Context to critiques of religious belief Flashcards
What was the enlightenment?
An intellectual and philosophical movement of the 1600s, it emphasized reason and science over tradition and religion. Key figures included Kant, Voltaire, smith and Rousseau. It came over a backlash to the power of the Catholic Church and the religious wars in Europe.
According to westphal, how did the enlightenment change views about god?
Before the enlightenment thinkers like aquinas argued faith and reason could work together to achieve an understanding of god. The enlightenment led to deism, which rejects divine revelation and says we can only know god through reason and logic.
What does deism reject?
Revelation and all that comes with it, this is the husk of religious belief and can be discarded, knowledge and understanding of god is the kernel of religious belief and its true purpose.
What are Hume’s views?
Intelligent design is flawed as flaws in the design point to a flawed creator, the only way to know how the universe came to be would be to go back and watch it.
What are Kant’s views?
God can’t be known a priori, the idea of a necessary being is flawed as existence is not a predicate. You can’t define a being into existence.
What are Schleiermacher’s views?
Religious experience is the kernel of belief, god can’t be known through reason or morals as religion is a personal and subjective practice. Belief in god is about having a sense encounter with the divine.
What is Marx’s sociological critique of religion?
It is used by the bourgeoisie to legitimize inequality and control the proletariat. It is the opioid of the people and for society to progress, it must be abolished, it is a social phenomenon that will be overcome in time.
What is Freud’s psychological critique of religion?
It stems from our unconscious desire for a father figure, explained by the oedepus complex. It is an illusion based on wish fulfillment, it helps us to overcome feelings of helplessness, but can’t provide true fulfillment.
Give three criticisms of Freud
- Oedepus complex doesn’t work with modern family structures. 2. He discounts religions which have no deity or female deities. 3. God could still exist objectively.
What are the three forms of atheism?
- Agnostic- there is not enough evidence to know either way. 2. Weak atheism- an absence of a belief in god, you are simply not a theist. 3. Strong atheism- a conviction that god does not exist.
What is Dawkins’ main argument in the god delusion?
Religion is dangerous, it stops humanity from progressing, science has proven that belief in god is mistaken.
What are four arguments put forward against religion by Dawkins?
- It leads to violence- Islamic terrorists. 2. Agnosticism is untenable as it’s clear god doesn’t exist. 3. Religion is the enemy of science and incompatible with it. 4. Proving god through reason is a mere word game, the universe was not created by a grand designer.
Give four more of Dawkins’ arguments
- Scriptures are pure fiction. 2. Religion is opposed to morality, condoning immoral actions and violence. 3. Religious ideas travel down generations like viruses through memes. 4. The idea that the universe is fine tuned is illogical, cosmological constants don’t rule out chance, we are simply very lucky to be here.
Give three criticisms of Dawkins
- His arguments lead to determinism, the idea that all events are determined by previous ones, leading to the denial of moral responsibility. 2. He makes an ontological reduction, seeing a complex system as nothing but a sum of its parts. Reducing all of human life to nothing but science fails to account for much of what it means to be human. 3. Religious beliefs are not genes, they can be changed.
What is the key idea of postmodernism?
There can never be an objective understanding of reality, reality is just a reflection of human understanding.
