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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If there was a sudden voice in the clouds saying “I am God”, would that be evidence?
I’ve been reading a lot about metaphysics and modality, especially in line with Graham Oppy’s work. One of his key premises behind preferring naturalism over theism is that when it comes to global ...
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According to bishop Berkeley how does trinitarian doctrine "God the Son (Jesus Christ)" apply to his subjective idealism? [closed]
Since Christian doctrine of Trinity defines: one God existing in three coequal, coeternal, consubstantial divine persons:God the Father, God the Son (Jesus Christ) and God the Holy Spirit, three ...
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Are there any positive arguments for atheism not rooted in self interest
I have watched many debates on the question of God's existence, and I have noticed that when the monotheist is asked to prove God's existence and they have arguments for God's existence and arguments ...
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If God created everything Who created GOD [closed]
I was born and raised in a communist country. When we came to the USA out of curiosity, we decided to get married in church.
We were curious about religion; we wanted to learn and see what we had ...
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What does mean “realitas objectiva” in scholastic ontology?
Descartes uses the term in his third meditation (Med. III) to demonstrate the existence of God, see a previous question.
The term “realitas objectiva” is a technical term from scholastic ontology.
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Can an immaterial being not be conscious?
Is it possible for an immaterial being or object with causal powers to not be conscious? Or is this a contradiction?
The only immaterial being I can conceive of to have causal powers is a conscious, ...
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Proof verification of god existence theorem
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My question was closed on math stack exchange. They advised me to post it here, but due to the lack of LaTeX formatting, I had to upload it as images. Apologies for that.
I am a first year student ...
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How does a necessary being fully explain contingent beings?
X contingent <=> there is W s.t. W -> S, where "->" is derivation, not material implication
X necessary <=> X not contingent
Theists claim, without further clarification, ...
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If God is omnipotent, can he make self-contradictory objects?
If God is omnipotent by definition, can he make self-contradictory objects such as colorless green ideas or something that exists and doesn't exist at the same time or long short objects.
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What is the reason for a god to create the world? [closed]
For the sake of the argument I make the assumption that the Jewish god Jahwe or gods from other religions like Brahma, Vishnu or Shiva actually exist and that one of them created the world.
Why did ...
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Pascal, Pensee #3 and a counterargument to natural theology
Here is the text of Pascal's Pensees No. 3 (in the Krailsheimer translation):
'There is change and succession in all things.' 'You are wrong, there is . . .' 'Why, do you not say yourself that the ...
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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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Must an omniscient being also be omnipotent? [duplicate]
In my opinion,yes.
Since you are omnipotent,you are greatest in all qualities and incomperable,which means if there is someone else omniscient (greatest in term of knowledge),you aren't omnipotent.
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Argument for God from quantum mechanics [closed]
The argument that my friend proposed is as follows.
1.) Quantum mechanics proposes inherent randomness. This implies a lack of determinism and thus a true probability of every event.
2.) If God exists,...
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Should proofs of God involve the infinitary language ℒ(∞,∞)?
If God is an infinite being (per Scotus, say), and if no finite number of steps in an argument is adequate to the scope of the divine majesty, then the strictures of monadic theism aside (God as a ...
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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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Can you mathematically prove the existence of God?
So I came across this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0hxb5UVaNE), which claims to prove the existence of God using math.
I then searched and found stuff like this: mathematician Kurt Gödel's ...
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Is theism a specific case of deism?
I believe that theism is a specific case of deism, because theists do believe in a god, like deists do. They just also go further and believe that this god is a personal god and does miracles, answers ...
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What does it mean for something to “break” infinite regress?
When it comes to the cosmological argument, proponents point out that a first cause is needed to stop an infinite regress of causes.
In epistemology, foundationalism is used to break the infinite ...
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What is the difference between necessary and in need of no explanation? [closed]
In a paper titled Is our existence in need of further explanation, Carlson argues that our universe, even if fine tuned, and even if granted to have a meaningfully very low probability, does not need ...
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Should you worship god if you don’t like Him but he was proven to be real? [closed]
I’ve seen some atheists casually talk about how they should still not worship the traditional Abrahamic God if He was proven to be real. This is because in their eyes, He is evil.
Many have even said ...
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Would an extremely unified being be able to issue more than one particular command?
Suppose that there is an actus purus, a being that is entirely active, impassible (nothing happens to this being), and which has no proper parts (its only part is itself entirely), not even abstract ...
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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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Is God simple or complex? How does this affect His plausibility?
Theologians have argued that God is simple, atleast in His form. Part of the reasoning behind this is that He takes no form given that He is taken to be immaterial.
At the same time, God is All ...
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First order logic and the cosmological argument
The way I see it, the cosmological argument, if one takes into consideration only what has been observed in the universe, goes something like this:
For everything in the universe, if it has a ...
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Why is the notion of life after death taken seriously in philosophy? [closed]
We obviously do know what happens after death. We die and that’s it. Why is there so much literature on this subject in philosophy and why does this concept gain special status?
