Ward believes religion to be existential. However, not everyone shares my opinion. Richard Swinburne used the principle of Occam’s razor to illustrate that Aquinas’ Cosmological Argument has value for religious faith. Occam’s razor says that the simplest answer is the best one, and as God is the simplest answer for the first cause, it is the best one. Denys Turner makes the point that Aquinas is misread, he says that Aquinas is just clarifying the existence of God for people who already believe rather than in an attempt to persuade non-believers.
With god/s grounding the moral the foundation of the moral becomes arbitrary because it would only be good because god says its so. Also calling god good would not make any sense since he decided what good is or isn't, so how could he be good unless the moral was grounding him? If piety was a certain care of the god’s we could look to do always what is Pious and in return we would be worshiping/caring for the god/s if they exists. If the God’s are looking to something the “moral,piety” then if you act pious in your actions through life you will be in a way worshiping the god’s, because you are honoring what they already honer. The problem with this idea is when people think god grounds the moral
Outline two key objections to the Ontological Argument and explain the responses made to them. The ontological argument was first introduced by Anselm in the ‘Prosologian’. It is an a priori argument as it is not based on empirical evidence but id deductive and analytic in that it allows one to use logical reasoning to reach a logically necessary conclusion which, in theory, cannot be disputed. Anselm defines God as ‘that than which nothing greater can be conceived’ (TTWNGCBC) and states that everyone, theist or not, can accept this definition. He argues that ‘the fool’ in Psalm 53 can conceive of God but fails to believe he exists.
The philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) was one of the early founders of existentialism. Although Kierkegaard was a devout Christian, he rejected the Christian Church due to its legalistic nature and the false relationship that people were receiving with God as a result. Kierkegaard believed that the key relationship of an individual was with God. He argued that God has given people freedom to make their own decisions and therefore our decisions are not determined. He thought that our existence is not something determined rationally or part of an on-going process but that it is something specific which is created through the choices we make.
Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?” Analysis: Fredrich Nietzche's influential quote adduces that humans have lost faith in God. The saying goes by “God is dead,” and people look at it through a literal perspective. However, the quote explains that the controversy of whether Christianity is real or not, due to the substantial evidence against the religion, to which is looked upon as theoretical. Nietzche postulates that humans' efficacy in this world is useless, for he perceives the idea of life to death, without the recognized afterlife. Despite the great possibilities that God might not be real, humans hold on to the idea; therefore, humans will have something to give faith to.
These experiences would be referred to as ‘I-Thou’ by Buber. Due to this, William James has justified this unfamiliarity with defining ineffability as one of his four characteristics of religious experiences. Not only does this help understand the inability to speak of religious experience as it is numinous but it also coincides with many existing perceptions of the divine. For example, the via negative would reinforce this idea as both concepts paint God as a supernatural, immeasurable being; this is a big strength for religious experience as it fits into traditional perceptions of God, making it more convincing for theists. On the other hand, atheists may be sceptical of this feature of religious experience.
In discussion of Pascal’s wager, one issue has been the persuasiveness of Pascal’s argument, as well as the holes in some of his reasoning. On the one hand, Simon Blackburn argues that we know nothing about this “God” we are supposed to believe in, so we do not know whether this is a jealous God who will send people to hell for not believing in Him, or if this “God” is the Christian God that Pascal presents. Blackburn eventually states that regardless of which type of God exists, “a God that punishes belief is just as likely, and a lot more reasonable, than one that punishes disbelief.” On the other hand, Linda Zagzebski contends that Pascal does have a compelling argument, yet his reasoning is flawed. Zagzebski states that it is wrong for people to believe in God because of their self-interest, based around the fact that if they do believe in God and if he does exist, they will be rewarded with infinite gain. Furthermore, Zagzebski employs an intriguing analogy by comparing one who chooses to believe in God just for infinite gain is similar to someone who chooses a mate with a high income, and then tries to love that person.
In this essay I will be explaining the problem of evil, the types of evil, Irenaeus’ idea on immature beings and Augustine’s theodicy of free will. Augustine in his ‘confessions’ defined the problem of evil. ‘Either God cannot abolish evil, or he will not; if he cannot then he is not all-powerful; if he will not then he is not all good’. His assumption is that a good God would eliminate evil as far as it is possible, because if he is omnipotent then all evil should be eliminated, but evil exists so why does God allow it? David hum in ‘Dialogues concerning Natural Religion’ argues that either God is not omnipotent, or God is not omnibenevolent, or evil does not exist.
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”. According to the Via Negativa, to say “God is good” limits God’s goodness because it puts a human idea of goodness in our minds. Similarly if we talk about God being all-knowing, we can debate what this means but ultimately we cannot know for certain what it means to be all-knowing. The only things we can be certain of about God is what God is not; for example God is not evil. There are strengths to this theory, for instance it prevents us from making anthropomorphic statements about God, meaning we are not left with an inadequate image of God.
Naturalist do not believe in more than just matter, they look at things as if I cannot see it then it is not there. However, as a Christians, I believe in more and I know our God is out there helping us through our lives. Naturalist look at us as machines that all of our emotions and such are just reactions in our brains, but Christians believe that everything we do is the creation of God. Secular humanist and Christians are so different I use my religion to help stay in line. Secular humanist feel that religion is really a negative thing because it gives you rules to follow therefore you never really follow your deepest desires.