P1S1 Flashcards
What is the:
Evidence for big bang and who came up with it
- Red shift - Doppler effect
- Cosmic Microwave radiation
- Primordial helium left over from big bang
Discovered by Georges Lemaitre
What is the:
Steady state theory
- Universe is constantly expanding, with new matter being created to form new stars and galazies
- no beginning or end
- A lot of evidence against theory, e.g. cosmic microwave background
Strengths of:
Inductive reasoning
- Allows an informed conclusion based on evidence and instances
- Proof is impossible, so best probabilities can be found
- Good at establishing probabilities, which are likely true
Weaknesses of:
Inductive reasoning
- Best outcome is an uncertain conclusion
- room for other possibilities, as it is on basis of probabilities
What was a problem with and how was it solved:
The creationist belief
Problem: fossils indicate species living millions of years ago, whereas in genesis earth only went back 6000 years.
Solution: Genesis flood book, where a flood submerged the dinosaurs into a layer of sedimentary
Why do some:
Darwinists belief God cannot exist
Selfish genes fighting with each other for 3 billion years is more than 6000 years, and means that species change over time instead of staying the same
Similarities and differences between:
Both genesis
Similar: God is the creator of everything
stewardship of humans over animals
Human dominion
Differences:
Genesis 2 said humans before animals
Genesis 1 focuses on 6-day creation, Genesis 2 on humans
Genesis 2 refers to the garden of Eden
Genesis 1 emphasised how the world was good
Explain a Quote on why science and religion are compatible
Einstein - “science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind”
This means that religion without science is blindly following scripture and that science without religion has no purpose
Quote for:
Conflict between church and science on the solar system
“The world is firmly established; it cannot be moved” disagrees with gallileo’s claims that the earth orbits around the sun
gallileo later got arrested for life
Reasons for:
Science and religion being incompatible
- They accept different views
- Only believe there is a true view
- theory of evolution contradicts genesis
What are the limitations of science?
- Answers can be found in areas other than science
- Not all questions are answered
- Science struggles to answer questions about purpose
- existential truths, not just scientific
Alistar McGrath believes science has limiting factors
Arguments for:
Religion and science being compatible
“Science asks how things happened, religion asks why” John Polkinghorne
Therefore comptabile, as it is different topics
What is
Image of God
Latin, quote
Imago Dei, which refers to the relationship between humanity and God
“Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals”
What are different interpretations of:
Imago Dei
- humans have God’s character and nature - St Irenaeus
- Humans can be in communion with God and ethic responsibilities - Karl Barth
- We are representatives of God on Earth - David JA Clines
View of
St Irenaeus on Imago Dei
2 stages to creation of human beings:
1. Image: mankind share certain characteristics with God, not perfect but with potential
2. Likeness: Humans develop nature to be like God
View of:
David Wilkinson on Science and religion’s conflictidness
Genesis should be read poetically, not literally so science and religion are not at conflict
View of:
Karl Barth on God’s image
Relational view:
Humans were made to have a relation with God
Functional view on:
God’s image
- View by David JA Clines
- Humans are representatives of God on Earth
- To keep the rest of creation in order
What are the religious:
Purposes of the universe
- Enjoyment of God’s creation - encourages them to explore different paths of God’s creation and to enjoy the gift
- The universe was created with a purpose as it is good - “God saw that it was good” - encourages to protect and safeguard the design created by God
What are the non-religious
Purposes of the universe
- A simplistic design - impact is that is cancels out the need to investigate a purpose of the universe
- No purpose - do not make assumptions without evidence
Purposes of:
Human existence
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- Stewardship, looking after the world
- Fullfill the will of God through commandments of Jesus
- Do acts of good service to God - Sheeps and Goats
- Grow into the likeness of God - Irenaeus
What are non-religious views on:
Purpose of humans
- Humanists UK - living good happy lives
- Being generous and altruistic, contrary to our natrually selfish nature - Richard Dawkins
What is Discrimination based on species
Speciesism, popularized but not made by peter singer
How is:
Human exceptionalism justified?
- Sex for pleasure
- use language
- express emotions
- make wars
- much higher intelligence
How is:
Human exceptionalism challenged?
- It is shown that animals have relationships with each other
- Utilitarian view that what counts is maximising happiness and minimising suffering
Views on:
Human and animals being =
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- Benthem - ‘the question is not”can they reason?” nor, “Can they talk?”, But, “Can they suffer”’
- speciesism if they are not treated on the same level
- Charles Darwin argued that animals thinked similarly to humans, just that it was extent and not kind which matters
- All beings have the same origin which is God
- God established a convenant with Noah in the flood in Genesis
Arguments for:
Dominance
- Human beings have higher moral status as they haved evolved better
- Kant - dominance as we have ability to reason
- Mill - utilitarian view of human dominance as we are capable of having better pleasures
- made in the image of god
- incarnation saving just humans
- Genesis narrative says that animals were not companions for Adam
What is:
Augustine’s Principle of Plenitude
- Best possible universe consists many different spcies
- animals were made by God so have value
- Therefore, domion should be stewardship and caring for the animals.
What is:
essentialism
The view that some properties of objects are essential o them. This means that humans have a set of characterstics making them what they are, for example, a knife needs a blade
What is the Christian understanding of:
Human nature
Made in the image of God:
It is made in the image of God
(“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him: male and female he created them”)
Rational and moral which differentiates us from different animals
Fallen and sinful:
original sin handed over through generations
‘for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’
means humans are inclined to sin
What is:
Augustin’s view on human nature
- Humans have a body and a soul
- Soul is the rational and moral part whereas body is driven by instinct and physcially
- Since the Fall the body came revellious and refused to obey the rational soul, leading to concupisence.
