Should Sensus Divinitatis Even Be Considered in Argument For/Against God?
  • Play-doh
    9
    I am wondering if sensus divinitatis should be used in the argument for the existence of God.

    Sensus divinitatis is a feeling of divinity that people are said to experience, for example, when looking at a beautiful scene of nature. This is supposed to show that belief in God is innate because we are drawn to such thoughts or overwhelmed with emotions when experiencing a particularly moving piece of God-made nature.

    However, can sensus divinitatis really be used in argument for the existence of God? A feeling does not necessarily prove the existence of something. The joy of looking at a Christmas tree in anticipation of Santa Clause does not prove the existence of Santa. This feeling is tied, instead, to one of expectation or hope but not of truth.

    If atheists feel this “sensus divinitatis”, is it because of man’s innate knowledge of God, or is it instead an innate attraction to beauty and understanding of nature? If it is the latter, are theists then just attributing sensus divinitatis to God?

    However, belief in a divine power (or powers) has been prominent in ancient religions, especially in relation to nature. The Greek gods were modeled after natural phenomenon witnessed by their believers.

    But are theists attributing these natural phenomena to a divine power because we as people need order and would like them to be attributed to a maker?

    Bringing in the Fine-Tuning Argument, theists believe that because the world seems so perfectly designed to maintain human life, there must be a Creator who perfected nature for our living. Are theists afraid of believing in the atheistic many-universes hypothesis because it claims that it was due to chance that we happen to live in this perfectly designed world – that if one thing went array in chance, then we wouldn’t exist today? Does our nonexistence scare us so that theists choose to believe in God’s existence – for us to have a greater purpose than simply to exist?
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  • Relativist
    2.1k
    I am wondering if sensus divinitatis should be used in the argument for the existence of God.
    It seems to me to be a reasonable epistemic justification for believing in some sort of god(s). In theory, it is a sensing of the existence of god(s), and if true - it can be deemed as trustworthy as any of our other senses. But it's not a basis for an argument for God's existence - your alleged sense of God carries no weight with me, who does not have it. I think you're mistaken in attributing the sensation to God, while you think I'm mistaken for failing to accept what my senses are telling me, or defective for failing to have these senses.

    The hypothesis that there is such a thing as sensus divinitatis is based on the idea that all peoples in all cultures throughout history have believed in god(s). Appealing to this basis has the problemaic implication that the sense is very non-specfic - all this sense can be telling anyone is that some sort of god or gods exist, not that some particular conception (or religion) is true.
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  • Larissa
    4
    However, can sensus divinitatis really be used in argument for the existence of God? A feeling does not necessarily prove the existence of something. The joy of looking at a Christmas tree in anticipation of Santa Clause does not prove the existence of Santa. This feeling is tied, instead, to one of expectation or hope but not of truth — Play-doh

    Sensus divinitatis is not, in itself, meant to prove that a God exists. Instead, it is can be used to support the idea that, if God exists, he would have given humans a way to comprehend that he exists. If sensus divinitatis is real in the sense that it was God-given to humans, atheists would still be able to experience the phenomenon since it is a universally human thing. But since atheists do not believe in a God, they would have to contribute this feeling to something, thus thinking that it is purely because of "innate attraction to beauty". The argument for feeling as evidence for existence is contingent on whether the thing whose existence is in question could or would give the ability to feel the phenomenon for a purpose. In your example of the Christmas tree and Santa, the difference between this and sensus devinitatis and God is that, in this case, you could say that this feeling of joy is not given to you by Santa, since even if Santa were real, he probably would not grant the ability to humans to feel joy every time they looked at a Christmas tree because there would be no reason to give this ability. In the case of sensus devinitatis, the ability to feel this is caused or is an ability given by God for the purpose of acknowledging his existence.

    As far as involving the fine-tuning argument, I think that while, yes, the idea of our existence based on slim chance can be scary and could drive people to theism with no other reasoning, it still begs the question of how we can exist regardless of theism- the probability that the universe could simply not exist or if another universe exactly like ours could exist. The fine-tuning argument is used in conjunction with other arguments in support of theism, which in total can provide enough reasoning to believe in a God.
    Larissa Options
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