Philosophy of religion Flashcards
FAITH AND REASON:
Locke’s argument for reason (is God certain? where does reason come from?) ____________________________
Criticism: the potential contradiction _____________
Aquinas’s argument for both (saw them as _______, leap of faith, free will, articles) ______________________________
Kierkegaard’s argument for faith (King analogy, tragic heros/Abraham comparison - what is shows) ___________________________
Locke is not certain of God, God is probable. God gives the faculty of reason, so it must be used to gain valid beliefs
Contradiction in using God-given faculties to disprove God
Aquinas saw faith & reason as complimentary. He argued philosophy can only go so far in showing God’s existence - leap of faith is needed for this belief. This involves exercising our free will/volitions. Faith is stronger than reason because it allows beliefs in articles of faith e.g. holy trinity which reason can’t demonstrate.
Kierkegaard argued it would be pompous to prove the existence of a King just as with a sovereign being - accepting the existence and submitting is what we ought to do. Tragic heros including King Agamemnon sacrificing his child so he can go to war, compared to Abraham doing so without personal motive - just out of faith. (better than reasoning to gain something)
VERIFICATION PRINCIPLE:
Philosopher: __________
What must a proposition be for the sentence to have literal meaning (one of 2 things) _______________________
A non-verifiable (meaningless) claim for a theist ______________ and for an atheist __________________
Ayer
A proposition must either be analytic (2+2=4) or empirically verifiable (the grass is green)
For a theist ‘there is a God’ for atheist ‘ there is no God’ - neither are analytically true nor empirically verifiable.
COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT 1
An a ________ argument
2 premises __________________
Conclusion _________________
Aquinas’s argument - motion (unmoved mover) _______________
cause (uncaused causer) _________________
contingency (possibility & necessity)
Criticisms:
God must also _________________
Rather than one starting cause, ________________________
Universe is not contingent (energy) _________________________
A posteriori
Everything must have a cause > Universe must have a cause > God must be the cause
Motion: Universe has a chain of movement - whatever moves has to be moved by something else - there must be a first mover that was not moved - God
Nothing can be its own cause or else it would have to exist before itself - there is a first, uncaused cause - God
There is a necessary being which stood outside the contingent universe before it came into existence - God
God must also have had a cause
Independant events could have independant causes
Energy in the universe is eternal, it has not come into existence as something contingent
COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT 2
Leibniz’s version (principle of sufficient reason) - what there is not within the universe, what this means ___________________________
Hume’s argument against cause (mother analogy) _______________________
Kalam cosmological argument (universe’s beginning)
Physics criticism (electrons)
Nothing in the universe which explains its existence - so its cause must be external (God)
Just from claiming every event in the universe has a cause, we cannot claim there is one cause for the whole universe - just because every human has a mother doesn’t mean the whole human race has one mother
Kalam - everything which has a beginning (including universe) must have a cause transcending it (God)
Electrons can pass in and out of existence without cause - cause is unnecesary
RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 1
Define it _________________
Name/define 3 types __________________
William James’s argument (faith) _________________________
Criticisms:
Free will _________________
Subjectivity ___________________
Psychological problems/reasons _______________________
Different religions ______________________________
A non-empirical, supernatural occurence that brings greater understanding of God, is individual in nature and usually positive
Mystical - union with god
Prayer - meditation to have the experience
Conversion - a life-changing experience
James argued religious experience is of primary importance - it leads to strengthening of faith (which is superior to reason in his view)
If God kept causing REs it would remove free will to believe in Him
Experiences are subjective, making them open to interpretation
An insecure person, for example, would be more likely to imagine an experience to allow faith in God as a form of comfort/help
Different religions make different claims - prior beliefs shape our later experiences
RESPONSE TO VP 1: RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE AS EXPRESSING FEELING
Philosopher _________
‘God does/does not exist’ is not a ______, it is ______
Invisible gardener analogy ____________
Criticism (having genuine religious belief) ___________________________
RESPONSE TO VP 2: RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE AS ACTION-GUIDING
Philosopher _______________
Explain - what RL ought to make us do, religious stories/texts ____________________
Religious propositions are performative, like ‘I promise you £5’ - explain ___________________________
Durkheim’s response (social sciences, context of ceremonies, psychological explanation) _____________________
Wisdom
Not a truth claim, but expressing how we feel about the actual case of affairs
If 2 people describe a neglected garden one may say ‘there is no gardener’ the other may say ‘there is an invisible gardener’ - neither make a truth claim, it is just what they feel about the garden
You cannot have genuine faith in God without holding a truth claim about God’s existence
Braithwaite
Religious language isn’t literal, it just relates our conduct/behaviour. Religious texts make it easier to decide on a moral course of action, they do not describe God as an actual reality
‘the Creator made the world’ and ‘I promise you £5’ are performative in that they involve commiments and make assumptions about the nature of the world - either commiting to a promise to pay in a world where paying is possible, or a commitment to worshipping God where religious conduct exists as a possibility
Durkheim argued that altered psychological states, like those in religious ceremonies, are the only reason for these types of action.
