God knew I would choose to write this paper, because God is omniscient. There is no possible outcome in which I could have chosen to not write this paper and made God’s knowledge false. This is an example of an atheological argument made by Nelson Pike, it essentially states that so long as God is omniscient, humans are unfree to act. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, this state is known as fatalism meaning “human acts occur by necessity and hence are unfree.” Upon evaluating Pike’s argument further, Alvin Plantinga came across what he refers to as a “confusion”. Plantinga states that this confusion comes about as a result of ambiguity surrounding the issue of what property God must necessarily have. This paper will examine …show more content…
He focuses on point three in premise six: “It was within Jones power to do something such that if he had done it, then anyone who believed at T1 that Jones would do X at T2 would have held a false belief.” According to Plantinga, there is a way in which two different actions could be done without disproving God. For instance, Emily goes to the mall in World Uno, but suppose in World Dos Emily does not go to the mall and chooses to stay home. Plantinga argues that this would make Pike’s point number three true and not false.
Moreover, holding true beliefs is a property that God must necessarily have, but Plantinga exposes contradictions in Pike’s argument when he shows that it does not follow that because God has this property that God must hold the same belief for every possible world; he simply holds the beliefs that are true for the world he is engaging with. Plantinga rebuttal of Pike’s argument surmises that the points made in premise six do not logically follow each other. For example, in World X, God could hold the belief that Ashanti does not enjoy swimming, but in another world God could hold the belief that Ashanti enjoys swimming. These two positions by God do not show a contradiction of what God should believe, but it instead shows that God holds the true belief for any world he engages with. Plantinga discovers where the argument becomes weak enough to fall apart and
Olaudah Equiano made this plea. His point in saying this was to call out the people who claimed that they were Christians for their treatment of others. He is saying that if they are truly Christians they should not be treating other people in this way since God said that we should treat others the way that we would personally want to be treated.
During the mid 1800s, the pro-slavery argument was at its strongest. The Proslavery Argument by Boundless, an online textbook, discusses the famous Mudsill Speech of James Henry Hammond which stated that the pro-slavery political argument, an ideology that defended a class-sensitive view of American antebellum society. He believed that many past societies carried the burden of the existence of a class of landless poor. Continually, other southern pro-slavery theorists felt that this class of landless poor was “inherently transient and easily manipulated, and as such often destabilized society as a whole” (Boundless). Thus, the greatest threat to democracy was seen as coming from “class warfare that destabilized a nation's economy, society and
In his book Most Moved Mover, Clark H. Pinnock explains his reasoning for believing in an open God. That is, Pinnock argues for the existence of a God of Christianity that does not determine the future in order to allow for the free will of creatures. Pinnock gives several arguments for the viability of his position by utilizing several sections of scripture to advocate for a more authentic understanding of the God that is revealed via the Bible. Furthermore, Pinnock argues from commonly held understandings of the Doctrine of God by claiming that the problems associated with present doctrine are best solved via the conceptual picture of a God that limits His foreknowledge. By doing this, we, therefore, solve issues related to theodicy in some way and free-will in some ways.
The Deferred Action for Parents of Americans is an executive action President Barack Obama plans on implementing in order to try and control illegal immigration. Its main goal is to deport illegal immigrants back to their home country who have a criminal history while providing those with a clean record an opportunity “to temporarily stay in the U.S. without fear of deportation” (). A way to be more conducive to an effective change in immigration policies would be to change the acceptance date to January 1st, 2000. DAPA, or also known as the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans, is an initiative requested by President Barack Obama that “would provide approximately 5 million illegal aliens access to work permits and social security cards”
Style is another form of rhetoric. Moving past correctness and clarity, we work with the true rhetorical side of style- appropriateness and ornament. “Appropriateness meaning to say or do whatever is fitting in a given situation”. Appropriateness would be better defined as situational propriety, like Kairos. For instance, when a person receives a call at a library, they’ll answer their phone call and the people around them will hush the person speaking on the phone.
From this we can understand, his belief is omnipotent—God is unconditional—he cannot live without that
The notion of God’s existence isn’t held as highly as it once was. John Irving presents this secular view by creating various characters with a disparity of beliefs. He sets Owen to believe that he is God’s instrument; however Owen juxtaposition is John Wheelwright who is cynical about God’s impact of the natural world. John Wheelwright’s story illustrates that in a secular, closed immanent world, Christians have to “struggle to recover a sense of what the Incarnation can mean” (John Irving, pg 753). Which means that God has this whole world in the palm of his hands and he basically can do his own bidding with it.
In “Believer”, the speaker believes in something differently than others, leading him to
Under these options, one is free to follow his/her passionate nature and believe whatever one would like to believe. Concerning the existence of God, James thinks that belief in God’s existence is a valuable sort of
With the year-round pressure pertaining to college applications on high school seniors follows the impending decision of choosing an appropriate college major. Generally, the decision-making process involves prioritizing one field of interest over another, however, due to globalization and constant innovation in technology determining a college major has increasingly become the modern day equivalent of the metaphorical line between life and death. Even so, the obvious choice would be the prestigious STEM fields over liberal arts due to the instant job opportunities which are seemingly ludicrous to a recent graduate. Nevertheless, liberal arts education should be encouraged to be pursued at higher education institutions in USA because it helps
Argument Against the Argument of Pascal’s Wager In Pascal’s Wager, Pascal pioneered new thoughts and opinions amongst his peers in probability theories by attempting to justify that believing in God is advantageous to one’s personal interest. In this paper, I will argue that Pascal’s argument rationalizing why one should believe in God fails and I will suggest that even if one was to accept Pascal’s wager theory, this will not be a suffice resolution to reap the rewards that God has promised to Christian believers like myself who has chosen to believe in God due to my early childhood teachings, familial and inherited beliefs. Pascal offers a logical reason for believing in God: just as the hypothesis that God's existence is improbable, the
In Lara Buchak’s essay, Can It Be Rational to Have Faith? , she asserts that everyday faith statements and religious faith statements share the same attributes. She later states that in order to truly have faith, a person ceases to search for more evidence for their claim, and that having faith can be rational. Although she makes compelling arguments in favor of faith in God, this essay is more hearsay and assumption than actual fact. In this paper, you will see that looking for further evidence would constitute not having faith, but that having faith, at least in the religious sense, is irrational.
Molinism has been the subject of many discussions in analytic philosophy of religion ever since Alvin Plantinga accepted it in his Free Will Defense against the "Logical" Argument from Evil. Molinism presupposes libertarian freedom. Libertarianism, is defined as the proposition that opportunity is contradictory with causal determinism, in addition to the case, some of our activities are free. The debate over Molinism is gravitated around several sets of ideals, for this paper I will focus on the theoretical Tie objection and God’s middle knowledge. The main focus of Molinism is the proposition that God has middle knowledge.
In addition to that, he added a new way to identify an unbeliever on the bases of “fundamental doctrine” which are three: the first is monotheism, second is
He states that teaching of faith is only known through revelation which is beyond reason, but not compatible to reason. Revelation overlaps where you can also approach these truths