Explain Scinetific views on the origin and the end of the universe. The most prevalent theory amongst scientists for the beginning of the universe is the big bang theory. This theory states that the universe rapidly expanded from a singular form of energy around 15 billion years ago and the universe is still expanding now, but at a much slower rate. The universe expanding is often likened to spots on an inflating balloon, when the balloon is stretched the spots on it expand, similar to the universe. The theory was first proposed by a Belgian priest and scientist Georges Lemaitre in the 1920’s.
Originally scientists thought they knew exactly what brains were made of. However, those scientists made this assumption based on very little evidence. Scientists thought that all mammalian brains were made of the same weight with a number of neurons that were always proportional to the size of the brain. For example taking two similar size brains, one of a cow and another of a chimpanzee, they would have similar cognitive abilities. However, most people would say that chimpanzees are much superior and are capable of more complex tasks.
Responding to an Atheistic View A.W. Tozer once said, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us”. In the his article, On Being an Atheist, H.J. McCloskey leaves little doubt of what enters his mind when he thinks about God. He argues that there are no real reasons to believe in God and takes the approach of dissecting several arguments used by both sides of the spectrum.
Response to Being an Atheist Christina Yarbrough PHIL 210 Liberty University H.J McCloskey wrote an article entitled “On Being an Atheist” which dealt with the atheist approach to the cosmological and teleological approaches and the problem of evil. He calls his view of the arguments proofs, as he feels that the arguments offer no proof for the existence of God. He believes that atheism is a more comfortable way to believe than that of theism and that those who believe in theism should be upset just because they believe in God. I believe that McCloskey has a fallacy in his arguments and that the existence of God can not be proven through any one argument, and that all we can do is defend our beliefs within the realm of our own understanding. McCloskey is reminding atheists the ways theists argue for their belief in God.
Some philosophers such as Aquinas believe that it is possible to talk meaningfully, truthfully and factually about God whereas others like Ayer believe this to be impossible. Philosophers have suggested that there are four ways that religious language might make truth claims about the reality of God and whether it can succeed in doing this – Via Negativa, Analogy, and Myth. The ‘via negativa’ or negative way is an attempt to prevent people from misrepresenting God. It claims that the only way we can talk about God is by saying what God is not. God is so beyond our ability to understand that the only way of seeing the reality of God is to continue saying what God is not, God is more than anything we can say of him.
Agnosticism is the purely epistemological stance that sufficient evidence does not exist for or against theism therefore the best stance on the argument is no stance at all. Combinations of these positions are possible due to their varying natures, but here only the argument between theism and atheism is examined more closely. The problem of evil is described and used to argue against the existence of God. Richard Swinburne’s solution to the problem of evil is explained and used to revise the original atheist’s argument from evil to its best, but still insufficient, form. Commonly, atheists hold the view that organized religions are corrupt and actually cause more harm than good.
On one hand you have the philosophers who believe you can speak and write about God, because God is reality. On the other hand, are the Logical Positivists who claim that statements about God have no meaning because they don’t relate to anything that is real. There are a number of philosophers who claimed to have proven conclusively that religious language is meaningful, for example Aquinas’ theory of analogy. An analogy is an attempt to explain the meaning of something which is difficult to understand and forming relations through attributes or relations that are similar. Aquinas rejected univocal and equivocal language when talking about God.
They treated claims made about God as cognitive, meaning that the assertions made are meant to be taken as facts or universal truth claims rather than non-cognitive meaning on a personal level for believers. They believed that language was only meaningful if it was analytically or synthetically verified. Analytic statements are a priori (based on logic) and synthetic statements are a posteriori (based on empirical evidence). They created a test called verification principle to see if religious language was meaningful; Statements can only be meaningful if it can be demonstrated. One could argue that the logical positivists were unsuccessful in arguing that religious language is meaningless because the verification principle has many weaknesses.
When the fist European settlers came to the Americas there was an estimated 100 million indigenous native North Americans living here. How then is it possible that a fraction of that many Europeans were able to not only conquer the Native Americans but to almost entirely wipe them out? The answer to this question is a relatively simple one, the Europeans had better technology, were one consolidated group, and they had a desire to spread their beliefs upon others. The Europeans that came over here after 1492 brought with them several things that worked to their advantage in gaining a foothold in this new world. Fist of all they brought with them superior weaponry.
The lack of clarification for the term “proofs” does a disservice to McCloskey’s opening. The very things he considers “proofs” to the theist are in most studious circles actually considered “arguments” for the case of theism not “proofs”. It may appear the he is attempting to run it altogether to misdirect the reader into believing something that is not. McCloskey refers to the arguments as proofs and he often implies that they can’t definitively establish the case for God, but the Cumulative Case using the Cosmological Argument, the creator, the Teleological Argument, the intelligent designer and the Moral Argument, that He is a personal, morally perfect being is the best explanation that God exists which is the best explanation for the universe we experience. The claims of science aren’t a hundred percent indisputable or even a hundred percent factual and yet they are still accepted as valid, rationally convincing or highly probable, thus the belief in theism doesn’t have to be irrefutable to be accepted as the same.