What is:
Aquinas’ view on human nature:
- As humans are created in God’s image people are good and do not sin deliberatly
- The fall damaged people’s ability to reason
- they mistake apparant goods for real goods
- these are arrived at by mistake and not deliberately
What was:
Satre’s view on human nature
- No such thing, as we are who we are through the chioces we make
- philosophy called existentialism
- ‘existence preceeds essence’, meaning life and choices come first and make ur nature
What is:
Dawkin’s view on human nature?
- human nature is driven to reproduce our genes
- altruistic behavior can be explained as it is trying to ensure gene reporuction
- This makes humans selfish
- “Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, becasue we are born selfish”
- Strength: strong argument as it provides a biological answer to explain why humans act selfishly
- Weakness: family members are helped out of love not trying to reproduce a gene pool
What is the:
Soul
A spiritual and immaterial aspect of your identity usually present in religions
What is:
Physicalism
The belief that the real world is nothing more than the physical world, and that consciousness is just physical processes
What is:
Dualism
The belief that people are made out of two parts - soul, not physical, and body, which is physical
What is:
Immortality
The belief that the soul lives on after death
Christian view on:
Body and soul
- They both exist, taking a dualistic point of view
- In genesis 2, a man was formed from the ground but breathed in the breath of life to become a living being, suggesting a soul
- Paul encourages Christians to “live by the spirit” instead of bodily desires
- The soul is immortal as shown by Matthew 10:28 : “And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell”
What is:
Akrasia
The concept that after the fall and original sin the mind was weakened and did not have enough will to ignore bodily desires, leading to a greedy violent and selfish human nature
What is:
Substance Dualism
- Bought by Rene Descartes
- Belived that the body was intangled with the soul, and can be proven as the body can feel pain, whoever his mind is not present in his body and can feel the body’s pains.
What are the strengths of:
Substance Dualism
- It provides an explanation of how the body and the mind communicate with one another
- Explains a variety of mental experiences that no physical explanation can account for, e.g. human thoughts and beliefs
Weaknesses of:
Substance dualism
- Something immaterial and material cannot be unified
- Scientific explanations could be possible for feelings in the mind by parts of the brain
What is:
Scientific materialism/physicalism
(Dawkin) Consciousness is just electro-chemical events in the brain, so there is no afterlife or soul
What is:
The Christian view on selfishness
- You should not put yourself in front of others
- Shown by parable of the good samaritan, and sheep and goats
- God’s second greatest commandment: love your neighbour
- Very negative view
What is:
Hobbe’s view:
- Human nature is selfish and there is no moral right or wrong built into ourselves
- Therefore naturally we fight and steal
- eventually we realise it is in our intrests to make a social contract to limit the extents of our own behaviors leading to society
Why is:
Greed often viewed as a negative character trait?
- It is glutenous
- egoist
- makes us ignorant of other people’s need
- can easily corrupt someone
- cannot guarantee happiness
- can lead to obsession
Christianity’s view on:
Dangers of a love of money
- Being wealthy is not a problem
- However, desiring or craving wealth is wrong
- “No one can serve two masters.”
What is:
Peter Singer’s view on greed:
- It is immoral as living comfortably is not neccesary and this money would help others more than yourself.
What is the persepective of:
Gordon Gecko (movie character) on greed?
It is good as it motivates humans to do better than what they are doing leading to improvement in society. For example, scientific progress is directed by greed.
It is also shown that charity can be counter productive to society
Weaknesses of capital approach: benefits are rarely distributed, and monopoly power can be gained, and icnrouges excessive greed and materialism
What is:
Moral ignorance
Not knowing or understanding the difference between right and wrong, or what makes actions wrong
What is a:
Biblical example of ignorance
- The parable of the rich young man
- He got sent to hell for not helping a beggar in need
- Asked to help his brothers but was refused as there were prophets already delivering messages
- this means ignorance is not listening to the messages out there which is a sin
- impact is that we do not need divine intervention to act justly, that we should not be ignorant to those less fortunate than ourselves and we should treat our neighbour the way we would want to be treated. Also means that ignorance can have significant consequences
What is:
Aquinas’ view on ignorance
- Sin is an act or thought turning away from God
- The fall impacted human nature
- the ability to reason can be used to uncover right from wrong
- The synderesis is created by God and seeks a natural orientation towards good.
- Sometimes apparant good and real goods are mistaken leading to sin
- This can only be taken in account if it is vincible ignorance which is not knowing something we should. (Invincible ignorance is not knowing something that is impossible to know)
How does:
John Rawl propose non-religious people preventing ignorance?
- Through the thought experiment veil of ignorance
- This is to imagine how to treat a society ignorant of your current race, gender, ability, pets, money…
- That way the resulting society should be fair for all
What is:
Sin
- An action or thought that seperates humans from God, whether it is against his laws or morals
- Christians believe all humans commit sins
Reinhold Neibuhr’s view on sin
The world has not been getting better as there is sin everywhere - crimes and capitalism and political systems
Good actions are mixed with selfishness
God brings us understanding of our sin, whereas otherwise pride blinds us or we despair and realise our limitations
