Philosophy of Religion
The philosophy of religion is considered as the philosophical study of the meaning and nature of religion as understood by human beings. It includes analyses of beliefs, concepts, arguments, and religious concepts. The philosophy study emphasizes the clarity of concepts and the precision of terms. It includes the assessment and investigation of the views and occurrences in the world that are considered as alternatives to the religious views on the world. The roots of the philosophy of religion, stretches back to the earliest form of philosophy. In the current era, the philosophy of religion has become the most vibrant forms of philosophy since it embraces the issues regarding the nature and extent of the human knowledge, the character of reality, and the basic morality foundations.
A cosmological argument uses a pattern of argumentation that is general and it makes an inference from certain alleged facts of the universe. It argues there is an existence of a unique being referred to as God. The argument proceeds from consideration of the existence and order that exists in the universe. Therefore, the cosmological argument studies the order of things and examines why things are the way they are in order to demonstrate the existence of God. This argument presents various interpretations to back the existence of the universe, which try to prove the existence of God as being the creator. One hand of the argument states that it arises from the curiosity of humans as to why there is something rather than nothing. It invokes a feeling or a concern for an explanation of what contingently exists. On the other hand of the argument, it raises important philosophical questions intrinsically about the causation, explanation, necessity, infinity, the nature, and the origin of the universe.
The earliest formulation of the cosmological version in the western philosophy is found in Plato’s Laws, but the classical argument is found in Aristotle’s Physics and Metaphysics. It can also be found in some religious philosophy like Islam, Arabic, and Indian. The general premise in all the argument revolves around the argument that everything that begins to exist require a cause for its beginning (Craig 1979). Both nontheists and theists have shown a healthy skepticism towards the argument over the past century. Some philosophers like Richard Gale contend that since the conclusion of the arguments ends in impossibilities in all versions, then the argument does not an example of sound reasoning. Others have proposed an inductive argument where it states its case for the existence of God. Richard Swinburne stated that it is very unlikely that the universe will exist uncaused, but rather it is more likely that God would exist uncaused. The existence of the universe therefore, is made comprehensible if there is a belief that it was brought about through the existence of God.
There are several contradictions from various philosophers that lie in this argument. Even though there are several contradictions that exists, there are several strengths to this argument that succeed to prove the existence of God. First is the idea that a larger being provides us with purpose to live our lives and it feels us with comfort in the world. The second strength is that this argument takes specific examples from people’s day-to-day lives. The chain of contingency in humans personifies that there is an existence of a higher being in the universe. Therefore, there exists a necessary being on which the contingent beings depend. Thirdly, many religions are in support of the argument since they believe in the universe having a creator. All these strengthen the belief that there is a God. The Big Bang theory supports this argument due to their similarity in explaining the beginning of the universe. Through this argument we are able to understand its reasoning through the various examples and strengthen the belief that there exists a God.
The teleological argument is also known as the design argument. Its central idea is that there exists so much details, design, and purpose in the world that we must suppose a creator. It also follows the argument that al the sophistication and the incredible detail that we observe and experience in nature cold not have occurred by chance. When observing the universe, people might see according to their predilection more order or disorder in varying proportions (Collins, 2003). There are a variety of explanations that come out of how the universe might have come into existence when we are trying to examine the universe and experiencing its complexity. There are different people with different reasoning when it comes to the existence of the universe. Some want an explanation of the phenomena backed up with evidence and reasoning, while others do not want the explanations, they accept the reasoning of others.
The major premise of all the teleological arguments for the existence of God, is that the world shows a purpose that is intelligent due to nature’s experienced obtained from the order, coherency, complexity, unity, and design. Therefore, there should exist an intelligent designer for us to account for the intelligent purpose and order that we observe. From this argument it can be seen that human artifacts are products of the intelligence design. The universe as we see it resemble the human artifacts therefore, they are of intelligence design. The universe still is gigantic and complex in comparison to the human artifacts. This leads to the conclusion that there probably is a powerful and a vastly intelligent designer who is the author of the universe.
Through history, the tension between foreknowledge and the human freedom was addressed in the context of religion. According to orthodox views, God is claimed to be omniscient but still He is supposed to give free will to humans. The many attempts to solve the contradiction that those views claimed attributed to God’s other property of being outside of time. This solution only focuses on God and leaves out the problem posed by human beings. Human beings have the foreknowledge of some events and behaviors hence a need to find a solution to this conundrum. It is clear that many philosophers and theologians are troubled by the notion of foreknowledge and human freedom. Many of them are keen on preserving the concept of free will viability. The dilemma between human free will and foreknowledge does not rest on a particular assumption and doesn’t require an analysis of the knowledge. Most accounts of human knowledge are fallibilist hence doesn’t require that the belief cannot be false.
There are several solutions to this problem. The first is the Aristotle solution which is the denial of the proposition having a truth value because no proposition about any contingent future is based on a truth value. This solution rejects the terms that compiles the set up of the problem. The main idea behind the solution is that the future contingent propositions are true when and only when the event about the proposition occurs. If the proposition does not occur at that specified time, then it goes on to say that the proposition becomes false. This solution collapses the truth into the necessity required and its falsehood into an impossibility of future propositions. The user of this solution is open to maintain that God has no beliefs about the future contingent because He does not infallibly know how it will turn out. This solution is also compatible with the characteristic of God being omniscience but restricts the range of His knowledge hence it has a disadvantage to its logic and religiousness.
