Philosophy of Religion - Introduction PDF

**Philosophy 1301** Philosophy of Religion -- Introduction ====================================== ganesh-festival\_6730\#BCCF0E Festival in honor of one of the most popular Hindu Gods, Ganesh, also worshipped by some Buddhists and Jains. **Overview** The philosophy of religion can be broken do...

**Philosophy 1301** Philosophy of Religion -- Introduction ====================================== ganesh-festival\_6730\#BCCF0E Festival in honor of one of the most popular Hindu Gods, Ganesh, also worshipped by some Buddhists and Jains. **Overview** The philosophy of religion can be broken down into the various questions addressed by each of the three main branches of philosophy. We will deal only with a few. First we discuss *natural theology*, that is, arguments for the existence of god based on the way the world is. This will take us back to Aristotle and move us forward to contemporary physics. Secondly, we will discuss the question of belief. Thirdly, we will confront the age-old problem of evil and suffering, considering theological justifications and rebuttals. Finally, we will discuss two prominent philosophical approaches to religious belief, focusing on essays by William Clifford and William James. *We are not human beings having a spiritual experience.* *We are spiritual beings having a human experience.* -Pierre Teilhard de Chardin \[Catholic Priest and Paleontologist\] **Kinds of Questions** From the time of Plato in ancient Greece philosophers have discussed the phenomenon of religion. Here is an outline of some of the questions listed under the three main branches of philosophy: **Metaphysics** Is there a God, or Gods, or a supernatural realm? What are the major conceptual views of God? (Theism, Deism, Pantheism.) What are the arguments for and against the *existence* of a supernatural Creator? What is the nature of God, or the gods? (Providence, Miracles) **Epistemology** What are the arguments for and against *belief* in a supernatural Creator? What is the validity of religious experiences, revelation for example? What is meant that someone "knows" God exists? Is there any knowable evidence of the supernatural? What is the conflict between Faith and Reason? What is the contribution of science? **Ethics** What is the relationship between morality and religion? What is the problem of evil? What are the resolutions and objections? Is religion needed for people to be good? Does religion cause because people to be good? Or bad? **Key Terms** **Materialism or Idealism** -- the distinction based on the belief or absence of belief that the material world is all there is. Idealists tend to believe that ideas or forms or something beyond the natural world -- *the supernatural*, exists and is just as important and often more important than the natural world. Idealism may or may not include belief in the supernatural in a religious sense. Materialism does not always exclude belief in God. **Animism** -- belief in spirits that inhabit or animate things in the natural world, such as, the spirit of the tree, of the river, or of the mountain. Many consider animism to be the oldest form of religion, antedating polytheism and monotheism. It still exists in places today. **Theism** -- the belief in a transcendent God (or gods) with **anthropomorphic** attributes such as will, intention, foresight, but also possibly joy, jealousy, anger. Examples include the God of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and many of the gods of Hinduism. **Monotheism is belief in one god**, **polytheism in many gods**. Many theistic gods are often said to have certain attributes: Eternal or Immortal -- **present at all times** and never die. Some say outside of time. Omnibenevolent -- **all good**. God wills the good or can only do good or is good by definition.  Artemis, Greek Goddess of Hunting **Deism** -- belief that there is a god but that this god is **not providential**. This idea arose in the Enlightenment (1600-1850), after the rise of a scientific viewpoint that sees the world as mechanized. For example, Isaac Newton's work on physics, the *Philosophiae Naturalis* *Principia Mathematica* (known as *the Principia*), crystallized the idea of the solar system as a great clock. This in turn led many to see the entire world as a clock wound up by God and left to run on its own -- the **Clockwork Universe**. The universe in this view works according to physical laws once it is created but needs no further divine attention. As science progressed, led by observations and experiment, there was less room for miracles and mysteries that could instead be explained by science, and thus no need for sacrifice or prayers for intervention. Many theists often call the deistic god a ***God of the Gaps***, meaning **an explanation of last resort** needed to fill the gaps in our understanding of the world. As science explains more and more, there are fewer and fewer gaps and less need for a god to sustain or explain the world. Some consider it likely or as least possible that the gaps will all be filled, and the deistic god left to the history books. It is likely that several of our **founding fathers**, impressed with Enlightenment ideas about the triumph of reason over superstition and faith, **were deists**: Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Ben Franklin, Thomas Paine, and others. Recently the Texas State Board of Education sought to remove an emphasis on Thomas Jefferson from history texts and substitute Thomas Aquinas, the great Catholic theologian. Many of the board members are evangelical Christians, that is, theists, and reject deism outright. Like **many theists**, they **consider deism a gateway to atheism**. They maintain that belief in a god if there is no providence, and hence no worship, prayer, ritual, sacrifice, or any personal relationship with God, may lead to immorality. **Deist Manifesto** Not all Deists would agree with these. Belief in a single creator based on reason and not faith or revelation. The order and complexity of nature are the universe make God self-evident. God's full nature is incomprehensible due to limitations of the human mind and language. God gave humanity reason and conscience so we could develop our own moral principles. Human beings should be free to find, know, and worship God in their own way. All views of God should be respected, so long as they do not cause harm or oppress the views of others. All human beings are created equal under God, with the same natural rights. **Pantheism** -- **God and Nature are one and the same thing**. This idea is very old but in Western Philosophy comes most notably from the work of Baruch Spinoza (1632 --1677), a Jewish philosopher of the Enlightenment who lived in the Netherlands. Spinoza rejected Descartes' distinction between matter and mind -- that they are separate substances. For Spinoza they are two aspects of the one and only substance -- God.  