Philosophy of Religion

Philosophy of Religion

The philosophical study of religion is primary focused upon three areas:

• The existence of God

• Rationality and of Religious Belief

• The Problem of Evil.

Existence of God

• St. Anselm- Ontological Argument

• Gaunilo- Anti Ontological Argument

• St. Thomas Aquinas- 5 Proofs

• William Paley- Watch on Beach

• David Hume- Weak Analogy

St. Anselm (1033- 1109)

• St. Anselm argues for the necessary existence of a perfect being.

• His argument is a priori in nature.

• It is based upon the meaning of certain terms, and does not rely upon empirical a posteriori evidence.

More Perfect

• His argument, sometimes called the ontological argument, because it is based upon the nature of being.

• Anselm says that if we imagine two objects, both identical, but one exist and the other does not, then the one that exist is more perfect.

Can Perfection be More Perfect?

• If something is already perfect, how can it be more perfect?

• Anslem, argues that perfection can not be more perfect, so by it’s very nature it must exist in order to be deemed perfect.

St. Anselm: Imagine the greatest possible being…

1. The greatest possible being is Perfect. It is All powerful, All knowing, All good.

2. In order to be the perfect being,

IT must exist.

3. Because if you did not exist, then it would not be the greatest or most perfect thing)

4. Therefore the greatest possible being must necessarily exist!

Gaunilo

• A French monk argues that existence does not make something more perfect.

• He employs a reductio argument.

• The idea is that if Anselm is correct in his assertion regarding God's necessary existence, then the same would be true for a perfect island.

Perfect Island

• He ask us to imagine the perfect island, yet to exist in reality is more perfect than to simply exist in the mind.

• So in order to be perfect, it must exist in reality!

Reductio ad um Serdum

• Believing in the perfect Island makes it real?

• This is absurd

• Just as it is an absurdity to conclude that God necessary exist simply because we can conceive of him.

Island, No. God, Yes!

• Anselm agrees that it is absurd to conclude that the perfect island exist just because you think of it!

• But God is a different matter all together.

• His existence is guaranteed by his perfection.

St. Thomas Aquinas

• Gave 5 proofs for God’s Existence…

• The first 4 ways fail but the 5th…

5 ways…

• Motion

• Efficient Cause

• POSSIBILITY AND NECESSITY

• DEGREES OF PERFECTION

• DESIGN

St. Thomas Aquinas (1224- 1274)

• Wants to give a posteriori arguments for the existence of God. He wants to go from things that we see in our everyday experience and draw conclusions from these regarding the nature of reality. In the Summa Theologica he gives the Five Ways that God's existence can be proven by empirical means.

St. Thomas Aquinas-Motion

1) Objects are in motion

2) If something is in motion, then it must be set into motion by something outside of itself

3) There can not be an infinite chain of movers, movees

________________________________________

4) So, there is a first, unmoved mover that sets the world into motion.

5)Hence God exist and is the first unmoved mover.

St. Thomas Aquinas Efficient Cause

1) Some events cause other events.

2) If an event happens, then it must be caused by some prior event outside of itself.

3) There cannot be an infinite causal chain of cause an effect

_______________________________________

4) So, there must be a first, efficient cause, uncaused cause.

5) Hence, God is this first cause and exist.

St. Thomas Aquinas POSSIBILITY AND NECESSITY

1) Contingent things exist.

2) Each contingent thing has a time when it fails to exist (Aquinas assumes contingent objects are not eternal)

3) So, if everything were contingent, then there would be a time in the past when nothing existed. A time of complete emptiness

POSSIBILITY AND NECESSITY

4) That time of complete emptiness would have been in the past.

5) If nothing existed in the past, then nothing would exist now, since something cannot come from nothing.

6) So, if everything were contingent, nothing would exist now.

(But clearly things do exist now, the world is not empty.)_______________________________________________7) Therefore a being exist that is not contingent.8) Hence, God is this necessary being and he exist.

St. Thomas Aquinas DEGREES OF PERFECTION

1) Objects have properties to greater or lesser degrees

2) If an object has a property to a lesser extent, then there must be an object that has it to the maximum extent.

___________________________________3) So there is a being that has all properties

to the greatest possible degree4) Hence this being is God and he exist

St. Thomas Aquinas DESIGN ARGUMENT

1) Among objects that have goals or purpose, some have minds and others do not.

2) An object that has a goal, but does not have a mind, must have been designed by a being that had a mind.

3) So there exists a being with a mind who designed all of the mindless objects that act for ends.

_________________________________________

4) Hence this Being is God and he does exist.

