Philosophy of Religion – Week 7

For week 7 we were asked to read two pieces: William James’ ” The Reality of the Unseen” and Freud’s “The Psychological Origins of Religion” which both deal with the origins and nature of religion. I actually posted twice on this one, with the second post being sort of an addendum to the first because I did not agree with some of the comments made and wanted to give a better example. For those who are Freud fanboys (or girl) you may be triggered by what I said, so please read with caution.

Freud and James have some specific similarities in their writings, mainly that there is a feeling of the “unseen” that permeates human nature. While Freud described this as “the derivation of religious needs from the infant’s helplessness and the longing for the father”, James points out that “all our attitudes, moral, practical, or emotional, as well as religious, are due to the ‘objects’ of our consciousness, the things we believe to exist, whether really or ideally, along with ourselves”. James’s view strikes me as the best explanation of the origin and nature of religion because it is based on fact, rather than Freud’s psycho-babble using terms he coined himself. Coming from a cocaine addict, continually talking about how he was able to determine certain things through “psycho-analysis” which was a field of psychology he basically founded, this does not hold much weight with me. I also know that many of Freud’s theories have been disproven, so in all I am not remotely swayed by his arguments. He refers to Darwin and other people’s ideas, which have not been proven to the extent he is describing them. Also there are a lot of loose ends in his arguments that he tries to tie up, such as connecting Oedipus and totemism by using the “children banding together and killing their father” (p. 268) example, but that is assuming there was never a son who was strong enough to best the father in combat, in which case the order Freud described would have been interrupted and incest would have ensued. Beyond this, there a number of other alternative “outcomes” that could have been, but Freud limits himself to certain descriptions so his point will be made, while James uses other peoples’ experiences to back up his point.

James was trying to prove that even if you cannot see something or prove with physical “facts” that it is real, it does not mean it does not exist. I will keep this short and give one example, which I already gave in a comment to someone. Love is unseen. Love cannot be touched, tasted, smelled, heard, or seen. So does this mean it does not exist? Since a scientist cannot measure an amount of love, there is no such thing as love? No. We all know that love is a real thing. So if love can exist without facts, without the senses being able to sense it, then why would God have to be any different? There are many things such as this: trust, loyalty, faith, hope. Whether or not you believe in God, these things exists without being seen, without having scientific theories or proven facts about them. So why should God be made to show Himself to us, when we are but mere humans?

Philosophy of Religion – Week 6

As I am finally finishing up posting the discussions that I initially posted 2 years ago, it is difficult to remember what some of these readings specifically said, so while I cannot expound upon them at this time I do agree with everything I originally said at the point of posting the discussion. This time the reading was Nietzsche’s “Religion and Power”. Here is what I wrote.

While for the most part I disagree with Nietzsche and his deductions, there were a few things that stood out to me as being partly correct. In the first section presented, the issue with Nietzsche’s point of view is that he is looking at things through an extremely subjective lens, which colors his descriptions of the “priests” and their “resentments” to be a worldwide epidemic with no end. He equates the aristocracy to being what is truly good in the world (good=noble=powerful=beautiful=happy=beloved of god) saying that those who are “well-born” are “the happy ones” and thus happiness means they are correct. This ignores logical and moral thinking, because if a man born into wealth ends up being a rapist or murderer, does this then mean that rape and murder are “good” just because this man is powerful? Just because this man does not “separate action from happiness” does this mean that his happiness in murder and rape are correct? This being said, he equates those of lower standing with being full of resentment and thus they invent a God who blesses them. As a Christian and knowledgeable of the Bible, the fallacies in this portion of Nietzsche’s are blatant. His description of those who are of “noble morality” is simply an endorsement of selfishness. While some people of low wealth may resent those of higher standing, this is not to say that Scripture says anywhere in it that rich or powerful people cannot be blessed or good. It is not an issue of worldly standing that determines a person’s place in God’s view. “Not to be able to take one’s enemies, one’s misfortunes, even one’s misdeeds seriously for very long-that is the mark of a strong, full nature…”. This quote is meant for those nobles, yet it describes the exact nature of mature Christians. In Nietzsche’s point of view, it would be impossible for anyone with enough money to be financially secure to be a Christian, and this is obviously not correct. On the next portion, Beyond Good and Evil, is where I find something that I agree with. Describing religious cruelties, once our nature is “sacrificed”, Nietzsche asks “Finally, what was left to sacrifice? Mustn’t one finally sacrifice everything comforting, holy, healing, all hope, all belief in a hidden harmony, in future blessedness and righteousness? Mustn’t one sacrifice God himself, and out of cruelty towards oneself, worship stone, stupidity, gravity, fate, nothingness?”. This is exceedingly true in our world and culture today, as people would rather focus their attentions on technology, celebrities, science, worries that cannot be affected by worrying, and atheistic beliefs. As Nietzsche predicted, “this paradoxical mystery of the ultimate cruelty has been saved for the generation to come.” The last paragraph of this section goes back to a subjective view of the world at that time, propagating the idea that morals are a delusion. For the last part of Nietzsche’s writing, a story of a madman elaborating on the death of God begins a description of the cheerfulness of man at hearing of His death. Though Nietzsche sees this as the beginning of a new hope for mankind, where “our horizon seems free again,” this is simply an extension of his own prediction from the last section, but where he turns it into something to be desired. There comes with this the same issue as with the first portion of the reading, that of a defiance of logic and morals. God says in His Word that the world will hate Him, and this is proven by those who are happy with His “disappearance” from the world. For all intents and purposes, God is dead for some people, and they couldn’t be happier because this frees them to live as they wish, to live immorally and not have to face the repercussions of this lifestyle. For those of us who know the truth, true freedom comes from God, a freedom from this physical world where the wishes of the people only leads to the suffering that they so adamantly speak out against.

