god, exIstenCe oF
This is the “Big” question, the ultimate metaphysical debate. It has occupied the world’s best minds for centuries.
Followers of many religions have offered proofs of the existence of God. Below are arguments from within the Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions.
Pros Cons
The world is so magnificent and wonderful, so full of variety and beauty that it is inconceivable that it could have come about purely by chance. It is so intricate that a conscious hand must have been involved in its creation.
Therefore, God exists as the creator of the world.
You cannot infer from the variety and beauty of the world that God was the creator. The conception of God contains many extra attributes that are not necessary for a world creator. Just because the world is beautiful and varied does not mean it was consciously designed. Why can’t beauty happen by accident?
If you saw a watch lying on the sand, you would think that someone must have made the watch—a watch-maker. Similarly, we human beings are so complicated and amazing that we must conclude that we had a con-scious maker.
The difference between a watch and humans is that the watch serves a purpose—to tell time. Therefore, seeing something so perfectly serving a purpose suggests design.
What purpose do we serve? We don’t, we just exist. And even if we were designed for a purpose, the earlier argu-ment applies: A purposeful designer isn’t necessarily God.
Only human beings are capable of rational thought. That we are here at all is amazing. One infinitesimal change in the world and life would not have evolved. Getting something so amazing, on such long odds, smacks of intention.
The argument from probability does not work. It relies on there being something special about us. What is so special about us? We are rational—so what?
God must be perfect if he exists. But a thing that exists is more perfect than a thing that doesn’t exist. But nothing can be more perfect than God. So God must exist.
This ontological argument can be rebutted by rejecting the idea that existence is perfection. Something either exists or it doesn’t. The argument is a disguised condi-tional. You say “if God exists then he must be perfect, and if he must be perfect he must therefore exist.” But all this rests on the initial “if God exists.” If God doesn’t exist, we don’t have the problem and the argument doesn’t work.
Greenhouse Gases: Trading Quotas |117
Everything in the universe has a cause. It is inconceivable that time is one long chain of cause and effect without beginning, but it must be because we cannot conceive of something happening uncaused. Therefore, God exists as the uncaused first cause.
The cosmological argument doesn’t work. For a start, an uncaused first cause still doesn’t necessarily have all the attributes it would need to be called God, e.g., omnipo-tence, benevolence, and omniscience. More important, an uncaused first cause is just as incomprehensible to us as an endless chain of cause and effect. You are just shift-ing the incomprehension one stage back.
sample motions:
This House believes that God exists.
This House believes that reports of God’s death have been greatly exaggerated.
Web Links:
Counterbalance. <http://www.counterbalance.org> Contains summary of the debate about the existence of God from a
cosmo-• logical standpoint.
The Existence of God and the Beginning of the Universe. <http://www.leaderu.com/truth/3truth11.html> An academic paper
• employing a cosmological argument to help prove the existence of God.
New Advent. <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06608b.htm> Detailed essay on a Roman Catholic Web site outlining the
• various proofs for the existence of God.
Further reading:
Boa, Kenneth D., and Robert M. Bowman Jr. 20 Compelling Evidences That God Exists: Discover Why Believing in God Makes so Much Sense. David C. Cook 2005.
Gardiner, Phillip. Proof? Does God Exist? Real2Can, 2007.
Strobel, Lee. The Case for a Creator: A Journalist Investigates Scientific Evidence That Points Toward God. Zonderan, 2004.
greenhouse gAses: trAdIng QuotAs
A number of methods have been proposed to reduce the emissions of the so-called greenhouse gases that lead to global warming. The European Union has always favored taxing heavy polluters, while the United States has supported Tradable Pollution Quotas (TPQs). The 1997 Kyoto Protocol laid the foundation for TPQs. Under this agreement developing countries are exempt from the emission standards and cannot take part directly in pollution trading.
Each country in the TPQ plan is initially permitted to produce a certain maximum amount of each polluting gas.
Countries that want to exceed their quotas can buy the right to do so from other countries that have produced less than their quota. Furthermore, countries can also “sink” carbon (by planting forests to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere) to offset some of their pollution quotas. Interestingly, two usually opposing groups are against TPQs.
Industries claim that they go too far and that such stringent regulation is unnecessary. Environmentalists maintain that they are too lax.
Pros Cons
The scientific community agrees that something must be done to curb emissions of greenhouse gases that may be the cause of global warming. The possible consequences of global warming include crop failure, mass flooding, and the destruction of entire ecosystems with the pos-sible loss of billions of lives. Other consequences of pol-lution include acid rain and the enlargement of the hole in the ozone layer.
The environmental lobby has hugely overestimated the claims for pollution damaging the environment. The fossil record indicates that climate change has occurred frequently in the past, and there is little evidence linking climate change with emissions.
The TPQ plan is the only practical way to reduce emis-sions of greenhouse gases globally. It will guarantee that global levels of these gases are kept below strict targets and is more realistic than expecting heavy polluters to cut their emissions overnight.
The TPQ plan ensures more pollution in the long run than if limits were strictly enforced for each country and punitive taxes imposed on those exceeding their quotas.
Without TPQs, the environment would benefit further if a country kept well below its emissions quota. Adopt-ing the TPQ plan means that this benefit is lost because the right to this extra pollution is bought by another country.
Emissions are a global problem. The emission of the main greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, for example, affects the entire planet regardless of where the gas is produced.
This validates the use of TPQs, which act to limit the total amount of each polluting gas globally. TPQs are much more effective than the alternative of taxing emis-sions, because rich companies or countries will be able to pay the tax and still pollute.
Stating that it does not matter where pollution is pro-duced is simplistic and completely untrue for many gases, which do affect the region in which they are created. Fur-thermore, to permit developing countries to industrial-ize, they have been exempted from the protocol. This seriously undermines its efficiency. Furthermore, if taxes on pollution were set high enough, big companies would stop polluting because it would be prohibitively expen-sive. In addition, the introduction of TPQs will make later reductions in global emissions much harder. Once trading in TPQs has started, countries that have bought extra emission rights would certainly not voluntarily give them up to help reduce global emissions further.
TPQs are tried and tested. The United States has used them successfully since they were introduced in 1990.
Therefore, we have good reason to expect them to suc-ceed on a global scale.
TPQs have had some success in the United States, but they failed in Europe for two reasons. First, the European plans were poorly conceived, as was the Kyoto Protocol.
Second, whereas the American solution to pollution was always trading emissions, the main European solution was, and still is, to produce new technology to clean the emissions. Extending the TPQ plan to the entire globe will slow the technological developments needed to reduce greenhouse gases.
Progress in the field of emission control is remarkably difficult because of the opposition from the industrial lobby, most notably in the United States, which sees such restrictions as harmful to its economy. TPQs are the one method of control acceptable to these lobby groups and, more significant, to the US government. As the world’s biggest polluter, the United States must be included in any meaningful treaty. Therefore, TPQs are the only practical way forward.
The Kyoto Protocol lacks a comprehensive enforcement mechanism and is thus ineffective. In addition, assess-ing the effect that an individual country’s carbon “sink”
is having on the atmosphere is impossible. This merely creates a loophole that allows a country to abuse the pro-tocol and produce more than its quota of gases.