DECK: Key Thinkers/Authors

From Mod 3-5

Mani

• Taught Manichaeism (a form of Dualism) in the 4th century.

St. Paul

• A "fictional contemporary" whose preaching exemplifies the universal content of an event.

• Taught that the church is the mystical body of Christ

St. Augustine of Hippo

• Was a believer of Manichaeism for 10 years, but later detached from it and instead taught that “evil is a privation of  good.”

• Interiority of Time: Medieval author who wrote the firs ever biography “The Confessions”

  • “In Interiore Homine”

G.W.F Hegel 

• stated that the whole of reality is God coming to know oneself/coming into self-consciousness (Absolute monism).

Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett

Enumerate the 4 Horsemen of New Atheism

The God Delusion, 2006

What book did Richard Dawkins, one of the 4 horsemen of new atheism, write?

God is Not Great, 2007

What book did Christopher Hitchens, one of the 4 horsemen of new atheism, write?

The End of Faith, 2004

What book did Sam Harris, one of the 4 horsemen of new atheism, write?

Breaking the Spell, 2007

What book did Daniel Dennett, one of the 4 horsemen of new atheism, write?

Antony Flew

He is a British philosopher from Oxford; known for his critiques on the belief of God.

• Wrote: “Theology and Falsification (1950)”, and later “There is a God” (co-authored with Roy Varghese).

Leibniz

A German philosopher who said “We are living in the best of all possible worlds,” in the response to the question “where was God?” during the 1755 Lisbon earthquake.

Voltaire

He wrote a satire on Leibniz’s response called Candide, named after the character who witnessed endless suffering and concluded that we are not living in the best possible world

Blaise Pascal

• A French mathematician and philosopher who said “For a believer no proof is necessary; for a nonbeliever, no proof suffices.”

• “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of each man”

St. Anselm of Canterbury

the origin of “fides quaerens intellectum” in his book Proslogion.

George Mavrodes

Formulated the 4 ways of assessing the value of arguments.

Gaunilo of Marmoutiers

A monk who criticized St. Anselm of Canterbury’s Ontological Argument, saying that his proof demonstrates anything could exists (e.g., a perfect island).

Immanuel Kant

• Criticized the ontological argument by arguing that existence isn’t a property which a thing may or may not have in varying degrees as it either exists or not.

• “Our experience is a product of how our mind makes sense of our sensory data.”

St. Thomas Aquinas

• He is a proponent of the cosmological and teleological argument. Believes that God is the cause of everything, and that there is order and value in nature.

• Developed “The 5 Ways of Aquinas”, which states that if you walk along this path, you affirm that God exists.

• Remember: Summa Theologiae

Duns Scotus

• He is a proponent of the cosmological argument, saying that God is the cause of everything.

• Believer of the Immaculate Conception.

William Paley

• A proponent of the Teleological argument, formulating the watchmaker analogy.

C.S. Lewis

• Author of the Chronicles of Narnia

• developed the notion of moral arguments to prove that our experience of having conscience indicates to us that God exists.

Arius

A priest who preached that Jesus is just human, causing a controversy in the Council of Nicea.

Socrates

Ancient period interiority; philosopher who invited his followers that “an unexamined life is not worth living”

Oracle of Delphi

Ancient period interiority; Greek priestess who said  “know thyself” 

Descartes

• Modern period interiority; philosopher who changed the mindset of a whole generation through his introspective journey (“I think therefore I am”)

• Claimed existence is a perfection inherent in a supremely perfect being (Ontological Argument)

• The essence of humanity is thought, founded the subjectivist principle.

St. Carlo Acutis

Contemporary period interiority; saint who said “We are all born as original, but we die as a copy.”

Charles Taylor

• Linguistic Turn.

• Said that Descartes’ cogito is the discovery of the dynamic of the will, imposing order upon reality called “Ethic of Poiesis.”