Philosophy of Religion – Week 5

The fifth week of class was based on the reading of J.L. Mackie’s “Evil and Omnipotence” and this was one of my more heartfelt responses to a reading. I tend to get extremely heated when someone tries to make an argument based off of their own opinions as opposed to actually using facts and/or logic. Just read what I had to say.

J.L. Mackie proposes to explain away the notion of an omnipotent, perfectly good God with closed arguments and opinions. Once again I am disappointed in the chosen bias used by those arguing against the existence of God, or in this case the abilities of God. According to Mackie, “There seems to be some contradiction between these three propositions… God is omnipotent; God is wholly good; and yet evil exists”. Yet he states himself that the contradiction does not arise unless we set some “quasi-logical rules” connecting the terms omnipotent, good, and evil. So he comes up with a few principles to cement his argument, namely that good always eliminates evil as far as it can and that omnipotence has no limit to what it can do. Here is one of the problems with Mackie’s argument already; he places a human ideal onto God’s abilities. Who decided that good eliminates evil whenever possible? Without this “principle” in place Mackie’s whole argument falls apart before he can even get it started. But summarizing his solutions, first he says if you take away one of the three propositions originally stated then the other two can exist. Then he lists “fallacious” solutions, which as far as I can see numbers 1 through 3 are pretty bad excuses for solutions, so there is one point I can actually agree with Mackie on, though not particularly on his way of disproving those fallacious solutions. The fourth point, however, is once again used by Mackie from his own opinion and from the lopsided mindset of those set against God. One of his arguments almost borders on ignorance, that being “why could he not have made men such that they always freely choose the good?”. While masking his ignorance by using the words “logic”, “logical”, and “logically” more times than is necessary, he presents a situation that is a contradiction to itself. If God made humans to have 100% free will, but made us so that we can only make left turns, what happens when we want to make a right turn? If we are not able to, then it is not free will. So this whole “always freely choose the good” is a contradiction in itself because if we are made to always choose something then it is not being freely chosen. Mackie continues on by presenting the solution that maybe God removed his power over people’s free wills, and thus his power over evil and so cannot change the evil that humans do. He also proposes that God made free will, and that in making free will truly free he no longer has power over it because if he did then it wouldn’t be free. Thus, having no power over our free wills means God is no longer omnipotent. When determining if this is a legitimate question, he uses the example of a mechanic who makes a machine that he cannot control but once again this is an inaccurate comparison because humans are not omnipotent! Not to mention that machines are not made with free will and reason and therefore could not be reasoned with when out of control. I hate to repeat myself, but Mackie’s ignorance of the Bible is astounding to me. I just cannot believe that some of the “greatest opponents” to the existence of God write as though they never read the Bible. But they probably haven’t because then they risk finding the truth instead of having to hide behind hierarchies of jargon. Anyways, the basic thing is this: God is not some force that can only act in a certain way. He is a person, three persons if you truly understand, and God chooses to give us free will. He has choice just as we have choice, and He chooses to let us have free will. Why? Well, imagine the difference between a robot that you created and a child that you created. While both may show you love, wouldn’t it be much better when your child freely chooses to love you rather than a robot being forced to love you because it was created that way? And even though the robot may always serve its function and do nothing wrong while the child rebels and makes wrong choices, wouldn’t you still love your child and appreciate their love for you more than a mindless robot? Just because humans make bad mistakes does not mean God is going to take away our free will, even though He has the power to. Last thing I will say. Besides not wanting to take our free will away because it means so much more to Him when we choose to love God freely, He has also promised us that He would not take away our free will. As we all know, God never breaks a promise.

