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Justin Hedberg
Professor Lockhart
Phil 201
October 7, 2015
McCloskey: Atheist View In the article of McCloskey, called “On Being an Atheist” explains that atheism is a more logical route to choose than that of Christianity. McCloskey argues the three theistic views which are cosmological, teleological, and design arguments. McCloskey explains about the evil that is prominent in the world which God had created. His points concluded that it was illogical to live by a standard of faith. It is unnecessary to live by the arguments or proofs because they do not play the role in believing in God. In McCloskey’s article he refers that theist do not come to God for the basis of having a religious faith but allow religion to feel the void of other
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He considers these principles to be reasons for moving a theist to theism. This would contradict how most theist would not hold these proofs to be reliable. The attempt to dispute the arguments for not believing in God are not really worth attempting. If a theist doesn’t hold the proofs as they are valued what is the point in arguing with a theist? McCloskey is motivated to prove a point in which some are not entirely interested in doing. Therefore, he is trying to wage war over this perplexed idea. McCloskey argues the cosmological argument was the argument for the creation of the world. McCloskey states that believing in an uncaused first cause of the complex universe was a problem because there is nothing that forces us beings to the conclusion. A cause-effect rationalization is most understandable between things that …show more content…
As McCloskey discussed he mentions us to being a rational automaton, that’s if freedom were removed from history. We as individuals would have to have predestined knowledge to know everything in order to perform such action. His view on Atheism is peaceful to McCloskey. The act of evil in which McCloskey entails is of God. He holds the beliefs of that evil are condemned to a being. That all evils such as accidental and moral evils are all attributed to one being. If there is no pattern to life itself, how can we further understand creation or its creator? Laws are given for a purpose. Evil is created by its free will of man, who was in which created by a creator. It would be a joke for God to commence an operation such as creating things if they didn’t have purpose or value we would be like robots. It is the act of a supreme, loving God in which made creation to determine its outcome. I hold recognition to an almighty creator in which allows me to be free and know what is best for me and that I can recognize the way God’s actions are because of how he created
Be denying the importance of nature God’s creation Christians are participating in a form of blasphemy
Within William Rowe’s Chapter two of “The Cosmological Argument”, Rowe reconstructs Samuel Clark's Cosmological Argument by making explicit the way in which the Principle of Sufficient Reason, or PSR, operates in the argument as well as providing contradictions of two important criticisms from Rowe’s argument.
In the article,"An Atheist Manifesto," by Sam Harris he discusses how God does not exisit because if he did exist there would not be any evil in this world. As I was reading this article I found it very intresting how Harris is so negative and believes that everything that happens is God's fault. "....at this very moment that an all-powerful and all-loving God is watching over them and their family. Are they right to believe this? Is it good that they believe this?No,.." stated Harris. He should understand that God gave us a gift called "free will," and with that gift it comes with a price that we should live with the consequeces by the descisions we make as human beings. I liked this article because it showed me the other side of the coin
First off, The Cosmological Argument was developed by St. Thomas Aquinas in 1274 through his work entitled Summa Theologica (otherwise known as Five Ways). Its purpose was to prove God’s existence through sensory perception. In Part One, Article Three of Prima Pars, Aquinas states that in order to debate, one must become involved in the opposing argument, then afterwards argue their view. In this case, one must look at both the argument for God’s existence (Theism) and for God’s non-existence (Atheism) in order to truly understand the argument that they are arguing for or against. The cosmological argument is divided into three parts, each containing varying sub-arguments:
Mackie in his paper Evil and Omnipotence, constructs an argument against the idea of the possibility of a God existing that has the characteristics laid out by the main religions: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. These characteristics include that God is omnipotent, or He is capable of stopping evil, and omni benevolent, or He wants to eliminate evil and He is entirely good. Mackie systematically goes through his logical thought process as well as his response to any type of criticism or alternative solution that might arise. The main point of his argument is to establish that God, as constructed by Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, could not possibly exist. It is one of the most highly regarded arguments towards atheism.
Throughout our short time on Earth, a very common thought and feeling that many people have is, “What’s out there? Why are we here? What made us?” etc. This natural human tendency to ask these questions lead some people draw conclusions that may or may not be there. A belief I’ve held for years is the atheistic one. Christians, as well as many other moral institutions would refer to an atheist as someone who doesn’t believe in God. Where this may be the case, I feel as though this definition is a lazy and non-intellectual one. Rather I tend to believe that atheism is the lack of a belief in a given higher power. To that, I will reference a quote from Richard Dawkins, “I am an atheist with respect to around 2700 Gods, you (a christian) on the other hand are an atheist with respect to around 2699 Gods.” This is a quintessential and distinguishable difference between the two beliefs, or lack there of. What’s interesting in what Dawkins was saying was that you could infer that with this definition, Christians are statistically about as atheist as atheists are. Now with that being explained, one would start to bring in to frame the probability and the odds that maybe in fact the Christian God is the one real God vs. the chances that maybe another factor has been played into this belief.
Penn Jillette is a very well-known atheist and a research fellow at Cato Institute and has lectured at Oxford and MIT. He also authored an article entitled, “There is no God.” In this article, Jillette declares himself to be “beyond atheism.” He argues that everyone needs to take a step back and start with no belief in God. Then, we can all start to look for evidence of God. Even Jillette believes that whatever conclusion we end up with, it has to be “some leap of faith that helps one see life’s big picture, some rules to live by.” Jillette's conclusion is simply “This I believe: I believe there is no God.” The rest of the article he goes on to explain that this decision has informed every moment of his life. He concludes his article by stating that believing there is no God gives him more room for belief in family, people, love, truth, and beauty.
