Plato and the theory of forms
Materialism (Hobbes): the view that matter is the ultimate constituent of reality.
Idealism (Berkeley): holds that reality consists of minds and their ideas.
The God Question: Theism, Pantheism, Panentheism, Deism
- Theism: there is God
- Pantheism: everything is God
- Panentheism: everything is God but God is still his his own entity
- Deism: God is transcendent but no imminent
Ontological Arguments/Objections
- Anselm’s ontological proof:
- (1) God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived
- (2) than which nothing greater can be conceived must exist in reality and not merely in the mind
- (3) so God exists in reality
- Objections to ontological argument: existence is not property or a part of the concept of a thing.
Teleological Arguments/Objections
Teleological: proof of God through design
Paley’s Argument of Design:
(1) If we find an artifact, like a watch, that is designed to achieve a purpose, we can conclude it was made by an intelligent being.
(2) But things we find in nature, especially living things and their parts, are designed to achieve a purpose.
(3) So, by analogy, we can conclude they were made by an intelligent being, and this is God.
Objections to the design argument: for all we know nature and living are made by a non-intelligent mechanisms, Darwin’s natural selection
Aquinas’ Five Ways (proofs), objections
- Aquinas’s cosmological proof:
- (1) Some things move.
- (2) What moves must be moved by another moving thing, which must be moved by another moving thing, and so on.
- (3) This series of moving movers cannot be infinite, for then their motion would have no origin.
- (4) The origin of their motion cannot be moving, for then it would have to be moved by another.
- (5) This unmoving origin of motion is God.
- Criticism to Aquinas’ proof: can be disapproved by Newton, it is possible for the series of movers and causes in the universe to be infinite.
<<^^Recommended reading: Problem of evil & God’s Nature ↴^^<<
- <<^^If there was god, there would be no evil, but there is evil^^<<
- <<^^God only produces good, evil is the absence of God^^<<
- <<^^In order for God’s creation to be finite, it must contain evil^^<<
- <<^^Evil is necessary for good^^<<
- <<^^God is omnipotent and can produce good without evil^^<<
- <<^^Human freedom which is good itself, is the cause of evil but this does not explain the evil humans do not produce^^<<
Atheism, Agnosticism, Mysticism
- Atheism: there is no God
- Agnosticism: no commitment to God or to no God
- Mysticism: the direct experience of a religious reality, involve the feelings of dependence, mystery, terror, and bliss.
Religious Experience: Many believe in God not on the basis of rational proofs but because of a direct personal experience of the divine. These claims of the divine are ineffable and noetic.
Will to Believe: it is legitimate (not wrong) to choose on the basis of our “passional nature,” even without sufficient evidence in support of the option we choose.