LAST MINUTE WOOP

Question 1

MESLE ON tightrope and Hick

Answer 1

“Hick is trying to obscure a real and obvious contradiction by simply shouting both sides of it very loudly”

• in reference to hick both rejecting and accepting genuine evil in his last chapter - hick is at fault for claiming that both evil really is evil, and god created it for a good purpose

Question 2

Hawking on the universe

Answer 2

“why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?”

Question 3

explain gassed and caters’ existing lion objection

Answer 3

though the entity of the greatest being is conceivable, it does not follow that its existence is actual - merely that the concepts of ‘greatest being’ and existence are inseparably tied; e.g. the ‘existing lion’ is a phrase that includes both concepts essentially, but this does not constrain the lion to exist

Question 4

name a modern leading physicist who believes in infinite regress

Answer 4

Freeman Dyson

Question 5

Distinguish hume’s counterarguments to cosmological and teleological arguments

Answer 5

cosmo:
1. cause and effect constant conjuncture
2. fallacy of composition
3. why look for a cause beyond our universe?
tele
1. like effects prove like causes (principle of proportionality)
2. disanalogy (we have seen watches being made but not the universe - too unique)
3. alternative hypothesis - epicurean

Question 6

David griffin (4bn years)

Answer 6

there is no obvious reason why god would waste 4bn years setting stage

Question 7

Levinas

Answer 7

theodicies are immoral because they transpose responsibility

Question 8

Dostoevsky

Answer 8

suffering could make it nonsensical to create a universe ib the first place

Question 9

Nursery school teacher and sharp sticks analogy

Answer 9

Marilyn Adams

Question 10

supernatural gods are indifferent to gratuitous suffering?

Answer 10

Paul Drapes - hypothesis of indifference

Question 11

Jung’s reply to atheism objection

Answer 11

atheism is a form of religion - this makes his theory unfalsifiable