PHIN103 Final Exam Study Guide PDF

LEIBNIZ - THE BEST POSSIBLE WORLD​ Leibniz -​ The existence of God is a given. -​ The problem of Evil is figuring out how God allows evil, not whether or not there is a God. VERSIONS OF THE PROBLEM OF EVIL...

LEIBNIZ - THE BEST POSSIBLE WORLD​ Leibniz -​ The existence of God is a given. -​ The problem of Evil is figuring out how God allows evil, not whether or not there is a God. VERSIONS OF THE PROBLEM OF EVIL The existence of evil is incompatible with the notion that an Omni-God exists. P1 - EvilEexists The Incompatibility P2 - God is O,O,O Argument C - Cannot exist at the same time -​ Is god able but not willing? -​ Is god willing but not able? -​ God both willing and able If God is regarded as the creative cause of The Holiness Problem everything, the existence of evil renders his attribute of holiness false. The Underachiever This world, with all the evils in it, is not what Problem you would expect from an Omni-God. BEST POSSIBLE WORLD -​ Leibniz argues that God does not underachieve in creating this world because this world is the best of all possible worlds. -​ God freely chose from all the logically possible worlds. -​ Leibniz conceives of God’s power as Omnipotence that is logically possible. BEST POSSIBLE WORLD ARGUMENT P1 - God is an Omni-God. P2 - God could have created any world to exist. P3 - Because God is Omniscient, He would know which would be the best possible world to create. P4 - Because God is Omnibenevolent, He would want to create the best possible world. P5 - God created this world. C - This is the best possible world. -​ If reality was any other way, it would have been worse.  -​ Leibnizian Optimism: adopting the optimistic position that we live in the Best Possible world. For any state of affairs, there must be a sufficient Principle of Sufficient reason that explains why that state of affairs and not Reason some other state of affairs obtains. -​ Is it best to eliminate all evils? -​ No. -​ Sometimes, an evil is accompanied by a greater good, or tolerating it avoids a greater evil. -​ Evil experiences lead us to overall goodness. CRITICISMS 1.​ Nicholas Hadsell REFORMULATES LEIBNIZ’S PREMISES P1 - Knowledge of an evident good attracts the will of an agent to the good (Moral Necessity) P2 - Omniscient knowledge of all evident goods attracts the agent to the highest good. P3 - If God is omniscient, then he is morally necessitated to create BPW in which highest good is obtained. P4 - God is omniscient. P5 - Therefore, God is morally necessitated to create the BPW. P6 - If God cannot fail to create the BPW, then all events within the BPW are good-making features of it. P7 - Evils are within the BPW. P8 - Therefore, evils are good-making features of the BPW. -​ Premise 1-5: restating the argument -​ If this is the best possible world, how do we explain evil? -​ Leibniz: evil has instrumental value. -​ A good-making feature is in the BPW. -​ Evil is a good-making feature. -​ Is premise 8 [evil is instrumental] true? -​ If false, evil has no good-making feature, therefore it has no necessary instrumental value, therefore it has no sufficient reason then the BPW collapses. 2.​ William Rowe ROWE’S ARGUMENT: 1.​ There exist instances of intense suffering which an omnipotent, omniscient being could have prevented without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse. (Factual Premise)  2.​ An omniscient, wholly good being would prevent the occurrence of any intense suffering it could, unless it could not do so without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse. (Theological Premise) 3.