Abdulhamid asked:

Does God really exist??

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We have to begin by agreeing upon a definition of divinity. I will take the liberty of assuming that you
have in mind a monotheism, that you envisage divinity in terms of a single omniscient omnipotent
universe-creating entity.

I happen to believe that there is no such entity. My atheism is motivated primarily by Ockam's Razor
Principle, whose basic claim is that the best explanation for any puzzle or phenomenon is almost
always the one involving the least complexity.

Regarding God (assuming I can refer successfully to a non-existent!), a universe with a God is more
complex than a universe without one. So the Razor Principle, at least this application of it, invites us
to believe that there is no God.

Nevertheless, this is not a knockdown proof that there is no God; more an argument that, other things
being equal, reason constrains us to believe that there is no God.

Two counter-arguments spring to mind. The first of these is that nothing can self-create, therefore
there must be a God, if only to supply this lack in the case of the universe as a whole. The problem
with this line of argument is that, notoriously, it carries over to God him/herself. Theologians tend to
be wary of the idea of an infinite regress of metacreators.

Secondly, St Anselm's Ontological Argument:

1. We can conceive of a God (see above), one of whose attributes is perfection. 2. An existing entity
is more perfect than a merely conceptual one. 3. Therefore God exists.

Very tricky. People are still arguing about it a thousand years later. What it's saying is that perfection
implies necessary existence. Personally, I think that if perfection is understood that way, it follows that
we can't conceive of a godless universe. But this is absurd. I certainly can conceive of a godless
universe. So I turn the whole argument, rather question-beggingly I admit, on its head. Instead it
becomes a sort of Reverse Ontological Argument:

1 We can conceive of a godless universe
2 If God was perfect there could be no godless universe 3 Therefore there is no God, at least not one
with perfection as one of its attributes in St Anselm's sense.

Of course, it's quite in order to believe that although reason constrains you not to believe in God,
nevertheless you have faith in his/her existence. The reason/faith distinction has a venerable
pedigree, and there is simply no intellectual basis on which an atheist can question a theist's faith.
Nevertheless, I really don't think there is a God!

Richard Craven