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The influence of religion on science
The influence of science on religion
The influence of religion on science
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Evidentialism vs. Mysticism
A majority of people believed that there is a higher power in the form of God or several gods depending on the religion on question. It is hard to just refute their claims without understanding what they believe in and why they have that kind of believe. In this piece, I will compare Clifford’s view on religion to the idea of mysticism as explained by William James. Both of these viewpoints are important to consider for a comprehensive understanding of religion from a philosophical point of view. W.K. Clifford was a British philosopher and mathematician. He argues that it is wrong to believe in something without having enough evidence to back the claim. On the other hand, William James was an American philosopher
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He argues that human beings should not just believe for the sake of it or for any other reason other than prove (501). There is no objective truth to this claim because in societies like ours, we have separated church from the state. We have our private believes and there are the laws of the land we have to abide by since that is part of being a believer of God’s existence. We do not only follow our spiritual texts but we are also urged to follow the laws of the land we live in. Believing that God exists doesn’t make you to believe in everything that you have been told about Him. We do ask questions about what He created us for and who we are as human beings in order to know our purpose. As James noted, “mystical states seem to those who experience them to be also states of knowledge. They are states of insight into the depths of truth unplumbed by the discursive intellect” (225). The main point he is arguing for is that we should stop trying to make complete sense out of deep connections or contacts humans have with God. Our human mind cannot fathom the vast expanse of God’s authority. Taking a look at algorithms on which computers function, a layman cannot understand why the mathematics he learn at high school different from it. It is a totally different real where the understanding of God’s nature resides …show more content…
“Our words, our phrases, our forms and processes and modes of thought are common property, fashioned and perfected from age to age”, claims Clifford and that they should be protected (500). There is no place in our constitution where your thought and believe is considered public property. What an individual does with his/her thoughts and feelings may affect the public if they are negative, nonetheless, as a free society based on the ideals of freedom, we cannot curtail individual freedom for a myth. He has not provided any prove to show the correlation and most of the societies built on religious acceptance and tolerances are very peaceful and progressive. Throughout my life I have seen the lowest crime rates in places where the fear of God and love for the neighbor is prevalent. I know that believe in God does not have a silver bullet for all of our problems, but with ardent prayer and believe in a higher power gives a spiritual comfort that cannot be fully described. James describes how this experience usually starts for most people. He explained how “the mystic feels as if his own will were in abeyance, and indeed sometimes as if he were grasped and held by a superior power” (226). Therefore, it is very hard to deny that God exist simply because we cannot prove it using the same methods Science uses top prove its theories. Another
Then he goes on to conclude by saying that, “The lessons learned from observing people and their beliefs support the position that I have defended: rational people may rationally believe in God without evidence or argument” (Feinberg 142). In schools today, students grow up listening to lectures that are subjective and then later are tested on what the teacher thinks and believes. Whether or not the taught perspective is factual or not, it teaches students from a young age to just take what the teachers, adults, and any authority says as truth, as a way to respecting authority. In the same way that it is reasonable to believe respectable authority, it is rational to have belief in God without specific evidence because we are created with the inclination that a higher being exists and God has shown Himself to be true to every generation. Furthermore, God has placed in every human the inkling to believe what is right or wrong, so when it comes to deciding whether to act a certain way, we can rely on our gut feeling if it is a good action or not. It is a very common and suggested thing to trust one's gut feeling when making a decision, even though it does not require any evidence to see if it is actually the right decision to
He also supports his argument that the Bible is true by claiming, if an individual believes what they are reading is true, then we are implying that we trust what it says. We learn to trust and believe in the God that the Bible tells us about, therefore, we trust the words written inside. He describes it as, “Perhaps the most important element in this mix is that we trust the Bible because we have come to trust the God about whom it tells us. The process of coming to this kind of trust moves in a kind of circle: we trust in that God in significant part because of what we learn in the
Pecorino, Philip A. "Section 4: What is Religion?" Philosophy of Religion. 2001. 15 November 2007.
