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Below: Kierkegaard & Faith | Proofs of God | Argument From Design | Cosmological Argument | Ontological Argument | The Problem of Evil | Key Concepts
About Philosophy 9th ed., Chapter 8
Philosophy of Religion
Kierkegaard's Encounter With Faith
- Kierkegaard's life
- perhaps his overbearing father & strict religious upbringing
- explain, somewhat, the overwrought intensity of K's thought
- Kierkegaard and the dread of death
- existential dread: overwhelming sense of
- the overriding certainty of my own impending death
- the infinity of the universe
- how meaningless my own brief life is by comparison
- the element of religious hope: complicates the issue
- a hope my life might be not so brief -- in fact that it might be eternal
- the horrible thought: it's no less meaningless for that!
- the element of faith
- not just belief that the proposition "God exists" is true
- it's wholehearted trust in the Lord & his promise of salvation
- the meaning of God's promise: a meaningful eternal life of eternal beatitude
- The problem of faith: to achieve such wholehearted belief
- The enemies of religious faith
- Established Christianity
- so engaged with outward forms of faith the inner spirit is missed
- the words ring hollow
- the ritual is inauthentic
- "it's just as hard to become a Christian when one has been born a Christian" as it is "to jump up in the air and land exactly on the spot from which one began" (355)
- "[E]very misunderstanding of Christianity may at once be recognized by its transforming it into a doctrine, transferring it to the sphere of the intellectual." (364)
- Middle-class society
- complacency of the bourgeois
- doctors, lawyers, professors, merchants
- & their comfortable lives
- & their smug self-satisfied attitudes
- religious attitudes all about piety & respectability
- incapable of mustering the passion required for a genuine leap of faith
- Hegelian philosophy with its
- overweening claim or aspiration to be
- a totally rational and objective system
- explaining absolutely everything'
- its smug self-satisfied conclusion
- Western European civilization is God's chosen one
- the one true progressive one: others are stagnant or regressive
- The Marxian contrast
- Like Marx, Kierkegaard saw a justifying ideology or the spiritually bankrupt bourgeois establishment in
- established religion
- for the poor working stiff
- "the opiate of the people" (Marx & Engels)
- "You'll get pie in the sky when you die" (leftist protest song).
- for the well off: assurance that their good fortune is well-deserved
- Hegelian philosophy: which viewed the existing order as the crown of creation
- Kierkegaard's call
- not for outward revolution, like Marx
- "Workers of the world to unite!" (Marx & Engels)
- Unite to overthrow of the Capitalist system & the rule of the bourgeois
- but for inward revolution
- for so-called "Christians"
- "to pay to eternal life as much attention as they regularly gave to a daily profit"
- Kierkegaard's philosophy of religion
- main tenets
- the subjectivity of truth
- the leap of faith
- truth
- correspondence theory (standard)
- a statement (or thought) is true if it corresponds to the objects it purports to describe
- truth is objective -- it depends on how the thought is related to its object
- how it is related to the subject -- whether the subject believes it wholeheartedly, half-heartedly, or not at all -- is irrelevant
- what's objectively true is true even if no one believes it -- e.g., the earth revolves around the sun
- Kierkegaard's subjective theory
- a (religious) belief's truth depends on the subject's relation to it (rather than its relation to its object)
- it's true if believed "passionately, unconditionally, absolutely without inner reservation or doubt"
- it's not what it says (whether its accurate) but how it's held (whether it's passionate & unreserved) that makes it true
- the leap of faith: required for true Christian belief
- tenets of Christian belief are not only not provable
- they're unbelievably absurd
- especially, the mystery of incarnation
- how can God be the eternal Father while being Jesus in time
- creo quia absurdum: I believe because it's absurd
Can We Prove That God Exists?
