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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What would it take in a book to convince a rational person that it had been written by or directly inspired by a god?
Many of the world's religions are based on a book or text that adherents claim to have been written by or directly inspired by a god, perhaps omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent.
My question is ...
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Is the "omniscient-omnipotent-omnipresent" definition of God consistent?
God is commonly defined as an omniscient (infinite knowledge), omnipotent (unlimited power), omnipresent (present everywhere) entity.
Is there any logical inconsistency in this definition?
I have ...
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Does Pascal's Wager contain any logical flaws or fallacies?
Blaise Pascal's famous wager was that even if the existence of God cannot be determined through reason, a rational person should wager as though God exists, because living life accordingly has ...
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How can one not believe in god as the root cause of the universe?
How can you lack belief in the existence of god?
I define god here as prime cause. As the world is a sum of collections of events, causally linked to the past through time, then there must be a ...
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Does a negative claimant have a burden of proof?
I have often heard it said that the burden of proof is on the positive claimant but not on the one making a negative claim. A person claiming, "God exists" has a burden of proof but not a person ...
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What should a rational person accept as a miracle?
I was reading through this collection of short essays from theologians, scientists and thinkers each responding to the question "Does the Universe have a purpose?" which was suggested to me in a ...
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Asserting that Atheism and Theism are both faith based positions
I am recently testing an assertion that I have concluded namely that atheism is a faith based position just like theism is a faith based position.
The reason I arrived at this conclusion is that ...
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What is the purpose of the universe? [closed]
There are two extremes known as creationism vs evolutionism. Let's consider creationism for a moment, and imagine that God exists, and he/she has created us. The question that obsesses my mind after ...
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Does humanism's rejection of God necesitate relativism?
I had the following discussion on Programmers.SE:
@Peter Turner, Which is a good example of how religion warps morality, leading people to imagine their concerns are moral when they are profoundly ...
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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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Evil thoughts without actions?
Can a thought without a corresponding action be morally wrong?
More fully, under which approaches to morality do thoughts, in and of themselves,
carry moral significance?
In particular I'm looking ...
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Where is the weakness in the ontological proof for God's existence?
I read the ontological proof for God's existence. As much as I understood, it says that if you consider that existence is part of essence, then the most complete essence should also exist.
Now, I see ...
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If the universe has a beginning does that prove God exists?
It is curious to note that a eminent Physicist like Stephen Hawking thinks the universe has a beginning. This has some rather startling Religious implications
You can find the link here: http://www....
Neil Meyer
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Is there any rigorous philosophical basis for atheism?
Definition/Update
In what follows I use the term God to refer to an entity that has at least one of the following properties:
Has created the universe
Is omnipotent
Is omniscient
Approaches to ...
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Does the idea of being created imply the necessity for obedience to a creator?
If a scientist created intelligent life (biological, AI software, etc.), would that scientist have the right to dictate to that life a moral framework? Does the act of creation give implicit rights ...
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Does the impossibility of an infinite regress prove God exists?
I'm strictly discussing one aspect of God: God as the First Cause. I am excluding all other qualities of God defined by any religion or belief system -- including the notion of God as a sentient being....
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Is God either amoral or not omnipotent?
The usual (Christian) justification for suffering/evil in the world created by a benevolent God is freedom of the will. However, the more interesting question is not about the source of evil (which ...
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What is the point of creating for an omniscient being?
I read a book about determinism and free will that argued an all knowing / all powerful God and free will are incompatible, because if God knows our future then our actions are determined, hence no ...
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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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Does Alvin Plantinga's account of epistemic warrant require belief in God?
On Plantinga's account, true belief becomes knowledge under epistemic warrant; and epistemic warrant requires the 'proper functioning' of our cognitive faculties in the right kind of cognitive ...
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What impact has Douglas Hofstadter's superrationality had in terms of philosophy?
Superrational decision making is a type of rational decision making in which the players cooperate in a one-shot prisoner's dilemma without coordination, punishment, or magical thinking.
The idea is ...
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Using Special Pleading to invalidate first-cause argument regarding existence of God
I don't have enough rep to comment or participate in the thread that prompted this post but I wanted to discuss the argument posted here:
How can you disbelieve in god?
The most popular answer at ...
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If there is a God, how is that relevant to us?
If you consider the God of the bible to be real (talking about Christianity), then the existence of God is relevant to you because he can do miracles, change your life for the best, and allow you to ...
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Why should I believe my own conclusions?