Philosophy of Religion – Week 4

This week was one of my favorite readings of the semester, Boethius’s “Omniscience and Human Freedom” from Consolation of Philosophy. We were asked to explain Boethius’s point, describe our own views of human freedom considering predetermination and free will. Here is my post:

It consistently amazes me how much I am learning from this course and this book. This chapter, while hard to understand through the odd wording, has a theme that I have thought of many times before but never to this depth. While it may seem like Boethius is doubtful of his own position, reading the introduction to the chapter explains that he was in prison when he wrote this and so he wrote it as a conversation between himself and “Lady Philosophy”. He presents the issue to Lady Philosophy from the human perspective, and She refutes his views as ignorant of Divine power. Just remember that Boethius wrote all of this, so in essence he is acting out the parts of the doubters and the doubted to prove his point. He first goes about this by pointing out the human misconception that if something that is going to happen is known beforehand then it is not free will that chooses to do it, but basically fate and there is no way of changing it. So imagine that I say tomorrow the President is going to announce a war with Russia. If this happens, does it mean that the President did it because I said he would, and thus he has no free will in the matter but was only doing it because I said so? Considering the fact that the President most likely would not know I ever said anything of the sort, it proves that he makes the choice to go to war of his own free will, despite the fact that I may have known it beforehand. It is also shown in the book that as we are watching things in the present, we can almost always rightly determine what is going to happen soon after. Imagine a Nascar race. We know that as the cars are driving around in ovals that they are going to continue driving in ovals. When this future is achieved, though we knew it before it happened, is it then to be decided that the Nascar drivers drove around in circles because we foreknew they would continue doing so, or because of the drivers’ free wills to keep driving in ovals? I hope this is understandable. The example the book uses is, “…the things the charioteers are seen to do as they guide their teams and give them rein… if all these were forced actions that were set into motion, the effect of the driver’s skill would be all in vain” (p. 187). What this means is that if everything is predetermined, then the skill of the driver means nothing because the outcome is already determined. As we can see from the former example, foreknowledge of an action does not mean the person doing the action is not doing it of their own free will. The next section of the writing goes on to explain how “everything that is perceived is grasped not according to its own force but rather according to the capability of those who perceive it” (p. 188) and how this pertains to God. For clarification of this quote, think about this: if we look at the sky during the day there is a chance it will be blue, or blue as we perceive the color to be. But we do not perceive the sky as blue because it is blue, we perceive it that way because we see it as blue. A blind person would not perceive the sky as blue because he cannot see it. So it is each person that determines what they perceive, not the object or action. Thus comes the hierarchical order of sense perception, imagination, reason, and understanding given in the writing. The senses allow us to see, feel, hear, etc., the physical world. Beyond that, imagination lets us go beyond what is in the physical world and imagine things. Reason is the next step above, because though we can imagine things it does not mean that they are true, but with reason we can figure out the truth through trial and error or proven methods that were learned by others using their reason. Understanding as it is used in the writing means something higher yet, a perception that can only come from God and spiritual beings. Example: Though we may not be able to physically feel a person’s pain(such as heartbreak), or imagine it, or make sense of it rationally, we can understand the way that person feels. This sets up the point that humans try to limit God to what we can figure out with our reasoning power, while God is above that and thus cannot be figured out in that way. Here I point out something away from the writing; because we cannot figure out God with reason alone, He gave us His Word so that we may know of Him, and have the spiritual understanding of Him that only comes from having a relationship with Him. As we come to the end of the writing, the final point is made that God is not constrained by time but exists outside of time. So as He looks upon us, He does not see but one moment of time such as the moment we are living in right this second, rather He is shown every moment from the beginning to the ending of time all together at all times, like a person who takes the pages of a book and spreads them out before him so that he can see them all at once, beginning to end, and choose where he will focus next. So because God sees all things as currently taking place, it is not actually foreknowledge but present knowledge of all the free will actions we do in our lives. To us this seems unbelievable because we are stuck in time, with a future and a past, but God does not have a past or a future because He is eternal.

