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 is faith seen as a sign of weakness, instead of an unexplored land/opportunity?
Hope this is the right place to put this question!
I am a person of faith (more specific, a Christian) and most of the time people consider me somehow inferior for my belief. I am not antisocial, not ...
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What fallacy in Pascal's Wager allows replacing God with the devil?
I wanted to know the name of the fallacy or fallacies the Pascal's Wager in the sense that it can be applied to motivate one's belief in many things. A similar argument to the original Wager can be ...
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How can one rebut the argument that atheism is inherently immoral?
It not uncommon to see religious people arguing that without the moral center of a religious text, true ethics are impossible.
The reasoning goes that, without a fixed moral center, atheists are ...
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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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Is it a fallacy, and if so which, to believe we are special because our existence on Earth seems improbable?
People often use the argument that there must be a God, for example, because Earth and the laws of physics are perfectly situated for humans to exist the way we do. However, if Earth or even the ...
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Fundamental idea on proving God's existence with science
I think that proving God's existence or any deity from any culture with the rigors of science is fundamentally absurd.
The popular arguments usually involve space-time and the big bang theory. (I ...
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Why are believers criticized so much for being anti-science when so many scientists are ... believers?
My first introduction to philosophical debate was through Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens. The idea that they hammered into a younger me was that faith was stupid and irrational and any person ...
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In what sense is atheism scientific?
I have been reading a bit of Dawkins and the like and they all seem to hold a very strong viewpoint on atheism and its associated ideology. I have not found a direct citation for this but he ...
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In what way(s) does popular New Atheism fail to be philosophical?
I've seen some derision against the popular New Atheism movement, in particular against Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris (particularly interesting since he makes a big deal that ...
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Why does Dawkins think it is wrong to posit that a paragon of 100% morals could theoretically exist?
Let’s move on down Aquinas’s list.
4. The Argument from Degree
We notice that things in the world differ. There are degrees of, say, goodness or
perfection. But we judge these degrees ...
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Isn't the existence of Hell inherently evil, and isn't God therefore evil in allowing Hell to exist?
In many religions, for example, the Abrahamic ones, there exists a place of eternal punishment for those who live in violation of God's commandments.
Assuming an infinitely-long afterlife, in which "...
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Are omniscience and omnipotence mutually inconsistent?
I see this in The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins:
If God is omniscient, he must already know how he is going to intervene to change the course of history using his omnipotence. But
that means ...
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Is religion necessary for the good life?
According to Aristotle, you will be deemed as living well if you experience worldly pleasures while still being morally upright and virtuous.
How can you identify what is morally right without the ...
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Is God subject to logic?
If someone claims that God is beyond logic then how do we know he is beyond logic ? (as we lose all the methods to know whether the claim is true or not?)
Logic is the use and study of valid reasoning,...
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Theories of Everything as a hold over from monotheism?
In his book "A Tear at the Edge of Creation", physicist Mario Gleiser argues that results from cosmology and particle physics make it unlikely that we will ever find an elegant unified theory of ...
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Are we all ‘atheist’ or 'agnostic in a pandemic'? [closed]
Saudi Arabia is a deeply religious country. Most of the people in the Persian Gulf nation pray five times a day, 35 times a week, 140 times a month and 1,680 times a year. But they banned pilgrimages (...
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Are there any counter arguments to the claim God does not exist because there is evil in the world?
It's been argued that God doesn't exist because there is so much evil in the world. For example, suppose a person is violently murdered - an innocent child say. They argue, God could have prevented ...
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Is there an advantage of a theistic account in terms of being able to define goodness?
I have been watching some debates about the existence of god, such as Peter Singer vs. Dinesh D'Souza, or Christopher Hitchens vs. John Lennox. On the religious side, one argument comes up ...
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What is the difference between philosophy and religion?
How do you make the distinction between philosophy and religion? Are there some philosophies/religions that are hard to categorize as being one or the other?
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On Atheists who are sympathetic to religion?
Most Atheists I have encountered fall into 2 categories:
New Atheists: People who don't believe in God and see religion as an evil to be eradicated given the harm it has caused humanity (i.e. ...
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Is "time" an abstract mental construct or does it exist independent of human consciousness?
When I consider my own existence with respect to time I can imagine three possibilities:
(1) Time extends infinitely into the past. In this case, how can the present, with me in it, exist, since ...
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Have there been any modern philosophical defenses of polytheism?
Modern philosophy of religion seems to be "Abrahamic-centric" with all of the discussion centered around problems specific to Christianity, Islam and Judaism. In particular most arguments for the ...
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Could Anselm's argument also "prove" that a perfectly evil god must exist?
As far as I know, Anselm's argument for the existence of god goes like this:
Let's imagine the most perfect being possible. If we imagine it being most perfect but not existing, it would be even more ...
