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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Does Alvin Plantinga's book Knowledge and Christian Belief offer any substantial updates to Warranted Christian Belief?
The stated primary goal of Plantinga's Knowledge and Christian Belief (2015) was to condense the content of Warranted Christian Belief (2000) into a shorter and more accessible book.
My question is ...
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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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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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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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Does contemporary art embody the desacralisation of western culture?
It's noticeable that all the great artistic traditions embody their religious worldviews: Hindu temples, Christian churches, Greek statues of gods and heroes, Egyptian sarcophagi, etc.
However, ...
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According to trinitarians, why can't there be multiple human persons who share one human substance?
According to trinitarians, if there can be three divine persons within the Godhead who share one divine substance, why can't there be multiple human persons who share one human substance?
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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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Please complete this expression
Longtime ago I heard someone say this, I need to know the correct wording and source of this expression. The basic idea is expression of how human society has changed over the last few hundred years. ...
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Absolute Divine Simplicity (ADS) and the Triune Godhead
Though apparent, the framework of the Triune Godhead appears logically incoherent in juxtaposition to the Absolute Divine Simplicity model.
Looking through the works of Thomas Aquinas, who is the most ...
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What does Spinoza mean by Acquiescentia in se ipso?
In Part V of Spinoza’s Ethics the pinnacle of human freedom and understanding is discussed as the viewpoint from eternal blessedness. How are we to characterize or interpret this doctrine of ...
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Did Augustine try to prove God's existence using Set Theory?
Some time ago I heard a professor of mine describe Augustine's Confessions as an attempt to prove God's existence using set theory. I didn't get a chance to ask him more of what he meant, and ...
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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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Which philosophy views "value" as the god?
What spiritual philosophy does Robert Lawrence Kuhn describe here? This view says that everything exists because of the value of the totality of universe.
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A critique of the epistemoloical models of religion
I'm interested to find any existing critique of the epistemological models by which religions (especially the various branches of Christianity) determine their theological conclusions.
What I ...
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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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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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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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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?
user66760
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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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Eternal uncreated things besides God
There is a big debate in the Philosophy of Rellgion as to whether or not there are things that are uncreated eternal things besides God, like abstract objects.
Some say that claiming there are ...
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Why does Thomas Aquinas conclude that the First Mover is God?
It appears to me that the First Mover of any motion must not move only with respect to the change it is producing, but otherwise could be moved in a way unrelated to what it is changing, or moved ...
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How may Nikolaus von Kues’ “concept of concept” be applied as a bridge between logic and theology?
I am neither a specialist for logic nor for theology. Yet, I was electrified about Nikolaus von Kues statement that God is the concept of concept.
Has Kues’ proposition somehow been applied as a real ...
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Could we take the fully rational and fully informed idealized agent that Peter Railton talks about as God, to give a theistic metaethics?
Recently, I finished Alexander Miller's book "An Introduction to Contemporary Metaethics." After reading about Peter Railton's reductionism, I wondered if it would be possible to take the agent which ...
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Is there any connection between the catholic conception of confession and psychotherapy?
Confession is healing of the soul by repentence to God mediated by a priest, psychoanalysis indulges in a confession of the secrets of the soul in order to heal. Is there any connection here or am I ...
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Are some religious claims subject to empirical testing?
Almost all (Christian) theists assert that humans experience everlasting bliss in heaven. Is this possible?
So the real issue is whether it is logically possible that an unending life (in which one ...
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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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Did Plato have a utilitarian view of religion?
I seem to remember while reading, from what I believe was the Republic, that Plato saw what could be interpreted a utilitarian role for Religion in society.
Am I misremembering? Not asking what he ...
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Experts in which area can be considered relevant / authoritive to validating religious claims?
Some consider that in today's word a layperson should rest their opinion on problems of field X what the majority of experts of field X say. (RationalWiki link) Quoting this article:
When ...
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Some questions about the cosmological argument given by Samuel Clarke
The exercise I am doing is as follows:
The following are my questions:
Why the exercise says that Samuel Clarke's argument "allow for the possibility of causal chains with no beginning"?
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Religious belief as a consequence of self-reliance
Self-reliance doesn't come naturally to many people, but one could argue that self-reliance is an important factor in both natural and sexual selection. Also many religious people achieve self-...
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Are religions at the end more humble comparing with the more Asian streams?
The three monotheistic religions all have a God who provides commandments and rules which are to be obeyed.
In Asian religions like Buddhism, Hinduism, and Taoism there isn't such a God who gives ...
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Define Internal and external vs Essence and illusion
In Buddhism, external reality is an illusion
and internal reality is an essence.
Luke 17, 21. Neither shall they say: Behold here, or behold there. For lo, the kingdom of God is within you.
How do ...
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What kind of arguments are there for the existence of the soul?
Arguments for the existence of God generally fall into certain categories (e.g. cosmological arguments, moral arguments, arguments from design, etc). But into which categories arguments for the ...
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Is Plato's ideal world comparable to heaven?
Plato thought there was an ideal world where ideas live. Independently of people. These ideas throw a shadow on the material world we live in. By examining this material world we can get knowledge of ...
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Expanding the definition of "Pilgrimage"
According to Wikipedia, the definition of "Pilgrimage":
"Is a journey often into an unknown or foreign place, where a person goes in search of new or expanded meaning about their self, ...
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Could God rule out solipsism, simulation theory and similar scenarios?
The god of abrahamic religions is typically said to be omnipotent an omniscient. However, how could such a god rule out solipsism, simulation theory and things like that? Consider the following ...
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How is it possible that focusing on a topic and focusing on your brain's process of doing it are not the same thing?
This question is different from How to live the present instead of just surviving?. It's about an apparent contradiction in general whereas that one is specifically asking how to live in the present ...
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Problems with ontological arguments
In the ontological argument, Anselm assumes that "A being that exists as an idea in the mind and in reality is, other things being equal, greater than a being that exists only as an idea in the ...
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Can ancient religions with an omnipotent god be discussed into a definite answer about if the religion is real or not?
I find that trying to prove that a certain religion which has as a characteristic to have an omnipotent god is right or wrong according to current knowledge and well established observations is ...
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