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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Can simulation theory be considered a form of religion?
The simulation theory has gained track in recent years; even Elon Musk has spoken on it.
As it follows the associated, can belief in the simulation theory be considered a form of religion?
The ...
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Can the definition of philosophy be personal?
Is there a formal definition of philosophy agreed upon by everybody. If any new- or third-party decides to subscribe to "philosophy", do they compulsorily accept the formal definition.
Or ...
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What exactly would count as a "positively meaningful and reciprocal conscious relationship" between a person and a God?
I would like to start quoting this answer's summary of the divine hiddenness argument:
This is the crux of the atheistic Argument from Divine
Hiddenness:
(1) Necessarily, if God exists, then God ...
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Is there a version of the divine-hiddenness problem based specifically on the cognitive side of schizophrenia treatment?
Although to my knowledge mystical psychosis "by itself" is not a DSM listing, it is similar to symptoms of schizophrenia-spectrum disorders, symptoms like delusions of reference and grandeur ...
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Is Christianity testable?
In a debate between John Lennox and Peter Atkins on the topic "Can science explain everything?", at minute 44:47 John Lennox claims:
Lennox: "And the major reason why I believe that ...
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Omniscience leads to necessitarianism
You have probably seen these types of arguments before on incompatibility of omniscience and free will. The question is are these arguments valid and what can be a good refutation?
Let G= x is known ...
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Should I respect other people's religions?
My point of view is that there is no reason to believe any god exists without evidence.
So I find religions a very irrational idea and I mostly heard people saying
We have to respect other ...
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Are there any publications that attempt to give a formal ontological definition of the Christian Trinity?
Are there any publications in the field of Philosophy of Religion that have attempted to provide a formal ontological definition of the Christian God as portrayed by the doctrine of the Trinity?
Take ...
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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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Authors that compare nationalism to religion
If people didn't choose their birth place nor their parents why do people feel proud or ashamed of their country? Why do they feel somehow responsible for the actions people take in the present or ...
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Is Abrahamic God a creature? [closed]
Is God (as YHWH/IEUE, or Allah, etc.) a being because he represents his name from this reality, or because he has the potential to represent his name from other realities?
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Can science claim to explain all experience?
If so, how strong a claim?
To expand the question: if there is a god that can be experienced, does that experience escape science?
And a third question: can humans define something, or work with ...
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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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A problem regarding an impermanent hell
Regarding the Abrahamic hells, one could say that they are absolutely terrible for it is suffering without end, an eternal suffering; but there is a puzzling different type of hell or hells, those of ...
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Kant’s claim “there are only three kinds of proof for the existence of God”
There are only three kinds of proof for the existence of God possible from speculative reason.
All paths on which one may set forth with this aim either begin from determinate experience and the ...
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Is there a philosophical doctrine that suggests that the soul endlessly travels between living organisms without being tied to space-time?
By the detachment of the soul from space-time, I understand the ability of the soul, after the death of the organism, to be reborn into anyone, anywhere and anytime. For example, the soul lived in a ...
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Why do we need repetitive demonstration to accept miracles happening?
From the highest upvoted answer on Is any aspect of the supernatural testable? What level of proof is possible for the supernatural?:
However, you are probably wasting your time on the various ...
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Is Zoroastrianism underappreciated when in relation to its influence of Early Greek Philosophy?
It would be nice to believe that the Early Greek Philosophers were entirely original in their ideas, though it would be rather simplistic to say that such a reality was true. When examining, let's ...
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Does the private language argument conflict with monotheism?
This blog post opposes the PLA to unitarianism (the belief in only one divine person), which is mostly a parochial, intra-Christian objection that, if generalized over other religions, seems like it ...
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Nietzsche on balancing service to the creation of (or becoming) the Overman and living a life of ones own choosing?
So, I have been looking into Nietzsche.
To be honest, I have thought a lot about Nietzsche for the past 2 years, and I am unsure of what to make of the nature of this need to become the Overman. My ...
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Are all explanations either personal or scientific?
In A New Cosmological Argument, Richard Gale and Alexander Pruss offer up a cosmological argument for a personal God, from the weak principle of sufficient reason (among other premises, but the WPSR ...
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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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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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Why does an explanation involving a "person" appeal?
If the common source of the natural order and the karmic order is
impersonal, we are still in need of some account of how and why it
would be such as to produce these two quite different sorts of ...
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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 ...
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The conflict of creationism and evolution. How can we know the truth?
the demands of evolution and creation cannot
be reconciled with each other because they represent two
fundamentally different, mutually hostile, and mutually
exclusive systems. They do not ...
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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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How much math must tenured full philosophy professors know?
I'm talking math not logic. I'm referring to full tenured Professors of Philosophy at world famous universities like Oxbridge, Ivy League, Stanford, or MIT. Please be specific and type the math course ...
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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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What are the fundamental differences between the belief system of science and religious belief systems?
While most religious belief systems affirm the existence of certain things, the belief system of (natural) science tends to deny the existence of certain "not-reproducible" things.
Let's look at two ...
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How could Occam's razor possibly be used metaphysically?
Occam's razor, or the law of parsimony, states that the simplest explanation for any given data is most likely the correct one.
Some have attempted to use Occam's razor in a metaphysical sense, to ...
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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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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 ...
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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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Are there any religions out there where skeptics are treated better than believers of a wrong religion (by God)?
It is a fact that most, if not all religious people view their religion as full of reward. This commonly takes the form of an after life, or even supposed "blessings" in this life. I'm ...
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Why would philosophical agnosticism and pragmatic atheism be considered more rational than philosophical agnosticism and pragmatic theism?
I'm referring to the accepted answer on this post. The answerer states that
If one is both attentive to empirical scientific studies and to philosophical investigations of the limits of knowledge, ...
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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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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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Before claiming prophethood,X was famous for being truthful among his people,so that is one of the proof that he is a prophet?
some people who believe in the prophethood and divine inspiration of specific individuals ,use this argument,as one of the arguments,that proves that their believe in such individuals is legitimate
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Isn't Nietzsche's overman a replacement for God?
Nietzsche claimed that "we killed God". Thus, as Nietzsche thought, it would result in nihilism.
He also "introduced" an idea of the overman. This question is not about what the overman is. But I'm ...
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Has there ever been a successful, philosophically defensible refutation of the Epicurean Paradox?
"God said it, I believe it, and that settles it", is the final refuge of faith-based rhetoric, not a viable philosophical position. Has any significant religious thinker of any stripe ...
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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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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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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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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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