Analyse the essential ideas in the Ontological Argument The Ontological (meaning ‘concerned with being’) argument is the only a priori argument for the existence of God. This means that it does not rely on the evidence of our senses for its premises or conclusion. It works by logical stages, which is self evidently true or logically necessary. This is one of its major strengths. It is also deductive, so the conclusion is the only possible one that could be deduced give the premises.
I myself am an Atheist, and therefore in my opinion believe miracles are impossible as all miracles are by, definition impossible if they claim to be the action of a deity. There are four different definitions of miracles, A ‘radical change for the better’ in a person, an ordinary event which has Religious significance for the believer, A remarkable or unusual event which has been directly caused by God but does not go against or break the laws of nature and The ‘laws of nature’ are being broken by God, which is the definition David Hume (18th Century) uses. This more traditional understanding of a miracle is the understanding of classical Theism, namely that God is omnipotent and omnibenevolent, and therefore he does intervene on occasion to perform miracles. As an atheist, David Hume refutes miracles, he does not believe that they can happen, although he has one of the most famous definitions of the traditional understanding of a miracle. Hume
Plato's doctrine of recollection states that rather than learning, what is really happening when people think about something, and in the end discover an answer to a problem, is that they are recollecting things that they already knew. Plato’s doctrine does not solve the problem of Meno’s paradox because there is no evidence of a soul being immortal and having all knowledge but does make interesting points on learning and teaching. Someone can have knowledge for something as simple as brushing your teeth and knowing those definitions, to having the knowledge of definitions of wide array of academic knowledge in the vast subject areas. The doctrine intends to allow us as critical readers to understand and distinguish the two different types of knowledge. These two types of knowledge are implicit and explicit knowledge.
In the quote below Rand explains why she rejects religion outright, and she believes man himself deserves the attention: Just as religion has preempted the field of ethics, turning morality against man, so it has usurped the highest moral concepts of our language, placing them outside this earth and beyond man’s reach. “Exaltation” is usually taken to mean an emotional state evoked by contemplating the supernatural. “Worship” means the emotional experience of loyalty and dedication to something higher than man… But such concepts do name actual emotions, even though no supernatural dimension exists; and these emotions are experienced as uplifting or ennobling, without the self-abasement required by religious definitions.
Sadly again, almost none of these paradoxes are quoted in Zeno's original words by their various commentators, but in paraphrase. 1. Background Before we look at the paradoxes themselves it will be useful to sketch some of their historical and logical significance. First, Zeno sought to defend Parmenides by attacking his critics. Parmenides rejected pluralism and the reality of any kind of change: for him all was one indivisible, unchanging reality, and any appearances to the contrary were illusions, to be dispelled by reason and revelation.
To what extent is the via negativa the only way to talk about God Within this essay I will be arguing that the via negativa is a very unhelpful way to talk about God as if we were to only talk about him negatively we would ultimately never know anything of God’s nature. Instead, I will argue that analogy is a better way to talk of God and I will refer to Aquinas’ ideas of analogical language. The via negativa (or apophatic way) claims that people can only talk about God in negative terms because he is transcendent and utterly different and greater than anything we can comprehend. Thus we cannot say what God is because his nature is beyond our comprehension. 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”.
“So where does this leave thee philosophers, the scholars and the world’s brilliant debaters? God has made the wisdom of this world look foolish. Since God in his wisdom saw to it that the world would never know him through human wisdom, he has used our foolish preaching to save those who believe.” (1 Corinthians 1:20-21 New living Translation). In the following verses it is stated that God saw in his wisdom that the world would never know him through human wisdom. Human wisdom is limited, because its bases off of prior knowledge and instinct, the wisdom of the world from philosophers, scholars, Greeks, Jews, and Gentiles is foolish to God.
Buffon was a deist or secret atheist,12 as were Lamarck13 and Hutton.14 Laplace was an open atheist.15Werner,16 Cuvier,17 Smith18 and Lyell19 were probably deists or some sort of vague theists. These developers of old-earth theory were hardly objective, unbiased, let-the-facts-speak-for-themselves observers of the physical evidence, as is so often supposed.” (Mortenson, 2003) They had no religious opinion to relegate the belief of creation. Their opinion of the age of the earth was solely scientific based on tangible and seen evidence and tested theories. Today in history scripture geologists are being determined to have acknowledged correct timelines which were once debated by earlier non scriptural geologists. “It would be misleading to think that all these factors influenced all scientists to the same degree.
“From this it is sufficiently clear that he cannot be a deceiver: for all cunning and deception presuppose some shortcoming, as is plain by the natural light.”(37) In Descartes third meditation he has proven and answered questions that he has set out to prove. Descartes has ruled out the possibilities of the ‘cause’ being; himself, that existence has always been, his parents, and/or of something less perfect than God. Descartes has proven that God does in fact exist and as such must not be a
Basically this life is all you have so do what you want. Even those these religions have very different beliefs they do have some similarities. This paper will compare and contrast various aspects of both of these belief systems. “The gods are not to be feared; death cannot be felt; the good can be won; all that we dread can be conquered.” -- Epicurus. (webspace.ship.edu/) An Epicurean mindset is that this life will be over and there is nothing else.With Epicurus's one constant problem with God was evil.