Questions tagged [theology]
Theology is the field of study and analysis that treats of God and of God's attributes and relations to the universe; the study of divine things or religious truth; divinity.
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Does probability require a beginning? Can it apply to eternal things like god?
When it comes to the probability of something coming into fruition, a number is calculated based upon the future. The probability of a dice landing on 6 means that if one were to roll a dice in the ...
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Please recommend some works on criticism/critique of the Hindu scripture Bhagavad Gita?
Can someone recommend some scholarly works on critique / criticism of the Bhagavad Gita.
Specifically from its utilitarian and broad ethical framework perspectives.
Can it be said that just because ...
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Why is infinite regress commonly discussed in the context of theology or metaphysics, when it implies a rather peculiar model of the universe?
I have witnessed infinite regress being used to "prove God as impossible" with the following objections:
If god is the creator, who created god?
If the universe needs to be intelligently ...
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I have a philosophy question about omnipotence [closed]
If omnipotence existed would multiple entities posses it or would only a single one would? explain which one and why.
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How can God exist but allow such suffering and inequality? [duplicate]
I know this question may be have been asked innumerable times over the last 4,000 years but I'm curious to see how serious theists reconcile God's existence with the horrible suffering that a very ...
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Wouldn’t any set of fundamental constants in the universe be equal evidence for God compared to the current ones? [closed]
The fine tuning argument posits a designer because if certain parameters were changed a bit, life would not exist. The chance of this is considered to be very small so a designer is posited. I’m not ...
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Is an omniscient entity impossible?
Let's consider a thought experiment, where there is 'something' and 3 people are trying to understand it. The first person says it is a red ball, the 2nd person says it doesn't exist and is actually a ...
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Does the fine tuning argument rest upon a fallacy?
The fine tuning argument suggests that if certain universal constants were any different, life would not have arisen.
Since this is better explained by a God who wanted life to arise, it is taken as ...
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Why would a God (who can bring back or look after the dead) have a reason to think murder is wrong? [closed]
Apologists for various religions often say murder is obviously wrong. That often tracks if you imagine from the perspective of a human. However, I don't see how that could possibly be what a God would ...
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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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How do we forgive our debtors?
Lord's prayer says:
And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
In this sentence it seems assumed that we are capable to forgive "our debtors". I do not understand how we ...
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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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Does Kant think that an evil God is a contradiction?
At one point in Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, Kant says:
So it is not surprising that an Apostle represents this invisible enemy, who is known only through his operations upon us and ...
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Does Omnipotence of God imply nonexistence of physical laws
I have already asked a similar question about omniscience of God implying determinism. I was corrected by people that this is actually fatalism and that there are different forms of omniscience.
Here ...
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Can a coincidence be evidence of a god?
If I experience a coincidence or a coincidence happens in the world that seems to be at extremely low odds, does this imply that God exists? If it doesn’t imply that God exists, can it at least make ...
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What is the correct level of plausibility one should have with God? [closed]
This part is confusing me for a bit and I’m having trouble finding a correct answer to it.
Say you are an atheist and are playing a poker game and you get dealt two straight Royal flushes. You ...
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Justifying God's existence by our existence
I have a friend that claims to be theist because they exist and it's extremely unlikely for them (and the Universe, their experience of life, etc.) to exist. They say that it would be simpler (for ...
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Is the God of a monotheism necessarily omnipotent?
I was reading the SEP entry about the problem of evil, and there it says that What properties must something have if it is to be an appropriate object of worship, and if it is to provide reason for ...
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Why is an evil or irrational god seen as less likely than a good and rational one?
What makes certain kinds of gods more or less plausible in our heads?
Why is it that many people find it plausible that God may be helping someone in times of distress but find it implausible that a ...
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What is the difference between natural theology and transcendental theology?
According to wikipedia,
Natural theology, once also termed physico-theology, is a type of
theology and deism that seeks to provide arguments for theological
topics (such as the existence of a deity) ...
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Does this proof of God I made work? [closed]
I worked up this proof of God, and I want to know if the proof works. Here is the proof:
Something which is unlimited is limited by not having limits. If limits were to be imposed on something which ...
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Are various concepts of divine creation based on more basic/simpler/integrated concepts, or are they indefinitely diverse?
For example, take these four notions:
Creation by rearranging/ordering prime matter (AKA from preexisting substance).
By emanation.𓆉
"From nothing."
Modal "toggling": ...
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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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Does omniscience necessarily entail omnipotence?
Suppose an existing being has its existence in danger, but miraculously becomes omniscient, could this being save its existence? Or is there any case where this is impossible?
My main motivation for ...
