“It’s the view that the only kind of ‘obligation’ there could possibly be is the kind that is disciplined by promise of reward or threat of punishment,” Antony claims. She believes that a Christians’ motivation comes from fear of punishment. Unfortunately, She dismisses the fact that motivation to do good out of fear of judgment may have value. For example, history teaches us that individuals who committed heinous crimes (Hitler, Stalin, Mao Zedong) have rejected the idea that their actions may produce judgment. Furthermore, besides fear of punishment, Christians have a higher motivation.
My purpose in this essay is to explain and analyze the Divine Command Theory. Divine Command Theory states that morality is ultimately based on the commands of God. I disagree with this theory because how do we know what concepts of God are true and what other concepts are false? There are so many religions making their own claims and interpretations that they believe are true. Therefore, how do we know then what God approves or disapproves of?
—God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived. —That which can be conceived not to exist is not God." One can see why God can be considered to seem inconceivable, but some may agree if one knows God that God is conceivable. In suggestion, Sin is one reason God sent Jesus to live on this earth, so we can see with our own eyes that there is a God, but at the same time, there will be those who still choose not to believe in God's existence. The weakness of Anselm argument is, he says he believes in God and seeks God at the same time Anselm thinks that it is hard to seek God when he cannot see God.
The second word in the statement ‘us’, proves 2 separate beings… not one. The statement itself; to make man in God’s image, if there were three entities that made this omnipotent creator who he was, wouldn’t man be made up the same? No humans of any religious domination claim themselves to be a trinity! The strongest argument against the dogmatic doctrine of the trinity comes from the Gospel according to Matthew, 3rd chapter verses 15 through 17, when Jesus was baptized. The Gospel clearly states when Jesus was baptized, the heavens were opened, the Holy Spirit descended in the form of a dove upon Jesus, and the voice of God came from the sky claiming “This is my ‘son’, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased”.
In conclusion, Richard Swinburne argues that God and evil can exist at the same time with the Free Will Theodicy. He believes that God is not the cause of evil, but humans and their free will to make choices. But I thought it would be interesting to ask where natural evil came from because according to Paley’s “Argument from Design” organic life probably has a designer, so it makes me curious to know if it does have one and of so,
PH2211 In this essay, I will first break down Anselm’s ontological argument with a powerful criticism, and then defend Anselm’s position. Following that, I will analyze both positions critically and provide my own stand regarding Anselm’s argument. The problem with Anselm’s ontological argument provided by Rowe in his book is the problem of definition.
In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins emphasizes on four theses that roughly entail his argument. Science is evidence based whilst faith is blind, If God created everything, who created Him, morality does not depend on a creator, and the Christian religion is perilous to society. His writing forces the reader to ponder the validity of religion. Dawkins adamantly states that religion can either be fully true or false. If proven false, it is the duty the intellectually conscience to refute.
A.W. Tozer puts it this way, “What comes to ours minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” If we do not believe God can be and is our refuge, then we are putting our trust in earthly securities, and thus putting limits on God. It may be that our faith in God is not what it should be. So right out the gate, I have a challenge for all of us, me included…
This can be seen through the Protestant Minister’s statement, “...do you believe the pope to be Antichrist...be gone, rogue; begone, wretch; do not come near me again”(21). Instead of coming to the aid of Candide, the Protestant Minister evaluates Candide’s religious status before deciding if he will help Candide or not. If he were to be a “true” Christian, then Candide’s religious beliefs would
However, Christians know this to be false and in direct opposition to the Bible, which teaches that salvation through Christ’s sacrifice on the cross determines the soul’s outcome after
All of the philosophers that we've studied so far have made some valid arguments concerning the existence, or non-existence of God. If I had to be swayed by an opinion for God's existence, or non-existence it would have to be by William Paley's argument. Paley's analogy is strong because of his metaphor of the watch to explain the universe and the existence of an intelligent designer. The weak part of this analogy is that the watchmaker as evidence can be produced in the physical form; the universe maker as evidence cannot be produced in physical form.
Saint Anselm is known as one of the most important Christian philosophers of his time and still today. He is best known for his ontological argument regarding God’s existence and is consistently referenced for his work regarding the nature of God, redemption, freedom, and sin. Anselm believes God to be something “…that which nothing greater can be conceived” (Anselm, 40). He finds support and uses personal and commonsense logic to support his main ideas. His argument is broken up into several topics that reference the concept of just considering the idea of God, His true existence, considering the impossibility of God’s nonexistence, and a few others.
Saint Anselm’s Ontological Argument was most likely constructed during a time when the majority of the population was religious, in order to strengthen the belief that God exists. The thesis of the argument is as straightforward as it gets – that God does indeed exist. In this argument, God is defined to be the greatest entity that an individual can ever conjure in his or her mind. His argument uses the reductio assumption, and the proof that starts it off – ironically – is that God does not exist. It is assumed that the majority of the people living back then believed in God, but in order to emphasise this fact, Anselm talks about how “even the fool” that does not believe in God, admits that God is thought to exist.
Many philosophers have argued and defined what it means to exist in order to prove or disprove the existence of God. George Berkeley, a Irish philosophers argues for the existence of God. The existence of a great perceiver causing ideas in our minds. On the other hand, David Hume, a Scottish philosopher is a skeptic, he argues to undermine religion, critiquing that religion can have harmful consequences on society. These empiricists argue to establish or dismiss religion because it sets universal notions in which it operates as part of society’s morality.
Holy person Thomas Aquinas was an Italian Dominican monk, Catholic priest, and Doctor of the Church. He was a massively persuasive philosopher, theologian, and jurist in the custom of scholasticism, within which he is called the Doctor Angelicus and the Doctor Communes. He believed in god and proved the existence of god with different argument like motion, efficient cause, design and possibility and necessity. I personally liked the design form of argument.