The second solution is the Boethian solution. This solution denies that God believed the premise yesterday and not that God is infallibly nor that He believes the content of proposition. This solution originated from Boethius who was a philosopher and maintained that God has no temporal properties and He is not in time; therefore, He doesn’t have beliefs at a time. According to this solution it is a mistake to say that God had beliefs yesterday, has beliefs today, will have beliefs tomorrow, or will have beliefs on a specific day. The solution describes God’s cognitive grasp as being before the mind at once. Still it doesn’t make sense saying that the whole temporal reality is before the mind of God in a single temporal present. It is simply an atemporal present where He has a single grasp of all the events completely in the entire span of time.
Most objections of this solution in accordance to the dilemma of foreknowledge and the freedom of humans, focuses mainly on the idea of timelessness itself. It argues that either it does not make sense or that it is not compatible with other properties of God that are compelling religiously (Pike, 1965). If God is not considered in time, then the key issue will not be the past necessity, but the timeless realm necessity. This solution does not solve the theological fatalism problem on its own since the nature of the timeless realm is elusive to many. This intuition about the timeless realm is weaker than the notion of the past’s necessity. This is because the necessity of the past is rooted deeply in the human’s intuition of time hence there ceases to exist the intuitions about the timelessness realm.
The existence of suffering and evil in the world poses a serious challenge towards the belief of the existence of a God. If God were all-knowing, then its logical that He would know about the bad things that are going to happen in the world. If He were all-powerful, then He has the capacity to do something to prevent the bad things from happening. If He were morally perfect, then He would want to do something about it so that nothing bad happens. Still, we find ourselves living in a world filled with evil and suffering which seems to conflict with the theist claim that there exists God; this has come to be known as the problem of evil (Peterson, 2018).
There are several solutions that exists which solve the problem of evil. The first is that we can either deny that God is omnipotent or we can deny that there is evil in the world. We will have to choose between one and hope to know why such things exist. The second solution is that good in the world cannot exist without evil because the existence of evil is necessary to counterpart the good. This is not a good way to understand the relationship since there is an incoherence while trying to maximize the relative goodness with relative smallness. Its point of view is that every quality that exists requires that there should exist something that lacks quality. This solution is not of great importance since it does not explain the existence of the much evil that exists in the world (Conway, 1988).
The third solution is accepting that evil is a necessary means of bringing out the goodness in the world. The idea is that God uses the evil to bring out the goodness in people. An example is that we have do something painful like removing a tooth to fix the cavity. The third solution is that a world with some evil in it is better than a world without evil in it. It follows the logic that without some evil in the world, there wouldn’t exist some good things that we have come to appreciate in the world. An example is that without disease there won’t be advances in the medical field and the existence of sympathy feelings (Conway, 1988). The fourth solution is that evil is necessary for there to exist people’s free will. Some kinds of evil that exist is because of free actions of human beings and not as a result of God’s actions. The existence of free will is of greater good to humans and if there would cease to exist, then the world would be worse than when the various evils are present which can be confronted (Conway, 1988).
The philosophical forms of skepticism that exists lay claim that humans do not the propositions that we think that we know. As humans, we should be able to differentiate such form of skepticism from the ordinary kind. Skepticism has raised worries and concerns about the beliefs of humans. It has questions whether it is possible for the humans to determine which of their experiences are veridical (Næss, 1968). The several variations that exists in the different perceptions of the presumed views, raises the question of what is correct and what is wrong. The occurrence of experiences that are illusory in nature makes us question whether it possible for us to distinguish between illusions and reality. This needs a criterion to question and justify our answer, but how does one know how to choose the right criteria, and which criteria is right. The attempt to justify which criteria to use will lead to a regress or an arbitrarily stop. Through the questioning of our daily lives, skepticism makes us question our beliefs as humans.
Being a complete skeptic leads to denial or suspending of all human judgements about the ordinary beliefs of the daily lives. This will soon lead to the person being driven insane. According to some philosophers like John Austin, skepticism by humans is simply unnecessary. If knowledge is defined by the criteria of being meaningful, then reflection of the knowledge needs to be challenged, advanced, and justified, making it open to all. Skeptic tends to raise false problems that do not exist since there is a criterion for distinguishing illusory experiences from real ones (Luyten, 1963). Doubts about a problem should be resolved and knowledge then attained through the procedures used. After this there shouldn’t be further doubt, which will be termed as meaningless.
The man is composed of a body and soul. The relationship can be understood in different ways. The soul of a human is spiritual in nature and it can be related the matter of the human body which is flesh. The disproportion of the spirit and matter is great in that it is difficult to conceive how both of them can be joined to form a unit. Human beings come into existence through biological conception and birth. The existence of his soul is conditioned by his body. The body is an instrument of the soul since it appears as an expression of the soul. Such expressions are in the form of tears, language, fatigue, gestures, smile among others. These experiences are either positive or negative which are a mutual conditioning of the body and the soul. The whole bodily functions with the implications are assumed by the soul as its own. The soul therefore, does not participate in the body’s existence but the body is in the existence of the soul.
Reference
Craig, William Lane, 1979, The Kalām Cosmological Argument, London: Macmillan Press.
Collins, Robin, 2003. “Evidence for Fine-Tuning,” in God and Design: The Teleological Argument and Modern Science, edited by Neil A. Manson, 178–99. New York: Routledge.
Conway David A. (1988). “The Philosophical Problem of Evil,” Philosophy of Religion, 24: 35–66.
Luyten, N. (1963). The Significance of the Body in a Thomistic Anthropology. Philosophy Today, 7(3), 175–193.
Næss, A. (1968). Scepticism. New York: Humanities Press.
Peterson, J. B. (2018). 12 rules for life: An antidote to chaos. Toronto, ON: Random House.
Pike, Nelson, 1965, “Divine Omniscience and Voluntary Action,” The Philosophical Review, 74(1): 27–46.