​ There does not exist an omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good being. -​ Evidential problem -​ Goes back to the holiness problem -​ Factual premise: if we can find one or more examples of intense suffering that do not lead to any greater good, this counts against belief in the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, supremely good creator of the world. -​ Case of Bambi and Sue -​ What good does their suffering achieve? J.L. MACKIE - EVIL AND OMNIPOTENCE​ CLARIFYING THE PROBLEM OF EVIL P1 - God is Omnibenevolent. P2 - God is Omnipotent. The conclusion does not follow P3 - Evil Exist. -​ Need additional (implicit) reasoning C - God does not exist. P1 - God is Omnibenevolent. If you take these 2 Premises [P4 and P5], P2 - God is Omnipotent. Mackie does think you can get to the P3 - Evil Exist. conclusion and that should be enough to say P4 - A good thing always eliminates evil as that we see evil in the world - God, therefore, far as it can. just does not exist. P5 - There are no limits to what an omnipotent thing can do. The question now is whether all these premises are true. C - God does not exist. ADEQUATE SOLUTIONS - Mackie doesn’t think these would work, but if they were true, they would solve the problem of evil. 1.​ Deny that God is Omnipotent -​ A God who cannot deny evil is compatible with the existence of evil. -​ However, if you accept this, it would go against the teachings of various religions regarding God. -​ Less Adequate Solution: Revise the term Omnipotence -​ Don’t say God can do anything without limit -​ You still might face difficulties with various religions.  2.​ Deny that Evil Exists -​ Option 1: Evil is not a real thing but a lack (a privation) of good. -​ There’s lots of things that are good in the world -​ Evil is not one of these instead, it is a lack of something -​ If something is bad, it is just lacking good qualities -​ Option 2: Evil is just “misunderstood good” (we don’t see the big picture) -​ If I can understand why evil happened, I now don’t have to call it evil. -​ Good that does not fit the way I would expect -​ When things seem like they don’t fit, we call them evil. FALLACIOUS SOLUTIONS - Doesn’t work as solutions for the Problem of Evil 1.​ Good cannot exist without Evil -​ “Good cannot exist without Evil” or “Evil is necessary as a counterpart to Good” -​ Ontological Claim: a claim about what exists or the way things do or must exist -​ We understand this by looking at how the world actually is -​ Fallacious because: 1.​ It does not tell us how to solve the problem. -​ This raises the possibility that the Problem of Evil is just unsolvable. 2.​ We must give up Omnipotence after all. -​ “God cannot create good without simultaneously creating evil.” -​ Some say that God can do the impossible, but this seems to deny it. 3.​ Evil isn’t opposed to Good as premised. -​ “Greater” vs “Lesser” -​ But, this means that nothing is good or evil, just better or worse. 2.​ Evil as a means for a Good outcome -​ “Evil is necessary as a means to good.” -​ Some good things cannot happen without evil in the first place. -​ Fallacious Because: 1.​ We must give up Omnipotence -​ “God cannot create good without simultaneously creating evil.” -​ There are some “causal laws” that limit what God can do. -​ Either God is not Omnipotent or we must revise what Omnipotence means. 3.​ Some Evil is better than none -​ “The Universe is better with some evil in it than it could be if there were no Evil.” -​ Total Good without Evil < Less Good with Evil  -​ If you calculate the total good, adding evil maximizes the good. -​ Option 1: Good is enhanced by its contrasts. -​ Option 2: Progress is valuable Evil 1[Pain 1 and Misery 1] and Evil heightens Happiness leading to Good 1[Pleasure 1 and Good 2[Pleasure 2 and Happiness 2] Happiness 1] Good 2[Pleasure 2 and However, to arrive at this we need Happiness 2] Evil 2[Pain 2 and Misery 2] Evil is okay because it brings out Maximal Happiness - Good Good 3[Pleasure 3 and 3[Pleasure 3 and Happiness 3] Happiness 3] This would still entail Evil 3[Pain 3 and Misery 3] -​ Fallacious Because: 1.​ Justification is backward. -​ The secondary goods (e.g. heroism, camaraderie) that contrast evil are only valuable because a life that is pleasurable without evil is better. 2.​ God is not sympathetic to all suffering but only cares about secondary goods. -​ God does not care about small evil. -​ God is not really interested in eliminating evil. 3.​ A benevolent God should eliminate second-order evils. -​ Second-order evil still exists -​ Does not solve the Problem of Evil 4.​ Free Will Defense -​ “Evil is due to human free will.” -​ God is not evil or responsible for it, we are. -​ Free will is very important and trumps all. -​ Fallacious Because: 1.​ Assume we have free will and there are good reasons to doubt we are really free. 2.