- Argument: a set of statements offered in support of another statement
- supporting statements are called premises
- statements supported are conclusions
- An argument is sound or cogent if and only if
- the premises are all true
- the conclusion actually follows from their being true
- deductively sound: if the truth of the premises guarantees the conclusion
- inductively strong: if the truth of the premises makes the conclusion likely but not certain
- The proofs and religiosity
- naive way of looking at it
- believers will welcome & support the proofs
- disbelievers will reject them
- why naive: fideist believers (of whom K is an extreme example)
- believe salvation is "by faith alone"
- Who needs faith if you have proof?
- fideist believers do not welcome these proofs: they reject them
The Argument From Design
- Paley's argument from design
- the analogical structure of the argument
- Premise: A is like B in respects P, Q, & R.
- Premise: A has property S.
- Conclusion: Probably, B has property S.
- two forms of the analogy
- between the parts of creation and the products of intelligent (human) design
- between the whole of creation (the universe) and the products of intelligent human design
- The argument from the parts:
- Premise: An eye is like a watch in being an effective assemblage of parts to achieve a purpose -- seeing in case of the eye, keeping time in the case of the watch.
- Premise: A watch is a product of intelligent design (ours).
- Conclusion: Probably an eye is a product of intelligent design (God's).
- The argument from the whole:
- Premise: The universe is like a watch in being an effective assemblage of parts to achieve a purpose.
- Premise A watch is a product of intelligent design.
- Conclusion: Probably the universe is a product of intelligent design (God's).
- Two criticisms of the argument
- Wolff's criticism
- even if cogent the argument only proves there is some intelligent artificer
- not that that intelligent designer is an infinitely powerful, infinitely wise God
- discussion
- the universe, being finite, it seems only finite (though admittedly very great) power & wisdom would be necessary to create it
- though to create it from nothing, I grant you, would require power & wisdom very very great indeed
- notice that much less power & wisdom (presumably) are required for creating an eye
- eyes are a more limited even imperfect creations -- they malfunction
- far less than infinite power & wisdom would seem necessary to make an eye
- Hume's criticism
- lampooned the argument from the parts:
- its defenders, Hume said, think it testifies to the power and wisdom of God that he has given us noses to hold up our glasses
- the argument from evil the flip side of the design argument
- the standard response to the argument from evil -- go holistic
- seeming flaws in the design of the whole
- are really virtues in the big picture
- it's good that our eyes malfunction
- it makes us exercise our minds to invent glasses
- the argument from whole depends on a forced (insupportable) analogy
- how is the whole universe like a watch?
- not clear what its purpose might be
- Just to be?
- What kind of purpose is that?
- if some inscrutable divine purpose is served
- this is not observable
- it's a matter of faith -- believers think they see it, nonbelievers not
The Cosmological Argument
- The a posteriori character of the argument
- a posteriori means "from after" -- it follows from facts we can experience
- it's truth or falsity depends on matters of (possibly observable) fact
- e.g., the premises in the design argument
- argues from assumptions (or observations) about how the world is
- we are arguing to the existence of God as the cause that best explains the consequence that the world
- is a certain way:
- well designed, as in the argument from design
- or in motion, as in Aquinas' 1st way
- or is at all: in the case of Aquinas' 3rd way
- Aquinas: Two sources of belief about God
- Revelation:
- for which our only evidence is the testimony of the Bible and the saints
- is required to know truths requisite for salvation
- that Christ is our savior
- that the Catholic Church as Christ's enduring representative on earth
- is the only door to salvation
- this is revealed theology -- it can only be known through (faith in) revelation
- Reason:
- which all human beings share -- it's our nature
- suffices for knowledge that God exists -- it's provable on the basis of
- this is natural theology.
- The cosmological argument
- first three of Aquinas' five ways
- 2nd way: from the order of efficient causes
- Premise 1: Everything has an efficient cause (as we observe)
- a things efficient cause is something that precede it and makes it be
- example 1: my parents procreative acts were the efficient causes of my being; their parents of theirs, etc.
- example 2: an auto accident was the efficient cause of Princess Di's death.
- Premise 2: The order of efficient causes cannot go on forever.
