Religion Course: Does God Exist?

Religion & Spirituality. Learn about systems of faith and worship.

Learn about beliefs, cultural systems, and world views the smart way with Religion & Spirituality courses at the University of Sydney.

Join us for a day-long workshop on the existence of God. Does God exist? How should we decide? And what is God anyway? Learn about the pros and cons for the best arguments for and against God’s existence, and learn about how debates on the topic do and should occur. We shall also tackle the false dichotomy, which indicates that either theism or naturalism obtains, introducing key models from outside the mainstream Western philosophical and religious traditions.

Aims

Learn to confidently describe and discuss key arguments concerning the existence of God. This course aims to introduce diverse ideas about religion and philosophy.

Outcomes

By the end of this course, you should be able to:

• describe God and other gods, and the methods for determining whether they exist
• debate on the existence of God and other gods, and miraculous occurrences
• apply epistemological concepts to your personal lives.

Content

Session 1: How to decide

• Basic epistemology – how do we ‘know’ anything?
• The ‘okayness’ of arguments.
• The utility of Bayesian analyses

Session 2: Arguments for God 1/2

• Argument from contingency
• Kalam cosmological argument
• Argument from fine-tuning

Session 3: Arguments for God 2/2

• Argument from morality
• Ontological arguments
• Arguments from personal experience and miracles

Session 4: Arguments for naturalism

• Argument from evil
• Argument from hiddenness
• Arguments from inconsistent revelation and other inefficiencies

Session 5: Exposing the false dichotomy

• Polytheisms
• Alternative monotheisms
• Pantheisms

Session 6: Decision time

• Theism vs. naturalism
• Theism vs. A-Theism
• The most probable divine model

Intended Audience

Anyone with an interest in the existence of God and how this is proved or disproved.

Prerequisites

None

Delivery Style

All-day workshop