William Paley (1743- 1805)

• Paley's Watch-

• Imagine you are walking on a beach and you see a rock…

• How did it come to be there?

• The question seems absurd.

• For all you know it has been there forever.

Paley, find a watch on the beach

• Now imagine you find a watch on the beach.

• How did it get there?

• This question seems less absurd.

• Perhaps it was created randomly- by the wave action and the sand on the beach.

Paley- random or designer?

• Or maybe it had a designer. Of those two hypothesis which seems to be the most likely?

• Paley thinks , just as you most probably do, that it makes more sense to talk about the watch having a designer.

Watch --- Natural creatures

• Paley wants to drawn an analogy between the watch and nature.

• Look at the complexity of nature and natural organisms.

• Does it not make sense to conclude that they have a designer?

• Paley thinks that the answer is obviously yes!

Of the 2 choices one makes more sense.

• H1- Random

• H2- Designer

• H3- ????

Problems with design argument

• It does not prove there is an interactive designer.

• It does not prove there is only one designer.

• It does not clearly show who is the designer.

David Hume (1711- 1776)

• Argues that the design argument is really a very weak analogy.

• It is one thing to talk about watches, it is another to talk about living organisms and still another to talk about the universe.

• He claims that the argument does not make it rational to conclude that the universe has a designer.

Which designer?

• If there is a designer, who is the designer?

• A higher being? Which higher being?

• What are humans doing?

Evolution

• Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection, Evolution of Species.

• Charles Darwin Published the Origin of Species in 1859

Chimpanzee and human ancestors may have interbred.

• Genetic analysis suggests a messy split between the two lineages.

• The evolutionary split between humans and our nearest evolutionary cousins, chimpanzees, may have occurred more recently than we thought, according to a new comparison of the respective genetic sequences.

Our earliest ancestor?

• Previous estimates put the split at as much as 7 million years ago — meaning that Toumaï, a fossil dating from at least 6.5 million years ago in Chad and assigned to the species Sahelanthropus tchadensis, was hailed as the earliest-known member of the line that gave rise to modern humans.

We share an X.

• Reich and his team explain in their study, published online in Nature. Different sections of the genome differ by different amounts, suggesting that they parted ways at different times. The divorce period between the two species, the data suggest, could have lasted a million years.

The region bearing the most similarity is the X chromosome. This is exactly what one might expect if the two lineages had continued to interbreed after first starting to separate.

Hybrids

• If a hybrid population did exist, the question remains as to whether it died out, or whether modern humans or chimpanzees (or both) are its descendants.

Who’s related to whom?

• It's very difficult to say, admits Reich.

• "The fossil data suggest, very tenuously, that it may have been humans who are descended from the hybrid population."

• “Human-like fossils far outnumber chimpanzee-like ones in the fossil record, making it difficult to see exactly who was sleeping with whom at the time.” (Nature)

Evolution

• Evolutionary theory is as true as any other scientific theory.

• Natural selection or survival of the fittest has been confirmed by evidence from the world.

• It is a way of organizing our experiences of the world, not unlike any other scientific law.

Poster boy atheism

• Who needs God?

• Evolution

• Explains the world without positing a higher power or deity.

Darwin is a Theist!

• “But with regard to the material world, we ca at least go so far as this- we can perceive that events are brought about not by insulated interposition of Divine power, exerted in each particular case, but by the establishment of general laws”-

• Whewell: Bridgewater Treatise Prologue, Darwin’s Origin of Species

Evolution

• H1- Random

• H2- Designer

• H3- Evolution

• H4- Evolution + Designer

• Evolution does not rule out the possibility of intelligent design for the universe.

Descartes 3 Proofs

Ontological Argument

Cosmological Argument

(Contingent & Necessary Being)

Teleological Argument (Design)

Ontological Argument

We have the idea of God, perfection, in order to have that idea of perfection, it must have come from the perfect being…God.

Cosmological Argument

I exist, but did not cause myself to exist, therefore there must exist a necessary being, God, which causes me (and the rest of the world) to exist.

Teleological Argument

The purpose and harmony of nature. The complexity of creatures; surely there is a designer.

Kant argues against these

Ontological Argument- problem: Existence is not a property of objects.

Cosmological Argument- problem: he claims some contingent beings are necessary or at least eternal.

(Contingent & Necessary Being)Teleological Argument (Design)- problem:

he claims that at best there may be a architect but not a interactive designer.

Kant argues we should all hope

• Kant claims that we should all hope that God exist. In that way justice will be served to those who have lived a wicked and unjust life and yet prospered in this world.

