Chapter 4: Philosophy & God

4.1 : The significance of religion

Defining Religion

• The choice between belief and unbelief influences one’s view of oneself and much more.
• Religion is difficult to define because some religions do not believe in God, some have no official beliefs, some are not institutionalized, and some do not value personal commitment.
• Smart says all religions have some or all of six dimensions:
  • (1) doctrine
  • (2) experience
  • (3) myth
  • (4) ritual
  • (5) morality
  • (6) organization.

Religious Belief, Religious Experience, and Theology

• Religious belief refers to doctrines held about a supernatural dimension; religious experience refers to experience of this supernatural dimension.
• Theology, the study of religious beliefs, assumes that God exists and the beliefs are true; the philosophy of religion studies religious beliefs but does not assume that they are true or that God exists.

4.2 : Does god exist?

\n The Ontologica%%l%% Argument

• Anselm’s ontological proof says
  • (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
• Kant claimed that Anselm wrongly assumed existence is a property that can be part of the concept of a thing—of the concept “that than which nothing greater can be conceived.”
• But existence is not a property or part of the concept of a thing.

The Cosmological Argument

• Aquinas’s first cosmological proof says
  • (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.
• Aquinas’s second cosmological proof says:
  • (1) Some things are caused to exist by other things.
  • (2) What is caused to exist must be caused by another thing, for nothing can cause itself to exist.
  • (3) The series of causes cannot extend back infinitely, for then there would be no beginning to the existence of the series of causes, so no causes would exist at all.
  • (4) So, there is a first cause of existence, and this is God.
• Some critics say that Aquinas’s views on motion were disproved by Newton, but Aquinas’s views can probably be reconciled with Newton’s.
• Critics of Aquinas say it is possible for the series of movers and causes in the universe to be infinite.
• His defenders reply that the discovery of the “Big Bang” shows the series of motions and causes in the universe had a beginning and is not infinite.
• Aquinas also held that even if the universe existed forever, the existence of the entire everlasting chain of motions and causes still needs to be explained, and God is the only explanation.
• Hume responded that if each individual motion or cause is explained by a previous motion or cause, the entire infinite chain needs no more explanation.

The Design Arguement

• Paley’s argument from design says:

  • (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.

• Hume objected that although we know how artifacts like watches are made, we have no knowledge of how nature and living things are made, so for all we know nature and living things are produced by a non-intelligent mechanism.

• Darwin argued that the nonintelligent mechanism of evolution through natural selection, working over millions of years, can produce living things whose parts appear to be designed by an intelligent being to achieve some purpose.

• Defenders of the argument from design argue that even if evolution is a fact, the believer can still hold that evolution is the means by which God produces living things and their parts.

• Dembski, a proponent of intelligent design, argues that the “specified complexity” (the directedness and improbability) of genes implies they were produced by an intelligence and not by chance or by natural laws.

• Others argue that if the features of the universe that make human life possible were slightly different, human life could not exist.

• It is so improbable that a universe would have these features out of an infinite range of other possible features that they had to be deliberately selected to make human life possible (the anthropic principle).

• God selected them.

• Critics of this new argument say that for all we know, some physical process, not God, selected the features that make life possible.

Theistic Alternatives to Traditional Monotheism

• The difficulties in the arguments for God and difficulties in the traditional concept of God have led some people to look for other ways of thinking about God, such as pantheism (which Spinoza advocated), and panentheism (which Peirce and others advocated).

4.3 : Atheism, agnosticism, and the problem of evil

Atheism

• Atheists claim there is no God.
• Many atheists base their atheism on the ability of science and the scientific method to explain the world, they rely on an empirical view of ethics such as utilitarianism, and they focus their concerns on the world here and now.
• Many atheists argue, like Hume did, that if an all-good and all-powerful God existed, there would be no evil. But there is evil.
  • So, an all-good and all-powerful God does not exist.
• Augustine argued that God produces what is good and only what is good. Because evil is the absence of good, God does not produce evil.
• Moreover, what God creates must be finite and lack some good.
  • So, if God is to create a finite world, and thereby bring at least some goodness into existence, it has to contain some evil.
• Some believers argue that evil is necessary for good.
• Critics say an omnipotent God could produce good without evil.
• Other believers argue that human freedom, which is in itself good, is the cause of evil.
• Critics say this does not explain evil that humans do not produce.