RESPONSE TO VP 3: ESCHATALOGICAL VERIFICATION
Philosopher _________
Two people walking road, celestial city analogy, what they believe/interpret, what it means about God ______________________________
RESPONSE TO VP 4: SEEING AS
Interpretation of the road/life/history in general, explain ___________________
how it allows free will ______________
Hick
Two travellers on a road, one believing it leads to a Celestial City, the other believing it leads nowhere. Both must travel to the end and one will be right, the other wrong. This means the believer interprets harsdships as tests of endurance, the other sees the good and bad as random events.
The belief in god therefore CAN be verified - with reference to the afterlife
Both the believer and non-believer have different interpretations of the road (the actual facts of life). We ‘see as’ either proof of God or proof of no God in the world, exercising free will in this interpretation.
MIRACLES 1
Define (natural laws, significance) ______________________
Can miracles occur? (coincidences) _______________________
Natural laws change _____________
Importance of the Bible __________________
Hume’s argument on testimony to miracles __________________________
Interruption of nature that can’t be explaine by natural laws and has significance to religion/the religious
Coincidences occur all the time but it is difficult to isolate them and show God as the sole cause/explanation.
They are constantly being widened by new knowledge
Miracles should only be believed in if the possibility of the testimony’s falsehood is more miraculous - there are millions of examples where miracles have not occured. Reliable, impartial witnesses of miracles are also lacking.
The Bible for believers is more than an historical record, it features miracles and these add to/validate religious belief
RESPONSE TO VP 5: DEATH BY A THOUSAND QUALIFICATIONS
What it means ___________________
Why is the statement ‘the door is closed’ meaningful by this argument? _______________________
However, for a religious believer with true faith who makes the claim, ‘God exists’… _________________________
Religious believers change their belief in God ___________ e.g. God is like a father because this avoids the other possibility ______________
Criticisms: Crombie (non-literal qualifications) _________________
Religious contingency (dependance on God) - what this feeling means for the religious ______________________
When an argument loses original meaning because it has had so many changes (qualifications) added
Because ‘the door is closed’ has a possible alternative ‘the door is open’ and it has not been qualified in any way to avoid this alternative
For those with true faith, when they make the claim ‘God exists’ they refuse to accept as a possibility ‘God does not exist’
They qualify their belief to avoid the possibility of God not existing - God is like a father - makes God’s existence more viable but loses original meaning
Crombie argued qualifications like ‘God is our father’ are not a literal understanding of God - this language is not a definitive part of God’s nature
Contingency within religion is the nature of things - the sense in which a believer feels an absolute dependance on God within their life.
This gives the context for the qualifications/language to have meaning
RESPONSE TO VP 6: RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE GAMES
Define them ______________________
explain why each is valid in its own right (science language game, religious language game, etc.) _________________
Criticism (about discussing beliefs) _____________________
Language games are sets of rules which are only intelligible to those taking part in them.
They are self-legitimating (legitimate by authority of those taking part) and autonomous (make sense in their own right)
This isolates religious belief and prevents it from being discussed by anyone except the religious.
RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 2:
Testimony of RE (our tendency to tell truth/believe others) _______________
Different givers of testimony in religion ________________________
Credulity (trusting own experiences)
__________________
Ayer’s response to such claims of mystic
______________________
Hick (seeing as)
____________________
Criticism: accuracy of these various impressions __________________
If someone claims they have had a RE, we have cause to believe them in that people tend to tell the truth and we tend to believe, unless there is reason not to.
However various biblical testimonies conflict.
Credulity is relying on our own REs - we naturally think we should trust our experiences.
Ayer argued that such experiences, if they cannot be explained in non-mystic terms,
must be meaningless.
Hick argued that with ‘seeing as’, even if experiences differ they all refer to the same thing (God), so they can be relied on.
These different impressions may be to distant from the real thing to give an accurate impression of it.
MIRACLES 2:
Holland’s argument (scientific knowledge, perspectives, train track example) ____________________
Bultmann’s argument (miracles in relation to modern science) ________________
God’s intervention with natural laws maintained (US legal system analogy) ________________________
Criticisms (Demeaning God’s power, not solving evils/conflicts) _____________________
Holland argued miracles can be explained by science as coincidences, but effect our lives in a way that leads to belief.
A train stops a few feet from a child on a train track and the mother INTERPRETS it as a miracle, even though she knows that the driver coincidentally fainted and the automatic brakes applied. It is a miracle because of PERSONAL SIGNIFICANCE
Bultmann claimed in the scientific age miraculous stories can’t be taken literally therefore must be rejected.
The US legal system has rules but outside of the rules the President can intervene in exceptional circumstances to pardon someone (not part of rules). Likewise God could allow miracles to occur from beyond the natural laws of science without breaking them.
It demeans God’s power because it is a rare and minor form of action for an omnipotent deity, and He has not used miracles to prevent many of history’s great conflicts and terrible events.
