Armstrong

• God is a supreme divine and personal Creator: Armstrong argues that belief in God is an essential aspect of most religious traditions

• Religion as a way of practice not of thinking: Religious practices such as prayer, meditation, and ritual are meant to help individuals connect with the divine and transform themselves

• Accessing regions of the psyche in order to step outside of oneself: Experiences can help individuals step outside of their own limited perspectives and see the world in a new way

• Fundamentalists and Atheism: narrow and rigid interpretation of religious tradition

New Atheists

• Criticized all religions to the extreme: simplistic and reductionist view of religion

Plato

• Plato believed in a higher reality of eternal Forms beyond the physical world.

  • The physical world is a reflection or imitation of the higher Forms.

  • The Forms are eternal and unchanging, while the physical world is constantly changing and imperfect.

  • Through philosophical inquiry and contemplation, we can come to understand the Forms.

• God is the ultimate source of the Forms and the divine craftsman who created the physical world.

Aristotle

• God is the unmoved mover, or the first cause in the world.

Plotinus

• The One ← The Intelligent ← Other

  • ← The Good

  • The One is simple and indivisible. It does not contain intelligence but rather it is the source of all existence.

• Plotinus believed in "The One," a simple and indivisible source of all existence.

• The One is not intelligent but is the ultimate origin of all intelligence and being.

• Plotinus's philosophy influenced later thinkers in fields such as mysticism, theology, and philosophy.

Augustine

• The soul is like the eye

  • It can perceive and understand the truth and it is at peace

  • But away from truth it does not comprehend reality

• God is an eternal and changeless reality and the highest form of existence

• The world was made with purpose and was made with time

• Augustine believed that the soul is like the eye, capable of perceiving and understanding truth.

• Without truth, the soul cannot comprehend reality and is not at peace.

• Augustine viewed God as an eternal and unchanging reality, the highest form of existence.

• He also believed that the world was created with purpose and within time.

Epicurus

• Epicurean philosophy was to achieve a state of tranquility and inner peace, free from the anxieties and fears that can arise from our attachment to the material world. Death is nothing to us

• Epicurus taught that the goal of his philosophy was to achieve inner peace and tranquility.

• He believed that this could be accomplished by freeing ourselves from our attachment to the material world.

• Epicurus also believed that death should not be feared because it is simply the end of sensation, and therefore nothing to us.

Eriugena

• Samaritan → Gentiles

  • Going out of the city → Searching for the fountain of reason

• Fountain of Truth → Christ

• Disciples → Spiritual nourishment

  • Faith, Action, and knowledge

Ps-Dionysius

• God is self sufficient and immanent and transcendent

Maimonides

• Proof of Negation

• Affirming God with positive affirmation tends to limit God and Idolatrize him

• Maimonides believed that it is easier to understand what God is not (proof of negation) than to understand what God is, and that attempting to affirm God with positive attributes can limit and idolize God. This idea is sometimes referred to as "negative theology" or "apophatic theology.”

Anselm

• God is the highest form of existence

  • Because he is the highest form he must necessarily exist

• Anselm believed in the existence of God as the highest form of existence, and argued that God must necessarily exist because existence is a necessary part of what it means to be the highest form of existence.

Aquinas

• Faith and reason complements and is a requirement in understanding God

• Five ways to prove God

  • First Motion; Causation; Necessity; Gradation; Design

Al-Kindi

• Cosmological argument based on causality

  1. Everything that exists has a cause.

  2. The universe exists.

  3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.

  4. This cause must be God, who is the only possible explanation for the existence of the universe.

Calvin

• Testimony of the Spirit

• The Holy spirit reveals the Truth about the world and of God

• Calvin believed that the Holy Spirit reveals the truth about the world and about God to believers, and that this inner witness of the Spirit is essential for true faith and knowledge.

Galillei

• Science and Bible are two separate fields of Knowledge (Mythos and Logos)

  • valid and important areas of knowledge, but that they should be kept separate and distinct from each other

• However, he does believe that the authority and truth of Christianity

  • believed that the authority and truth of Christianity did not depend on its compatibility with any particular scientific theory or observation

• Bellarmine

  • Bible as a fundamentalist (kinda). Science must be based on the Bible

Descartes (math)

• God as a clear and distinct Idea

• God as an Innate knowledge

• "Cogito, ergo sum" ("I think, therefore I am")

• Doubt as a method of inquiry and the foundation of knowledge

• Mind and body as distinct substances, with the mind being non-physical (dualism)

• Knowledge of the external world as mediated by perception and subject to error

Noma

• Non-Overlapping Magisteria

  • science and religion represent two separate domains of inquiry that do not overlap with each other

• Mutual respect and understanding different belief systems

Pascal

• Wager argument, It is better to believe in God that to not believe in him

• "The heart has reasons that reason cannot know."

• Human beings are a mixture of greatness and wretchedness.

• The futility of seeking happiness through worldly pleasures.

• The role of faith in human understanding and the limitations of reason.