Finally, I will state which viewpoint I agree with and give my reasons why. Determinism is stated as “the view that every event, including human actions, is brought about by previous events in accordance with universal casual laws that govern the world. Human freedom is an illusion” (Chaffee 141). As the definition bluntly states, people who believe in determinism believe that everything is predetermined based on prior events and people and do not believe that humans have free will. In the philosophical view of determinism with respect to free will, it focuses more on the circumstances surrounding the agent instead of just the individual agent.
The difference is that utilitarianism states that no matter what a person should never stray from the moral that will bring the greatest good. Kant justifies that under certain circumstances one could stray from the moral as long as the truths are logically consistent and universalizable. Utilitarianism is broken down into two categories; act utilitarianism and rule utilitarianism. The act utilitarian believes that one cannot establish rules in advance to cover all situations, actions and people because they are all different. The rule utilitarian believes that there are enough human motives and situations to justify setting up rules that apply to all humans and situations.
Only McCloskey knows why he wrote this article with his reasons for not believing as he did write this piece as if he had been appointed to provide why and what their foundational arguments are against theists’ beliefs in God. To say that proofs do not prove the existence of God, is not justifying the evidence. According to Foreman, we must justify the evidence, distinguish the specific actions, how these actions universal judgments concerning right or wrong, and formulate ethical views in the evidence. Just because a proof is stated doesn’t mean it’s valid. We need to investigate and see why it is valid or invalid.
The biggest contradictory idea against the motion would be that of whether God can be proven empirically. Does science have a method to refute God? If science requires evidence to prove something what if that evidence is not measurable by scientific methods? Science is a form of reasoning developed by us to provide answers to many questions, yet
Masserman at heart agrees with Freud’s argument that religion is an illusion humans hold onto, but he makes a key distinction in saying that this illusion is necessary for the well doing of human beings, “they are substitutive or compensatory beliefs, quite necessary to make human life at all livable” [Herberg 177]. Having set up Masserman’s ideas, Herberg is now able to explain with key distinction what the ideas of Masserman, which he calls the idea of ‘Natural Religion’, really are and why they are different then his ideas of true faith, of ‘Biblical Faith’. Herberg calls Masserman’s ideas one of ‘Natural Religion’. Herberg best explains this as “Sinful man…needs God and searches for him….but the God he finds is the God he constructs-if not with his hands than with his heart and mind- to suite his purposes” [Herberg 180,181]. Herberg
The saying ‘the more things change, the more they remain the same’ is related to each of these theories in different ways. When tackling the issue of change, Parmenides takes his theory of reality into account. Parmenides states that there is no such thing as change and that our senses are deceiving, and therefore, our perception of the world does not reflect reality. Parmenides believes in the ‘one’ being, which is unchangeable, immobile and eternal. Parmenides also says that everything is, has been and always shall be due to the importance he gives to thought and language.
Descartes concludes that the senses provide attributes of existence in the world that is being experienced, but he is looking for truth, one that cannot come in the physical world. The way we come to know this is not through the senses of the body, because we can misunderstand the relationship between us and the world, senses of the body gives us the qualities of finite existence but doesn’t give us existence itself, and because infinite existence is the more real, it should be sought out more, not that finite existence is not important, just not as important. The mind has finite understand but it has 1 infinite idea it can think on. Infinite will must be brought down into the finite to be properly used. Through adventuring on this journey to fid infallible truth, he runs into the problem of God’s existence, and specifically in the Third Meditation, he removes himself from the world and examines the innate idea of infinity in his contemplation of Gods existence.
It cites many peer-reviewed experiments, in which people are subjected to certain mental tests and questions. The book concludes that overall, faith can positively influence one’s subconscious mental activities if they truly believe that God can help them. One of the problems with the book is a lack of acknowledgement that strong, passionate belief can cause harmful actions. The Crusades and the 9/11 terrorist attacks were both initiated by people who interpreted their faith as a means to take harmful action against a group of people who do not share their faith. It’s important to address this danger, and although faith can certainly create the benefits described in How God Changes Your Brain, it’s irresponsible to ignore that faith, being a psychological tool, can be used for both positive and negative means.
Berkeley’s Three Dialogues In his three dialogues, George Berkeley’s central claim is that to be is to be perceived, whereby reality only consists exclusively of minds and ideas. Real things are strictly identical to sensible qualities, and thus depend on a perceiver to exist. However, this paper aims to defend the ontological view that sensible qualities are only appearances of the external world and therefore do not reveal all there is to know about the external world. In other words, humans possess only a limited set of modes of perception that, in turn, allow only a narrow window of perceiving the external world, i.e. what we call sensible qualities.
Is it really there? To believe in God or not to believe in God; this has to be one of the most controversial thoughts that has many opinionated arguments. Questions are asked constantly concerning our being, the higher power, the reason we are here, who made the one that made us, and the list goes on and on. To question this is something normal, but how can we possibly find an answer. In the Dialogues of Concerning Natural Religion by David Hume, he explains his thoughts concerning God and the higher power that in his opinion should not be accepted.