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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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Reference requests re: maltheism
What are some philosophical texts on maltheism?
Maltheism is the belief that there is an Evil God who enjoys our suffering and is toying with us.
People also believe that there is a hell that was made ...
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Is the design answer to fine-tuning sufficiently complete?
If the problem of "fine tuning for life" (SEP) is that the precise value of some constants (and laws) in physics seems necessary to the emergence of life in our universe but at the same time ...
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What are the chances that an evil God does exist and send us to a hell for the sake of it? [closed]
This question has been on my mind as of late. I’m just curious about the nature of God and its existence.
Take religion out of the picture , Hypothetically, could it be possible that God or the entity ...
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Does God solve the problem of objective morality?
I’ve seen people talk about how if there’s no God, there is no source for your morality and that it would be based on your whims. It’s a pretty common way of thinking especially among theists.
But ...
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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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Doesn’t the fact that we can’t assign a probability to God in itself defeat any possible arguments for it?
By God here, I mean the traditional conception of God, not some potentially mindless first cause, which could for all we know even be a soup of chemicals.
Unless we can show that God as a Being is ...
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Does God kill happenstance?
So I'm big into playing videogames, and recently started reading lore of the Elder Scrolls. Some of which is pretty deep. I came across this in the 36 Lessons of Vivec and thought I'd ask for opinions....
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If we can't fully know a designer/supernatural being's intentions, how can we ever have enough evidence to suggest His/Her existence?
There is a common argument by atheists that we simply can't know God's intentions and is considered a weak point in the design argument. See Elliott Sober's paper on this subject for example: https://...
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Can we assign likelihoods to God’s actions?
A rebuttal to the design argument for God by Elliott Sober (see https://appearedtoblogly.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/sober-elliot-22the-design-argument22.pdf) is that we simply cannot know what God ...
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If a deity knowingly creates an extremely evil being, is that deity itself morally worse than if it had created only good beings? [closed]
If the Catholic God knew Lucifer would come out to be a disaster, and he did know, since he is omniscient, why he didn't he simply not create Lucifer and then create something better?
I know this ...
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Proving God and believing only provable things
This question has two, related, parts.
Part 1.
I recently have been on some discussions regarding proving God exists and proving that Jesus is really the son of God; intertwined with that, there was a ...
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The apparent and partial "sui-deicide" of the Christian god
For this topic and question, I've tried finding and learning from other sources online (for reasons of unintentional duplication here but more-so the intentional avoidance of posting something ...
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Can I agree to what I do not allow the sovereign?
Suppose we enter a social contract to bring about some power
Social contract arguments typically are that individuals have
consented, either explicitly or tacitly, to surrender some of their
freedoms ...
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Can someone formulate John Pollack's argument in understandable terms for laymen?
http://www.strongatheism.net/library/atheology/ontological_argument_for_nonexistence/
By the way, I am not asking whether this argument is sound or not. I just want to have it formulated in ...
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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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How do you evaluate likelihoods without direct independent evidence?
For example, say there is a lottery with 10 million people. Only one of them is a Christian. The Christian wins.
The P(Christian winning | chance) is 1 in 10 million.
The P(Christian winning | ...
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Has the “is-ought” problem finally met its match?
In the current online issue of Skeptic magazine, Gary Whittenberger publishes “Meta Ethics: Toward a Universal Ethics — How Science & Reason Can Give Us Objective Moral Truths Without God”. In the ...
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Can God change the past?
St. Augustine famously said that God is outside of time. And it is said that Peter Damian thought that God can change the past (I did not find the original source for this. If anyone knows and can ...
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Are there any other "omni-" paradoxes known similar to omnipotence?
The paradox related to omnipotence is well known - in one of the many possible forms it asks whether an omnipotent being can create a stone that it cannot lift.
While there are many similar paradoxes ...
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Why is perfection a good trait to have?
"Better a flawed diamond than a perfect pebble." - Confucius
I think the definition of perfection is "fully actualizes its own nature." According to Christian theology, it is a ...
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Is there any ackonowledgement and solution for the objection raised on ontological argument using problem of evil?
Ontological Argument, in its initial verison as presented by Anselm of Canterbury is as follows,
The first ontological argument in Western Christian tradition[i] was
proposed by Saint Anselm of ...
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Would tragedy exist if there was no evil but only good?
I watched Jordan Peterson's video about tragedy vs evil. It's been some time since but I thought about it a lot and now come to some questions that confuse me tremendously. I have the idea that ...
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Proving the existence of God [duplicate]
I was wondering whether anyone has done, or attempted to do, any work, trying to prove the existence of God. If so, scary works such work be centered about, what would it do, or consist of, or what ...
