Dewey vs. Jesus Anthony Mayson EDUC 305 Dewey vs. Jesus Contrast the ideas of Dewey to the teaching of Christ. John Dewey was a great philosopher and was also a pioneer for education. He stated that value was a function neither of whim nor purely of social construction, but a quality situated in events. When it came to religious views Dewey honored the important functions that religious institutions and practices played in human life, but he rejected belief in any static ideal, such as a personal God. Dewey felt that only scientific method could reliably increase human good.
But because it’s impossible to conceive a greater being that God he must exist in both reality and our minds. In Anselm’s view only a fool can therefore doubt the existence of God, because the ‘fool’ has the idea of God in their mind to doubt him,
He is half correct in his statement as a theist does not believe in the proofs individually, but finds enough evidence in them to form the belief that God does exist; He is the creator of the universe, and He is morally perfect. McCloskey touches on faith in his article. It is defined by Tillich: as the state of being ultimately concerned as claiming truth for concern, and is involving commitment, courage, and the taking of risk. Theists have faith in God, and treat Him as the most important person in their lives. To have faith in someone on past knowledge, according to McCloskey, is reasonable however; it is unreasonable to have faith in God as we have no past knowledge of God.
The heart of Leibniz’s argument was that there must be a cause for the whole which explains the whole. Frederick Copleston would have disagreed with this statement because he believed that there has to be a necessary being which explains the contingent beings and this necessary being should contain within itself the reason for its own existence. Copleston would go on to say that this necessary being is God and God is therefore the explanation of the universe and how it came into existence. Hume would have agreed with this statement because he questioned the idea that everything has a cause. He claimed that
This postulate of God has origin in one’s own reason which would necessarily mean that submitting to will of God is submitting to one’s own reason. The need of God arises because the relationship between moral law and happiness is not guaranteed in this world. So here God comes to the rescue and thus necessitates the compatibility of virtue and realization of highest good. The postulate of immortality is very much interwoven with the postulate of God. Taking into account the sensuous nature of human beings, Kant states that it is very difficult for a man to be righteous without hope.
Like the Puritans, he planned to combat natural inclinations by building a life of strong moral preservation. While Franklin did not have as devoted a belief in God as the Puritans, he did believe in God and believed in the importance of good deeds and services. He also believed that all crimes were punishable, like the Puritans, who believed that God gave punishments to all wrongs. Franklin listed out virtues and sought to accomplish each in a specific order. His notion of virtues differed, however, from the Puritans who believed that being close to God was most virtuous and focused on reading scripture and prayers instead of being good citizens.
If God is assumed to be good, then all of his actions are good, and this would include the creation of right and wrong. The idea of “wrong” would never exist in this case as God only does and creates things that are good. While the author never gives up the idea of God being good, as he states that all theologians also believe this and then proceeds to brainstorm potential reasoning for the creation of “wrong.” He suggests that a deity, more superior than God, gave him orders to do so. This is a plausible conclusion to the premise of God being good, but also creating right and wrong. But he seems more certain about the idea of the devil creating this
Kant proclaims “the belief that we have cognition of something through experience which we in fact cannot accept as happening according to objective laws of experience (faith in miracles)”(p.185). He credits faith's mass appeal and staying power as the main reason for the growth of corrupted notions of miracles and saving grace. Kant was not a believer that accepting Jesus Christ as our savior would be all that is needed in Christian grace to free oneself from sin. Kant says “It is totally inconceivable, however, how a rational human being who knows himself to deserve punishment could seriously believe that he only has to believe the news of satisfaction having been rendered Page 1 for him, and accept it utiliter, in order to regard his guilt as done away with” (p. 123). These ideas of Kant seem to imply he is not a believer of Jesus or that miracles have never happened, the idea Kant is developing that miracles are not necessary for us to develop moral
He believed that life is meaningless and that we have no souls, so we should therefore grasp everything that the world has to offer whilst we can as there is no chance of an afterlife in his perspective. Neitzche also said that everyone should strive to seek pleasure and success wherever it could be found, he also thought religious beliefs to be false. But what did Neitzche mean by God is ‘dead’? He felt that religious outlook is no longer credible for the modern intellectual person. He meant that humans had advanced their understanding of the natural world enough to realize that the literal teachings of the religions that espoused God were not true.
So when we say ’God is good’, we need to know that we are using ’good’ in that sentence. In univocal terms this would be claiming that God is good in some way that humans are, Aquinas rejected this as he believed God to be perfect. Because of this, imperfect humans can’t be good in the same way that God is. In equivocal terms, this would mean that God is good in a totally different way to humans, Aquinas rejected that too. He argued that if people speak equivocally about God, then it cannot profess to know anything about him as it is saying that the language we use to describe humans or the experienced world around us, doesn’t apply to God.