1.1.2: Human Nature and Condition Flashcards
What is human nature?
Human nature refers to the characteristics that are always present in humans, or what it means to be human.
Identify five characteristics about humans in the traditional Christian view.
Humans are moral, rational, spiritually aware, and have free will, but are also fallen.
Explain Augustine’s view on human nature.
Augustine believed that humans are made out of a physical body and a spiritual soul. The body is driven by instinct and physical drives while the soul is the moral and rational part. The soul should therefore guide the body like a rider and a horse. Sin comes from concupiscence when the body refuses to follow the soul’s judgement, and does wrong anyway.
Explain Aquinas’ view on human nature.
Aquinas believed that humans are made of a body and soul, like Augustine, but they both are essentially good, since everyone is created in the image of God. However, the Fall damaged humans’ reason, causing a person to mistake an apparent good(something that seems good but isn’t) for a real good(something that is good).
Explain Sartre’s view on human nature.
Sartre thought that there was no such thing as a human nature or “essence” and that who a person is or turns out to be comes from the lives that they live and the choices that they make: not the other way round. This ideology of “existence precedes essence” is known as existentialism, which Sartre was well-known for.
Outline two Christian beliefs about the body.
The body is the physical matter of a person. Christians believe that the body is God’s creation and that those who destroy the body will themselves be destroyed. Christians also believe that life after death will also include a body but it will be imperishable.
Explain the difference between the soul and the spirit.
The soul comes from the Hebrew “nephesh” and Greek “psyche” which both are meant to describe life force or character. The spirit comes from the Hebrew “ru’ach” and the Greek “pneuma” and is said to be the non-material part of a person. All living beings are described to have a soul, but not all living things have a spirit.
Explain religious beliefs about immortality.
The Jews believed that they had a soul that died when the body dies; no one is immortal and there is no dualistic world view. The Ancient Greeks viewed the soul as immortal and that it went to the spiritual world of ideas after being dragged down by the body. For Modern Christians the soul is immortal and that “the spirit itself returns to the true God who gave it”. Human actions cannot kill the soul but they can kill the body.
Explain the physicalist position on the existence of a soul.
Physicalists believe there is nothing beyond the physical world and non-material parts of a human, like the soul, cannot exist. This is firstly because the evidence for the soul is anecdotal, subjective and hard to test. There are simpler explanations like brain activity that can better explain the evidence for such; it is far less likely that a spiritual explanation is correct.
Provide arguments for and against the statement: “There is more to life than the physical world.”
Content may include:
NDEs have shown that a person can still be conscious even though they may have no brain activity and are “dead” to an extent, so the soul must be responsible for this.
Remembered past lives could be used to show that a part of a person can survive death, so a person does have a soul.
All the evidence is anecdotal and hard to test; it cannot be scientifically or properly proven that a person has a soul.
There are simpler explanations for evidence about the soul: a person may have unusual brain activity.