​ Isn’t it possible that God created some people who are free to do only good? -​ Maybe having options is what is important in free will, but can’t an Omnipotent God make sure all of our options are good? 3.​ Paradox of Omnipotence: God is unable to control our free will. FEUERBACH - THEOLOGY IS ANTHROPOLOGY; ANTHROPOLOGY IS THEOLOGY​ -​ Theology: God; Anthropology: Man RELIGION AS AN ILLUSION Immanent World Transcendental World -​ Physical world -​ The world beyond, -​ Dependent -​ “Heaven” -​ Temporary -​ Perfect -​ Permanent -​ Finite -​ Eternal -​ Imperfect -​ We are scared of dying so we construct this transcendental world. -​ We tend to become dependent on the transcendental. -​ God is a psychological construct. -​ God resides in our minds. -​ Feuerbach: calls for a “New Religion of Action”. -​ Instead of looking at the transcendent world, we go back to the immanent world. -​ Religion is very sentimental. -​ Feuerbach: religion is a part phase of man's intellectual progression. -​ Religion was an effective answer to things we could not explain before. -​ Now it is no longer effective because our basis now is reason. -​ Why do we believe in the transcendental? -​ Because we are poor. -​ The immanent world fails so we easily go to the transcendental. HEGELIAN INFLUENCE -​ The evolution of consciousness is driven by the dialectical nature of reality. -​ Religion/Unhappy Consciousness -​ Human beings need/desire someone bigger to put their life in control and that is God. -​ Heroes of Action -​ Individuals who are to usher in a new era. -​ The Transcendental God is nothing but a projection of your mind. -​ Projection: Attributes characteristics to other people. -​ If God is a projection, then what is God? -​ God is just another name for our desires  -​ Religion is an illusion because you think there is really an independently existing God but it is just a projection. -​ Hegel: the God of Christians is not a mature God. -​ Unhappy conscience -​ We are nothing is we do not have God that is why we need “salvation”. -​ The more you deny yourself, the more you make your God bigger. -​ Cultivates master and slave relationship. ATHEISTIC HUMANISM -​ “Those who have no desires have no Gods… Gods are men's wishes in corporeal form.” -​ God is nothing but a projection of our own desire, then God is just inside our mind. 1.​ Negative Thesis: Alienation -​ Man is caught in the tension between capacity and incapacity. -​ Man is capable of doing something but his finite being blocks them in a way. -​ Always in the opposing poles of the two which leads us to the feeling of alienation. -​ When someone is alienated, man ends up not knowing themselves, he feels like the other. -​ Alienation does not always happen externally, can also happen internally. -​ What happens when our finite nature meets our human desires? -​ We end up alienated. -​ We project god in order to resolve the tension between human nature and human desires. -​ If we take a look at ourselves, we actually experience this feeling of capacity and yet although we experience them we experience them as something that is finite, fleeting. -​ Because of projection, we project them to a being that is stable and absolute. -​ If in my human nature, I feel incapable, this being I call God is stable yet only a projection of my mind. -​ God is a desire of man. -​ The more I project my human qualities to God, the more I end up with nothing in me. -​ If God is everything, then man is nothing.  -​ Because of this alienated consciousness, man end up not knowing themselves, they become the other. -​ “Man simultaneously dispossesses himself and enriches his God; in affirming God he denies himself; the poorer he becomes, the richer his God becomes; nothing really exists in God except what belongs and actually really still is in man’s heart.” -​ Leads to an unhappy conscience. 2.