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 human conciousness "prove" that God exists?
I'm aware this question assumes our universe isn't an infinite regression.
The logic is as follows:
A is the source of everything. B exists. B came from A. Therefore B is an attribute of A.
A being ...
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How would Leibniz respond to this objection to his argument for God's existence?
Leibniz argues for the existence of a necessary being using the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR).
Any contingent fact about the world must have an explanation. (Principle of sufficient reason)
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Are atheists taking atheism by faith? [duplicate]
The problem with Atheism, is the fact that they can't prove their claims for which god doesn't exist, but where is the evidence for that? In which they shift the burden of proof, to theists that are ...
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Is Sam Harris's view of morality innovating? What philosophers innovated specifics on morality?
Sam Harris in his book, The moral landscape (2010), has certainly ignited discussions on morality, but did Sam Harris create his view or popularize someone else's?
side== I am also curious if anyone ...
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What are transcendental arguments logically, and are moral arguments for God of this kind?
SEP has this to say on transcendental arguments: "As standardly conceived, transcendental arguments are taken to be distinctive in involving a certain sort of claim, namely that X is a necessary ...
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Would an all-powerful God still be all-powerful if they can never do evil?
God is perfectly good, and so never does any evil. God is also all-powerful, so God can do anything that is logically possible.
But, it's logically possible for there to be a bad world (a world with ...
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Weakness of Spinoza's ontological argument
The ontological arguments of God are many, the weaknesses they suffer can be found in this reference.
My goal here is to focus on Spinoza’s ontological argument.
Spinoza's argument is different from ...
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How can God be in the genus of efficient causes?
In Summa Theologica I q. 3 a. 5 "Whether God is contained in a genus?", Aquinas says that if God were in a genus, it would be the genus of "being," but being cannot be the genus of anything (cf. ...
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Are angels rational or irrational beings? [closed]
In reading Odo Casel's "The Mystery of Christian Worship" I found this:
... For him the realm of irrational spirits does not exist: The beyond, the eternity. There is only matter, to be manipulated....
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What does St.Thomas Aquinas teach about state of the univerese after renewal in Summa Theologica?
In Summa Theologica suppl.q.91, St.Thomas teaches clearly about the state of the world after its renewal. In article 5 of the same question I said above, he says plants and animals will not remain in ...
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Why does an explanation involving a "person" appeal?
If the common source of the natural order and the karmic order is
impersonal, we are still in need of some account of how and why it
would be such as to produce these two quite different sorts of ...
user38026
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Does omnipotence entail omniscience?
Twice this week, in academic works, I came across the "idea" that omnipotence implies omniscience. I don't remember the first place I encountered it (I'm trying to remember, and if I do I'll add it to ...
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How does Buddhist soteriology link to the first cause argument?
Aquinas argued that the observable order of causation is not
self-explanatory. It can only be accounted for by the existence of a
first cause; this first cause, however, must not be considered ...
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What are some non-traditional arguments for God's existence?
By traditional arguments, I mean argument widely and traditionally used for existence of God like:
Cosmological argument,
Teleological argument,
Moral argument,
Ontological argument,
Pragmatic ...
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Is classical theism 'spiritually' equivalent to atheism?
Classical theists believe that God is simple, in the sense described by the doctrine of divine simplicity. God has no parts, has no distinct essences, God's essence is God's existence, God is pure ...
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Where did Suárez say the principle of non-contradiction does not apply to the Trinity?
Fr. Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., says, in Le Sens du Mystère et le Clair-Obscur Intellectuel: Nature et Surnaturel p. 128 fn. 1 (Engl. transl. p. 142 fn. 41):
St. Thomas never would have ...
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Boethius, Logical Necessity, and Accidental Necessity: A Solution to Free Will and Foreknowledge?
In his classic book, the Consolation of Philosophy (Book V), Boethius attempts to make an argument that libertarian free will and [divine] foreknowledge are not incompatible. His argument goes ...
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What did Gödel mean by "positive property" in his ontological argument?
In his ontological proof, Gödel states (Axiom 1)
If a property is positive, then its negation is not positive.
What does he meant by this term? I have come across authors who replace this notion ...
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Is God's existence either impossible or necessary?
This is meant as a supplement to a modal ontological argument to show that God's existence is either logically impossible or necessary. Am I committing a fallacy or a logical error of some kind or ...
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Is process philosophy at odds with orthodox Christian theology?
Process philosophy regards change, as opposed to stasis, as the basis of reality. Does this contradict orthodox Christian theology, such as Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and the various Protestant ...
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How to evaluate the impersonal God and the personal God? [closed]
How to evaluate the impersonal God and the personal God?
Aristotle holds the former view, while Aquinas, Islam and Judaism in the Middle Ages hold the latter view.
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What is the difference between Theology and philosophy of Religion?
Wikipedia explains it as follows
The philosophy of religion has been distinguished from theology by pointing out that, for theology, "its critical reflections are based on religious convictions". ...
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According to Aquinas, why doesn't God need a cause but everything else does? Why would God resolve the problem of infinite regress?
Do you think the explanation for the universe could be something physical or does it have to be metaphysical?
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Did God have a choice in creating our universe?
Einstein asked this question originally :
What really interests me is whether God could have created the world any differently; in other words, whether the requirement of logical simplicity admits ...
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Is this argument valid, and will the God accept this motivation of praying?
