Questions tagged [philosophy-of-religion]
Philosophy of religion is a branch of philosophy concerned with questions regarding religion, including the nature and existence of God, the examination of religious experience, analysis of religious vocabulary and texts, and the relationship of religion and science. Note that term is somewhat ambiguous as questions regarding atheism, secular humanism and agnosticism is included in the discipline.
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Why should I seek to determine the ultimate nature of reality (i.e. whether God exists or not)?
Here is my argument:
Until recently, I considered the pursuit (and eventual determination) of the ultimate nature of reality to be one of the most (if not the most) important goals for me. This is ...
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Decades ago Dr. Eugene Scott said, "God's knowledge is a function of his power. He can know whatever he wants to know." Is this coherent?
Dr. Eugene Scott said, "God's knowledge is a function of his power. He can know whatever he wants to know." Is this coherent? I thought this was a noncontroversial statement, but I was told ...
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Does super-essentiality preclude compatibility with Anaxagoras?
On the one hand, God as superessential implies:
Part of God's divine nature is to be found in humans, and indeed all things
This seems to be consonant with the view of the cosmos held by Anaxagoras: ...
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A Case of Scheler vs. Skepticism: Religious Experience
This concerns a problem I myself have with Scheler, and am not sure where to go with it. Scheler argues in On the Eternal in Man that one cannot dismiss religious experience (or as he calls it, "...
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If we can't know whether a divine being exists, would that being be unimportant even if it did exist?
This is what I thought at first (by "objectively important," we mean this in the sense of naive moral realism, at least):
If there were an ultimately powerful, knowledgeable, and good being,...
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Is american libertarianism a religion?
It seems to fit definition of religion
a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith
Which would make it like idol worship, the idol being the market.
One could dispute that ...
user67699
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Is religious authority justified?
Is religious authority justified?
I mean religious broadly thought, as something that may be a mystic non-inferential claim (and I'm especially interesting in these).
An inference is the process of ...
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Who wrote this uncited quote?
The following uncited quotation appears in The Early Modern European Catachism by Joshua Gibbs. He includes many quotes from philosophy and literature but does not cite any of his sources. Would ...
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Which future cyber religion do you think would appeal more to contemporary society and why? [closed]
Let's consider a hypothetical scenario where in future people organize new forms of religion or pseudoreligion if you wish based on an advanced AI development.
Church of Digital Ascendancy
The Church ...
user66933
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Reconciling Parmenides with the Kabbalist notion of Ein Sof
While contrasting the ontological systems of Parmenides and Kabbalists may seem arbitrary, I hope it will not be fruitless.
For now, I'm aiming to examine one specific concept: Ein Sof. As wiki puts ...
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Is mysticism a confusion of language?
Is mysticism a confusion of language, in Wittgenstein's sense? You'd have thought it was, especially if it makes any positive claims. But does it not ever "show" things, ever?
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Is a miracle the only possible evidence for the supernatural?
Is a literal violation of a current law of nature the only way we can point to a potential divine explanation? This is not to say that a violation of a current law of nature necessarily implies a ...
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Secrets/Esotericism in Mysticism
Some Western mystical traditions have an element of esotericism or secrecy, restrictions on who can learn the mysteries and how. For example, Judaism traditionally restricts the Kabbalah to men above ...
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Which philosophical ethics frameworks are compatible/incompatible with a literal, eternal Hell?
In Judeo-Christian religions it is usually taught that those who commit sin i.e. evil will suffer some sort of eternal damnation like burning for eternity in hell. My concern is to understand the ...
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Doesn't fallibilism complexify Pascal's wager further?
We can never know whether we have accumulated all the knowledge in the world or not. This is a general statement. For example, a powerful counterargument against the contingency argument might exist ...
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How do adherents to Plantinga's "free-will defense" against the problem of evil explain that God is free and immune to moral evil at the same time?
