New answers tagged philosophy-of-religion
1
As to Heaven, I don't expect anyone to be able to validly infer the laws of any non-physical world, real or imaginary, from the laws of the physical world.
Why would time in Heaven necessarily be physical time? Why expect a transition from the physical to the non-physical to follow the laws of the physical?
If heat death, particle decay and all the laws ...
-1
Just so it's said, the phrase 'most theists' is reductionistic, and a bit anti-intellectual. I mean, back in the year zero 'most people' believed that the earth was flat, but we don't take that as the standard for modern physics. We allow that physics can grow and change over time to become something more intellectually sophisticated, and we give precedence ...
1
If we add the premise that all innocent children go to heaven when they die, then it would be most ethical to murder as many children as possible to prevent them from sinning and possibly going to hell! Thus really, how can any theist justify not having and then murdering as many children as possible?
4
I think the actual beliefs of philosophers are more open to dualism than the "discredited" quote implies. The philosophical survey shows a majority of philosophers to be physicalists (56.5%), but with 27.1% non-physicalist, and 16.4% other -- there is certainly a lot of room for dualism and idealism among contemporary philosophy. http://consc.net/papers/...
0
Your argument is based on the following premises:
P1 - Every person who is exists AND goes to heaven represents an infinite amount of happiness.
P2 - More than 50% of everyone who is born will go to heaven.
Your conclusion is:
C - having as many children as possible is the greatest possible good, because it generates an infinite amount ...
2
That is a valid question, however, monotheistic religions are outside the scope of the kalam cosmological argument which only proves the existence of a necessary Creator.
Regarding the possibility of a "top-level universe" the reason we don't specify which universe the Creator created is because we don't know any besides our own.
Let me elaborate. We have ...
2
Islam, Christianity etc. claim that the changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless and infinitely powerful Creator directly created this universe and communicates directly and specifically for this universe. But this is not necessarily the case. A mortal being, simply with more technological abilities could have created, the universe?
The Kalam ...
0
I'm not sure this is exactly what you're asking, but it's very much possible to use Occam's razor with religion.
Of these two hypothesis:
Humans made a mix of the beliefs and legends of their time about the world and its origin, based on their current knowledge, it stuck orally, and eventually got written in a book that was then described as the original ...
4
Calvin, as Mauro said:
.... in
Calvin’s vastly influential 1559 Institutes of the Christian
Religion, he wrote, “There is within the human mind, and
indeed by natural instinct, an awareness of divinity.”
This awareness of divinity, or sensus divinitatis, is
“beyond dispute” according to Calvin. (Greg Cootsona, 'Science and the Sensus Divinitatis ...
1
Wasn't French at all. Sensus divinitatis, it turned out to be. Came from a French guy though.
0
Same reason why there are many languages: religions originate in various cultures independently and also tend to diverge where there is no sufficient central authority. Same as for the language, is must be some force keeping all in the same belief and persecuting heretics. Such a force is often missing, not strong enough, or does not reach far enough, while ...
0
More philosophically than theologically, the need for the supernatural arose as an answer to natural phenomena in the presence of ignorance. (I am making a distinction between questions of 1) why/how is there fire in the sky (lightning) and, 2) why/how am I and is there a purpose.)
Folks once thought that sneezes were the dispelling of the malevolent god ...
4
This is more of a question of psychology than it is philosophy, or even anthropology. The origins of this phenomenon come from man's evolved tendency to assume agency.
Consider in prehistoric times when early man hears a twig breaking, or something rustling in a forest. If he assumes it's a tiger and runs away, he survives whether or not there was actually ...
1
This is indeed a far more anthropological problem than philosophical: how did it come to be that way?
There can hardly be definitive answers to such questions. There may be evidence to believe one way or another, but often the same evidence may be interpreted in the opposite ways.
One, the most 'basic' view is that there were actually an ancestor religion (...
6
If there are no gods (or effectively no gods, i.e. absolutely no interaction, indirect or otherwise)
Who invented Calculus? Newton, of course. ...and Leibniz.
This is likely a common occurrence, although that's somewhat disputed.
There's only one Calculus, though, because there are things we all agree on, like 1+1=2. Calculus arises from this common ...
5
There is a school of thought sometimes called the Perennial Philosophy, which holds that all religions and all philosophies are reflections of a singer greater truth, which cannot be fully contained by any of them. An obvious ancestor of this theory is Plotinus' Neoplatonism (and, if you accept Plotinus' arguments, the work of Plato himself). The best-...
2
If you focus on religion-as-theism then the differences in nature, number, power, very existence of god(s) will ever be greater than the commonality. If OTOH you focus on religion-as-spirituality the commonality jumps out and the differences vanish.
Some examples from across world religions and teachers.
Hinduism
The pontiff Sankara acharya said :
It ...
0
Does the fact that there was prehistoric religion and that humans have displayed religious behaviour by worshipping gods long before the creation/rise of the Abrahamic religions (and the other major religious groups such as Hinduism, Buddhism and so forth) prove the fact all these religions are man made, thus false and hence a god does not exist?
The ...
10
This is an answer from the point of view of the Catholic Church (but which might also represent other Christian denominations).
The Catechism of the Catholic Church (a document which summarises the beliefs of the Catholic Church, emerging from centuries of theological scrutiny [notice theology tag in the question]), states the following:
I. The Desire ...
14
This question is probably more aligned with history or anthropology than philosophy.
People began believing in gods thousands of years ago, long before modern transportation and communication. How was a person living in Africa supposed to know about the existence of a distant tribe that would one day evolve into the Mongols, let alone what god(s) the tribe ...
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