McCloskey contended against the three mystical verifications, which are the cosmological argument, the argument from design and the teleological argument. He called attention to the presence of evil on the planet that God made. He likewise called attention to that it is irrational to live by trust or faith. As indicated by McCloskey, confirmations do not essentially assume a fundamental part in the conviction of God. Page 62 of the article expresses that "most theists do not come to have faith in God as a premise for religious conviction, however come to religion as a consequence of different reasons and variables."
We cannot judge God, nor his actions because he is a non cognitive being. Only God knows the future, and therefore when it is appropriate to intervene. Therefore, through miracles he is not favouring some of his creation over others, but the good of the whole creation itself. Furthermore, our free will stops God from intervening in every situation, because according to Swinburne, if we do not have the capacity to damn ourselves, we are not truly free agents. However this does not necessarily overcome the problem of God favouring his creation because by having the ability to intervene, but not at every moment he can prevent evil from happening to some but not too others.
Aquinas also presented an objection to Anselm’s ontological argument. He argued that the ontological argument is invalid as we cannot define God ‘for the human mind does not have an intuition of the essence of God’. Aquinas rejects that there can be
Should the resurrection of Jesus be considered one of the "signs" of the Gospel? Why or why not? This by far is a very controversial debate and is tossed to and fro with the theological community. The Gospel of John does not state that the resurrection is a “sign” even though the event was miraculous in and of itself, there is no biblical evidence to back up the event as a sign. The purpose of the resurrection was not to prove that Christ was who He claimed to be rather it was necessary.
The word “good” in reference to God is meaningless as we cannot know what this entails; it is completely different from saying “the man is good”. According to the Via Negativa, to say “God is good” limits God’s goodness because it puts a human idea of goodness in our minds. Similarly if we talk about God being all-knowing, we can debate what this means but ultimately we cannot know for certain what it means to be all-knowing. The only things we can be certain of about God is what God is not; for example God is not evil. There are strengths to this theory, for instance it prevents us from making anthropomorphic statements about God, meaning we are not left with an inadequate image of God.
He has different ways to view certain things such as death, religion, and strangers. He does not believe in God and does not think that there is an afterlife. Some people may think that his austism is making him think this way. Most people that have autism can only believe what is in front of them and what they can see. This is probably why Christopher thinks the way he does because you can not really see god, and probably doesn’t see the logic in religion either.
For example, on Damascus Road, Saint Paul’s religious experience transformed his moral outlook. It would appear that all religious experiences demonstrate a revelation of truth, but one could argue that this does not indicate they are true. As Freud would argue that religious experiences are a way of externalising deep, repressed personal truths. In such a view, religious experiences are unverifiable and cannot be thought to prove the existence of God, as they are merely manifestations of the human subconsciousness. A transient experience short, and cannot be sustained for a long duration of time.
McCloskey attempts to make an argument for the non-existence of God and to give reasons why atheism is more comforting than theism. This paper is a response to that article which will address certain ideas raised by Mr. McCloskey. This author is a theist and will present arguments to show the reasoning for the existence and necessity of God. To begin with, McCloskey suggests in his article that the theist’s arguments are “proofs” which do not provide definitive evidence for the existence of God, so therefore, they should be discarded. This is not a justified argument due to the fact that theists do not try to definitely prove the existence of God.
This is especially true of Christianity. In short it can be said that theology works on religion. Theology is in fact based on religion. It is a system of studying about God especially Christian religion. Religion does not deal with any sort of rational analysis.
Paul Tillich argues against the literal theologians and the social scientists as well. He says that “religion has rediscovered its true place in man’s spiritual life, namely, in its depth, out of which it gives substance, ultimate meaning, judgment and creative courage to all functions of the human spirit.” (Tillich 9) In my opinion and it may be clouded by my religion, which is Christianity, is that God does exist and one will not