But he also said, "God and Nature are one and the same." And by ***God or Nature*** he meant rocks, trees, zebras, humans, clouds and stars, but also, and perhaps more importantly, the laws of logic, mathematics, physics, psychology, and above all, ethics. Spinoza entitled his most prominent work, *Ethics*. Such a God has no intention or will, and like the deistic god, is not providential. Again the theists ask, "Why worship such a god?" His answer was that humans are spiritual beings. **You worship such a non-personal god by seeking to understand and improve yourself**. You gain a deeper understanding of nature, and your place in nature. This is the only rational approach to God, and since you are part of Nature, you are God worshipping itself. As a young man who thought for himself Spinoza was called a heretic and an atheist. He was excommunicated by the Jewish community of Amsterdam. He spent the rest of his life, (fairly short), making a living grinding lenses and working alone in his study at night, producing works that were not published in his lifetime. There are few pantheists today, though you can look up Internet sites, such as *pantheism.org*, and find lists of famous thinkers, like Albert Einstein, who are believed to be pantheists. Einstein, when asked what god he believed in, said that his god was the god of Spinoza. In other words, being spiritual meant doing science, discovering the deepest secrets of the universe and having a profound reverence toward the rational and understandable world. **Atheism** -- absence of belief in gods and the supernatural. Keep in mind that there are **active and passive unbelievers as there are active and passive believers**. For example, there are atheists who simply have no religion, perhaps from birth, and there are those who actively believe there are no gods and who have reasons to support that position and want to discuss it. "Atheism" is often a dirty word. This is because many people believe that morality comes from God, as part of their religious tradition, and someone who doesn't believe in God has no reason to be good and is thus more likely to be bad. If fact, there is no evidence to support this. There is a dilemma expressing the problem of a tight connection between religion and morality. It is called **Euthyphro's Dilemma** in reference to a Socratic dialog by that name. It asks whether "something is morally good and just because God wills it or whether God wills it because it is morally good and just." The paradox says the former case implies that God *makes* something right, and thus can arbitrarily make anything right (not an attractive solution). The latter moves towards a separation of morality and religion (not attractive to many theists). **Agnosticism** -- generally means "**I don't know if gods exist**." Thomas Henry Huxley coined the term in 1860, shortly after Darwin published *Origin of the Species*. Huxley, a naturalist and friend of Darwin, informally debated Oxford Bishop Samuel Wilberforce over evolution. Wilberforce was strongly opposed to Darwin and the new theory of natural selection. Huxley used the word to mean that he, Huxley, **cannot** know whether god exists, that he was a scientist and science confines itself to the natural or observable world, whereas God is alleged to be a supernatural or unobservable being. He emphasized that evolution was a scientific theory based on facts in the natural world and must be judged on those facts and not beliefs in the supernatural. **What he implied was that Wilberforce, like everyone else, could not *know* whether God exists**. Now the term is most often used to mean ***I don't know*** whether God exists. Many self-proclaimed agnostics say they are suspending belief for the time being and are awaiting further evidence or arguments. Interestingly, atheism and agnosticism are not mutually exclusive. Many people are atheists -- they have no belief in god -- because they are agnostic -- they do not know whether God exists. **Humanism** -- focus on humans and not God or an afterlife. Humanism began with the ancient Greeks, arose a second time in the European Renaissance, and has a continuous tradition down to the present. There are religious and non-religious (secular) versions. Most people who call themselves humanists are secular humanists and are also atheists. You can find a summary of their beliefs, *The Humanist Manifesto*, on the Internet.  **Here are three other concepts that you might study in a class on world religions or theology.** **Atavistic** -- the same god may appear and be worshiped in many forms. For example, there are, in one tradition, ten avatars of the Hindu god Vishnu, all with different names, attributes, appearances, and legends. The ninth one is the Buddha. **Relational** -- many gods have backgrounds or histories, often tying them together to other gods of the same religion to create a consistent religious framework as well as memorable stories. **Syncretic** - many gods from different religions are often merged to create a consistent religious framework when two cultures must live together or one takes over from another. For example, the Egyptian god Amun was worshipped as the Greek god called Zeus Ammon after Alexander the Great went into the desert to seek out Amun\'s oracle at Siwa.