To them, if there is a good side to the world and a bad side to the world, then there must be two gods to keep track of it all. Gnostic believers even present “evidence” defending their position through information found in the secret books of the gnostic gospels (29). Though this argument seems sound, orthodox Christianity is the more popular belief on this subject because the Gnostics were considered ignorantly dualistic; God clearly sent his word through the Bible stating that he is the one and only God that ever was and ever will
There is nothing wrong with this, except when it comes to the issue of believing in God. Zagzebski makes a compelling point by discussing how people who are given Pascal’s wager would be motivated to believe in God due to the infinite gain, which is basically an appeal to one’s self-interest. This brings up the fundamental issue I have with Pascal’s wager: if God were to appear before every non-believer’s eyes and tell them to believe in Him or suffer eternal damnation, would these people believe in God just to avoid going
God also makes a promise to Jacob and doesn’t give him a mission like he does with Moses, emphasising that with different visions come different messages. The actuality of the image of God appearing before man also raises people’s attentions and also suggests that this is definitely a vision from God because according to the bible Christians are not supposed to see the God as a human figure until they reach heaven. The previous examples also highlight that not all visions are the same; they can happen in different ways, such as dreams or physical experiences. In the case of Hildegard
If everyone makes it to heaven, what is the motivation to be moral? Do any of someone’s moral actions have any consequence if everyone just goes to heaven anyway? However, Irenaean’s Theodicy also has much strength. Many people these days believe that the evidence of evolution and the contradictions that modern science have with the existence of God, disproves God. Yet, the Irenaean Theodicy is compatible with both the theory of evolution and modern science.
Examine the strengths and weakness of the argument for the existence of God based on Religious Experience (18) Religious experience presents an argument for the existence of God far different from more traditional teleological or cosmological arguments; its defining feature being an inductive argument with a posteriori factors of experience. A religious experience means there has been an encounter with the divine, making it backed among religious believers as convincing evidence of God. Religious experiences occur in an extraordinary way that does not apply to straight forward empiricism, but rather happen in a spiritual, mystical or religious condition. This often makes them somewhat unfathomable, as they are so outside the normal ‘I-It’ experiences. These experiences would be referred to as ‘I-Thou’ by Buber.
According to the Mormons, The Doctrine and Covenants is the record of heavenly revelations provided to Joseph Smith during his efforts as leader of the Mormon Church. But when one compares the Book of Mormon with the Doctrine and Covenants there is a problem of internal logical consistency. While both maintain divine inspiration, they do not synchronize. The
God cannot be a coward because he is the Supreme. Then if God is supreme and he created Descartes how that is Descartes has made mistakes because God would not give someone a mind to lead them astray. So why can Descartes make mistakes? “I am in a sense something intermediate between God and nought, placed in such a manner between the supreme Being and non-being, that
The gifts of the Spirit are simply God enabling believers to do what He has called them to do. Once a Christian submits to the leading of the indwelling, The Holy Spirit puts himself under His influence or control. The gifts of the Spirit and the fruit of the Spirit are both bestowed by God, yet they are distinct in their purpose and presentation. The gifts of the Spirit have a specific purpose; to prove a claim and to offer evidence of the Holy Spirits’ presence. The fruits of the Spirit are not for proof, but rather are evidence of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit of God in the believer.
Critically evaluate the relative merits of visions and voices, numinous, conversion and corporate religious experiences for proving the existence of God. A religious experience, for many, may be defined as a rare supernatural event, where an individual has had an experience in which they had a direct encounter of something truly divine to them personally. Swinburne would accept this as a reasonable thought as he states “An omnipotent and perfectly good creator will seek to interact with his creatures and in particular human persons capable of knowing him”. The existence of God can be argued in many ways, an a posteriori approach would be an argument from experience, and for example, the proposition that the experience of x indicated the
Either you believe science or you have “blind faith” in some religion. Honestly, it all depends on the person. In Matt 4:17 it says, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” With this being said repent means, to change your mind. If you never believe or have faith in anything, it’s privilege to get it. Most people say it is up to you to believe whatever, but then again there is believing or knowing the truth in life.