- if my parents hadn't already been caused to exist (if all the preceding sequence of causes had not been completed)
- then I couldn't exist
- but if the preceding series goes back forever the sequence cannot be completed
- an infinite sequence can't be run through
- however long you count you'll never get to infinity
- Conclusion: A first efficient cause of everything exists, "to which everyone gives the name of God."
- A Humean Objection
- The order of efficient causes could go on forever
- If the universe itself is eternal
- then each preceding event explains the following
- and the whole sequence requires no further explanation
- easiest to see if you envisage a cyclical universe
The Ontological Argument
- The a priori -- "from before" -- character of the argument
- not from what comes after -- his creation
- but from what comes "before" -- his very nature
- God, by nature is a being who must exist
- God has necessary existence
- as opposed to the merely contingent existence of things or creation
- The nature & plan of the argument
- conceptual truths or tautologies: true in virtue of the meaning of the terms or thoughts employed in stating or thinking them
- bachelors are unmarried
- triangles have three sides
- contrast empirical truths or contingencies: true in virtue of facts above and beyond the meaning of the words or thoughts employed
- most bachelors are unhappy
- some triangles are on the chalkboard
- the ontological argument purports to show that "God exists" is a conceptual truth
- The argument (St. Anselm)
- Premise: The concept of God is the concept of "a being than which no greater can be conceived" (378)
- Premise: A being that exists is greater than a being that doesn't.
- Conclusion: God exists.
- Exegesis: If God were conceived not to exist, then a greater being could be conceived (just like God but existing); but that's a contradiction (God by definition is the greatest); so, necessarily, God exists.
- The argument (Descartes)
- God means most perfect being.
- If God didn't exist, God wouldn't be perfect.
- :. God exists.
- Example I: By parity of reasoning with the following
- Bachelor means unmarried adult male.
- If a bachelor weren't single, then he would be married.
- :. Bachelors are single.
- Example 2:
- Triangle means closed three-sided figure.
- If a figure didn't have interior angles of 180° it wouldn't be closed & three-sided.
- :. Triangles have interior angles of 180°
- Kant's refutation
- perfections or virtues are characteristics or properties of things, e.g.,
- the features that make up the concept of a thing are likewise properties, e.g.,
- but existence is not a property -- not "a proper predicate" Kant says
- therefore being is not a perfection that can enter into the concept of a thing
- comparison
- first conceive of bachelors as existing (as nowadays) and then as not (before there were humans on the planet)
- to do either is to deploy the very same concept: unmarried-adult-male
- existence adds nothing to the concept
- to think of bachelors existing is to think of the concept being exemplified
- to think of no bachelors existing is to think of the very same concept being unexemplified
The Problem of Evil
- Preliminaries: Bad things
- natural evils: death, disease, pain, etc.
- moral evils: spite, envy, hate, etc.
- Epicurus' version
- Premise: If God is all powerful, then he could prevent evil.
- Premise: If God is all good then he would prevent evil if he could.
- Premise: Evil exists.
- Conclusion: There is no all good, all powerful God.
- Leibniz's Theodicy: the second premise is false.
- Many good things would not exist if their were no bad things
- natural evils
- If there were no danger, courage would be impossible.
- If there were no difficulties there would be no achievements.
- moral evils
- If not for sin there couldn't be free will. {Isn't possibility of sinning all that's required?}
- If not for sin there couldn't be salvation. {Isn't it better not to sin in the first place?}
- So a world with some bad things can be better than a world without bad things, if it has enough compensating goods.
- God, being perfectly good, creates the best of all possible worlds . . . which contains some evils.
- Other Theodicies
- Stoic: There is no evil
- What we call evil -- dying from cancer, say -- seems bad to us.
- We don't see the point (why anyone has to do it).
- And even if we did see that someone had to do it's hard on us and bad
- But viewed sub specie aeternitatus -- as God sees things -- all is good.
- Yogi Berra: "If it was a perfect world, it wouldn't be."
Above: Kierkegaard & Faith | Proofs of God | Argument From Design | Cosmological Argument | Ontological Argument | The Problem of Evil | Key Concepts
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