Consider the metaphysical question of whether God exists (just as an example). There are, and have been throughout history, billions of atheists, billions of Christians, and billions of people with ...
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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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Term for people who believe God once existed but then disappeared?
Reading Wikipedia, I learnt
Agnosticism is the view that the existence of God, of the divine or the supernatural is unknown or unknowable.
Comment: Am I correct if I say an agnostics would say: &...
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Are there JTB epistemologies which reject the knowledge of some Gettier problems, but in which religious experiences still justify belief?
Such is my current worldview that there is no religious experience or numinous feeling that could justify faith in any god.
This is because, in the wake of a slew of discoveries about the ...
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Gödel's theorem and God
I have seen it argued that Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems have implications regarding the existence of God. Arguments for the existence of God run mostly along the lines: "Because of Gödel's Theorem, ...
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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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Are systems of logic that don't follow or extend garden-variety FOL possible?
As I know all humans share a unique logic and even less-educated people uses same common sense in their statements. For example, it is rational for anybody that if P is correct then P or Q is correct ...
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Does Wittgenstein's Tractatus establish serious bounds for discussions of the supernatural from a modern point of view?
In today's mathematics, we have many variants of logic (propositional, first order, higher order, fuzzy logic, etc.). These are all self-consistent formal systems that are based on some set of axioms.
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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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Can we logically prove that anything exists?
Suppose I want to prove that negative numbers exist. Well, I could easily do that using a mathematical proof. However, all I would be doing is adding another logical object to a list of known logical ...
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Is faith just a consolation for the common folk?
In reading Dostoevsky, I stumbled upon the perplexing question of faith being a mere consolation. And in spite of considering myself a believer, I still agree to this statement to a certain extent. ...
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Is watching an amputated limb regrow proof of the supernatural?
A typical challenge skeptics present when confronted with claims of alleged miracles is "why won't God Heal amputees?". But, would that do the job? Consider the following thought experiment: ...
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What confirms the claim that Friedrich Nietzsche was an atheist from a christian perspective?
In reading some of Nietzsche's works, his disappointment with humanity and God is evident to me. But so far I haven't seen any text by him where he explicitly endorses atheism. At the same time, many ...
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How can souls and angels be pure forms if only matter undergoes change?
In Thomas Aquinas' philosophy, angels are conceived as pure forms without any matter, like God, but contrary to God they still possess potentiality.
Although there is no composition of matter and ...
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How does Schopenhauer maintain idealism without God?
In Berkeley's idealism God holds the world together, enabling us to avoid chaos and experience a shared, orderly reality. But Schopenhauer is an idealist and an atheist. How can we then explain the ...
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In what way can theism and science co-exist?
Probably the most cliche question ever, but I never got a good answer so I'll ask it anyway:
How can science and theism co-exist? Even if we forget that the two have entirely different ideas about how ...
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How can being able to conceive of something "perfect" imply its existence?
In this question and reading about the ontological argument elsewhere I have discovered that there is (and has been) a lot of discussion about it, and that it was taken very seriously.
Can someone ...
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Why have philosophers historically defined God as omni-benevolent?
Whenever I read philosophy throughout history regarding God, I notice something I have issue with: Philosophers in most cases define god to be omnipotent, omniscient, and omni-benevolent.
The first ...
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Does punishment from god contradict the idea of free will?
In various religions it is often preached that god has given humans free will. But at the same time those religions preach that there is punishment for sinning.
Assuming a god does exist, and god ...
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Does God have the power to make identical universes through different means?
The easiest way to explain this question is with a thought experiment:
Consider God, the ultimate of everything, who is wholly omnipotent (all-powerful) and omniscient (all-knowing). Let's just say, ...
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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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Has religion adapted to modern cosmology and if so how?
I wonder how existing major religions follow modern cosmology. Is God a god of the planet Earth, or of the whole solar system, or of the entire universe? If he is the god of the whole universe, is he ...
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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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What are the philosophical implications of The Second Law of thermodynamics?
The Second Law of thermodynamics states that "The entropy of a closed system cannot decrease over time."
What are the philosophical implications of this statement, especially wrt to theology and ...
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Why does Aquinas argue that rationality of the universe points to a creator?
In the Summa, Aquinas, working from an Aristotelian philosophical position, argues that the rationality of the universe points to a creator. If I am correct in interpreting his work, he says that the ...
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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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Why are there so many religions and gods? [closed]
Why are there so many religions and gods all over the world? Come to think of it, when the idea spread, why did people develop different gods and beliefs rather than follow the same one?
If the idea ...
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