• If you are a moral agent, then you must assume the God’s existence in order to be rational.

The Rationality of Belief

• John Henry Newman• Soren Kierkegaard• Blaise Pascal (1623- 1662)• Julian of Norwich• Codification of Bible• William James • Nietzsche• Freud

John Henry Newman

• Our feeling of conscience lead us to knowledge of God. Our sense of conscience emanated from a supreme being that will judge our actions.

Soren Kierkegaard

• True understanding of God is beyond our comprehension.

• God is beyond time and space.

• Jesus became part of time part of space. He became a contradiction, a paradox.

• Truth is subjective, truth is relative. Belief in God is contradictory.

Blaise Pascal

• Pascal thought belief in God served our rational self interest.

• He proposed a prudential argument for God’s Existence.

Pascal’s Wager

God Exist God Does Not Exist

You

Believe

Infinite Bliss

(Heaven)

+/- 5

You

Don’t

Believe

Infinite Damnation

(Hell)

+/- 5

Possible Outcomes

A) If you believe in God, and he exist, then you are going to heaven and are going to reap infinite rewards.

B) If you don't believe in God, and he does exist, then you are going to hell and suffer infinite pain.

C) If you believe in God, and he does not exist, you have wasted some small measure of energy.

D) If you don't believe in God and he does not exist, then you have saved some small measure of energy.

William James

• James thinks that the existence of God can not be proved or refuted by science.

• It is something that is open for us to believe in even though there is not sufficient evidence for it.

• We can “Will ourselves to believe” in God

How we believe…

• James defines a hypothesis as a proposed belief.

• Such a hypothesis may be live or dead, forced or avoidable, momentous or trivial.

• When a hypothesis is live, forced and momentous then it is a genuine option for us to choose to believe in it.

Faith versus Reason

• Reason seeks justification for our beliefs

• Faith needs no justification.

Mysticism

• Mystical or personal visions granted by God.

• Julian of Norwich, claimed to have “showings” that came directly from God.

Gnosticism vs. Christianity

• What books belong in the Bible.

• For 300 years after the time of Jesus, there were numerous books and religions based upon his teachings.

• Gnostic teachings are books written at this time, but that are not now part of the Bible.

Bible was codified in 325

• The First Council of Nicaea

• Under the leadership of the Roman Emperor Constantine, the early church was called to the city of Nicaea,

• First Ecumenical Council of the Catholic Church, held in 325 AD on the occasion of the heresy of Arius, Arianism.

Unified the Church

• The Council of Nicaea was historically significant because it was the first effort to attain consensus in the church through an assembly representing all of Christendom.

• Believers should hold that the council was divinely inspired to include the right books.

All Holy Books…

• All believers in Holy Books and writing should hold that those books are divinely inspired. They are the word of god transmitted to man.

Nietzsche

• “God is Dead!”

• If you are intelligent, able to reason, you understand that God is a fable, a fairy tale used by the powerful to control the weak.

Sigmund Freud (1856- 1939)

• Freud divides the psyche into three elements,

• The id- (the it),

• The ego, (the I)

• The super ego (super I).

The id

• The id is the original core of our being. It is directed by two instincts- sex and aggression.

• The id wants immediate gratification of its desires.

• (Most men never out grow this- some women too)

The ego

• The ego develops out of the id.

• It is aimed out satisfying our desires in a more rational, and ultimately more productive way.

The Super Ego

• The super ego contains our moral prohibitions and positive ideals.

• It develops from our parents, educators and society.

• It is an over arching force within us that directs the ego.

The Pleasure Principle

• According to Freud the ego is conscious while the super ego and id or unconscious parts of our psyche.

• Freud claims that our psyche acts from one central purpose: to maximize pleasure. As such, he is a psychological egoist.

• He calls this notion the Pleasure principle. • The id is often direct by this principle.

Reality Principle

• The ego, discovers that sometimes greater pleasure can be achieved by refraining for immediate gratification

• This realization by the ego is the reality principle, since it takes into account the structure of the real world.

The Future of an Illusion

• In the book, the Future of an Illusion Freud applies his theory to religious belief.

• According to Freud most religious belief is captured by the idea that there is a God, who cares about us, and that will provide us with a eternal happiness after this life.

• A Protective Father Figure.

Wishful Thinking

• Freud argues that the origin of such a belief, which is lacking almost any empirical evidence, is wish fulfillment.

• It is the result of the psychological desire for protection from a cold brutal reality.

• Belief in God is simply wishful thinking

Belief in God is ignorance!

