KEY TERMS - POR

Philosophy of Religion - key terms

Ancient Philosophical Influences (KT)

• Forms - a name Plato gave to ideal concept

• Reason - using logical steps and thought processes in order to reach conclusions

• Rationalist - someone who thinks that the primary source of knowledge is reason

• Empiricist - someone who thinks that the primary source of knowledge is experience gained through the five senses

• Prime mover - Aristotle's concept of the ultimate cause of movement and change in the universe

• Socratic method - the method of philosophical reasoning which involves critical questioning

• Analogy - a comparison between one thing and another in an attempt to clarify meaning

• Transcendent - being beyond this world and outside the realms of ordinary experience

• Dualism - the belief that reality can be divided into two distinct parts, such as good and evil, or physical and non-physical

• Aetion - an explanatory factor, a reason or cause for something

• Telos - the end, or purpose, of something

• Theist - someone who believes in a God or gods

Soul, Mind and Body (KT)

• Soul - often, but not always, understood to be the non-physical essence of a person

• Consciousness - awareness or perception

• Substance - a subject which has different properties attributed to it

• Dualism - the belief that reality can be divided into two distinct parts, such as good and evil, or physical and non-physical

• Substance dualism - the belief that the mind and the body both exist as two distinct and separate realities

• Scepticism - a questioning approach which does not take assumptions for granted

• Materialism - the belief that only physical matter exists, and that the mind can be explained in physical terms as chemical activity in the brain

• Reductive materialism - otherwise known as identity theory - the view that mental events are identical with physical occurrences in the brain

• Category error - a problem of language that arises when things are talked about as if they belong to one category when in fact they belong to another

Arguments Based on Observation (KT)

• Teleological - looking to the end results (telos) in order to draw a conclusion about what is right or wrong

• Cosmological - to do with the universe

• Natural theology - drawing conclusions about the nature and activity of God by using reason and observing the world

• Contingent - depending on other things

• Principle of Sufficient reason - the principle that everything must have a reason to explain it

• Sceptic - someone who will not accept what others say without questioning and challenging

• A posteriori argument - arguments which draw conclusions based on observation through experience

• Necessary existence - existence which does not depend on anything else

• A priori arguments - arguments which draw conclusions through the use of reason

• Logical fallacy - reasoning that has a flaw in its structure

Arguments Based on Reason (KT)

• A posteriori argument - arguments which draw conclusions based on observation through experience

• Ontological - to do with the nature of existence

• Epistemic distance - a distance in knowledge and understanding

• Predicate - a term which describes a distinctive characteristic of something

• Logical fallacy - reasoning that has a flaw in its structure

• Necessary existence - existence which does not depend on anything else

• A priori arguments - arguments which draw conclusions through the use of reason

• Contingent - depending on other things

Religious Experience (KT)

• Mystical Experience - experiences of God or of the supernatural which go beyond everyday sense experience

• Conversion Experience - an experience which produces a radical change in someone's belief system

• Corporate religious experience - religious experiences which happen to a group of people 'as a body'

• Numinous experience - an indescribable experience which invokes feelings of awe, worship and fascination

• Principle of Credulity - Swinburne's principle that we should usually believe what our sense tell us we are perceiving

• Principle of testimony - Swinburne's principle that we should usually trust that other people are telling us the truth

• Naturalistic explanation - an explanation referring to natural rather than supernatural causes

• Neurophysiology - an area of science which studies the brain and the nervous system

The Problem of Evil (KT)

• Omnipotent - all-powerful

• Omniscient - all-knowing

• Omnibenevolent - all-good and all-loving

• Inconsistent triad - the omnibenevolence and omnipotence of God, and the existence of evil in the world, are said to be mutually incompatible

• Theodicy - an attempt to justify God in the face of evil in the world

• Natural evil - evil and suffering caused by non-human agencies

• Moral evil - the evil done and the suffering caused by deliberate misuse of human free will

• Privatio boni - a phrase used by Augustine to mean an absence of goodness

• Free will - the ability to make independent choices between real options

• Epistemic distance - a distance in knowledge and understanding

The Nature or Attributes of G-d (KT)

• Omnipotent - all-powerful

• Omniscient - all-knowing

• Omnibenevolent - all-good and all-loving

• Eternal - timeless, atemporal, being outside the constraints of time

• Everlasting - sempiternal, lasting forever on the same timeline as humanity

• Free will - the ability to make independent choices between real options

• Existentialism - a way of thinking that emphasises personal freedom of choice

• Immutable - incapable of changing or being affected

Religious Language: Negative, Analogical or Symbolic (KT)

• Agnosticism - the view that there is insufficient evidence for God, or the view that God cannot be known

• Truth-claim - a statement that asserts that something is factually true

• Apophatic way (via negativa) - a way of speaking about God and theological ideas using only terms that say what God is not

• Cataphatic way (via positiva) - a range of ways of speaking about God and theological ideas using only terms that say what God is

• Univocal language - words that mean the same thing when used in different contexts

• Equivocal language - words that mean different things when used in different contexts

• Analogy - a comparison made between one thing and another in an effort to aid understanding

• Symbol - a word or other kind of representation used to stand for something else and to shed light on its meaning

Twentieth Century Perspectives and Philosophical Comparisons (KT)

• Logical Positivism - a movement that claimed that assertions have to be capable of being tested empirically if they are to be meaningful

• Cognitive - having a factual quality that is available to knowledge, where words are labels for things in the world

• Non-cognitive - not having a factual quality that is available to knowledge; words are tools used to achieve something rather than labels for things

• Empirical - available to be experienced by the five senses

• Verification - providing evidence to determine that something is true

• Symposium - a group of people who meet to discuss a particular question or theme

• Falsification - providing evidence to determine that something is false

• Demythologising - removing the mythical elements from a narrative to expose the central message