​ Positive Thesis: Repossession -​ In alienation we had rejected all these attributes by projecting them to God, we​ have to take them back again. -​ If God is all-loving and realizing that loving is just a desire of man, then we must start saying that man is a loving species. -​ Move the unhappy conscience into feeling good about ourselves again. -​ “While I do reduce theology to anthropology, I exalt anthropology to theology; very much as Christianity, while lowering God into man, made man into God.” -​ All attributes of God are just projected human desires. -​ If so, if I study God in theology, I study the history of human desires. -​ “God is man's self-awareness, emancipated from all actuality.” -​ The notion of God is nothing but our awareness and goal in perfecting our humanity. -​ We cannot totally emancipate ourselves. -​ The alienated consciousness creates God. -​ By realizing that God is just a creation, then we realize God is just a projection of what man can do. -​ When human nature meets human desires, now goes to humanity. -​ See the things that humanity can achieve -​ Attribute qualities to humanity rather than to God. -​ In repossession, I am aware of man's finite nature and no longer afraid of it, no longer afraid of failure. -​ Embracing my human nature as finite does not deny the fact that humanity can do things.  -​ Because I am finite, I build a strong humanity and become Hegel’s Heroes of Action AUTHENTIC ATHEISM -​ “What theology and philosophy have held to be God, the absolute, the infinite, is not God; but that which they have held not to be God is God.” -​ God is not god because, in the end, God is nothing but man. -​ Not god but god because man is actually the possessor of the attribute projected to God. ATHEISM IS HUMANISM -​ Man has created God according to his [man’s] image. -​ God is Man; Man is God. -​ The true religion is the religion of humanism. MARX - RELIGION AS ALIENATION​ ECONOMIC DETERMINISM -​ Human behavior is economically determined. -​ “Everything” is economically determined. -​ Everything is about materialism. IDEOLOGY -​ Because of economics, there is an ideology -​ Ideology: false presentation of truth Bourgeoisie Proletariat -​ Working Class; Poor -​ Rich; Merchants; Businessmen -​ Believe that they owe their existence -​ Controls the social relationship to the Bourgeoisie -​ We become the proletariat because of the system. -​ We no longer work to express ourselves but to earn money. ALIENATION -​ Dysfunctional separations -​ Marx: Work has the potential to be something creative and fulfilling. -​ Not all can pursue your passion, money is more important. 4 KINDS OF ALIENATION OF LABOR 1.​ Man - Product of his labor 2.​ Man - Labor Production 3.​ Man - Species-Being 4.​ Man - Man -​ Labor in capitalism is alienated because it embodies separations preventing the self-realization of producers; because it is organized in a way that frustrates the human need for free, conscious, and creative work. -​ Accepted Feuerbach’s assertion that humans have invented God. -​ Religion is a form of Alienation. -​ Religion is the worst form of ideology. -​ Justifies the oppression happening. -​ Gives the world immaterial reality -​ Religion separates human beings from their “species-essence” -​ Species-essence: nature of each human and of humanity as a whole -​ Religion is the Opium of the People -​ Hallucinations, illusions, addictive -​ Instead of confronting the social reality, religion makes us gaze upwards. -​ Spiritualize the struggle -​ Reduces suffering and provides pleasant illusions. -​ Religion is a response to alienation in material life and, therefore, cannot be removed until human material life is emancipated at which religion will wither away. -​ Religion is a symptom, not the disease. NIETZSCHE - THE DEATH OF GOD AND THE WILL TO POWER​ GOD IS DEAD -​ Death of the Absolute -​ Absolute: A perfect, self-sufficient reality that depends upon nothing external to itself. -​ There is no absolute, even morality. -​ God is not the absolute. -​ What happens when we now realize that God is dead? -​ We become liberated. -​ Free to create our own values. -​ The old values are gone. -​ Proves that these values are not really something we created because, given a chance, we will not follow them. -​ We follow them because it is what is demanded by society. -​ Slave Morality: exerting one’s will through careful subversion -​ I do things because I want to not because I need to. -​ With the will to power, I can give my middle finger to the world. -​ Will to power: overcoming -​ Doing “evil” things (e.g. killing) is done out of resentment. -​ One thing that perpetuates slave morality is religion. -​ Ethical Person: Herd-mentality -​ Leads to resentment -​ “Dare to Know”: The most liberating thing -​ Free to create ourselves -​ Ubermensch: superman “Atheism is really a critique of society and shows the failure of the system.” KIERKEGAARD - LEAP OF FAITH​ Kierkegaard -​ Father of existentialism -​ Meaning of life or the absence of it -​ 2 camps of existentialism -​ Life has no meaning so you have to invent it. -​ Camus - Life is absurd. -​ Life has meaning, so you have to search for it.  -​ Kierkegaard - Human existence is about looking for meaning in life -​ Man’s search for meaning -​ Human beings are eternally looking for meaning 3 STAGES OF SEARCH FOR MEANING 1.​ Aesthetic Stage -​ The aim is to experience freedom and pleasure (“I”) -​ The thing to avoid is boredom -​ Seeks to avoid dependence on people and things that threaten freedom -​ Rejects commitments -​ The immediate moment, the now takes precedence over long-range commitments -​ Routines tend to be boring -​ What is boredom? -​ Absence of stimulation, adventure -​ Emptiness -​ No meaning -​ Experience time not passing and you are stuck in that time that has no meaning -​ They don't want commitment because they don’t want boredom -​ Don’t want to be dependent but they are dependent on something new -​ They always try new things because they don't want to be bored 2.​ Ethical Stage -​ Commitment is the source of meaning -​ The other, the object of my commitment -​ The more I make my commitment, the more I find myself, the more I find meaning -​ The ultimate aim is to perform his duty -​ Duty is the source of meaning and universal moral principle -​ Someone who performs duty is seen as someone who is good -​ Commitment is future-bound -​ Routine is now a source of meaning, no longer a source of boredom -​ The thing to avoid is guilt -​ We are finite, there will always be a time that you will fail to make your commitment -​ The bigger your commitment, the deeper your guilt when you fall -​ If you don’t feel guilt then perhaps you are not really committed after all -​ Being afraid of the consequences is different from being guilty Stage Focus Aim Avoid Result Aesthetic I Pleasure and Freedom Boredom Despair Ethical Other Commitment Guilt Despair  The act of believing in or accepting something not Leap of Faith based on reason. 3.​ Religious Stage -​ Realm of Faith -​ Essence is the affirmation of one’s allegiance to and dependence on God, the transcendent but personal source of existence. -​ Why do we plea? -​ Not because they are the uncaused cause or the unmoved mover. We pray to God as a source of meaning -​ The Christian faith is not something that can be conclusively verified, demonstrated, or rationalized so as to assure everyone that it is highly probable, if not absolutely certain. -​ Atheism and theism are included in the set of reason -​ Faith does not belong, faith is part of a different reason -​ Example: When you love you see those reasons until it is not enough, and you reach “Ewan Basta”. -​ Not totally out of human reason -​ Faith cannot be demonstrated, it's just there -​ That does not mean there is no reason, the reasons are just insufficient -​ Offers hope and meaning to individuals through the paradox of the incarnation, and the appropriation of this hope and meaning ultimately depends on a movement of faith that goes beyond the boundaries of reason -​ Despite the fear and trembling I say yes to God -​ Abraham and Isaac -​ Abraham knows that God will provide but does not have any evidence, yet he still took that leap of faith. KIERKEGAARD’S CRITIQUE OF CHRISTIAN FAITH -​ Faith is merely an acceptance of dogmatic truths -​ Reduced faith into a cultural phenomenon -​ The primitive meaning of Christianity as an identity whose acquisition once entailed great risk had become a matter of merely being born to Christian parents in a Christian nation - a culture -​ Not because you belong, you have faith. At the same time, even though I don't identify with an institutionalized religion I have faith. -​ Christianity today can be had at a “bargain price” -​ Why do you cheapen faith?