Divinity revision - key terms

Philosophy

The study of reality, knowledge and values

Metaphysics

The nature of reality

Ethics

What it means to be good or do the right thing

Ad Hominem

To criticise the opposition rather than the content of the argument

Principle of Charity

To find the strongest and most persuasive version of an argument

Straw Man argument

To make an argument more simplistic or to dumb it down

Plato

Greek philosopher who founded the academy and is regarded as the father of philosophy also created the idea of Plato’s Cave

Socrates

Teacher of plato and was condemned to death for corrupting the youth bit killed himself by drinking a cup of hemlock

Iff

If and only if

Empiricism

A view that all human knowledge is based on experience

Objective

Facts that do not depend on the view of the person stating them

Subjective

Facts that do depend on the view of the person stating them

Hume’s Law

The argument that ‘ought’ statements cannot be derived from ‘is’ statements

David Hume

Scottish philosopher who is known for his views that all human knowledge is ultimately founded on experience

Robert Nozick

Harvard philosopher interested in how we know what we know

Scepticism

The habit of doubting the truth

Academic scepticism

Knowledge of the world gained through the senses is unreliable as it could not be trusted

Pyrrhonian scepticism

Doubts whether any claims about the world are possible

Epistemology

What can be known and how we know what we know

Theology

The study of God

Natural theology

The knowledge we can have about God through experience of the world

Revealed Theology

God can only be known as he allows himself to be known

Pyrrho of Elis

Greek philosopher who argued that there is no way of knowing whether anything is true or not

René Descartes

A French philosopher and mathematician who explored epidemiological questions

Karl Barth

20th Century theologian who thought that we could not trust our impressions of God gained through experience

Theism

Belief in the existence of a God

Atheism

A belief that God does not exist

Agnosticism

Either a state of uncertainty as to whether God exists or not

Design Argument

To use the beauty and complexity of the world to prove God existence

The Argument from Fine Tuning

Since there are extremely delicately balanced forces in the universe which are just right to sustain life there must be a intelligent designer (God)

William Paley

A Church of England clergyman, theologian and philosopher

Bertrand Russell

A philosopher, logician, historian, mathematician and social critic, well known for being an atheist and a leading anti-war activist

Hypothesis

A proposed explanation for an event or phenomenon

Theory

A tested and unifying explanation

Ockham’s Razor

A situation where there is more than one possible explanation and the one with the fewest assumptions is preferred

The Verification Principle

Unless something can be verified then it is meaningless

The Falsification Principle

The best way to tell if something is scientific or not is whether or not it can be falsified

William of Ockham

An English friar, philosopher and theologian

Karl Popper

Austrian-British physicist, historian and philosopher of science