God Flashcards
And a long time ago, there was a man who argued that God’s existence is provable: 11th century French monk BLANK.
Anselm of Canterbury
The study of being is called BLANK
ontology
A BLANK is a flaw in reasoning, something that weakens or destroys an argument.
fallacy
“BLANK” is often used incorrectly when the speaker or writer really means “raising the question.” For example Jane is an intelligent, insightful, well-educated and personable individual, which begs the question: why does she stay at that dead-end job?
Begging the question
Kant offered the point that, as he put it, “BLANK.”
existence is not a predicate.
A BLANK is just something that’s said of another object.
predicate
For example, if a triangle exists, it necessarily has 3 sides. But it could be that no triangle exists at all. Because the idea of existence isn’t part of how we define a triangle.
BLANK
Aquinas 5 arguments about the existence of God
ARGUMENT FROM MOTION ARGUMENT FROM CAUSATION ARGUMENT FROM CONTINGENCY ARGUMENT FROM DEGREES TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
BLANK. In it, Aquinas observed that we currently live in a world in which things are moving. And he also observed that movement is caused by movers – things that cause motion.
ARGUMENT FROM MOTION
BLANK- in a chain of reasoning, the evidence for each point along the chain relies on the existence of something that came before it, which in turn relies on something even further back, and so on, with no starting point.
Infinite Regress
There must have been a time when nothing was in motion, Aquinas thought, and there also must’ve been a static being that started the motion. And that being, according to Aquinas, is God – the BLANK.
Unmoved Mover
BLANK The argument went along these lines: Some things are caused Anything that’s caused has to be caused by something else (since nothing causes itself)
There can’t be an infinite regress of causes
So there must have been a first causer, itself uncaused, and that is God. Just like with the Argument from Motion, the point here is pretty simple: Effects have causes.
ARGUMENT FROM CAUSATION
BLANK – a being that has always existed, that always will exist, and that can’t not exist,
Necessary being
BLANK - any being that could have not existed.
Contingent being
BLANK - contingent things can cause other contingent things but there cant only be contingent things. Because that would mean that there is an infinite regress of contingency and a possibility that nothing might have existed.
ARGUMENT FROM CONTINGENCY
BLANK - Properties come from degrees. In order for there to be degrees of perfection, there must be something perfect against which everything else is measured.
ARGUMENT FROM DEGREES
It’s known as the teleological argument. You may know it as BLANK. To make his case for the existence of God, William Paley gave us what’s known as an argument by analogy. This form of inductive argument invites us to consider a particular state of affairs
Intelligent Design
God cannot sin is known as BLANK
Divine Impeccability
God’s Omnipotent and Omnibenelovent- One possible response is to say that BLANK
knowledge and causation aren’t the same things.
BLANK – a set of beliefs that can’t all be true at the same time.
Contradiction
A BLANK is an attempt to show that the existence of evil doesn’t rule out the possibility of God’s existence.
theodicy
The problem is, the free will defense really only really addresses what’s known as a BLANK
moral evil
BLANK - Evil we are not responsible for. Natural disasters and etc.
Natural Evil
BLANK - of, based on, or serving as a hypothesis.
Hypothetical
20th-century English philosopher of religion BLANK offered what’s known as the soul-making theodicy. Unlike the traditional view that God created a perfect world, which we ruined through our own poor choices, Hick argued that God deliberately creates us “unfinished,” and our earthly lives are designed to toughen us up, in a sense, kinda like boot camp.
John Hick
