Miguel asked:

How can some philosophers prove that God doesn't exist?

Can you prove that God exists or can't we prove it?

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It is harder to prove that God doesn't exist than it is to prove that God does exist. One argument for
the non-existence of God is the 'Problem of Evil'. God is all-powerful, all-good and all-knowing by
definition. God therefore has the power to eradicate all evil. Being all-good he wants to eradicate all
evil, and being all-knowing no evil can escape his attention. Yet there IS evil in the world. Therefore
'God', as defined, does not exist. There are a number of loopholes in this argument, however.

There are three main types of argument for the existence of God. The teleological argument says that
the universe has order and design, therefore it must have been the work of a 'Great Designer'. The
cosmological argument says that every event has a cause, therefore following back the chain of
causes and effects, there must have been a 'First Cause'. The ontological argument says that it is
part of the definition of God to be 'Perfect'. But non-existence is an imperfection. Therefore God must
exist.

All three arguments were criticised by the philosopher Immanuel Kant in his book 'Critique of Pure
Reason' (1781), though he liked the teleological argument the best. There are still philosophers today
who think that a good case can be made for the existence of God. Richard Swinburne, for example.

Geoffrey Klempner