Bill Maher is a smart individual but an agnostic can only promote what they know which means not very much when it comes to religion. Bill Maher said “Rational people, anti-religionists, must end their timidity and come out of the closet and assert themselves. And those who consider themselves only moderately religious really need to look in the mirror and realize that the solace and comfort that religion brings you actually comes at a terrible price.” To me having a meaning and a reason to
When Biblical scholars debate this they lose the true meaning of the text. They become more focused on proving it to be factual rather than looking at the scripture for what it is. The scientific theory is backed by better evidence and is more likely to be true, there is too much evidence to ignore it, and therefore it should be accepted for the most part. Then Genesis can be used as a metaphorical story that allows us to understand more fully who God really is. Genesis 1-2 can show us that God is all-powerful and all-loving.
Many people would not agree that Christianity and theology cannot be integrated, but in actuality it can. This book helps the reader understand the basics of what psychology and theology is and how it can be integrated beautifully if you take the right steps and don’t remain open minded to your view of the world. Worldview, as defined by Entwistle, is “a set of presuppositions which we hold about the basic make-up of the world” (Entwistle, 2010 p.56). Our worldview assumptions whether it is true or not, plays a major role in how we relate psychology and Christianity. Every individual will have their own truth because the lens through which they see the world is biased.
By knowing the definition of these integration models, one can better understand how others approach integration. In doing so, the author also refers to two books of God, the Book of God's Word (the Bible) and the Book of God's Works (His creation). Enemies do not believe integration to be possible. Spies tend to "piece together" information from both psychology and theology to come up with something that they could believe in and helps others in the process. Colonialists place "...the book of God's Word over the book of God's Works, and theology over psychology."
In particular, when speaking of Spies, the lines are not as clear as they do not accept the tenets of Christianity but see activities such as prayer or forgiveness as useful to the secular world. Because of this area of debate, the idea of absolutes is not possible. Without absolutes, how can we actually give someone guidance on how and where to go in their lives? Without a spiritual path that is laid out and definite, where does someone with a troubled soul go? I am grateful for the door that the book opens by illustrating how the two worlds of psychology and Christianity can be married yet as in any marriage, there is always areas that are not
“Religious Language is meaningless” Analyse and evaluate this claim with reference to the verification and falsification debates. (35 marks) Religious Language is language used to talk about God and other religious beliefs. Religious language is known to be cognitive as it can make a positive statement be proved true or false. However on the other hand, Religious language could be seen as non-cognitive as some statements could be misinterpreted, for example, majority rather than a minority in some cases could act out religious and cultural beliefs within society. The verification principle had originated from philosophers in a group called ‘The Vienna Circle” where they believed that dome statements were meaningful and some simply were not, they distinguished these statements by coming up with a theory called, The verification principle.
Popper wrote the foundation of the principle, but flew went a bit further with it. He was influenced by Popper but Flew applied the falsification principle to religious language and derived the conclusion that religious statements are no more than words with little to no significance. He then goes on to modify John Wisdom's analogy of the intangiable gardener to illustrate his point that religious believers cannot be convinced against God and their belief in him. Flew says that a religious believer is forced to say that “God's love is incomprehensible” when they are faced with the argument that God allows the death of a child due to an inoperable illness. He also goes further to say that “religious believers are allowing their definition of God to 'die a death of a thousand qualifications'” which would suggest that Flew believes that religious believers will use any 'qualification of God' to explain certain happenings in the world.
Many examples in the book made me consider perspectives that I had never thought of before. In my opinion, this book definitely stirred up a reassurance of my place in society and what can be done to liberate the oppressed. I believe the voices represented in this book can cause negative reactions from some churches because it goes against what is and has been normal. Churches would not really like to change the view of “white” Christ to be a diverse Christ of another race because it would change certain aspects and power. The church is called to be one diverse body of God, but as churches can remain dominant to one race, it becomes difficult to incorporate diversity into what already is established.
It is not a reliable way. This includes reasoning and making predictions without further testing. Faith is another way that a lot of Christian believers us to seek the truth. The faith based way of seeking the truth is different from the scientific method in that it can answer a lot of questions about the most important truths. (Religious-Science.com 2008) The truths about the purpose of life and that our creator, God wants us to be happy and that he has a plan for each one of us.
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.