Aristotle

• Remember: Substance and accidents

Alfred North Whitehead

• Experiential Turn; A metaphysician who shifted focus from being to becoming, proposed the reformed Subjectivist Principle.

• Concrescence; Pan-experientalism;

• Aims to overcome Descartes' dualism by replacing substance with relation;

John Searle

• Compared Descartes’ subjectivist principle to a brain-in-a-vat —- detached from reality.

Santayana

• Said that Descartes’ subjectivist principle falls into the solipsism of the present moment — beyond the mind, there is no reality.

Friedrich Schleiermacher

• RE as an Affective Mode; “On Religion: Speeches to its Culture Despisers and The Christian Faith”

• absolute dependence

• Argues that RE is pre-conceptual, wants to separate religion from knowledge.

Rudolf Otto

• RE as an Affective Mode; “The Idea of the Holy”

• Argued that RE is a complex of feelings, entailing a sentiment of dread/awe involving a longing for the transcendent being.

• God as the mysterious Other = mysterium tremendum et fascinans.

William Alston

• RE as an Perception; “Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience”

• Believes we can perceive  God, but our perception will always be incomplete.

Gerardus van der Leeuw

• RE as Interpretation; "Phenomenology of Religion”

• Experience is relational (constituted by object-subject relation); Phenomenology of Religion

Th.P, van Baaren

• RE as Interpretation; “Science of Religion”

John Hick

• RE as Interpretation; generalized Wittgenstein's concept of “seeing-as” (based on Jastrow’s duck-rabbit picture)

Wayne Proudfoot

edited William James to emphasize the noetic quality of religious experience.

Alain Badiou

• Contemporary French philosopher; Developed the Ontology of the Event, Transfinite Set Theory, Event Metaphysics. 

• Key concepts: Eventum Tantum, Subject defined by fidelity to the event; Dismissal of God as the ultimate One

Theology and Falsification

• Author: Antony Flew

• “God dies the death of a thousand qualifications.” Used the Parable of the Invisible Gardener.

• Main idea: Religious beliefs must be open to falsification.

There is a God

• Author: Antony Flew (w/ Varghese)

• Looked for coherent evidence of God: Human DNA is too complex to not have a designer.

Candide

a satire written by Voltaire that addressed the statement “We are living in the best of all possible worlds.”

Watchmaker Analogy

An analogy by William Paley to illustrate that the intricacies of creation points to a designer.

Passions of the Soul

The book by Descartes that proposed the pineal gland connects the boy and the soul to address the mind-body problem that emerged from his subjectivist principle.

Being and Time

the magnum opus of Heidegger, a document on existentialism. Posits that it’s difficult to explain about being while presupposing the very concept that we are trying to explain.

Heidegger

Wrote on the metaphysical concept of being in “Being and Time”

The life of Jesus and the Lives of the Saints

What were the two books the St. Ignatius of Loyola read that led him to his conversion?

On Religion: Speeches to its Culture Despisers and The Christian Faith

Author: Schleiermacher

Understands religious experience as the feeling of absolute dependence. Has a 2 way approach:

• Justify religion by appealing to RE or piety, adding on that religion can’t be reduced to knowledge or morality.

• Responds to Kantian critique that experience is about productions rather than reproduction. He claims that RE is an immediacy of religious feeling,

  that is, pre-conceptual.

Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience

• Author: William Alston

• Theory of Appearing; Perception is basic and preconceptual (hence, unanalyzable).

• RE makes an appeal to its non-sensory character and the Swinburnean Principle of Credulity.

Principle of Credulity

Constructed by: Swinburne

if it seems to a person that something is the case, then, in the absence of special considerations, it is reasonable for that person to believe that it is the case.

Phenomenology of Religion

Author: Gerardus van der Leeuw

Experience is relational; Epoche(Greek: “bracketing”) means suspending prejudices and biases to let the object reveal itself.

Edmund Husserl

Founded phenomenology, rooted in idealism, where reality is accessed through ideas — “back to the things themselves” (zu den Sachen selbst).