Russell, Bertrand. Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related
In William James” Lecture XX, conclusions” he has argued on various aspects of “Religion”. The whole concept of religion seems to be in accordance to the facts of mankind’s biological operation, still according to him its doesn’t makes it true. Universe itself has a very strong connection to religion of any kind. Nature of Universe is interconnected to human spirit and to the existence of God. James states that “Visible world is part of a more spiritual universe from which it draws its chief significance”, which means that Universe relationship with the religion can be seen through the connection of human and religion. Religion is practically all-inclusive foundation in human culture. It is found in all social orders, over a wide span of time. All the
The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions by David Berlinski uses clever and unique critiques of militant atheism and its devotion to scientism. Ten in depth chapters shed light on the dogmatic stance of many of today’s popular “new atheists.” According to Berlinski new atheism poses itself as the sole holder of truth through science, “And like any militant church, this one places a familiar demand before all others: Thou shalt have no other gods before me” (10). Berlinski (a secular Jew) approaches ideas with his own mixture of intelligence and thought filled logic; exploring the world as well as important philosophical questions pertaining to “new atheism”. Thus providing the information needed to explore the sides for both and existence and nonexistence of God.
His final point within this argument of relativism is that his not believing in God allows him to be proven wrong. Anyone whose only area to be proven wrong in is there faith is severely shallow and pathetic. Within the Christian life and even life in general, there is much ambiguity and freedom for argument. Philosophy is all about seeking out how to prove everything we know wrong and rethink it only for it to be found faulty again. This course and history show us that philosophers that claim faith in God engage with this examination of beliefs and fundamentals as well.
Due to their theories about skepticism as a whole, we can now understand it and put our own A major strength of his was the idea of objective reality. He believes that it is useless to claim the existence of one thing until we are positive as to how that claim can be defended as a true belief. He shows how we are able to prove our beliefs about existence by limiting what we believe is indeed certain. He goes about doing this through three main points.
As James Madison, the fourth President of the United States said, “The religion of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man, and it is right of every man to exercise it as they may dictate” (Haynes, C...
William Clifford was born on the 4th of May 1845 in Exeter England. He was an English mathematician and British philosopher. At the age of 15, William attended Kings College, London where he achieved a minor scholarship to Trinity College. Later after graduation he was invited to join the Apostles. He became concerned of many religious questions after studying the influential philosopher Thomas Aquinas and he decided to turn away from religion. Clifford’s philosophical standpoint was a major influence for his day. One of his greatest written accomplishments was an essay “The Ethics of Belief”.
Although explicated on many occasions and by many different authors, the teleological argument for the existence of God provides the best springboard from which to launch contemporary convictions of faith. In the revised edition of his earlier The Existence of God, Richard Swinburne constructs a solid outline that reveals the exact structure of the teleological argument. He presents both forms of the teleological argument , holds each under the light of skeptical review and then provides insight and defense that allows for careful philosophical review.
Since the beginning of time, religion has played one of the most significant roles within human existence and has been believed to be the source whereby our governing laws have been derived. However, dating back to as early as the 3rd to 6th century, Greek philosophers inclusive of Diagoras of Melos, Euhemerus, alongside the schools of Hindu philosophy, Samkhya and the Greek Cyrenaic School were all amongst some of the first who did not accept the idea of God (Friedrich, 1942, 25). In the 7th century and during the Early Middle Ages, undergoing the Golden Age, the idea of knowledge was emphasised amongst the Muslim world, translating and collaborating knowledge from all over the world, giving rise to a group of people known as the Dahriyya who were the ‘holders of materialistic opinions of vari...
For William James, his perspective on religious experience was skeptical. He divided religion between institutional religion and personal religion. For institutional religion he made reference to the religious group or organization that plays a critical part in the culture of a society. Personal religion he defined as when an individual has a mystical experience which can occur regardless of the culture. James was more focused on the personal religious experience, “the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine” (Varieties, 31), and had a sort of distain for organized and institutional religion.
In conclusion, Lessing’s Nathan the Wise argues in favour of a religion in which the focus is redirected on human beings. His conception of a universal religion of reason refers to a praising of human reason without ignoring existing religious beliefs. However, it appears that these two conceptions of religion cannot coexist. Moreover, Lessing’s conception of a universal religion of reason seems to fail to understand the nature of religion, which is to apprehend the causes of one’s existence.
Since the beginning of human civilization, Homo sapiens have strived to address the existence of God. In every era, humans have tried to explore the existence of God and presented their own elaborations to the concept of God. Some found Sun to be God, while others try to find “godly” part in other elements of nature like tress, animals, or stars. It can be noted that the existence of God is a concept, which is found in the very nature of human beings. The question of the “seen” or “unseen” is yet another argument, which populates the debate of philosophers. There is no doubt that religions have played a critical role in establishing the existence of God. At the same time, different religions interpret the presence of God in a distinct manner.