Furthermore experience is one of, if not the, principle way of gaining knowledge and forming ideas. It helps people form concepts and especially form ideas that would not otherwise be formed. Rene Descartes argued that some ideas were innate and he attempted to prove this with a deductive argument in which if all the premises are true then the conclusion must be true. Through this he convinced himself that God was real and seeing as only God could have implanted the idea of God into him that it must be innate. This is a counter to Locke’s argument but I feel it is a poor one as the premises are not certainly true they are based on falsehoods especially ones about God being the perfect being; that just depends what you believe.
This is not a justified argument due to the fact that theists do not try to definitely prove the existence of God. Several different approaches are used to provide a very strong argument for the
Rational knowledge is often derived from syllogisms. Unless both the major and minor premises of syllogisms are sound, the logical conclusions drawn from the rational thoughts are unsound. Scientists cannot rely on rational knowledge alone because rational knowledge involved only form and not content (Jackson, 2009). Empirical knowledge is gained through objective observations and a person’s experience in relation to his or her senses (Jackson, 2009). A person who relies on empirical knowledge only believes what can be detected by his/her senses (sight, sound, taste, etc.).
The falsification principle is a method of working out whether language is meaningful by looking at scientific methods of proving the statement wrong, if you can think of a way in which the statement could be proved wrong then the statement has meaning. It is a theory closely associated with Karl Popper (1902-1994) and Antony Flew (1923-present). Karl popper was born in Vienna and was agnostic, even though he was raised by a Christian family. He started to question logical positivism and the verification principle when writing a book and founded the idea of falsification through his discussion of scientific method. Popper stated that in order for a statement to be scientifically true you had to be able to think of a way to disprove it.
Both types of utilitarianism wanted a secular theory to which everyone could use. This is the main reason as to why utilitarianism is not compatible with religion. Another reason as to why act utilitarianism is not compatible with a religious approach to decision making is that it has the potential to justify any act as long as it generates the most happiness for the greatest number even if the act is very wrong. It reduces morality to simple maths when using the hedonic calculus. It doesn’t value human life as highly as religions, such as Christianity does.
Outline two key objections to the Ontological Argument and explain the responses made to them. The ontological argument was first introduced by Anselm in the ‘Prosologian’. It is an a priori argument as it is not based on empirical evidence but id deductive and analytic in that it allows one to use logical reasoning to reach a logically necessary conclusion which, in theory, cannot be disputed. Anselm defines God as ‘that than which nothing greater can be conceived’ (TTWNGCBC) and states that everyone, theist or not, can accept this definition. He argues that ‘the fool’ in Psalm 53 can conceive of God but fails to believe he exists.
“Logos” describes a kind of truth that strives for objectivitythrought the use of critical reason, while “mythos” describes a truth whose purpose is to overcome our subjective sense of separateness from the world and other living beings. Though past societies understood the distinction betwwn the two, Armstrong contends that in our time both skeptics and religious people treat mythos as a set of objective claims. After reading “Homo Religiosus,” the concept of keeping mythos separate from logos is impossible to
Under this conception, language is not an adequate tool to determine which particulars belong within a concept. Regardless of this semantic confusion, without a conception of language that is not idea-based, (III) would also seem to rule out a word from mentally representing every possible quality of concept-instances. Thus, without further development of a theory of language, this understanding of Hume’s theory is bizarrely both circular and
Elizabeth Marrero March 11, 2013 Section 3 1) We should not accept the psychic’s answers because a psychic might give false hope and/or false information some psychic’s might be well at what they do but there are some who are guilty. It is better to look at it from a distance and not take it personally. Most people tend to listen to what people say and give them the benefit of doubt. Then there are people who see this as a religious perspective. For instance, with some religions like Christianity, they believe in God and that God is the only one who can predict and know your future.
This means that do we do good things because God says is good or do we do good things so than God says that it is good. Another argument I am going to examine, is for the statement, and it is an argument based on a group of people called Anti-Theists. They don’t believe in God, so they agree with the statement. However, Anti-Theists like Richard Dawkins say that anyone who believes in religion or in a god is an extremist and it clouds and distorts your view on morality. The next argument that I am going to examine is what some people in the world think, but it is based around Cultural Relativists, who say that if morality was decided for by God then he could say one day to murder somebody and it would be fine.