Professor Barbara C. Sproul REL 205 Section 001 5 February 2013 Being or Not-Being Paul Tillich’s “Religion as a Dimension in Man’s Spiritual Life” is his argument against two groups of people, the Literal Theologians and Social Scientist. The Literal Theologians believe that Religion is given by God and he does exist as a being. While the Social Scientist argues that Religion is a man made and God is a being who does not exist. Tillich in the middle of this has a side that he supports and that side is neither. Paul Tillich argues against the literal theologians and the social scientists as well.
He based his argument on the statement “Does God will something because it is good or is something good because it is willed by God?” There are two ‘horns’ to this argument which stem from the statement; these both critiques of the link between religion and morality. Horn one questions “Does God command x because it is good.” This argument suggests that God is inferior to good, or perhaps good could even be temporally prior to God. In addition both God’s omnipotence and omniscience are damaged; he cannot claim full responsibility for creating the world and therefore cannot possibly have full control as it is not his creation. He also may not have the knowledge of right and wrong if it is independent of him. An independent good takes away from religious motivation to do good, we can be good for the sake of being good as opposed to seeking eschatological reward, for example going to heaven in the afterlife.
For example, on Damascus Road, Saint Paul’s religious experience transformed his moral outlook. It would appear that all religious experiences demonstrate a revelation of truth, but one could argue that this does not indicate they are true. As Freud would argue that religious experiences are a way of externalising deep, repressed personal truths. In such a view, religious experiences are unverifiable and cannot be thought to prove the existence of God, as they are merely manifestations of the human subconsciousness. A transient experience short, and cannot be sustained for a long duration of time.
Kant then argued that God’s existence in the ontological argument is based on a synthetic statements (‘God is that which than greater cannot be imagined’ and ‘existing is greater than not existing’) therefore more evidence and proof is required in addition to the ontological argument in order to verify the existence of God. The ontological argument also features the idea that God has necessary existence – because his definition is that he is perfect and existing is more perfect than not existing, God must have necessary existence. However Kant opposed this idea and said that if we reject the whole idea of God that his definition is no longer important and thus he
He was an idealist in the sense that we are aware of the real world and a transcendent because he thought that ultimate reality goes beyond our sense experience. He believed that there are certain things that we couldn’t gain from sense experience alone e.g. a sense of time and space. Kant thought everything was bound by time and space. If we didn’t have intuitions of space and time there would be no experience at all so we must possess some innate knowledge in order for us to live within it.
It does not prove God’s existence; it argues that there must be a necessary being which created the universe. This is consistent with some views of God, however, it is far from an all-encompassing explanation. The argument is not considered to be the end-all-be-all defense for the existence of God. However, it is a good
In this essay I am going to focus on Anselm ontological argument and comment on its strengths and weakness of his argument to prove the existence of God. Anselm’s ontological argument can be seen as a Reductio ad absurdum, which means it is a logical argument that aims to prove contention by demonstrating that its denial leads to absurdity. Anselm’s argument explains that it is contradictory for someone to accept that God to exist in understanding and not in reality. This is because according to the existence of perfection a doctrine that something is greater if it exists in addition t being thought of, and God is greater than which nothing can be thought therefore He has to exist in both understanding and reality. The argument goes like this: 1.
Free will means that God does not have any set destiny for us. If God were to create free agents that could only choose good, that would mean that God laid out a destiny of good for all agents. Even though God is omniscient, free will is still possible because while God may know the choices we are going to make, he is not the cause of them. Since God does not choose or cause our destiny, we still have free will. In response to the option in which God creates a world with free agents and no evil, a world with no evil would mean a world with no good, so it would be impossible for God to create a free agents that only choose good, since evil does not exist.
According to St. Anselm in his ontological argument, he describes God as an idea or concept of which nothing greater can be conceived (Living Issues in Philosophy, page 388). In this he guides thought by arguing “If the most perfect being existed only in thought and not in reality, then it would not really be the most perfect being. One that exists in the mind and in reality would be more perfect.” Anselm concludes his theory with “no one who understands what God is; can conceive that God does not exist. (A. J. Hoober). Existence is a part of perfection.
Paper #1 The Wager Section 233 Michael Holden Part I- In section 233 of the passage The Wager, Pascal argues through the concept of infinity with respect to numbers, that the idea of the infinite is definite in its existence. He then uses this argument of the fact that the infinite exists to state that god’s existence can neither be proven nor disproven. This uncertainty of god’s existence is the basis for Pascal’s whole wager. Pascal uses this theory of the unprovable nature of god to present a wager. Pascal informs the reader that they must accept this wager; that they cannot deny to take a side.