The God Delusion By Richard Dawkins Summary

Nowhere in The Natural History of Religion does Hume’s explicitly speak in favor of atheism (perhaps due to the fear of persecution at the time), and yet, I would categorize this work as atheist. Hume strategically places monotheism or “theism” in contention with polytheism, leading the reader to assume that one would eventually prevail, but instead, he picks apart at both until readers are left questioning their own faith and wondering what a more rational alternative might be. In sections 1-5, Hume discusses polytheism and its origin. In sections 6-8, Hume discusses how we transition from polytheism to monotheism, and finally, in sections 9-15, he compares and contrasts the two, pointing out weaknesses and flaws in both. Throughout the book,

Martin Luther lists the Ten Commandments, top among them the commandment against idolatry. Idolatry, according to the book, means having a wrong and false trust which translates to not serving the right God. I find Luther’s interpretation of idolatry insightful, particularly his analysis of the first commandment as demanding sole trust in God without ever seeking any other god. Luther further adds that idolatry goes beyond erecting and worshiping images to trusting, seeking, and pursuance of help and consolation from sources other than God. This interpretation widens the scope of idolatry beyond the common perspective of the practice, an interpretation I find enlightening and which introduces a new dimension to the understanding of the practice of idolatry.

The author used various devices to convey his view that Jesus had to be misunderstood for him to fulfill God’s plan. For starters, Mark’s use of apocalyptic devices was used in the beginning and ending of his Gospel. Other than condemning the Temple’s sacrificial system and the priest who controlled it, Mark had used other devices to indicate Jesus ministry is fundamentally an adverse judgement on the

Religiously polarizing is the act of finding the disagreements in religious beliefs and on that basis separate ourselves from those of differing beliefs. It is the idea of moving to opposite ends of a spectrum. People are religiously polarizing especially between secularism and individual spirituality. For example Religious humanists claim to be associated with an Ethical Culture Society, a Society for Humanistic Judaism or a Unitarian Universalist Church. They are note "nones".

This shows that just as I mentioned, Mark’s purpose was to prove and show facts of how Jesus was the Messiah. As mentioned in the course manual, if Mark’s gospel ended on the crucifixion, then the gospel would be missing facts, which could be essential of the belief of the reader and not to mention that it would be ending on quite a tragic ending that shows more injustice . It means that in order for Mark to capture more than just the injustice committed against Jesus, he had to differ him from all the other famous executions such as Socrates’s or Joan of Arc and let’s not forget to mention that it was vital to the Christianity faith for the reader to understand what exactly differentiated Jesus Christ from all those other

In a literature review by Burris and Rempel (2012) they suggested that evil in religions all around the world is surrounded by selfishness, the destruction of well being and impersonality. The researchers in the literature review suggested that in the perspective of Christianity, the concept of evil is seen as an act done to cause an inappropriate suffering. Researchers found that a great example of evil in Christianity is the crucifixion of Jesus was an act to end the well-being of Jesus. Judaism’s has the perspective that there is a dark side to everyone that is similar to the idea of Jung’s shadow, in which there is a part in all humans that is attracted to evil, the yetzer ra. In Islam the nature of evil can be understood within the relationship between adl (having done something in a traditional way) and zulm (having done something in an unorthodox way).

Arguably, if God’s conduct in Paradise Lost is even slightly comparable to Victor’s, it could be submitted that Shelley believes religion, and particularly Christianity, has a lot to answer for. Alternatively, Shelley could simply be reproving Victor’s behaviour in his obvious attempts at playing ‘God’, and making that more damning by contrasting Adam with the Monster. As Chris Baldick has remarked, to early readers of Frankenstein it appeared that Shelley was ‘calling into question the most sacred of stories, equating the Supreme Being with a blundering chemistry student.’ In his analysis, Baldick contends that Paradise Lost lays itself open to this kind of impious treatment by Shelley, because ‘by submitting God’s providence to rational debate’ Milton had ‘inadvertently exposed the foundations of his religion to

Ultimately John Milton’s Paradise Lost, created the first movements of individual thought and ideas. Milton took a major risk for criticism to write such controversial perspectives. The exposing of hierarchy allows one to understand a culture. The exposing of a religion’s hierarchy allows one to understand the

This era has become the central barrier to the contemporary Jewish belief. Many have raised issues whether the all powerful and good God was unable to prevent the execution of innocent children, men and women of Jewish origin from 1933 to 1945 on n account that they were born to a Jewish parent. This dilemma of evil has led to the following proposals of various ways to try and solve the problem of

Overview From Biblical times to present day ISIS, religious prejudice has remained a global issue. The most infamous of these perceptions is the policy of antisemitism. Anti semitism,"the specific hatred of Jews", not only revolves around lack of Jewish tolerance, but also around trends associated with them ("Antisemitism"). Christians were very antisemitic because contrary to Christian beliefs, Jews did not believe in Jesus. As political power eventually trumped the power of the church, the Jews glorified beliefs such as civil rights, free trade, and democracy ("Antisemitism").

E. the west found it very difficult to from a factual ideal of Islam, held back by its own closed mindedness as well as an overall ignorance. Christians knew nothing about Islam, and saw Arab people only as enemies. Two very different populations in the West expressed a vision of Islam. One was that of a common people, that was influenced by false information from the Chanson de Geste. The other negative propaganda from scholastics ,which the scholastics were Although sometimes it was saw as a reaction to see Islam as violent and fanatic, in general the scholastics vision of Islam was balanced and portrayed Islam more realistically than the stereotypes that influenced Christian Culture.

People all over the world have good luck charms. Whether it be a rabbits foot, or a stone from the ocean, many people have one. In The Things They Carried, Mitchell Sanders gave Norman Bowker a dead Vietnam boy's thumb. Is this a good luck charm or a present? Mitchell Sanders saw the thumb as neither, he saw it as a moral.

1. The omnipotence argument against Landau is: “Premise 1: If God commands an act because it is moral, then God cannot command an immoral act. Premise 2: If God cannot command an immoral act, then God is not omnipotent. Premise 3:

Socrates asks Euthyphro “is the holy, holy because it is loved by the gods?” or “is something loved by the gods because it is holy?” Euthyphro was charging his father with murder. Not that he physically put his hands on one, but while another was awaiting the decision, his father left the man to die of starvation and lack of water. In Euthyphro’s eyes, his father was the murder of this man. The reason he is prosecuting his father is because he believes in the Gods and that no matter if someone is of kin if it is not right then it just isn’t right.

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” – Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion In Dawkin’s The God Delusion, he makes the obvious argument that this self-proclaimed ‘good god’ is not actually any real good–in fact–this god seems to be denying precisely what he is and does. Assuming that this higher power exists, the god of the Bible, specifically the god of the Old Testament, radiates evil. He allows, some would argue condones, slavery, rape, incest, baby killing and racial and sexual discrimination. Is it a coincidence that said beliefs and principles seem rather aptly fitting of the practices of that time period?