He states that someone can easily substitute God or final reality for fairies, if the outcome is the same. There is no compulsory argument in favor of one or the other. It’s all ‘between our ears’. James did have deep respect for religion that enriches the human life; he believed that all cultures turn to a god (or gods). There is said to be no compelling rational argument to be found either against or for the existence of God, but James believed there to be some sort of God for everyone because he studied the effects of people involved in religion and people who were not.
We cannot judge God, nor his actions because he is a non cognitive being. Only God knows the future, and therefore when it is appropriate to intervene. Therefore, through miracles he is not favouring some of his creation over others, but the good of the whole creation itself. Furthermore, our free will stops God from intervening in every situation, because according to Swinburne, if we do not have the capacity to damn ourselves, we are not truly free agents. However this does not necessarily overcome the problem of God favouring his creation because by having the ability to intervene, but not at every moment he can prevent evil from happening to some but not too others.
To what extent is the via negativa the only way to talk about God Within this essay I will be arguing that the via negativa is a very unhelpful way to talk about God as if we were to only talk about him negatively we would ultimately never know anything of God’s nature. Instead, I will argue that analogy is a better way to talk of God and I will refer to Aquinas’ ideas of analogical language. The via negativa (or apophatic way) claims that people can only talk about God in negative terms because he is transcendent and utterly different and greater than anything we can comprehend. Thus we cannot say what God is because his nature is beyond our comprehension. The word “good” in reference to God is meaningless as we cannot know what this entails; it is completely different from saying “the man is good”.
In the quote below Rand explains why she rejects religion outright, and she believes man himself deserves the attention: Just as religion has preempted the field of ethics, turning morality against man, so it has usurped the highest moral concepts of our language, placing them outside this earth and beyond man’s reach. “Exaltation” is usually taken to mean an emotional state evoked by contemplating the supernatural. “Worship” means the emotional experience of loyalty and dedication to something higher than man… But such concepts do name actual emotions, even though no supernatural dimension exists; and these emotions are experienced as uplifting or ennobling, without the self-abasement required by religious definitions.
They say that God does not exist in an objective and real sense; they do not think he is a real human entity existing in the world. For the Deist, God is the creator of the universe. God really exists but he does not and cannot intervene within the world. And lastly, for the Atheist, there is no God to bring about any kind of miracle. I myself am an Atheist, and therefore in my opinion believe miracles are impossible as all miracles are by, definition impossible if they claim to be the action of a deity.
Faith is what truly kills doubt. To have faith is a great thing because it helps us believe in a religion, without it people would not have religions. The foundation for religion is faith, if everything was proven then we would not need religion, but science cannot answer everything. Anyone who is mentally stable and can think for themselves knows that science cannot answer all of life’s questions and it is based on theories that cannot be proven. Bill Maher had the audacity to say “religion is a neurological disorder”.
‘By Definition a miracle can never happen.’ Discuss. Clearly the answer to this question depends on your definition of a miracle. The traditional understanding of a miracle involves the interruption of a Law of Nature, usually bearing deeper religious significance. ‘A transgression of a Law of Nature’ to quote Hume, suggests to many an impossible event and it is therefore immediately obvious why many agree that, ‘by definition, a miracle can never happen.’ However, it is interesting to note that Hume, in his famous argument against miracles, at no point implies that a miracle, by definition, can never happen. The basis of Hume’s attack is that there will never be sufficient empirical evidence to justify believing in a miracle.
All things considered, the endeavor to question these arguments as a reason not to trust in God does not merit endeavoring. In the event that theists don't for the most part hold to these proofs as explanations behind faith, then why try attempting to question them to theists? Keeping on doing as such appears as though he is persuaded to demonstrate a point that few are not interested on questioning, and accordingly is intentionally attempting to set up theist conviction as crazy; at the end of the day, he is looking to start a fight. This is not a scholarly target article. Inclination essentially relinquishes scholarly objectivity.
There are several sources of anti-intellectualism. Religion is an obvious one, of course, since being intelligent and learning makes one less likely to accept arguments from authority, and to question unproven assertions. An intelligent, learned man has no need for religion – therefore, we don’t want any intelligent, learned men (to paraphrase The Fountainhead‘s Elllsworth Toohey). Besides “normal” religion, there’s also the usual mystical, new age thinking, according to which the mind is “flawed” and imperfect, incapable of perceiving any real “revelations”, which you supposedly can only grasp with “your heart” or “your spirit”. The mind is human, and therefore imperfect, while the heart/spirit are filled with “the cosmos’s love” or any other generic, meaningless terms.
“From this it is sufficiently clear that he cannot be a deceiver: for all cunning and deception presuppose some shortcoming, as is plain by the natural light.”(37) In Descartes third meditation he has proven and answered questions that he has set out to prove. Descartes has ruled out the possibilities of the ‘cause’ being; himself, that existence has always been, his parents, and/or of something less perfect than God. Descartes has proven that God does in fact exist and as such must not be a