The free-will defense is an argument commonly attributed to Alvin Plantinga, who developed it as a response to the logical problem of evil. However, in developing this argument Plantinga unwittingly ...
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Under what conceptions of God does it follow that we necessarily are in "the best of all possible worlds"?
My personal take on this question is that it would follow that we are living in "the best of all possible worlds" if God were a utilitarian, that is, if we viewed God as an agent making ...
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Should I trust my own thoughts when studying philosophy?
I sometimes find myself disagreeing with Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy or other seasoned philosophers. However, I am scared to trust my own thoughts lest my ideas are erroneous. I do not know ...
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Can the Christian God be a Utilitarian?
I've been entertaining the idea that the Christian God might be utilitarian, after noticing many correlations between things that the Christian God commands or desires and things that promote ...
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How should one treat probability in taking a decision?
Suppose, I have a machine that accurately gives me the probability of any event occuring.
It's obvious what to do when
The probabilities are 0.5 and 0.5 (Do nothing)
The probabilities are 0 and 1 (...
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Is there something a little artificial about 'miracles'?
A miracle is something that is currently inexplicable by the laws of nature: statues crying blood; the resurrection of the dead; turning water into wine; etc.. Suppose I can accurately guess the ...
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The Ethics of Finding Comfort in Religion: Balancing Personal Benefits and Societal Harm
Is it morally justifiable for individuals to continue practicing a religion solely for the psychological comfort it provides, while turning a blind eye to the potential dangers of the religion's power ...
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Identification of light with existence and darkness with non-existence [closed]
Is it true that in ancient times many thinkers identified light with existence (essence), and darkness with non-existence?
Examples include Pythagoreanism, Neoplatonism, the ontology of light as-...
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"We will never have the answers to everything, and God could be an answer to something, so a God may exist" as an argument against anti-theism?
"We will never have the answers to every question and every unexplained occurrence, and a God may be involved in the explanation to the unexplained answer(s), so we cannot completely assert its ...
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What have philosophers said or what stances are there on what religion is? [closed]
Religion has a relation to the individual and society, and it gets into the way of thinking of many people from the past and at present times.
What is religion from the point of view of philosophy?
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I'm a new polytheist. What does it mean for me to believe in a god?
Please pardon me about that I'm concealing my religious background to prevent a flame-war.
Though I've never lost my faith, the faith has been changing for recent times. For now, I seem to be ...
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Voltaire "if god did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him" what does it mean?
Voltaire said "if god did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him".
What is the context or meaning of that quotation?
Religion(or existence of god) gives us many advantages?
Or, is he ...
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What is the correct counter argument, if there is one, to a uniqueness argument for design?
I have a friend who argued that Islam is true because the Qur'an is a unique piece of literature. Apparently, the textual styles of the book are unique in such a way that no other book can be ...
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Request for a philosopher/mathematician that arrives at a wicked God as the only solution to the problem of evil using formal logic
I was reading the book Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari, and stumbled upon this paragraph on Chapter 12 (translation is mine because the book is in spanish):
And thus, monotheism explains order, but is ...
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Tension Between Absolutism and Relativism: How to Choose?
When making decisions where one option imposes an importance on itself, it becomes paradoxical to try and decide between them.
To summarize my thought process with an analogy:
You are at a crossroads,...
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If we accept that living things have a soul, when and where does that happen?
I identify myself as a Christian, but I'm not posting this on Christianity because almost all religions have a definition for soul.
The Latin word "anima" was "something" they ...
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Is Religion Necessary for Communism? [closed]
For example, Karl Marx wasn't anti religion, but he was irreligious, as such a fan of Communism I wondered how this is, as the ideas of communism fall in line with the teachings of Jesus.
I'm just ...
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Is there a term that indicates disbelief in human "soul" or "spirit"?
Most Atheists, I think, would deny the existence of a human "soul" in the Cartesian sense.
However, the defining characteristic of Atheism is disbelief in God or gods. As per Wikipedia:
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How can I optimize the attributes of God?
