Stuff That’s Involved In The 2 Above

Question 1

Relativism (Sophist)
Skepticism
Absolutism

Answer 1

• Reality is whatever you think it is, for you.
• We can’t know anything about reality (or maybe we only know that we can’t know anything.)
  • Mitigated Scepticism (Hume)- We can only know what we encounter through the senses (empiricism), but we keep believing in all sorts of things, like necessary caution, as a matter of habit and custom.
• There is one way the world really is dependent of what you think and truths about the world exist independently of what you think.
  •Platonism (Plato)- there are two worlds, the realm of forms is the more real realm, true knowledge (knowledge of the forms) comes through reason, through the mind, the demiurge created the world in accord with the forms.
  •atomism/materialism (Epicurus)- everything is made of eternal atoms, all knowledge comes through the senses (empiricism), the gods are physical and don’t intervene in human affairs.
  • abrahamic theism- One all good, all powerful, all knowing God exists and created the world, and revealed himself to humanity in scripture.
  —>Theistic evidentialism (Thomas Aquinas and Descartes)— the existence of this card can be shown through the use of rational argument.
  —>Theistic evidentialism (William James)—the existence of this god cannot be shown through the use of rational argument, but should be held to on faith alone.
  -Atheistic evidentialism (W. K. Clifford)—the existence of this god ought to be shown through the use of rational argument if we are to believe, but since there is no evidence of God, we ought not to believe.

Question 2

Evidentialism a non-evidentialism

Answer 2

Evidentialism— Belief in God based on evidence.

Theistic Evidentialism— Belief in God is based on evidence and there is good evidence for God’s existence, so we are justified in believing.
• Thomas Aquinas, John Locke, C.S Lewis

Atheistic evidentialism— belied in God is based on evidence and there is no good evidence for God’s existence so we are not justified in believing.
• W.K. Clifford
•Contemporary: Graham Oppy, Alexander Rosenberg, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins

Theistic non- Evidentialism— Belief in God is not based on evidence, but on faith (Fideism), practical reasons, feelings, psychological/existential meaning, etc.
•William of Ockham, Henry Dodwell (unless he was joking), Blaise Pascal, Soren Kierkegaard, William James, Karl Barth, Ludwig Wittgenstein (maybe), D.Z. Phillips.
•Kierkegaard was perhaps most extreme, he thought the doctrine of the incarnation was a self-contradictory, irrational, absurd, requiring a “leap of faith.”
•Contemporary: William lame Craig*, Harriet Baber
•Craig defends arguments for God’s existence, but Argues faith is Primary and is the real and independent justification of religious belief.