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beliefs are different from those you were raised with, explain what caused you to change your religious views.
What religious activities do you engage in (for example, worship, prayer,
LUDWIG FEUERBACH
KARL MARX
BUDDHISM: FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS Life inevitably involves suffering, is imperfect and unsatisfactory
Suffering originates in our desires
Karma Suffering will cease if all desires cease Yogic Practices There is a way to realize this state: the Five Sacrifices
in its view that Jesus is the Son of God and savior whose sacrificial death and resurrection make it possible for people to have eternal life in heaven
Islam focuses on the Five Pillars
Shahadah: There is no God but Allah and Mohammad is his prophet Salat: a regular life of prayer (prayer five times a day is required) Zakat: a yearly setting aside of a portion of ones wealth for others Sawm: the observation of the holy month of Ramadan Hajj: the pilgramage to Mecca required once in a Moslems life (assuming adequate health and economic means to make the journey)
religions of the world embody different responses to the ultimate divine Reality. Each religion, in attempting to express the human experience of this divine Reality, has built its own distinctive way of thinking and experiencing this Reality and has developed its own answers to the perennial questions of our origin and destiny. What is your reaction to Hicks argument? Do you agree with it? Why or why not?
Hick believes that all of the major religions are based on the concept of
salvation, moving human existence from self-centeredness to Realitycenteredness. Based on what you know of various religions, do you believe this broad and inclusive definition of salvation is accurate? Why or why not? position. What arguments would you make against religious pluralism and for the existence of one true religion?
Copyright 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
not p and show that a contradiction results. Since not p leads to a contradiction it must be the case that p is true
circles?
havent discovered it
That is a contradiction
Therefore round squares dont exist
Good Strategy
It is often claimed that belief in God is irrational Belief in something that conflicts with science and which no one can see
the atheist by arguing that it is they who have the irrational belief
that square circles exist It is to assert something contradictory
which has no equal, and we see that we cannot think of something better We understand what it would mean for there to be a being which was the greatest possible being and we see that we cant think of anything greater
So far we are only talking about the idea of God
being than which nothing greater can be thought (i.e. I am thinking about the greatest thing that I can think of) And yet there were no such being in reality
both
be conceived (i.e. I am thinking about God) and not thinking of a being than which none greater can be conceived (since I can think of a greater being: namely one who exists)
Which is a contradiction; so God must exist
conceive
contradiction
of And not thinking of the greatest island that I can conceive of So the island must exist
too
Yet, the argument is only supposed to work for In other words, I can always think of a greater
Kants Response
Consider the sentence Cats are brown
Cats is the subject brown is the predicate
George is a cat
cat is the predicate
Kants Response II
A predicate names a property that an object
Now what about the sentence God exists? It looks like exists is a predicate It looks like it stands for a property, like cat or brown This it is because it is grammatically the same
Kants Response IV
If existence were a property then it would be
case that there was an object which was a smurf and which lacked the property of existence Just like to say that the table is not blue is to say that there is an object which is a table and lacks the property of being blue
Kants Response V
The problem with Anselms argument, then, is
object can have (or lack) And since God is thought of as having everything He must have existence (or else He wont be the greatest)
But existence doesnt name a property It is not something that we can add to an object to make it better
Kant VI
So what is existence? Predicates are contrasted with quantifiers A quantifier tells you how many of a thing you
have
quantifier
object that has maximum greatness We are thinking there are no objects with maximum greatness
ontological argument for the existence of God. If you did not believe in God, or if your belief in God was shaky, would this argument help convince you that there is indeed a supreme being whom we have traditionally called God? Why or why not?
Describe in your own words Gaunilos
critique of Anselms ontological argument for the existence of God. Do you find Gaunilos reasoning persuasive? Why or why not?