To me, given my limited religious understanding, it is really probable for Islam to be true, but I am not 100% sure. I just don't know the truth. However, I see this to be problematic: this not being ...
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Is "lacking belief in X" equivalent to "belief in the nonexistence of X"?
Often I see atheists say they do not have an active belief in the nonexistence of God, only a lack of belief in God.
I see where they are coming from, but I have a suspicion that they're equivalent.
...
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Are there any scholarly critiques of Edward Feser's work?
Have there been any critiques of Feser in academia, particularly philosophy of religion? I'd also like to see if there have been critiques of Aristotelian-Thomism which is what Feser's framework is ...
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What is the difference between the Umma and the Ecclesia?
What is the difference between the Umma and the Ecclesia?
I’m looking for answers only from people who are versed in comparative theology and can give proper, well-thought-out explanations, not just ...
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Should we accept the PSR on the grounds of cognitive faculty?
Feser said in his publication, "Scholastic Metaphysics - A Contemporary Introduction" that if we reject the PSR, we're undermining any possibility of rational inquiry. Also in Pruss' paper, "PSR and ...
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What are all attributes of God and what is the manner of knowing them according to Aquinas?
What are all of the divine attributes, and in which way is each of them predicted of God (univocal, equivocal or analogical way; if in an analogical way, what kind of analogy)?
An answer should be ...
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Truth outside of god
I am looking for resources about this matter, thank you for your help!
I start from a theist viewpoint (god exists). God created existence, before that, though, it is true that he was "there", but ...
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The Full Scope of Sloth [closed]
Disclaimer one: I am not a Christian, nor do I have any religious agendas with this post.
Disclaimer two: This is a quite lengthy post, with a considerable amount of preliminary stuff, and also a few ...
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What does Nietzsche refer to with the "backworldsmen"?
I'm a rookie to philosophical thinking but trying my best to understand the concepts. I'd be appreciated if you could enlighten me about this:
In Chapter 3 of Thus Spake Zarathustra, he is addressing ...
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Is there a class of arguments for God that does not rely on knowledge of His work -- the world?
I was just having a discussion in comments (I won't recreate its details) that has convinced me that we can't know God through his work, through the world He is said to have created. Is there a class ...
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What tools exist to provide constitutive phenomenological analysis of religious experiences?
Considering descriptions of religious experiences, there is a call for abstracts for discussion in October 2019 and I’m looking for what tools may exist to analyze these experiences in a logical and ...
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If God does not exist then would God's heaven be classified as an "empty world"?
If God does not exist then would God's heaven, in the phrase "God is in his heaven" be classified as an "empty world"?
I have only encountered the phrase "empty world" in the SEP article on ...
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What is the meaning of Logos?
While trying to ascertain a better understanding on the topic of Logos, I interpret from a offering a more modern view that it is "a logic that recycles God into a mind hiding through sign-...
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Is this logical? Topic on death being a black box
People say death is a black box, that you can know nothing about it, but is the following logical?
If you believe real time travel is possible maybe in the future and someone eventually may be able ...
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Divine simplicity vs. divine aseity
Although the concept of divine simplicity is so poetic that I almost wish I could believe it, as it turns out, I can't believe it. Here's my argument:
[Assumption for reductio] The creatrix is a se ...
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Does Gandhi's paraphrase of Augustine's phrase distort its meaning?
His [St. Augustine's] Letter 211 (c. 424) contains the phrase Cum
dilectione hominum et odio vitiorum, which translates roughly to “With
love for mankind and hatred of sins.” The phrase has become ...
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Theology of set theory
Absolute space and time are said to emanate from Aristotle. The Church acted as custodian of these concepts from early on up to recent times.
I am thinking about another issue, namely that of ...
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What if Euthyphro gave the opposite answer?
As part of a course I am taking, I was asked to continue the dialogue Euthyphro as if Euthyphro had given the opposite response to Plato's famous question:
Is the pious loved by the gods because it ...
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Transcendental and non-transcendental god and objectivism
Objectivism rejects transcendence as it is not part of the objective world that exists and which we can explore. But what if we put time in this equation?
As we see through the years, many phenomena ...
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Does God still know what He has forgotten?
The following is from the Christian text Hebrews 10:15-17: [my emphasis]
15 The Holy Spirit also testifies to us about this. First he says:
16 “This is the covenant I will make with them
...
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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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What falls under Hegel's concept of "absolute knowledge": does that include deductive logic and scientific explanation?
In the wikipedia page for Hegel's Science of Logic, it states:
According to Hegel, logic is the form taken by the science of thinking
in general. He thought that, as it had hitherto been ...
user38026
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Academic papers/longer works on the refutation of God?
The subtitle would be: "or the inevitable arguments which follow said refutation."
Almost all of the work in the atheist department is by pop-culture philosophers like Christopher Hitchens or Sam ...
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Was there a potentiality for God to create a perfect being? [closed]
I have read some people argue that if there was a God that created, his creation was imperfect because we have a potentiality and thus making him act in an imperfect way, and not being pure actuality. ...
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Is existence essential to God?
Thomas Aquinas said that God was absolute perfect, God being pure actuality and had no potentiality. If there was a time where there wasn't an existence, then God would have a potentiality and not ...
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Are all explanations either personal or scientific?
In A New Cosmological Argument, Richard Gale and Alexander Pruss offer up a cosmological argument for a personal God, from the weak principle of sufficient reason (among other premises, but the WPSR ...
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