This essay will discuss what can be found in the Scriptures on the topics of the natural world, human identity, human relationships, and culture. The Apostle Paul's epistle to the church in Rome provides sufficient answers to each of these topics. Specifically, Romans 1:20, and 8:19-21 speaks a great deal on the natural world. The Apostle wrote in Romans 1:20 (HCSB), “For His [God's] invisible attributes, that is, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen since the creation of the world, being understood through what He has made. As a result, people are without excuse.” According to Paul, the natural world reflects God's invisible attributes.
All Christians to a certain extent believe that free will plays an important role in their lives (most commonly seen in their faith and actions). Although, ultimately they see God as the omniscient, omnibenevolent and omnipotent being that governs their lives. Hard determinists state that everything in our lives is pre-determined, and therefore we have no influence over the matter and that we have no free will. Some determinists would argue that free will only appears to be present in our lives, where in actual fact we are 'disillusioned' (no choice principle). The argument of determinism gained a huge amount of respect and acknowledgement in 1924, when Clarence Darrow the lawyer to the case, stated that his clients, Leopold and Loeb, we're not completely responsible for the kidnapping and murder of Bobby Franks (aged 14).
Thomas Aquinas popularized the cosmological argument, which says that every being that exists in the world is contingent, or dependent. In order to bring anything into being, there must have been at least one noncontingent, or independent, being, and this being is what we refer to as God. The ontological argument states that God is the greatest conceivable being. Because existing is a better quality than not existing, God must exist. The final argument, the teleological argument, states that nature is a very complex system whose parts work together to perform a certain function.
The Natural World God created the natural world through His word. This shows the nature of God as all powerful and His word as power. When God spoke, the universe and everything in it came into existence. This we know because the Bible is the word of God that it is not written by human knowledge, but by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Romans 1:20 says “that the creation has been seen and understood because of God’s invisible qualities, divine nature and His eternal power so that men may not have an excuse.” It, therefore, follows that God is seen through His creation.
It’s like saying that a tree is valuable without the valuer. Even when there is no one around to give value to the tree it’ll always be valuable. That’s the argument used to “prove” that the Last Man’s actions are NOT morally permissible. If something is IV2 then it is also IV3 because IV2 is an object having properties based on its non-relational properties which also lets it fit in with being IV3. But it only fits in with weak IV3 because weak IV3 would still require that someone finds the relation between the secondary properties and evaluative properties.
William Paley’s argument William Paley’s design argument is the idea of purpose or chance. Paley argues for purpose. He believes that the order, beauty and complexity of this world could not be blind chance and therefore must have a purpose. Paley believes that for everything to work so intricately together there must be a divine intelligence ordering it; A creator. He believed this creator to be God.
Wayne Grudem writes in Systematic Theology that “First, all people have an inner sense of God. Second, we believe the evidence that is found in Scripture and in nature.” A full investigation is more than we can offer, instead we focus on the most commonly held belief,
Hence why, natural laws such as gravity and motion assist in forming the basis for the cause and effect that fills the discussion of hard determinism. However, James Lovelock argued that according to GAIA theory the world changes, adapts and amends itself in order to survive and the human race is of little significance. Humans do not control nature, nature is in control. Philosophical determinism, like all forms of hard determinism, is based on the theory of Universal Causation. This is the belief that everything in the universe including all human actions and choices has a cause.
The ultimate law is Eternal Law. These are the principles by which God made and controls the universe which only God can understand completely. We can have a partial understanding of these laws through ‘reflections’. Aquinas argued that we can understand these laws more by using human reason. He was influenced by Aristotle’s view that humans, like all objects in this realm, have a specific purpose.
There is a relatively strong connection to God in this book and many people during this time period believed in God. I bring this up because it was believed that God is the supreme creator of all things including the human race. It would therefore be horrendously inconceivable to challenge God and attempt to do something that would show that a mortal can have power equal to that of God. Next, regardless of how an individual comes into being it the duty of the creator to be there to nurture and care for the creature they have brought into the world. The world is a cruel place, even to those who are normal, but to someone who is different, as we see in the book, there