Yet to this day, no one seems any closer to an answer than when they first started. In consequence, when trying to compare two works with very different views of life and death, like Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God by Jonathan Edwards and Thanatopsis by William Cullen Bryant, one can find many differences, but also a few key similarities. To be specific, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God shows that Jonathan Edwards believes that the sinful way man lives his life brings wrath from a god that they should fear, while Thanatopsis portrays a worldview in which death is welcomed and god is not considered. In his work Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, Edwards uses fear to manipulate his audience into repenting and turn to Christ. His puritan worldview led him to believe that “God has laid himself under no obligation, by any promise to keep any natural man out of hell” (Edwards 175).
Ammirus was an iconoclast who publicly expressed atheistic views and abolitionist beliefs which deeply influenced and had a lasting impact on the young Clarence Darrow. Clarence would early on learn to be an iconoclast and even relish the role of the person who would upset conventional society. The legacy of Ammirus would lead Darrow to reject the majority stance on many issues and to defy conventional religious views that were much more prominent Darrow’s views on religion changed, he said; ‘I am an Agnostic because I am not afraid to think. I am not afraid of any god in the universe who would send me or any other man or woman to hell. If there were such a being, he would not be a god; he would
Believers practicing loving God with all their mind would be a witness to this world and even a way of reaching out in compassion and gentleness we have left behind by burying our arguments in our Bibles and not engaging the questions raised by the lost. Understanding where Evangelicals have fallen intellectually will help foster obedience to Christ’s command to love God with all of our mind. The major arguments held by critics Richard Hofstadter, George M. Marsden, and Alister McGrath, declare modern Evangelicalism anti-intellectual. Some of the main reasons for this are the average Evangelicals fear of defending their faith, the separation of the spiritual and secular, and the slothfulness Evangelicals have to
God eventually talks to Job making it clear that his actions need no explanation. The book of Job brings up the ever-present question of why bad things happen to good people and answers that question by saying God is above justice. When Job’s friends — Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar — hear of his calamity, they come to visit him and begin to argue their “theology” to him. Their theology is that a man’s suffering is always the result of his personal sin. Further, the more one has sinned, the greater one will suffer.
Response to Being an Atheist Christina Yarbrough PHIL 210 Liberty University H.J McCloskey wrote an article entitled “On Being an Atheist” which dealt with the atheist approach to the cosmological and teleological approaches and the problem of evil. He calls his view of the arguments proofs, as he feels that the arguments offer no proof for the existence of God. He believes that atheism is a more comfortable way to believe than that of theism and that those who believe in theism should be upset just because they believe in God. I believe that McCloskey has a fallacy in his arguments and that the existence of God can not be proven through any one argument, and that all we can do is defend our beliefs within the realm of our own understanding. McCloskey is reminding atheists the ways theists argue for their belief in God.
Using these different types of language demonstrates a difficulty; assuming that when we speak of God, we are speaking cognitively- assuming that our statement is something that is either true or false and that it is able to describe an extinct being, God. Philosophers have always had a debate between this. Some say that a statement of God is non-cognitive, statements not subject to true of falsity. This led to a strong trial and tribulation to religious faith and its believers. Some such as Mortiz Schlick claim that religious belief is literally meaningless; religious statements are nonsense and should not be the basis of philosophical discussion.
“God must be Evil” The question “is God evil?” is asked very often with both sides of the question offering different answers to this question with no definitive answer coming about but in both cases people coming out with very convincing arguments for both sides of the story. Some people argue that God is indeed evil because he is omniscient and because of his omniscience he knows that from the moment he decided to create us maybe even before then he knew which of us would reject him thus securing a place in hell for them or would sin again securing them a place in hell and yet does nothing about this. This is a major contradiction to his supposedly being omnibenevolent and some people even go so far as to use examples of murder and rape which are horrific events which they then use to say “how can a loving God allow such a thing to happen?” They then go further into it saying how as God is omnipresent and can see everything that has happened, will happen and is happening he must take some sort of sick pleasure in watching these events occur and so is evil. Or at the very least by allowing such a horrific event to happen without some form of justice or stopping them then he has to be evil as only an evil person would let evil acts go unpunished. Sam Harris uses this idea in one of his quotes saying that “Either God can do nothing to stop catastrophes or he doesn’t care to or he doesn’t exist.
The Tower of Babel: A Symbol of Hubris I. Introduction What hubris to defy the omnipotent authority of God – the Creator of all things from time immemorial. Humanity’s existence has long been mindful of the strengths and weaknesses of its pride. However, this did not come to past until God punished man for their excessive arrogance and pride. Mankind became fearful of God and challenged His almighty authority by creating a tower believed by many to reach Heaven.
Throughout The Second Coming Yeats refers to the myth of the reappearance of Christ as prophesised in the Book of Revelation. Desperation and fear can be seen from the line, “Surely the Second Coming is at hand” as the poet suggests that only the return of Christ can save the world from self-destruction. However, whilst the word “surely” can be seen as a positive sign of reassurance, one could also suggest that it is used to mock religion. The word “surely” can be seen as a form of sarcasm, inferring that that there must be no God if he allowed innocent people to die as a result of World War One. Therefore, this suggests society has lost confidence and belief in religion.
I will also be discussing the expelling, torture and killing of non-believer and heretics of religions. Issue #1-Religious inspired violence throughout history is inexcusable. There is no reason for such acts of violence, no matter what “scriptures” say. To execute or torture another because their religious views are not as yours is immoral. It is said in many scriptures in all religions that God will punish non-believers and heretics so why would people take matters into their own hands.