The Problem
The three traditional attributes of God (in whichever tradition it is) are omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence. Under the assumption that reasonable discussion of God is possible,...
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Is Andalusi/Rasmussen's proof for the existence of God correct?
Summary of his argument:
Every limited thing's existence has a cause.
The universe is limited.
Therefore, the universe's existence must have a cause.
Now, naturally, the question arises: what caused ...
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Comprehensive list of philosophical categories regarding God in history
I might be wrong about some definitions, but to give some examples:
Some people beleive that God does not exist (atheists)
While some say they don't know about it (Agnostics)
Yet others say God ...
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What is the distinction between Ancient Philosophy and Religion?
I'm currently reading Pierre Hadot book What is "Ancient Philosophy?" (Qu'est-ce que la philosophie antique?) and as I reach the third part of the book i can't stop thinking about, how ...
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Lumen naturale, Lumen gratiae, Lumen fidei, what are they?
Unfortunately, I'm unable to locate a good source to cite on these terms you see in the question title.
Below is a short abstract based on Google.
Natural light (lumen naturale), equivalent to lumen ...
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What is a person who believes in a creator but does not accept that organized religion describes the creator's attributes?
I hope this is the right stack exchange: there is no "religion" only "christianity" that I can see.
It seems very reasonable to me that many scientists accept that the creation of ...
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Do all religions summarise into the same principle?
I have read, a highly revered mystic and ascetic of Hinduism -- Lord Ramakrishna, the Guru of Swami Vivekananda, had a worldview that every religion is true and every religion eventually leads to God. ...
user63180
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How does methodological naturalism deal with appeals to abstract objects like logical truths, mathematical truths, or natural kinds?
A core component of the modern scientific worldview and the beliefs of people and governments in western liberal democracies is that methodological naturalism is true. It is essential to scientific ...
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Is realism an integral part of Classical Theism?
Classical Theism is one of the main forms of monotheism, and dominant in at least Christianity. It says that God has aseity and also is immanent, transcendent, simple, immutable, impassable, and ...
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If we assume there is something of my mental life after death, what means, without authority, do we have to decide what? [closed]
If we assume there is something of my mental life after death, what means, without authority, do we have to decide what? So, in effect, how do we decide about who's vision of an "afterlife" ...
user62727
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Is incest morally wrong if it is between only consenting adults, and there is no chance of offspring? [duplicate]
If two fully consenting adults engage in incest, and one or both of them are most definitely infertile, and neither of them are in any other romantic or sexual relationship requiring loyalty, is it ...
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Mixing of people and peace [closed]
I would like to know people's opinions on the following philosophical question.
Is It necessary for people belonging to different populations to mix in order to ensure peace among them?
What is ...
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Free will and determinism [duplicate]
If God knows everything including the future, then we have no free will and if he doesn't, it’s a flaw of him and it's in contradiction with God's definition. How can we get away from this conflict?
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In the Doctrine of Virtue, does Kant accidentally encode a solution to the redemption problem from his theory of radical evil?
The set-up. Having identified original sin as an inversion of our maxims vs. their intended order of priority, Kant goes on to note that the nature of radical evil makes it empirically impossible to ...
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Belief, in 'divine madness'
Theia mania (Ancient Greek: θεία μανία) is a term used by Plato in his dialogue Phaedrus to describe a condition of divine madness (unusual behavior attributed to the intervention of a God).
Do ...
user61995
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Which philosophers, if any, have claimed that a limited amount of evil is possible? [closed]
In Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves, there is a footnote somewhere that quotes an unidentified source as saying something like, "The Messiah will not come until the Tears of Esau have ceased ...
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What is a word that categories and subsumes religion, philosophy, and spirituality?
I saw the question What is the difference between philosophy and religion? which is interesting, but I am wondering what is a concept or term which categorizes/bundles all the meanings of philosophy, ...
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