• "Ignorance is Ignorance; no right to believe anything can be derived from [ignorance or wishful thinking]…

• Scientific work is the only road which can lead us to a knowledge of reality outside of ourselves.“

• The scientific reality is God does not exist.

The Problem of Evil.

• Can an all knowing all powerful all good being allow evil to exist?

• Why does Evil Exist in the world?

J. L. Mackie

• J. L. Mackie argues that if we consider the notion of a 3 Omni being-

• He argues that an omni benevolent being will attempt to stop all evil,

• That an all powerful being could stop all evil,

• Therefore if such a being exist then evil should not.

Logical Proof that God does not Exist!

• 1. If a being is omni benevolent, he will try to stop all evil.

• 2. If a being is all powerful he can do anything, (including stopping all evil)

• 3. If a being is all knowing, then he knows everything (including every instance of evil)

• 4. So if such a being existed he would not permit any evil; for such an omni benevolent being will try to remove all evil from the world and an omnipotent being can do anything.

• 5. Since evil exist a Three Omni God does not.

A limitation of God’s Power.

• Some argue that we need evil to know good. But why should this be the case.

• Must we know and experience evil in order to know good? How many rapes and murders do we need before we all know evil?

• This argument is a limitation upon God's power.

Theodicy

• Theologian respond in different ways. Often they claim that evil is necessary or that it is the result of human free will.

• Mackie argues that it should not be necessary, and that humans could still have free will even if God prevented us from committing evils.

Free Will?

• Even if we grant that free will is responsible for some evil, what about natural evil.

• Evil or pain that results from natural disasters.

• If people are hurt or killed in an earth quake isn't their pain and suffering an evil? Why should God stand idly by and not help those that are in need?

Do we need evil?

• If you are all powerful you don't need to employ any particular means to your end.

• You don't need to use evil to show what good is, your god, you can do it any way that you want.

• So why choose a means that creates pain and suffering?

Natural Evil

• An Earth Quake in San Giuliano Italy flattened the only school, killing at least 26 children.

• Rescue workers were pulling the last bodies out of the rubble when another quake hit the region.

Free will?

• One might argue that it was human freewill that lead to this tragedy.

• Humans freely choose to build their school at that location, freely sent their kids to school that day, and were therefore responsible for the tragedy.

Where is God?

• This has some plausibility,

• Imagine you see your neighbor digging a hole, and you know he is a few inches away from a natural gas pipeline.

• Should you just sit back and let him strike the pipe and kill himself and perhaps you, because it is his choice, his free will to decide to did the hole there or not?

Knowingly let us die

• If you know tragedy is about to befall him, should you not try to stop him, or at least inform him of his impending doom?

• If you tell him, and he still chooses to dig, then forget him,

• He is truly is exercising his freewill.

Leibniz

• The best of all possible worlds!

• God, being all powerful, all knowing and all good, created the best of all worlds.

Principle of Sufficient Reason

• Principle of Sufficient Reason:

There is a reason why things are exactly as they are and not some other way.

Prior cause…

• Any event can be explained by referring to a prior cause.

• But the prior cause itself must be explained by a still earlier cause.

• If all the causes we refer to are alike in that they must be caused, we could never fully explain the reason for any event.

God is outside of Time

• In order to explain the world, there must exist a being outside of the causal chain of events, which gives purpose and meaning to each event.

• That being is God.

3 Cases

• Let's consider three cases.

• Man,

• Superman

• Omni benevolent God

Man

• Man does both good and bad.

• He commits evil in some instances and attempts to stop it in others.

• For the most part his free will is the source of a great amount of the evil in the world.

Superman• Superman is omni benevolent. • He is all good. (For the sake of argument.)• He always does the right thing, and he

has a desire to relieve suffering and to stop evil where ever he finds it.

• Yet, he is mortal, and his power and knowledge are limited.

• He cannot be everywhere at every time, and he does not know something bad is going to happen before it actually does.

God

• God.

• Omni benevolent- All Good.

• Omniscient- All Knowing

• Omnipotent- All Powerful

Omni benevolent.

• He is all good. He always does the right thing, and he has a desire to relieve suffering and to stop evil where ever he finds it.

Omniscient

• All knowing. Knowing all acts, events and all of the laws that govern the universe.

An All Powerful God can do all

• God can stop all evil- that's what it means to be all powerful, and God knows whenever an evil thing is about to happen, so God can prevent it.

John Hick

• John Hick argues that there are at least 2 ways to try to explain evil.

