Antony Flew: The Existence and Belief of God
Antony Flew starts by telling the audience this story of two explorers
that accidentally came upon a garden in a jungle. In this garden, there were
many beautiful flowers and weeds. One explorer says, "some gardener must tend
this plot". While the other disagrees, "there is no gardener". So, these two
explorers tried to figure out who was right and who was wrong. They waited the
whole night, but no gardener was ever seen. Then the "Believer" said that there
must be a gardener, that he "is an invisible gardener". He tried everything he
could to convince to the "Sceptic" that he was right, barbed-wire, electrifying
fence, patrolling bloodhounds. But no gardener was ever found. Still the
"Believer" was not convinced. He gave the "Sceptic" many excuses as to why they
couldn't see the gardener. The "Sceptic" told him that he was crazy because
what started out as a simple assertion that there was a gardener, turned into
"an imaginary gardener".
This parable that Flew is using is clearly an analogy to the existence
and belief of God. The garden represents God, "…invisible, intangible,
insensible…". The "Sceptic" says there is no gardener, just as an atheist
denies the existence God. The "Believer" says there is a gardener, like a
theist telling everyone that God exists. The "Believer" tries to prove that
there was a planter, who planted the seeds for the flowers to grow. This
planter takes care of them, a parallelism to God supposedly taking care of "us".
Flew talks about assertions. He states that "what starts as an
assertion, that something exists…may be reduced step by step to an altogether
different status". He uses the example of how if one man were to talk about
sexual behavior, "another man prefers to talk of Aphrodite". They don't seem to
make sense. How can one confuse the idea of a sexual behavior with Aphrodite?
He also points out the fact that "a fine brash hypothesis may be killed by
inches, the death of a thousand qualifications". A good example of this is
when he said that "God loves us as a father loves his children". He states that
when we see a child dying of cancer, his "earthy father" is there, to help him,
nurture him, trying his best for his son. But his "Heavenly Father", God, is no
where to be found, that he "reveals no obvious sign of concern". The...
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...arden in which I
find myself, that I am unable to share the explorers' detachment," said Hare.
He tried to point out that if he was in the same situation, he would not share
the same views as the explorers. Which is a belief in the g ardener, a belief
in God.
Both of these man had some strong viewpoints. Flew states, if one
asserts something, then one must deny something. What Hare is trying to say is
that, there is two sides to every idea or "assertions", a blik. That that is a
sane blik and a insane blik. Most people have the sane one and those who don't
share this view is point as lunatics. But no one is not trying to deny
something here. The person with the insane blik is not wrong or that he's not
trying to deny something, it's just that his views are different. Flew states,
"what would have to occur or to have occurred to constitute for you a disproof
of the love of, or of the existence of, God?" Hare's reply to this question is
that he calls this "completely victorious." Nothing have to occur because those
who does not share this belief in God have an insane blik. They are not trying
to deny that God doesn't but rather that they views are just different.
Upon analyzing his experiment, Stanley Milgram, a Yale psychologist, concludes that people will drive to great lengths to obey orders given by a higher authority. The experiment, which included ordinary people delivering “shocks” to an unknown subject, has raised many questions in the psychological world. Diana Baumrind, a psychologist at the University of California and one of Milgram’s colleagues, attacks Milgram’s ethics after he completes his experiment in her review. She deems Milgram as being unethical towards the subjects he uses for testing and claims that his experiment is irrelevant to obedience. In contrast, Ian Parker, a writer for New Yorker and Human Sciences, asserts Milgram’s experiments hold validity in the psychological world. While Baumrind focuses on Milgram’s ethics, Parker concentrates more on the reactions, both immediate and long-term, to his experiments.
The question of God’s existence has been debated through the history of man, with every philosopher from Socrates to Immanuel Kant weighing in on the debate. So great has this topic become that numerous proofs have been invented and utilized to prove or disprove God’s existence. Yet no answer still has been reached, leaving me to wonder if any answer at all is possible. So I will try in this paper to see if it is possible to philosophically prove God’s existence.
In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. However, even after centuries later, little is truly known of the mysterious voyage and findings of the new world.1 By examining “Letter from Columbus to Luis Santangel”, one can further contextualize the events of Columbus' exploration of the New World. The letter uncovers Columbus' subtle hints of his true intentions and exposes his exaggerated tone that catered to his lavish demands with Spain. Likewise, The Columbian Voyage Map read in accordance with the letter helps the reader track Columbus' first, second, third, and fourth voyage to the New World carefully and conveniently. Thus, the letter and map's rarity and description render invaluable insight into Columbus' intentionality of the New World and its indigenous inhabitants.
In the short story “Big Boy Leaves Home,” Big Boy loses his adolescent innocence due to the stereotypes society has created about African Americans. The story is about a young man who finds himself in a situation completely blown out of proportion due to his skin
that everyone has a moral duty only to believe what is supported by reliable evidence
In the classic story of “Cinderella”, a beautiful young woman is treated badly but in the end lives happily ever after with a prince. The French version of “Cinderella” is romantic and happy, where the Cinderella character forgives her bad stepsisters by finding them husbands and allowing them to live in the palace with her and the prince. However, in the German version of “Cinderella” by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, the stepsisters are violently punished for mistreating Cinderella.
what is normal and usual; that it is not usual to be able to describe
In 1961, Stanley Milgram, a Yale University Psychologist conducted a variety of social psychology experiments on obedience to authority figures. His experiments involved three individuals, one of them was a volunteer who played the role of the teacher, one was an actor who played the role of the student, and one was the experimenter who played the role of the authority. The teacher was instructed by the authority to administrate shocks to the student (who claimed to have a heart condition) whenever they answered a question incorrectly. The voltage of the shock would go up after every wrong answer. The experimenter would then instruct the teacher to administrate higher voltages even though pain was being imposed. The teacher would then have to make a choice between his morals and values or the choice of the authority figure. The point of the experiment was to try to comprehend just how far an individual would continue when being ordered by an individual in a trench coat to electrically shock another human being for getting questions incorrect. The experiment consisted of administrating pain to different people and proved that ordinary people will obey people with authority. Some of the various reasons are that the experimenter was wearing a trench coat, fear of the consequences for not cooperating, the experiments were conducted in Yale University a place of prestige, and the authority f...
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As the world has transformed and progressed throughout history, so have its stories and legends, namely the infamous tale of Cinderella. With countless versions and adaptations, numerous authors from around the world have written this beauty’s tale with their own twists and additions to it. And while many may have a unique or interesting way of telling her story, Anne Sexton and The Brother’s Grimm’s Cinderellas show the effects cultures from different time periods can have on a timeless tale, effects such as changing the story’s moral. While Sexton chooses to keep some elements of her version, such as the story, the same as the Brothers Grimm version, she changes the format and context, and adds her own commentary to transform the story’s
The first term, ascribed status plays a large role in the analysis. For example, it is the social status a person is assigned at birth or assumed involuntarily later in life. It is a position that is neither earned nor chosen, but assigned. This term depicts the two families immensely. The mother and father in both families came from poor backgrounds and lived through struggle their entire lives. This plays a large role in life because it already puts you behind people who come from successful backgrounds. It is not easy to work your way back out of poverty if you were born into it. Nobody asks to live that way, but some are just assigned to live that way, and cannot do anything about it to fix it.
Thomas Aquinas tries to prove the existence of God using motion. In his famous work Summa Contra Gentiles, he examines the physical universe in terms of its motion. Thus they are implied to be a cosmological argument. Aquinas’ version of the cosmological argument entails,
There is a lot of argument about does God exist or not exist. It was