Agnosticism

• Some argue that atheism requires a “commitment” to certain beliefs as theism does.
• Huxley, an agnostic, held “it is wrong” to believe unless one has evidence that “logically justifies” belief, so he “suspended judgment.”
• Freud claimed that people believe because they have an “infantile” need to believe someone like a “father” is still watching over them.
• Kant argued that our morality forces us to believe in the possibility of a just world where evil is punished and good is rewarded, and this is possible only if there is a God and an afterlife.
• So, we have to believe in a God and afterlife.

4.4 : Traditional religious belief and experience

\n Religious Belief “The Will to Believe”

• James held that when an option is a “genuine”—a “living, momentous, and forced”—option that \n “by its nature cannot be decided on intellectual grounds,” 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.
• James answers critics who claim it is always wrong to believe without sufficient evidence by arguing that this claim itself has no sufficient evidence, so those who believe this claim believe it on the basis of their passional nature
  • the claim that it is legitimate to believe when faced with a genuine option that cannot be decided on intellectual grounds is also a claim that must be chosen or rejected on the basis of our passional nature.

Personal Experience of the Divine

• Many believe in God not on the basis of rational proofs but because of a direct personal experience of the divine.
• James claims that religious experiences of the divine are ineffable and noetic.
• Mystical experiences, the direct experience of a religious reality, involve the feelings of dependence, mystery, terror, and bliss.
• However, one can question whether people really have direct experiences of the divine, a possibility that seems beyond the capacity of our human ability to perceive things.

4.5 : Nontraditional religious experience

\n \n Radical Theology

• Kierkegaard distinguishes objective (dispassionate, scientific) from subjective (passionate, involved) thinking.
• Radical theology believes that, religious belief is not open to objective thinking, and it is useless to try to prove God’s existence.
  • This causes “anguish.”
• Religion and God must be approached through a “leap of faith,” a commitment that defies objective analysis.
• Tillich claimed that traditional concepts of God objectified God and turned God into an “invincible tyrant.”
• For Tillich, God is “the source of your ultimate concern” and “of what you take seriously without reservation.” So, anyone who has an ultimate concern believes in God.
• Traditional proofs of God turn God into an object and ultimately lead to a loss of faith.
• But it is unclear what Tillich means by “God,” and statements he makes about what “God” is seem to be mere tautologies.

Feminist Theology

• Feminist theologian Daly holds that the traditional concept of God is male, sexist, oppressive to women, and legitimates patriarchy—the rule of men over women.
• We must reject it, especially in its Christian form, and replace it with “the Goddess.”
• Young, also a feminist theologian, disagrees, arguing that the male qualities of the Christian concept of God are nonessential, so the concept can be re-formed.

Eastern Religious Traditions

• Hinduism views Brahman as the only reality and all else is illusion; atman is the Hindu doctrine of no self.
• Hindu thought affirms four values; in order of increasing importance: wealth, pleasure, duty, and enlightenment.
• Seven emphases of Indian thought are
  • the spiritual
  • the interrelation of philosophy and life
  • the inner life
  • the nonmaterial oneness of creation
  • awareness as the path to reality
  • respect for tradition
  • tolerance of all sincere beliefs.
• Buddhism emphasizes the four noble truths:
  • All life is sorrow
  • sorrow arises from craving
  • stopping craving will stop sorrow
  • and the Noble Eightfold Path will stop craving; it requires
  • right views
  • right resolve
  • right speech
  • right conduct
  • right livelihood
  • right effort
  • right mindfulness
  • right concentration.
• Zen Buddhism emphasizes the avoidance of words and concepts, the understanding of Mind and its oneness with nature, and attaining enlightenment through this understanding.
• Broadly speaking, these forms of Eastern thought reject the Western concept of an all-powerful, all-knowing personal God and of the moral law as something God commands.