PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION Review – Metaphysics, Realism vs Nominalism, Dualism, Idealism, Materialism,

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

Review – Metaphysics, Realism vs Nominalism, Dualism, Idealism, Materialism, 3 materialist views of mind (behaviorism, mind-brain identity theory, functionalism)

Philosophy of religion uses the methods of philosophy (rational inquiry) to study the claims of religion.

Preliminary Definitions –
theism – belief in a God outside the natural world that intervenes in the world. Most Western religions are theistic, most Eastern religions are not.
polytheism – there are multiple gods. Similar to animism that sees god-like intentions in many natural objects.
monotheism – there is one God. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are monotheistic religions.
pantheism – God and nature are the same. Spinoza was a pantheist.
panentheism – God is both within and outside nature. Many mystical systems such as kabbalah are panentheistic.
deism – God created the world but does not intervene. Many Enlightenment thinkers such as Thomas Jefferson were deists.
atheism – there is no God.
agnosticism – (from the word gnostic which means knowledge), we cannot know if there is a God.
fideism – reliance on faith rather than philosophy or science in religious matters (Kierkegaard was a fideist)

Theism – attributes of God
omniscient – God is all-knowing (question, does God know the future)
omnipotent – God is all-powerful
omnipresent – God is everywhere
beneficent – God is all good

Proofs of God

An a priori proof – The ontological proof for the existence of God was first invented by Saint Anselm (1033 – 1109). Versions have been used by Descartes, Spinoza, and in the twentieth century by the great mathematician Kurt Godel (1906 – 1978). It is based on the definition of God as a perfect being. Imagine a being “than which nothing greater can be conceived.” Such a being must exist, for if this being did not exist, we can conceive of something greater. It is greater to exist than not to exist.

Spinoza put the proof that “the essence of God requires existence.” By essence, we mean the very definition of God. Gaunilo, an 11th century Benedictine monk, said the same argument can be used to prove there is a perfect island. Both Hume and Kant rejected the ontological proof. Kant said that “existence is not a predicate.” To say God is good or wise is to add a predicate or adjective; to say God is existent is not such a predicate.

Two a posteriori proofs – The cosmological argument was made famous by Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225 – 1274). Actually, he brought five different proofs, that are similar. 1 version – everything has an efficient cause, which itself has an efficient cause, creating a chain of causation. We cannot have an infinite chain, so there must be a first cause, or an uncaused cause (Aristotle called it an unmoved mover). This is God.)

There are many problems with this proof. Hume said that causation cannot be assumed. Also, why can there not be an infinite chain of causes. Finally, even if there is a first cause, why should we assume it is the God of classical theism. Plato assumed the universe was created by a lesser creature he called the demiurge.

The teleological argument was brought by Aquinas but made most famous by naturalist William Paley (1743 – 1805). Imagine you found a watch on the ground. You realize the watch did not come together by random chance. Certainly, the organization implies that there is a watchmaker. In a similar way, the organization found in nature implies that there is a designer. (this is actually a proof by analogy.)

Critique – the analogy breaks down, even if you assume a designer, that designer may not be God. Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection explains design through a natural but blind process. Richard Dawkins entitled one of his most famous books The Blind Watchmaker. Kant attacked all a posteriori proofs of God, saying that we can only know the phenomenal world, not the noumenal world. He said that since we lack knowledge, this makes room for faith. Kant really thought he was strengthening Christianity with his philosophy.

The Choice to be Religious

Pascal’s Wager – Blaise Pascal (1623 – 1662) taught that religious faith is based on a wager. Pascal was a gambler but also a religious Christian. He taught that if you choose to believe there is a God and God exists, you get an eternal reward; if there is no God, you have not lost anything. If you choose not to believe and there is a God, you get eternal punishment, if there is no God, it does not matter. Therefore, choosing to believe is the best bet.

American philosopher William James (1842 – 1910), one of the founders of the pragmatic school of philosophy, built on Pascal’s ideas. He taught that one can make a choice to believe. Choosing to believe can lead to real belief. One should believe for pragmatic reasons – belief in God leads to a better healthier life. But is it true? James taught that choosing to believe is permissible if the choice is live, forced, and momentous. Live means we feel it is an authentic choice, forced means we must decide one way or another, and momentous means the choice makes a difference in our lives.

Soren Kierkegaard (1813 – 1855), was a fideist, He believed that we cannot prove God exists. One must take a leap of faith. There are three ways to live: the aesthetic life (based on pleasure), the ethical life (based on doing the right thing), and finally, based on the story of Abraham and the binding of Isaac, the religious life (doing God’s will, even if it is absurd.) He is considered a religious existentialist – (existentialism teaches that existence comes before essence, start with your existence, then decide what kind of person you want to be.) Later there would be a number of atheist existentialist such as Friedrich Nietzsche and Jean-Paul Sartre.