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Is it inconsistent to praise God for apparent action while claiming that apparent inaction is a mystery?
Finally the site is open! I've been waiting to ask this for a week or so. I have been pondering typical responses concerning intercession and resultant positive/negative outcomes and am hoping someone ...
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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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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. ...
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Is there a demarcation problem for religions?
So far, all of the philosophy of religion I have read focuses on the questions of God's existence and on the problem of evil. It seems to me that just as important would be the question of what a ...
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Can belief in science be considered a form of theism?
Based on the problem of induction, nobody can assert with absolute certainty that the laws of science (i.e. physics, chemistry, etc,...) will hold all the time, in every part of the universe. ...
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Does the notion of an all-powerful God conflict with the idea of free will?
In Abrahamic religions, God is often believed to be wholly omnipotent. People also seem to believe that humans have "free will", especially insofar that they feel they are in control of their own ...
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Does refuting the fine-tuning argument for the existence of God necessarily require belief in a Multiverse?
The fine-tuning argument for the existence of God is based on the fact that certain physical constants can only have very specific values for life to exist in the universe. If there was even the ...
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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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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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Was Bishop Berkeley part of the Enlightenment and if so - how did it fit his adherence to religion?
In his The Analyst Berkeley argued, among other things, that mathematicians must not "submit to Authority, take things upon Trust" and so expressed a view of the Enlightenment. This made me think: if ...
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What makes a basic belief a properly basic belief?
I'm currently looking into Plantinga's reformed epistemology and I'm trying to wrap my head around what makes a basic belief a properly basic belief.
I understand what a basic belief is, in that it ...
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"God doesn't play with dice": does QM's randomness really contradict religion?
Everyone knows Einstein's popular phrase on Quantum Mechanics - "God doesn't play with dice", implying that the randomness theory that the universe "popped" into existence randomly doesn't align with ...
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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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How does Kant's moral philosophy define "goodness" and evaluate the moral worth?
Philosophy.SE, this is my first time being here, hence please pardon my inexperience of phrasing the question.
I was discussing the moral philosophy of Kant vs the moral philosophy of the Christian ...
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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 ...
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Why should atheists bother debating theists?
I am currently digging into atheism/agnosticism (I will use atheism for terms of simplicity). Before, I was not religious, I really did not give the subject much thought. I am reading Richard Dawkins ...
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What does Kant mean by "Existence is not a predicate"?
What does Kant mean by "Existence is not a predicate"?
How does that invalidate the ontological arguments? and how can he show that it's not a predicate?
By predicate, I think he means a "property"...
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What is god for religious people?
In order to discuss with religious friends about god, I would like to know if there's some accepted objective definitions of God for main religions, even if belief is subjective.
For example, is he "...
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Is reductio ad absurdum a valid logical proof?
It strikes me that atheists often in the religion debate will try to characterize religion in a funny or silly way, often comparing religion to belief in fairies or unicorns or flying spaghetti ...
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What is the name behind the concept of believing in God based on this logical deduction?
From my memories, there is a well defined definition / concept / name for the following:
A scientist chose to believe in the Christian God because of the following logic:
If God does exist, then you ...
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Do messenger-based religions contradict the idea of an all wise God?
Many religions believe that their holy book is the literal word of God (and not the word of the messenger). For instance, the announcement of "new rules" for humanity, such as Quranic injunctions like ...
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To what extent was Galileo's trial a conflict between science and religion?
In an answer to another question (https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/a/50328/8160), I mentioned Galileo as an example of religion contradicting science. Several comments criticised that.
I posted ...
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Has anyone used analytic methods to attempt to dissolve the question of God's existence (as opposed to solving it)?
One of the main ideas of the analytic schools of philosophy (logical atomism, ordinary language philosophy,...) is that many philosophical problems can be dissolved - as opposed to resolved - upon ...
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Could there ever be evidence for an infinite being?
The God of Anselm is understood as "that than which nothing greater can be conceived." From this definition, God can be presumed to be omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, perfectly free, uncaused, ...
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Is the logical problem of evil still argued?
Mackie (in "The Miracle of Theism" for instance) has argued that the supposed incompatibility between an all-powerful, all-knowing, and morally perfect God and the existence of evil actually ...
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How might science (particularly theoretical physics) be able to approach god?
I've searched over the internet but I've found no satisfactory answer so far , How might science (Particularly theoretical physics) be able to approach god? If we make the assumption that a super-...
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Is it reasonable to arrive at a conclusion based on lack of evidence to the contrary?
I was having a discussion last night about my atheism, and it was suggested to me that agnostism is the only reasonable conclusion, as it leaves the door open for new information.
This made me think, ...
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