The Canadian philosopher J.L. Schellenberg has recently put forward an argument for atheism based on the idea that God is supposed to be perfectly loving and so would not permit people to be deprived of awareness of his existence. If such a deity were to exist, then, he would do something to reveal his existence clearly to people, thereby causing them to become theists. Thus, the fact that there are so many non-theists in the world becomes good reason to deny the existence of God conceived of in the given way. I first raise objections to Schellenberg’s formulation of the argument and then suggest some improvements. My main improvement is to include among the divine attributes the property of strongly desiring humanity’s love. Since to love God requires at least believing that he exists, if God were to exist, he must want widespread theistic belief. The fact that so many people lack such belief becomes a good argument for atheism with respect to God conceived of in the given way. Some objections to this line of reasoning are considered, in particular the claim that God refrains from revealing himself to people in order to avoid interfering with their free will or to avoid eliciting inappropriate responses from them or some other (unknown) purpose. An attempt is made to refute each of these objections.
First of all, agnostics tend to use emotional arguments rather than rational ones. This is prominent in the film, God’s Not Dead. Professor Raddison was an atheist through and through, which cause him to mistreat his Christian student. Raddison states, “I hate God” and his student, Josh Wheaton relies, “How can you hate someone that doesn’t exist?” Furthermore, for one to claim that the universe simply appeared out of nowhere and was created from nothing, by nothing is extremely flawed reasoning. Agnostics will swear up and down that science is the absolute truth, yet they continue to argue that something can be created from nothing; it is well known that is invalid. Using mathematics, the most accurate branch of science, one can easily disprove that argument. For example, 8 ÷ 0=undefined, meaning it is impossible. This clearly displays that something cannot be created from nothing. Every effect must first have a cause and every existence in our world is the result of a cause that permitted its existence. Such as humans, nobody can zap a baby into existence, it must first be created. In addition, the theistic God is an uncaused God, which many agnostics fail to comprehend. Therefore, according to a theist, God is both antecedent and eternal; he is neither caused nor uncaused. Similar to matter,
The cosmological argument is the existence of God, arguing that the possibility of each existing and the domain collected of such elements in this universe. The inquiry is that 'for what reason does anything exist? Why as opposed to nothing? In this paper, I will explain for what reason does everything need cause? Why is God thought to be the principal cause?
Theology is an intentionally reflective endeavor. Every day we reflect upon the real, vital, and true experience of the benevolent God that exists. We as humans tend to be social beings, and being so we communicate our beliefs with one another in order to validate ourselves. Furthermore atheism has many forms, three of the most popular atheistic beliefs include: scientific atheism, humanistic atheism and the most popular one being protest atheism. Scientific atheism is the idea that science is the answer for everything and god is not existent. The humanistic approach states that society is self-sufficient; therefore God is not needed for survival. Therefore how could he exist? The position that I will argue in this paper is the pessimistic idea of protest atheism.
Religion is the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods, a particular system of faith and worship or a pursuit or interest followed with great devotion (Oxford Dictionary, 2014). From religion, many new groups, communities and further derived religions have formed. Closely related to religion and with endless controversies surrounding it’s classification as a religion is the concept of Atheism- which is defined as the disbelief or rejection of a deity. Descending from this is a social and political movement in favour of secularism known as New Atheism. Understanding the historical content concerning the emergence of atheism, this essay will then address how various aspects within the field inclusive the goals, structures and approaches have emerged and developed over time in comparison to the original atheist ideals.
Meynell's strategy in his chapter on the relevance of theism, he begins by arguing that belief in God does have specifically moral effects upon those who have. It enables us to act upon our beliefs about what it is right for us to do, and enables us to correct our pressing and depressing tendencies toward self-deception and self-interest. And he then argues that philosophical challenges to this view of the relations between theism and right action fail. The principal challenge he has in mind is the claim that Socrates' question in the Euthyphro-whether the gods love what is good because it is good, or whether what they love is good merely because they love it- cannot be answered. The main point of the chapter is not that theists are better people than atheists. It is concluded that theists do not agree to abandon their belief that theism is relevant to moral beliefs and actions.
The problem of reconciling an omnipotent, perfectly just, perfectly benevolent god with a world full of evil and suffering has plagued believers since the beginning of religious thought. Atheists often site this paradox in order to demonstrate that such a god cannot exist and, therefore, that theism is an invalid position. Theodicy is a branch of philosophy that seeks to defend religion by reconciling the supposed existence of an omnipotent, perfectly just God with the presence of evil and suffering in the world. In fact, the word “theodicy” consists of the Greek words “theos,” or God, and “dike,” or justice (Knox 1981, 1). Thus, theodicy seeks to find a sense of divine justice in a world filled with suffering.
I do not agree with him. For example, if I am try to convince you ‘1+1=2’, and you say you do not think so because you do not believe in me. Then I state that Johann Karl Friedrich Gauss, the great mathematician say so, so you should believe that. Then you reply you do not believe him either and you do not believe in mathematics at all, then any great mathematician or any reasonable mathematics proof on 1+1=2 cannot be your reason to believe 1+1=2. And then my ‘1+1=2’ argument is thus weak and inconvincible. Similarly, it is not fair to convince atheist that God is the foundation of objective morality, because being an atheist means do not believe in