Analyse the essential ideas in the Ontological Argument The Ontological (meaning ‘concerned with being’) argument is the only a priori argument for the existence of God. This means that it does not rely on the evidence of our senses for its premises or conclusion. It works by logical stages, which is self evidently true or logically necessary. This is one of its major strengths. It is also deductive, so the conclusion is the only possible one that could be deduced give the premises.
There is said to be no compelling rational argument to be found either against or for the existence of God, but James believed there to be some sort of God for everyone because he studied the effects of people involved in religion and people who were not. He referred to them as “healthy minded” and “morbid minded,” these are people who are either positive about life or negative about their life. James claimed that we judge the truth of religious ideas by what he referred to as, “immediate luminousness,” or philosophical reasonableness and moral helpfulness as the only available criteria. He said that religious faith is important and meaningful on pragmatic grounds: Its presence or absence makes a clearly observable, practical, and concrete difference in our lives
Just like a religious believer who states “god loves us” but can’t explain the contradiction of evil in the world, believers qualify their statements by explaining god’s love is not like humans love he calls this “death by a thousand qualifications”. Therefore religious language is meaningless. However religion has responded to the falsification principle. R.B Braithwaite argued that the falsification principle explains religious language as cognitive when it if in fact non cognitive and therefore cannot be falsified, religious language is therefore still meaningful. Hare also responds to the falsification principle, showing that religious statements are meaningful even though they cannot be falsified because they have a significant impact for the people using the statement.
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.
However, the scientific method is only a way of seeking the truth. It does not in any way reach the truth. There is no way to test every single circumstance to know for sure that the results are completely factual. However, the scientific method is at least testing and research is being done. The old way of just debating a theory is the not a realistic means to the
However, if this link between religion and morality is criticised, then there are sufficient grounds for secularist and atheistic ways of life. Why is religion needed when it is not the source of moral guidance? Two famous critiques of the link between religion and morality are the Euthyphro dilemma and the many critiques od Richard Dawkins against religion. Both essentially come to the same conclusion; that we do not need God to be good. The basic concept of religion and morality, especially divine command theory, is very simple: what God commands is good, therefore only do that.
Many, if not most, Christians would argue that they believe the second statement and that morality depends entirely on God as he is omnipotent and omnibenevolant and so is the source of goodness. One reason why atheists would argue that Christians cannot follow any other statement is because if morality was grounded if something other than God, it means that atheists could do morally good actions consciously, without requiring religious faith, and could perhaps be more morally good than a Christian, making belief in or obedience to God pointless. Therefore, theists need to claim that morality can only be understood through God because what He commands is good, to set them apart from and above the rest of society in
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.
Descartes' argument in the Meditations is circular. Discuss. In trying to prove the existence of God, Descartes will, of course, have to rely on what he can clearly and distinctly perceive, because this is the only way he can know anything. However, Descartes also needs to prove that God exists for us to know what we clearly and distinctly perceive. This leads to the famous objection that he uses the existence of God to establish his doctrine of clear and distinct ideas, and that he uses his doctrine of clear and distinct ideas to establish the existence of God: his argument is circular.
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?