Kierkegaard taught that there are three ways to live. There is the aesthetic life (based on pleasure). There is the ethical life (based on doing the right thing.) He felt the people of Copenhagen who married, raised families, and went to church each Sunday, lacked passion. He broke up with his beloved fiancée to pursue a life of philosophy. Finally, there is the religious life (based on the story of Abraham and the binding of Isaac.) His book Fear and Trembling describes how his hero set aside ethics to live a life of passion, according to God’s will. He admires Abraham’s life of “infinite resignation.”

Miracles – It is common to see miracles as proof of God. Regarding miracles, David Hume said that there are two possibilities. Either we can believe that nature took its usual course and obeyed its own laws, which we know to be true through our experience. Or else we can believe that the laws of nature were suspended, something that we can only know through eye-witness testimony. Given the choice between believing such testimony and believing our own experience of how nature works, the logical choice is to believe that God did not change the laws of nature. There are no miracles. To quote Hume, “A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined.”

Regarding miracles, Benedict Spinoza taught that people look for God in the violations of natural law. God’s existence is proved when seas part, the sun stands still, or a man is raised from the dead. When the world behaves according to its natural laws, there is no proof of God. To quote Spinoza, “They suppose, forsooth, that God is inactive as long as nature works in her accustomed order, and vice versa, that the power of nature and natural causes are idle as long as God is acting; thus, they imagine two powers distinct one from the other, the power of God and the power of nature.” To Spinoza, nature itself is the miracle. When Einstein was asked if he believed in God, he famously answered, “I believe in Spinoza’s God.” For many religious people, nature is the miracle. To quote the poet William Blake, “To see a World in a Grain of Sand, And a Heaven in a Wild Flower. Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And Eternity in an hour.” (Auguries of Innocence)

God and Ethics -There is one more proof of God based on ethics. Without God, how can we say anything is ethical. Dostoyevsky wrote in The Brothers Karamazov, “If there is no God, then everything is permissible.” This point of view is attacked by Socrates in Plato’s dialogue Euthyphro. Euthyphro, bringing his father up on criminal charges for killing a slave, claims that piety is whatever the gods will. Socrates argues, “Is something good because the gods will it, or do they will it because it is good.” Maybe goodness exists even without God. This is the approach of Aquinas who taught a doctrine of natural law, we can know good and evil rationally without dependence on God. We will study this further in the unit on ethics, when we study Divine Command Theory.

Atheism Atheism is the claim that there is no God. The best argument against the classical theistic God is the problem of evil. We begin with three assumptions about God. God is omnipotent, God is benevolent, and yet there is evil in the world. David Hume already raises this problem. Hume – “Is he (God) willing to prevent evil, but not able?  Then he is impotent.  Is he able but not willing?  Then he is malevolent.  Is he both able and willing?  Whence then evil?” Hume also wrote against miracles (listen to previous lecture.)

We can divide the problem between human evil and natural evil. Human evil (war, murder, the Holocaust) exists because God gave people free will (in the next module we will study free will versus determinism). Natural evil includes events like hurricanes, tsunamis, birth defects, and cancer. How do we explain natural evil? Perhaps God created a world still in process where brokenness is necessary for progress. For example, evolution is based on the same mutations that cause birth defects. Philosopher John Hick (1922 – 2012), basing himself on the Church father Irenaeus, taught that the purpose of evil is soul-building. There have been many different attempts to justify God in the face of evil, reaching back to the Biblical book of Job. The name for such justification is theodicy.

Masters of Suspicion – Philosopher Paul Ricoeur coined the phrase Masters of Suspicion to describe a number of atheist philosophers. In different ways, each raised suspicions or doubts regarding human religious faith. We need to explore the true underlying reason which brings people to believe in God. (On the right is a symbol of atheism.)

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 – 1900) wrote that “God is Dead.” The entire Western way of understanding God has died. Western morality is a slave morality, portraying weakness. Nietzsche called for the building of an ubermencsh (superman), based on a master morality. If God does not exist, humans must become as gods. We will study him in a future lecture.

Ludwig Feuerbach (1804 – 1872) was a radical follower of Hegel. Religion is a human creation. Humans have certain values (thesis), often those values cannot be achieved in this world (antithesis), so humans create God as source of values (synthesis). God is a human invention to meet human needs.

Karl Marx (1818 – 1883) was influenced by both Hegel and Feuerbach. He said that religion is not a spiritual but a material problem. People need religion to deal with their economic situation. Religion is “the opiate of the people.” When we change the economic system to communism, we will remove the need for religion. Religion was either forbidden or strongly discouraged in most communist countries. We will study him in a future lecture.

Sigmund Freud (1856 – 1939) believed that religion is a kind of mass neurosis. It is based on the unconscious need for a father figure. Religion has no basis in reality. We will study him a future lecture.

Ricoeur did not include Charles Darwin (1809 – 1882) in his Masters of Suspicion. Darwin was ambivalent about the threat to religion caused by his theory of evolution by natural selection. Nonetheless, many modern atheists base their arguments on Darwin’s blind process for the development of life on earth. For example, Richard Dawkins (b. 1941), a passionate atheist, has written, “The meme for blind faith secures its own perpetuation by the simple unconscious expedient of discouraging rational inquiry.”