• Augustinian theodicy

• Irenaean Theodicy

Theodicy

• One is the Augustinian theodicy which tries to reconcile the existence of evil with an all good being. St. Augustine argued that evil was simply a privation- a lack of a good.

St. Augustine

• A blind man simply lacks that what a man with sight has.

• As such there is not an existing thing that is evil.

• Further , "All evil is either sin or punishment for sin." Is his other explanation.

Punishment for sin

• St. Augustine- "All evil is either sin or punishment for sin." Is his other explanation.

St Irenaeus (130-202 AD)

• St Irenaeus thought that the existence o evil actually serves a purpose. From his point of view, evil provides the necessary problems through which we take part in what he calls "soul-making". From this point of view, evil is a means to an end in as much as if it did not exist, there would be no means of spiritual development.

Ireaean Theodicy

• An Irenaean Theodicy maintains that creation is a 2 step process. God first made man in his image, as it is stated in genesis and is now making us into his likeness.

No perfect creation

• According to this view, "God's purpose in creation was not to make a perfectly comfortable dwelling-place for fully formed human beings, but to put rational creatures with the potential for growth in an imperfect environment where they could, through their freely chosen responses to difficulties they encounter, attain maturity."

If a 3 omni God existed…

• If there were a all powerful, all knowing all good being, then he could do anything.

• The possibilities seem endless.

The possibilities are endless.

• What the world would be like with a 3 Omni god around would be nearly unfathomable.

• Earth quakes would stop before they start. Hurricanes would meander harmlessly over the open ocean.

• Bullets would stop in midair,• Infants falling out a 10 story high-rise would land

softly on the ground as those they had wings.

Not in this world.

• The point is that such a world does not exist.

• Our existence is not one where we interact with such a powerful deity.

• The three Omni god appears not to exist because of the evil in the world.

The reality is that…

• God seems to lacks either omnipotence or omniscient,

• In such a case, God cannot stamp out all evil.

• In such a case, God would be is in the same boat as Superman.

In the end,

• In the end, this topic is a matter of faith, and faith does not need a rational justification.

• In order to have faith, all you need to do it believe.

Faith Vs. Reason

• Leo Tolstoy

Tolstoy

• Tolstoy begins by considering life. He wishes to know what science and rationality have to say regarding the meaning of his life.

• What do they have to say? Nothing. • They can tell him what he is- a collection of

atoms that are arranged in such a way that he is "alive", they can explain the process of the formation of the universe, but…

• Science cannot give meaning to our existence.

Life is meaningless

• He finds such a life to be unfulfilling and hallow.

• He feels that the stark reality of no afterlife and of no meaning to be loathsome.

Tolstoy says:

• "I could not attribute any rational meaning to a single act, let alone my whole life. I simply felt astonished that I had not recognized this from the beginning. It had all been common knowledge for such a long time.

Tolstoy

• Today or tomorrow sickness and death will come (and they had already arrived) to those dear to me, and to myself, and nothing will remain other than stench and worms. Sooner or later my deeds, whatever they may have been, will be forgotten and will no longer exist. What is all the fuss about? How can a person carry on living and fail to perceive this….“

A Stupid Trick

• In fact he contemplates suicide and considers life to be nothing more than

"a stupid trick"- lacking meaning and purpose…

Nothingness

• He says, "philosophical knowledge denies nothing but simply replies that it cannot solve the question, and that as far as it is concerned any resolution remains infinite.

• Having understood this, I realized that it was impossible to search for an answer to my questions in rational knowledge; … rational knowledge had led me to recognize that life is meaningless. My life came to a halt and I wanted to kill myself.”

Humanity, the masses

• “It appeared that mankind, as a whole, had some kind of comprehension of the meaning of life that I did not acknowledge or derided.

• It followed that rational knowledge does not provide the meaning of life, but excluded it; while the meaning given to millions of people, humanity as a whole, is founded on some sort of knowledge that is despised and considered false…

Not as irrational

• “ A contradiction arose from which there were two ways out: either that which I called reasonable was not as reasonable as I thought, or that which I thought was irrational was not as irrational as I thought.

Living allows us to live…

• As I looked around at people, at humanity as a whole, I saw that they lived and affirmed that they knew the meaning of life. I looked at myself, I had lived as long as I knew the meaning of life.

• For me, as for others, faith provided the meaning of life and the possibility of living."

Faith for meaning!

• “Thus in addition to rational knowledge, which I had thought was the only kind of knowledge, I was inevitably led to acknowledge that there exist another kind of knowledge- an irrational one- possessed by humanity as a whole: faith, which affords the possibility of living…

• Where there is life, there is faith!”