We have determined, ...
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Proof of the existence of God?
Here it is, the long-awaited proof for the existence of God (for your consideration).
I have taken the liberty of defining discretely what God is, without which there is no question to be answered (...
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Implicit Models and Probability - are degrees of belief/truth/existence a complete free-for-all?
Or, to put it another way, as long as you model your statements using the grammatical framework of our modern logical idioms, is it appropriate practice to assign a probability to any utterance at all,...
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Is a god who cares about us more likely to exist than one who doesn’t?
Would it be reasonable to state this is true? Or do we just have no knowledge as to what kind of god or gods could exist?
What I find curious is that without this assumption, some of the traditional ...
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Is consciousness requiring a brain a good inductive argument against god?
The argument is simple.
1.) Every instance of consciousness/intelligence that we’ve observed requires something material
2.) God is assumed to be conscious and intelligent yet immaterial
3.) Given 1.) ...
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Kant's "interpret them as divine commands" remark
I was thinking about the idea of teleological/natural-law ethics as founded in the will of a divine power, and I thought that there would be (A) a purpose that this power had set for Itself alongside (...
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Should the length of time of absence of evidence count as evidence of absence for god?
Imagine a hypothetical universe where 1 million days have gone by.
Imagine another where 1 billion days have gone by.
Assume that in each case, one has found no direct evidence of god operating in the ...
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How can we exist?
Positing that God exists and is perfect (by the fact that he is the moral authority and is thought of as absolute perfection according to the general consensus); a change that he makes would mean that ...
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Does it make sense to consider God meaning is 0? [closed]
Foreword:
Mathematics is science, that can prove or disprove everything.
That is the meaning of Mathematics, prove or disprove any statement.
When somebody say something, that something are statements ...
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If the universe was inherently indeterministic, does it rule out an omniscient god?
If the universe is fundamentally indeterministic, and by Bell’s theorem, some hidden variable theories cannot exist, does this also mean that an omniscient god cannot exist?
If one cannot predict ...
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Moral arguments against dystheism (in the spirit of James Rachels)
Here's my almost-twenty-years-old memory of Rachels' argument (I read it in an introduction-to-ethics class at a community college):
If God existed, there would be a being more important, morally, ...
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Would a divine being having properties of multiple orders undermine the point of attributing divine simplicity to this being?
It seems as if debates about divine natures, among the "laity," are usually preoccupied with what have been called first-order properties of those natures. So we see the perennial quibbling ...
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How can one measure the reasonableness of god without probability?
What is the probability of god, assuming the concept of god is coherent? Many have argued for a probability. Others, including me, think that the notion of a probability of god is meaningless. This to ...
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If conciousness isn't physical does it imply god?
Think about it. The brain is designed for consciousness. Physical objects, other ones aren't conscious.
We know because they show no signs of consciousness. They can't move on their own, which is what ...
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How does one show that a theory that explains only one or a few data points is less likely to be true?
Let’s take the example of a coincidence. Suppose I pray to God to help me win two straight lotteries and I do. It would seem remarkable. From a personal standpoint, it might even seem so remarkable ...
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Panentheism and God as a real epiphenomenon
Just trying to think of God as something that explains nothing at all, as per Russell's Teapot, I think.
God must withdraw in order for creation to exist
claim's Cooper's panentheism. Does this mean ...
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If God is an immaterial being, is it impossible for Him to exist?
Most people, even atheists, often at least recognize the possibility that God may exist but claim that it is very improbable.
But if God is defined as an immaterial being, is the notion of that even ...
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Can we ever have evidence for theism at all?
Unless this god is physical and has effects on the world that are physical through a mechanism that is physical, how can we possibly ever have evidence for a god existing?
Many would argue that this ...
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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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Should our confidence in god decrease the longer we go without finding clear cut evidence of Him?
Every mystery we ever had to solve that was solved in some way was explained through natural causes. This includes the diversification of life, thunder, etc.
On the one hand, the large amount of time ...
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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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Can someone explain the terms "virtual cause" and "eminent cause"?
I would highly appreciate it if you could explain the two terms virtual and eminent. Please also refer me to a book or an article where this issue has been discussed, preferably extensively.
This ...
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Leibniz is famous for claiming that this is the best of all possible worlds. Did he explain how it is that we keep making it better via technology?
In his "Theodicy" (if I am not mistaken), Gottfried Leibniz famously claimed that this is the best of all possible worlds. Doesn't that imply that making the world a better place by ...
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Why is God, if He exists, assumed to be reasonable in most of philosophy?
Almost no one looks at a stone lying down and thinks that it specifically is in need of a special explanation. More specifically, most don’t get the impulse amounting to “there must have been a ...
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Can we rule out God as an explanation for the origin of life without knowing a natural explanation?
Is it reasonable to rule out God as an explanation for the mystery of the origin of life even though we do not have a current natural explanation? Note that this is under the assumption that we haven’...
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