Intro Flashcards
Functionalist strategy
Rituals, beliefs, communities, objects, etc are religious based on how they function in the lives of participants
Problem with Durkheim’s defintion of religion? “unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, uniting into one single moral community…”
places no constraint on content of unifying matter
Substantive strategy
Rituals, beliefs, communities, objects, etc. are religious when concerned with superempericial reality
Problems with substantive strategy
Too inclusive - could include deism, but is that really a religion?
Superemprical reality
not observable by techniques recognized by science, nor straightforwardly grounded/conertable to the former
Combined strategy (Schiillbrack)
Religion best understood both in terms of a distinctive function and a substantive orientation toward super-empirical reality
Naturalism
Opposite of supernatural, says any good or value in universe is accidental
What are the personal aspects of reality
consciousness, cognition/understanding, free agency, morality, value,
2 characteristics of “hard-nosed” naturalism
- Non-teological - world not oriented toward any goal/end
- Personal aspects of reality are not fundamental, rather reducible to impersonal material reality
Traditional theism
Personal reality is the most fundamental, not emerging from impersonal reality; a supremely good personal being is the ultimate reality
Four features of God in the Bagavad Gita
- God is independent of the world God creates and sustains inasmuch God does not depend on the world for God’s existence or well-being
- God is not only the source of the world, but also the telos/goal
- God is a person
- Our language insufficient to characterize God
“Atman is Brahma”
Atman is the individual self, Brahma is the fundamental reality
Some sources/criteria for theorizing about God
- Scripture/revelation
- Religious experience
- Explanatory riteria
- Religious adequacy
- Perfect Being Theology
- Moral reasons
- Epistemic reasons
- Political reasons
explanatory criteria:
Adequately explaining existence/features of our world requires there (necessarily) be a being with such and such features
Religious adequacy argument
- I worship God and will continue to
- If I worship God, then I ought to conceive of God as having these properties that would make him worthy of worship
- Therefore, I believe God has these properties
Perfect Being Theology
God is an unsurpassably great being, that than which nothing greater can be conceived
3 Key attributes according to classical theism
- Metaphysical necessity
- Aseity
- Maximal simplicity
Metaphysical reality
God could not have failed to exist; the existent of contingent reality requires an explanation that is non-conteinent/necessary
Two objections to metaphysical reality:
- Something is absolutely necessary only if it is logically necessary; God’s existence cannot be logically necessary; God’s existence cannot be logically necessary
- Possibility of godless worlds: if God is necessary, then no possible world w/out God; but there is a possible world w/out God; therefore, God is not necessary
Nomological necessity
It must be so given the laws of nature that we have; weaker kind of necessity
What is Hick’s reply to the logic objection of metaphysical necessity:
Rejects logical necessity and settles for conditional necessity - given that God has always existed and exists independently, his ceasing to exist is impossible
Aseity
God exists a se (from himself), nothing in god is derived from anything else
What is one crucial implication of aseity?
It affirms simplicity
Simplicity
God is maximally simple, with no metaphysical complexity of any sort, since parts are prior to the whole