Philosophy of Religion – Week 3

For the third week of class we were asked to read a very interesting argument, “Religion and the Queerness of Morality” by George I. Mavrodes. We were asked to use this writing as a guide to argue for one of four possible positions:

1. My belief in God requires that I adhere to a firm and defined set of morals.
2. My belief in God frees me adhering to a strict moral code.
3. My belief that God does not exist has allowed me to develop my own set of morals to live by.
4. My belief that God does not exist leads me to think that discussions about morality are not helpful and not necessary.

Here is my post:

This chapter was probably the most linguistically challenging I have yet read in this book so far. Based on my understanding of Mavrodes’s writing, I will use it as a guide to argue for the position that my belief in God frees me from adhering to a strict moral code. I will also use my understanding of my own chosen beliefs and knowledge of what the Bible says.

Do not think I am saying that there is no such thing as morality. There is good and evil, right and wrong, life and death. People do have morals, and some religions do enforce a strict moral code, or at least attempt to enforce one. The majority of people in the world have something inside them, whether you call it knowledge or instinct or conscience, that allows them to distinguish between a good thought and a bad thought, a good action and a bad action. Many people are turned off by Christianity because of a misunderstanding about morality. “Why do I have to follow all these rules?” The truth is that believing in Christ frees the believer from the the “yoke of the law” as the Bible itself states. The Ten Commandments were given to the Jews as a set of rules to follow so they could enjoy close fellowship with God by abiding in the character of God, as well as set them apart as a people because they were the only ones during this time period to adhere to all of these particular regulations. Many of the commandments are known to be common sense according to morality, but the fact is that no normal person could ever fulfill the whole Law for their whole life and be perfect or without sin. This is why Jesus came and fulfilled the law, never sinning, then dying as a sacrifice so that we do not live by the Law anymore, but by the Spirit. The Holy Spirit gives those who utilize Him a better understanding of the moral character of God and the desire to follow His will. According to a Russellian world, the feelings and thoughts of man are nothing but a “collocation of atoms” yet there is an overriding agreement among humans that certain things are right and certain things are wrong, and if there is a differing “moral viewpoint” it is usually due to a strong religious belief (such as suicide bombings) or a mental sickness (such as schizophrenia). Mavrodes also distinguishes the difference between doing something right because you get a reward and doing something right at a loss to yourself but the benefit of another. While it is plausible that in a Russelian world people may sacrifice for others to keep the peace and encourage cooperation, the value would be lost because if there is no God then life has no meaning, and thus no value when there is sacrifice. Thus we come to Mavrodes’s examination of Baier’s reply to “Why should we be moral?”. Baier obliquely answers that it is in everyone’s self-interest to be moral because that means all people would be looking out for the interests of everyone else, which in turn means that our own self-interests would be realized by other people acting morally. This is a wonderful thought, of course, but only works when everyone is acting morally all the time. And as Mavrodes states, in reality there are times when self-interest means that it is not in my best interest for me to act morally. Self-interest is often in conflict with what the majority knows to be morally correct. Having said this, humans still choose to do some things for others with no gain for themselves. The whole point of Mavrodes’s writing is to demonstrate how odd our world would be if there was no God from which our morality comes. The morality that is clearly in the world cannot be explained by random atomic collisions, but only “hereditarily” from our Heavenly Father, who made all humans in His image. This is why, even if not everyone is a Christian, all humans have a sense of morality. However, in true Christianity, there is no strict moral code because as I said before Jesus died so we could be free from the Law and live by the Spirit, who will move our hearts to live morally without enforcing it against our will.

Philosophy of Religion – Week 2

For the second week of the class we were only assigned one reading, and that was William Lane Craig’s “Philosophical and Scientific Pointers to Creatio ex Nihilo“. There is an introduction to the argument that was not assigned but I read that as well to get a better understanding of what exactly Craig was saying. We were asked to explain why we agree or disagree with his scientific arguments for creation by a personal God. Here is my post:

