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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What philosophers have considered humans as gods?
Have any reputable philosophers considered this concept? If so, which ones? And how did they account for responsibility and accountability in their frameworks?
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What's a name for the fallacy of concluding something must be based on truth because it is successful?
I have noticed a type of fallacious reasoning that conflates truth and success. For example, a company might assume their predictive models are correct because these models make the company more money....
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Is the Kalam cosmological argument scientifically provable?
Kalam Cosmological Argument:
(1) Everything that has a beginning of its existence has a cause of its existence.
(2) The universe has a beginning of its existence.
Therefore:
(3) The universe has a ...
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How does Ravi Zacharias' defence of the problem of evil jump from the need of a moral law giver to there being a God?
On first finding this defense by Zacharias, I was rather convinced, but upon reading it again, I have some doubts.
Firstly, here is the transcript from what he said about the problem of evil.
......
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How could an eternal God know that He is eternal? [closed]
In most religions, God is described as "eternal." In particular, in Christianity, God promises eternal life, a promise that seems to require His own eternity.
But how does He know that He is eternal ...
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Arguments/premises to disprove God's omniscience
I was thinking about validity of God's omniscience and stumbled upon three statements, which can be summarized as -
To be omniscient, a being would require to capture and store all the
data in the ...
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Could Ethical subjectivism be classified as Moral realism if we include God?
For the sake of my question, God = "an omnipotent being". I am not referring to any specific gods that come from any past or present religions.
Ethical subjectivism generally stands in opposition to ...
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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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Is it hypocritical to support democracy [as an idea] while being religious?
Define religiousness to be the believe in a supreme God such as the one from the Abrahamic religions.
Inherently, this is an anti-democratic state of affairs. God is the leader, God is the voice of ...
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How ancient is 'Philosophy'?
Firstly the word 'philosophy' traces back to the Ancient Greeks, but surely 'Wisdom' must have preceded the sophistication to record and preserve it. I believe that religion may have served as a ...
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Given the supplied definitions, which has broader scope: pantheism or panentheism?
Consider the two definitional statements below:
Pantheism is the claim that everything in the universe is part of an all-encompassing, immanent God.
Panentheism is the claim that the God who ...
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Authors who link religions to Plato's Noble lie
Noble Lie as taught by Plato is a lie created to keep the social order and harmony.
Are there any remarkable authors who understood religions as such?
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Why did Hartshorne believe in God?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Hartshorne
https://www.iep.utm.edu/hart-t-a/
Donald Wayne Viney and George W. Shields wrote that Charles Hartshorne denied justifying his own faith upon Anselm’...
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Universe as a container; Critique of the Kalam Cosmological Argument?
I was introduced to the Kalam Cosmological Argumant the other day (I know, late to the party), and it struck me that there seems to be a rather simple critique that I couldn't find an accounting of. ...
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How is the theory of divine revelation coherent?
There is a long history of Christian philosophy† drawing a distinction between knowledge gained from rational/empirical sources and knowledge from divine revelation. It seems Tertullian was one of the ...
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If the universe evolves according to mathematical laws, does that imply God exists?
I am an atheist. The theists I meet, mostly, try to place religion and science as opposite viewpoints and thus, I have never seen them argue as follows:
Science has been successful. Mathematical laws ...
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Can anybody list all the religion? Or the most commonly known. Also, what to they practice or follow? [closed]
I want to expend my knowledge toward understanding who I am as a human- being and what I belief in. Sometime I don't fully know where I stand and one way to start that is by simply narrowing down what ...
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Moral skepticism and "walking the talk"
It would seem that a substantial minority of philosophers agree with the moral anti-realist position that we have a problem going from "is" to "ought"--that there is no objective correlate of the ...
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Is Western atheism a kind of Protestant religion?
Alvin Plantinga, while setting up his evolutionary argument against naturalism in Where the Conflict Really Lies, writes (page 311):
Now it is not clear that naturalism, as it stands, is a religion;...
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Information about Satan [closed]
I'm looking for some information/books/papers/essays about the archetype of Satan as the Antagonist of our lives and not the villain. I've found some information but it is really hard to find ...
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'Thanks, but no thanks' - God and my existence
Problem: God (in an Abrahamic religion) created me without asking me if I would want this life. Now I don't want this life. If I commit suicide, I will burn in hell for eternity. I just want to cease ...
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The viability of holding a neo-Aristotelian metaphysics?
I want to ask a few questions and sort of vent my frustration as well as analyze an acknowledged ignorance of the subject matter on this post. I possess a minuscule but possibly still workable idea of ...
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If a false scientific theory is seemingly 'proven', and contributes to the progress of society, is proving it wrong detrimental?
If, some well known and extremely well respected scientist of the modern world makes a seemingly unmistakable correlation between x (eating 33 bananas a day for instance) and y (ease in anxiety). The ...
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How is it possible to be thankful for what you have?
Question:
How can one be thankful for what he has?