A Posteriori Arguments
We have so far been looking at an a priori
arguments
about the world And conclude that God must exist in order to explain the fact
The Cosmological The Teleological
Design
goal It starts from the observation that the world looks designed and concludes that there is a designer
His version focuses on the design of the universe The modern version focuses on the design of living
origins in Aristotle
that the cosmos (world) always existed These arguments are taken over by early Muslim philosophers and then find their way into Western philosophy via Aquinas
of God
The Argument from Motion The argument from Efficient Causation The Argument from Possibility and Necessity The Argument from Degrees of Perfection The Argument from the Governance of the World
cosmological arguments and the last is a teleological argument (all from Aristotle)
The fourth is an argument similar to the kind that
changed
motion) is one kind of movement But so also is a piece of wood burning, a leaf turning brown etc.
that the object has becoming actual So when the wood is not on fire it is potentially hot In order to become actually hot the wood must be brought into contact with something that is itself actually hot
Copyright 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
causes
Efficient- the agent that makes something Formal- the essence of the thing Material- the material it is made of Final- the reason that the thing is made
material (wood) coming to posses a new form (the form of heat) form could transmit it to receptive material
Aristotles terms
the effect
So consider some causal chain A1A2A3A4A5 If we take away A4 then we wouldnt have A5 If we take away A2 we wouldnt have A3, A4, or A5 If we take away A1 the whole chain would disappear So if there were no first cause then there would
Objections
Maybe there is a first cause
But why think that its God?
No First Cause
A 1 A-n A 2 A1 A 3 A 0 A 4 A 1 A n A 2 A n
Possible Worlds
Lets introduce some technical language
but where there are a different set of truths So, there is a possible world where Hitler won World War II, and a possible world where you did not come to class today, and so on
some possible world A necessary being is one that exists in every possible world
a contingent being
necessary
Objections
Same as before
Maybe there is a necessary being, maybe it is
being
contingent beings going back forever There is no time at which nothing exists There is always a contingent being around to create more contingent beings and each contingent being has one that precedes it
Dialogue
The world is a giant machine We can infer by analogy that the machine had to
seeing a watch (Paleys example) We have seen watches before and know that they do not spontaneously arrange themselves So we can conclude that the watch must have been made
Copyright 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
Teleological Argument II
But in the case of the universe the analogy
breaks down
designed because of the way things act around here Hume make the comparison to using the growth of hair to learn about human birth
Humans make mistakes and design imperfect things This looks like what is going on in nature So the analogy doesnt establish a perfect God
Teleological Argument IV
Even if we can show that the world is perfect there is
long process of design and re-design where the kinks are ironed out Maybe this is just the latest in a long process of trial and error
Why not 100 gods working together One in charge of flowers, one in charge of trees, one in
ingrained sense of morality. Do you believe that the existence of this deeply felt moral sense supports belief in the existence of a supremely moral mindGod? Why or why not?
In line with Kants reasoning, do
you believe in cosmic justice, the belief that good people must be rewarded with personal happiness, whether in this world or the next. Why or why not?
prevent evil
If God cannot prevent evil, then
God is limited in power If God will not prevent evil, then God is limited in benevolence But if God is not limited in either power or benevolence, why is there evil in the world?
Pascals Wager
Pascal starts from the assumption that we
The Wager
God exists Believe Infinite reward God does not exist Nothin g
Dont believe
Infinite punishme nt
Nothin g
The Process
Given the options and the fact that we must
Why must we choose? Pascal argues that to not make a choice is really to choose not to believe
So what we should do is to start to go through
Eventually we will come to actually believe We in effect brainwash ourselves into being true
Objections
Which religion should we go and join?
Christianity? Islam?
believe
Agnostic
I dont believe there is a God can
not have a belief that God exists (nor do I have the belief that He does not exist) On the other reading it says that I do in fact believe that God does not exist The difference between ~B(G) (& ~B(~G)) and B (~G) To refuse the wager is to choose the first option
Copyright 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
Cliffords Objection
Choosing what to believe based on which
of things which would result in innocent deaths and the downfall of society
people will die, but it is in his best interest to believe that the ship is seaworthy
He is guilty of murder
Cliffords Objection II
But it is worse than that
He who believes without evidence harms mankind The danger to society is not that it should believe
wrong things, though that is great enough; but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them; for then it must sink back into savagery
Noetic quality
Transiency Passivity
For if God does not exist it would of course be impossible to prove it; and if he does exist it would be folly to attempt it.