Elizabeth Perricone 397 Dan Churchwell-Introduction to Philosophy Research Paper 1 2/22/2013 Anti-Intellectualism among Evangelicals Philosophers have been opposing, contemplating, and defending the idea of God for centuries. The majority of philosophers in today’s day and age take the arrogant view of pushing the concept of “God” out of their philosophy. They do this by their prideful standing against submission or conceiving a being higher than themselves and seeing those who believe in such a being as, leaning on a mere crutch that humanity has surpassed long ago. The poor opinion America’s culture has on the Christian Church’s intelligence is not surprising. Movies and TV shows have been portraying Christians as judgmental, mindless, know-it-alls for years.
The Druids believed in many gods, each representing a different aspect of life. In Druidism, there were a lot of gods, spirits, sprites and fairies – anywhere from a dozen to thousands of spiritual entities, each of them separate, each of them with their own sphere of influence, with their own character and powers. The Christians believed in one almighty god who oversees the whole world. God knows all and sees all, then he knows what you want ahead of time; everything is happened for God’s will. To the Druids, this is against their ingrained convictions: no one god can control the whole world.
“If (the Holocaust) is something like a religion... that in a few years time no one will believe this particular legend anymore. They will say, as I do, that atrocities were committed. Yes, hundreds of thousands of people were killed, but there were no factories of death.” - David Irving (in a recent trial, suggesting Irving was an Anti-Semite, and associate with extremists who promote Neo-Nazism) What this quote is trying to suggest is that the Holocaust (Mass extermination of the Jews) never actually happened. The reliability of this source is poor, because the purpose of this source is Irving looking to promote Nazism, by attempting to disprove the Holocaust. I can also judge the reliability as poor, because I know from other sources and my own knowledge that there were indeed extermination camps.
The Case for the Cosmological Argument One of the shortcomings of McCloskey’s case against theism is his accusation that the cosmological and teleological arguments cannot definitively establish the proof of God. McCloskey is completely missing the mark by implying that Christians have to have definitive proof to feel confident about theism. The goal of validating Christianity is not to provide 100% proof that there is a God, yet the objective of believing in theism is to provide conclusive evidence that God exists, in conjunction with faith. Shani Itzkowitz wrote in a Baltimore Jewish Times periodical, “The consensus is that faith in God is a non-scientific matter which can only be spoken of in terms of a leap of faith,’ Rabbi [Yisroel Roll] said.” The study of epistemology shows that providing an unarguable scientific explanation to a question is a very challenging proposition. Justified true belief can be interpreted differently for different individuals.
McCloskey is reminding atheists the ways theists argue for their belief in God. He is reminding atheists the reasons they believe that there is no God. He feels atheism is superior to theism; however; I find that his opinions only strengthen my belief that there is a God. Proof, as he states, carries no weight for a theist. He is half correct in his statement as a theist does not believe in the proofs individually, but finds enough evidence in them to form the belief that God does exist; He is the creator of the universe, and He is morally perfect.
“Will to Power” is a section that is parallel to “Thoughts on Life” because is discusses an individuals will to become powerful and make a personal stand for themselves. In “On Interpretation” he shares his view that there is no fact in the world because everything is an interpretation. As you can see all of these sections have a possible relation to Christianity and their set of beliefs. A particular problem I notice with Nietzsche’s aphorisms is that it creates an image for the reader to portray a Christian to be a weak mined helpless being. He basically degrades the entire Bible by saying that there is no fact in the world and everything is an interpretation.
There are many reasons for why Christians believe in God. Firstly, some Christians believe that the Bible itself is from God, from himself and it is the revealed word of God. Christians believe that what is in the Bible must be true as it is there in the first place. Some, Christians are literalists who take what is in the Bible word for word, however, some are liberalists and understand what is in the Bible as a metaphor, however, still proves that God exists. Additionally, some Christians believe in the ontological argument by St Anselm, which suggests that God cannot not exist and so that it is logical to believe.
Christians could argue that they believe Jesus was still the Messiah and everything he stood for is what they believe in but maybe the authenticity of miracles today can be questioned as there is no Jesus around to prove them being performed by a Deity just as the definition says there should be. So believing in miracles would be hard to do because there is no proof because Christians just have to believe what the Bible says and can not question it even though there is no proof of miracles other than what the Bible says. It would be hard for Christians to believe in miracles because there is no evidence that supports them… (The Bible can’t be classed as evidence because it has no proof it’s real and could be a fictional book) But Christians would have to believe in them because if they disagree that would be sort of going against the belief of Jesus. I think Christians don’t have a choice and have to believe in miracles otherwise they’re going
In 2 Corinthians 10:3-5, Paul specified that “believers are engaged in a spiritual battle against forces which stand against the knowledge of God (Anderson, 2000). Anderson also believed that before people received Christ into their lives, they were slaves to their sin, and because Christ hung on the cross and paid the price for our sin, sin no longer have dominion over them. He also believed that maturity and freedom are essential to a Christian’s life. Anderson stated that Satan has no right or ownership or authority over God’s children (Anderson, 2000, p. 11). Anderson also stated that “the Western world has experienced a massive paradigm shift in its worldview and voiced his concern about the influence of the “kingdom of darkness” (pp.
Roman society worked by everyone submitting to the emperor and sacrificing to the gods. That these Christians would not accept societal norms must have been infuriating for many romans, and is the starting point of their hatred towards the Christians. The roman religion which saw seeing forgiveness as performing a set of rituals had no interest in some morality or a set of dos and don’ts, which the Christians lived by. This was considered to be the realm of philosophy. There was no great concern for the afterlife here, and Polytheism with its acceptance of an unlimited number of gods meant that the society that practiced it was adaptable to change.