Details:
Many religions, philosophies and self-development lectures advocate people to become grateful for what they already have so that they can ...
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Does believing in a Christian God logically imply believing in miracles?
Assume you are a Christian and you believe that the descriptions of the life of Jesus are facts.
Things like turning water into wine magically, walking on water and other miracles seem to be ...
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Should all religions and science simply be called philosophies? [closed]
It could be argued that there are three great competing philosophies in the world right now. Democracy, Communism and Islam.
Now because one of these philosophies also includes the presumption of a ...
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If the bible says 'Thou shalt not judge' why do people judge LGBT lifestyle? [closed]
It's something that puzzles me. It's like the bible says one thing, but then many people turn it around and use it to bash other people with it.
I've also seen so-called Christians make lies, and the ...
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Authors on religions as mental traps
Religions use mental concepts such as final judgement, sin, salvation, redemption, condemnation, karma, purification of the soul etc. A person who has been indoctrinated for years with these concepts ...
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How similar were Epicureans and Stoics to Buddhism on suffering?
One of the main goals of the Buddhist philosophy/religion is to be free of suffering.
Buddhism identifies ego, desire, non acceptance of impermanence, ignorance and all negative emotions(because the ...
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Is faith necessary for optimism?
I’ve been pondering this awhile now. I think possibly the most important thing to me is intellectual honesty when it comes to things - tending to be a realist; anticipating what is most likely going ...
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Does anyone say that dying for a cause is always irrational? [closed]
Does anyone say that dying for a cause is always irrational? I wouldn't gloss Heidegger's freedom-toward-death, like that, but it might be broadly similar.
On the one hand, I would prefer to die ...
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If the deity is both omnipotent and omniscient can the deity then construct a riddle so difficult that even he can not solve it? [duplicate]
If he can't create a riddle he can't solve then he can't do everything so he is not omnipotent and if he can create a riddle he can't solve then he is not omniscient...So which is it?
(Ok I know it'...
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How widely accepted is the "presumption of atheism" among philosophers?
The presumption of atheism is the idea that in debates between theists and atheists, the burden of proof is on the theist to prove that God exists. This principle appears to be taken for granted in ...
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How to deal with self conflicting opinion with my potential religion on controversial issue?
I have conflicting opinion with my potential religion (Christian) on issues such as LGBT rights and euthanasia. Is it ethical and proper to continue to approach this religion? Could I interpret bible ...
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Wanted: literature on the ethics of creating a fake world (The morality of God)
WARNING (reader discretion is advised. Don't do these experiments if you are not familiar with existential philosophy or if you suffer from some mental disorder)
This question is subtle. I think ...
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Is it unfair to eternally punish people in hell if determinism is true?
If determinism happens to be true, then people just do what the laws of Physics governing the chemical interactions of neurons in their brains make them do. In such a scenario, wouldn't it be unfair ...
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What other theistic positions support open theism besides Christianity?
Open theism is a libertarian view of free will claiming that God’s omniscience does not extend to knowing the actual choices of free human agents. It is a theory of “dynamic omniscience”.
This ...
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Skepticism towards Nirvana, Moksha
Doesn't the Experience Machine thought experiment by Robert Nozick refute the idea of Nirvana and Moksha?
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Paradox with regards to detachment
Recently I got a chance to read 'Gita' where the central paradigm is 'Detachment', which goes absolutely against my intuition which I explain below.
Let's take example of Feynman, who was so ...
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How does somebody believe in anything out of science?
I fail to see how someone can believe in something such as a religion without any evidence of it being real when nowadays no one believes anything without seeing proof. I don't know if this goes for a ...
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What are the limits (if any) of God's Omnipotence [closed]
What can a Omnipotence God Do and what he can't ?
can he for example create logically incoherent things ?
Can god Create A being more powerful than he/it is ? Or
Can god Prove he doesn't Exist ? if ...
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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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Theory of everything and God
I always reach this point when I think about physics and God:
Assume that a theory of everything is found. And this ToE is a successful mathematical description of the entire universe.
EDIT: By "...
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Does Plantinga view God as knowing precisely what a human being will choose to do?
This question has been bothering me since I attempted an answer to Dmitry Ornatsky’s question about God’s omniscience: How does Plantinga's defense of free will align with omniscience
I think ...
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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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In nondualistic religions (Shaivism/Hinduism/New Age) why does consciousness manifest the world at all?
Hi I do not understand why there is no religion stacks exchange but this question is more philosophy anyhow.
Nondualistic eastern religions (Traditionally tantra movement, some Hinduism strands, ...
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How do religious pluralists decide on exclusion?
“Religious pluralism” here means believing that the teachings of the different religions are just variations of some “universal truth”… like John Hick did, for example.
Surely religious pluralists ...
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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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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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Why did Aldous Huxley not include the Zohar/Kabbalah in "The Perennial Philosophy"?
The Perennial Philosophy presents a universalist interpretation of the world's religions through a comparative study of a collection of mystical writings, from both Eastern and Western philosophies. ...
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