I read the whole of Craig’s writing in this section rather than just the assigned reading. Once I was able to fully wrap my mind around what was being said in the first philosophical argument, it helped to explain the scientific reasoning he gives later. For any of my classmates who didn’t read that part or couldn’t make sense of it I want to give you the basics of what Craig was saying: within the confines of time, it is impossible to have something physical that is infinite. I could probably write 1000 words explaining it all over again, but the fact is Craig makes the point well. It needs to be understood that all these initial points, including the scientific ones, are meant to prove that the universe was created rather than having existed from eternity. That being said, I find that I agree with Craig’s first scientific argument from the point of the expansion of the universe, because I have heard of the steady-state and oscillating models before and know them to be false, or at least fallible. Part of what I think adds a lot of credibility to Craig’s argument is that he uses quotes from other people, such as John Gribbin and Dr. Tinsley that are easily understood. Craig also expounds on a principle of the big bang that states the universe began as a state of infinite density. Part of the explanation of this comes from the unassigned reading material, which is that since nothing in time can actually be infinite, the fact that the universe expanded from a state of infinite density means that it was actually created from nothing. This in turn proves that, since something can not come out of nothing of its own power (being that there is no power, because there is nothing), there had to have been some initial cause for the universe to come about out of nothing. One other thing in Craig’s first scientific argument (and partly the philosophical argument) that I have thought about for a long time is that big bang theorists tend to accept the fact that something had to have caused the big bang, but they do not want to admit that it could be “God.” For the second scientific argument, from the point of the second law of thermodynamics, Craig makes it clear that without the second law being in effect the world would not make any sense at all though we do not recognize it without having it pointed out to us. This leads us to realize that everything within the universe and time must follow this law, including the universe itself as a whole. So Craig makes the point that if the universe has been going on since infinity then we should have already reached the state of equilibrium but at the same time could never reach that state. In conclusion, it is a fallacy to believe that the universe was not created, or at least had a cause and a beginning.

If anyone who reads this has questions or arguments, feel free to comment and we can have a healthy theological debate.

Philosophy of Religion – Week 1

Before I get started, I want to mention that the first few weeks of my writings were not the strongest or most in-depth. I was still working on getting into the swing of the class itself and trying to understand what I would be reading.

Anyways, the first week we were assigned “The Five Ways” by Thomas Aquinas, from Summa Theologica, “The Teleological Argument” by William Paley, from Natural Theology, and “Critique of the Traditional Arguments” by Bertrand Russell, from Why I Am Not a Christian. We were asked to give our opinions on each argument, tell if we agreed or disagreed with them, and then explain our own argument for or against God. Here is my post:

I find the Paley argument to be a wonderful refutation of the attempt to imagine creation without a design. Though a little hard to follow at times, I was able to understand fairly well and think it is extremely strong, with little room for a criticism of contradiction. I find that I can easily agree with what he has said because it compliments everything I have learned through reason and my past experiences, which includes a period of hardcore atheism. I was disappointed in Russell’s critiques. I expected more, and I find myself remembering stronger criticisms from teenagers in a stage of doubt than he presented. He ignores many aspects of who God is supposed to be, such as saying that if God placed natural laws then He would be subject to them, but this does not take into account that the God he is talking about is Spirit while we live in a physical world. So, God would not be subject to physical laws unless He came to Earth as a human.. Which He did in Jesus, and this explains why Jesus was subject to these physical laws until death. The moral laws are not “set down” by God, but rather are imbued in us because we were made in His image with a spirit inside our physical bodies. Russell talks about the First Cause and says if everything has a cause than God must have had a cause and so on. This is fallacy because he only considers things that are constricted by time, while God exists outside of time because there was no time until God created it. So while we cannot imagine what it would be like to live outside of time, it can be understood that everything not affected by time does not have a beginning or an end. So God would not have to have a beginning, or cause, because outside of time those words have no meaning. As for his critique of the argument from design, he asks how an omnipotent God would still have such an imperfect world after having millions of years to perfect it. Besides putting God under time restraints again, I begin to wonder if Russell has studied scripture at all or just pulls these concepts from what he’s heard others say. As the Scripture says, God gave the earth to the humans to tend to and take care of. With the Fall, we separated ourselves from God by the free will He gave us but separating ourselves from Him also separated us from His perfect goodness, making us the fallen creatures we are who need redemption. With the world under the control of fallen mankind, it is not an issue of “how long God had to make the world perfect” but rather “how long humans had to tear the world apart”.

What this will be..

I took a Philosophy of Religion class in Spring 2014, online through Ivy Tech Bloomington. The textbook for the course was God, an anthology of arguments for and against the existence/belief in the God of the monotheistic religions. We had to make a post every week based on the assigned reading and questions the professor asked. I start this blog as a way of keeping what I have written, and possibly discussing more of the arguments in the book. Thanks and God bless.

 

UPDATE

I am taking another Philosophy of Religion class this Fall through Indiana University, so I am updating this blog and finishing what I started and then I will add some new stuff.