Stacey Snyder Professor McMichael Introduction to Philosophy April 08, 2014 Paley’s Teleological Argument In this paper, I will be discussing Paley’s teleological argument for the existence of God. This is a valid argument but in my opinion it is not enough to prove the existence of God. I believe that even if all the premises are true and they relate to the conclusion, which they do, that the argument can still be proven wrong by other theories. Paley’s teleological arguments, also called the design argument, attempts to prove that God exists by proving that God created the earth and created humans. Paley’s version of the argument is commonly recognized by the “watchmaker” analogy which is as follows.
Via negative features often in Buddhism’s religious language. Though they do not actually have a God, and therefore do not describe one, but they use it to put across the idea of a human reality in efforts to make the difficult concept of a God or divine power easier to describe. The theory of via negative has both advantages and disadvantages. One advantage is that it helps us to comprehend God and understand that he cannot be limited to the physical world, and to experience him, we must go one step further. It also allows human beings to get their minds around the fact that Gods knowledge and being is beyond anything our human minds can comprehend, let alone try to describe with ‘positive’ words.
Catholic people think that if you believe in God miracles seem more obvious to you and if you deny and test the existence of God then it will be harder to see the miracles happen. If God really is behind all of the natural laws, he is not restricted by them therefore He is allowed to violate them from time to time. This also contradicts the fact that God is omnibenevolant and defeats the saying that ‘all humans are equal’. There are a lot of problems with using miracles to prove Gods existence, some say that one person’s miracle is not one to another person, we have some sort of scientific explanations to miracles that happened in the bible, so in the future we could have explanations to miracles that
Genesis 1-2 can show us that God is all-powerful and all-loving. As far as Genesis 1-2 goes, it is more important to understand the scripture, rather than prove it to be factual. “Although popular images of controversy continue to exemplify the supposed hostility of Christianity to new scientific theories, studies have shown that Christianity has often nurtured and encouraged scientific endeavor, while at other times the two have co-existed without either tension or attempts at harmonization” (Ferngren, 2). Genesis 1-2 is the cause of much unnecessary tension between the religious and scientific communities. The writers of Genesis 1-2 wrote it in a way that presents the Earth’s creation as a factual account of God creating the heavens and the Earth.
Therefore, Wiles comes to the conclusion that God's goodness and the concept of miracles are two incompatible ideas. When discussing God's omnibenevolemce, Wiles introduces the nature of God and its impact on miracles. However, this also anthropomorphises him. As humans, with a limited knowledge of what the word 'good' means, Maimonedes states that it would be disrespectful to attribute this equivocal concept to an unlimited God. We cannot judge God, nor his actions because he is a non cognitive being.
Why Is There Evil And Suffering In The World? The curious as well as the critics of Christianity ask this question. If God is all-powerful and all loving, then why does He permit evil and suffering in the world? Various answers have been given but permanently settling the issue is impossible because so many of our answers raise further questions. Nevertheless, our lack of ability to answer the question perfectly does not mean that we cannot offer solutions.
Before talking about the incompatibility of science and religion, it is necessary to answer questions such as what is science and what is religion? The science is a tool by means of which it is possible to receive true knowledge of the world. How there was a Universe or how life has appeared? Very deep and difficult question. While none of these issues have precise answers, but there is a scientific methodology, which is the best of what people can approach to them.
Boethius was successful in his argument that God rewards and punishes justly.’ Discuss. (35) In this essay I am going to be examining Boethius and his theory of divine foreknowledge and attempting to come to a conclusion on whether or not his theory is successful in arguing that God rewards and punishes justly. Boethius’ argument is a very interesting theory that attempts to overcome the idea that God is partly responsible for human evil, if he knows in advance what we are going to do. It does so by arguing that God does in actual fact not know human actions in advance of us doing them and therefore cannot do anything about them. In this, Boethius’ ensures that God can be both omniscient and omnibenevolent.
The use of faith as a foundation of getting and recieving knowledge is a contreversial topic that has been debated. Faith in the bible is basically what the belief of God is about, having hope for a supernatural being that nobody can implant within you. Human beings always want to inquire more, but for some people inquiring more knowledge means to actually feel it and sense it in order to believe it. To some extent this is the opposite of faith, because faith however is a belief on something or someone without needing to get that “evidence”. There are more than seven billion people on our planet and each individual has a different belief, but why is it that faith as an individual is such a controversial topic?
This is the "God gene". Furthermore, the scientific linkage of a gene with chemicals that affect happiness or sadness does not answer the question "Is there a God?" but rather "Why do we believe in God?" Our genes can predispose us to believe. What we are is God's gift to us.