Philosophy of Religion Final Exam Study Guide

religion

"A set of symbolic forms and acts that relate human beings to the ultimate conditions of their existence."; "A system of beliefs and practices primarily centered around a transcendent Reality."

miracles of timing

"Miracles" as fortunate and extraordinary coincidences that do not transgress any laws of nature.

karma

(Hinduism and Buddhism) The effects of a person's actions that determine his destiny in his next incarnation.

logical problem of evil

-(Plantinga) "The Free Will Defense": It is not possible for God to ensure that his free creatures would always do good and never do wrong. -(Leibriz) "The Best of All Possible Worlds Theodicy": God, who possess perfect, power, knowledge, and goodness, would chose to bring about the best possible world.

Gaunilo of Marmoutiers

-Argument against Anselm -Consider the idea of a perfect island. -Which has every perfection. -Existence is a perfection.

creatio ex nihilo

-Big Bang is emergence of universe from nothing. -At this singularity, space and time came into existence; literally nothing existed before the singularity. -Universe originated at such a singularity = creatio ex nihilo.

cryptomnesia

-Brain fabricates pseudo-memories from forgotten source-material and then presents these as genuine (Ian Stevenson). -Alleged cases of reincarnation forgotten sources have been positively identified.

determinism

-Causal Determinism: if the state of the entire universe could be known, along with all relevant laws, then all future states could (in principle) be precisely calculated. -Deterministic laws govern the behavior of all physical processes and all causes are accounted for. -Universal Causal Determinism: if one knows the right physical information, than one can precisely predict the outcome of the event.

cognitive science of religion

-Cognitive Science (cognitive developmental psychology). -Interdisciplinary study of mind and intelligence. -Examines what cognition is, what it does, and how it works. -Mind is not all-purpose processing device. -Paul Bloom: "There's now a lot of evidence that some of the foundations for our religious beliefs are hard-wired". -Our minds are finely tuned to believe in gods. -Acquiring religion is like acquiring language--the brain is primed for certain religious concepts. -Vast majority of humans have cognitive predisposition that orients them to seek religious explanations Religion is common within and across culture because of its cognitive naturalness. -Humans have natural propensities towards believing in some kind of God. -Widespread conscious rejection of the supernatural appears to require either special cultural conditions that upset the function of maturationally natural outputs, cognitive effort, or a good degree of cultural scaffolding.

Charles Darwin

-Darwinian evolution emphasizes central role of death, extinction, pain, selfishness, and competition as being entailed in the very process by which organisms are created. -Too much misery in the world → cannot convince himself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designed animal suffering. -Everything is a result of designed laws with the details left to work out in change. -Was motivated by abolitionist ideals in his scientific work.

eternity

-Deists and atheist scientists argued for the uncreated eternity of the Earth. -For atheists, eternal earth was seen as the best guarantee of the absence of a creator God of any kind. -Eternalism assumed uncreated eternity of the human race.

Nancy Murphy

-Even if life were possible in a universe with different basic laws, there would still be suffering. -The better we understand the interconnectedness among natural systems in the universe, the clearer it becomes that it would be impossible to have a world that allowed for a free and loving response to God, yet one without natural evil. -Natural and metaphysical evil are unavoidable by-products of choices God had to make in order to achieve his purposes in creating creatures who could know and love him.

libertarian free will

-Free will is incompatible with causal determinism and agents have free will. -Event-causal libertarians: free actions are caused indeterministically by prior events. -Agent-causal libertarians: agents indeterministically cause free actions. -Non-causal libertarians: free actions are constituted by basic mental actions such as decision or choice.

soul-making theodicy

-God created humans as 'good' but not perfect because moral maturity requires experiencing trials and hardships in life. -Natural evils, then, are a necessary element of the process of developing immature human persons into spiritually and morally mature beings.

dharma

-Hinduism: Dharma is religious and moral law governing individual conduct and is one of the four ends of life. -Buddhism: Dharma is the doctrine, the universal truth common to all individuals at all times, proclaimed by Buddha.

Thomas Tracy

-In order for the world to engender intelligence life, it must be put together in very much the way we find it, and therefore, contain nearly the current range and volume of natural evils. -Freedom, morality, rationality, love, etc., necessarily require a significant awareness of the consequences or results of one's actions.

John Hick

-Proponent for religious pluralism. -John Hick defines evil as contrary to God's will.

dualism (body-soul)

-Soul is naturally eternal, pre-existent, and distinct from the body. -The soul belongs to the realm of "The Forms". -Death is the liberation of the soul.

conflict thesis/warfare thesis

-That Science and Religion have had a long history of conflict or warfare -Conflict Thesis: that science and religion have had a long history of conflict or warfare. -Invented by Enlightenment Rationalists. -Elaborated by Victorian "Freethinkers". -Assumed and perpetuated by many modern-day proponents of scientism. -Made popular drapers and whites books on the supposed historical warfare of science and war.

William Lane Craig

-The Kalam Cosmological Argument: universe is not eternal but had a beginning. -Since God is a causal agent who creates the world, God must--in some sense--be time.

Richard Dawkins

-What is the ultimate purpose of life? -Survival and reproduction: "our genes created us, body and mind; and their preservation is the ultimate rationale for our existence...We are their survival machines". -Total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. -Religion is a virus like meme.

cosmic fine tuning

-When we look into the universe and identify the many accidents of physics and astronomy that have worked together for our benefit, it almost seems as if the universe must in some sense have known that we were coming. Responses: -A lucky accident. -Theory of Everything (TOE): yet to be discovered law of physics that describes everything. Multiverse: multiple universes in which ours happened to work out. -Cosmic designer.

four noble truths

1. Suffering: suffering is involved in life, in obvious and subtle forms. 2. The Cause of Suffering: suffering is craving and fundamental ignorance. 3. The End of Suffering: suffering can end because our obscurations can be purified and awakened. 4. The Path: living ethnically, practicing meditation, and developing wisdom.

Rene Descartes

A 17th century French philosopher who argued for a philosophical method based on doubt—but he could not doubt that there was a "doubter".

Augustine of Hippo

A Dilemma for Augustine's Free Will Theodicy -There was death and suffering long before humans ever appeared. -How could have human free will caused this? -If human sin brought death, suffering, and decay into the world, then why do these phenomena precede the appearance of humans? -Is there any point to such animal suffering?

moksha

A Hindu term that references breaking the cycle of life, death and reincarnation.

basic belief

A belief which is not based on other beliefs; for example, the belief that there are other minds besides one's own, or that 1+1=2.

chessmaster analogy (and human freedom)

A chess master is always in 'control' of the game when playing the novice even though the novice has perfect freedom to make many different moves to try to beat the master. Applies to Deism? Theists have traditionally affirmed that God's action engages with and responds to human freedom (e.g. in prayer).

paradigm

A distinct set of concepts or thought patterns, including theories, research methods, postulates, and standards for what constitutes legitimate contributions to a field.

practical rationality

A fundamental aspect of rationality, the appropriate way of processing information through reasoning, complements theoretical rationality.

yoga

A group of mental, physical and spiritual practices that are practiced in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism.

multiverse

A hypothetical group of multiple separate universes including the universe that humans live in.

realism, scientific

A positive epistemic attitude toward the content of our best theories and models, recommending belief in both observable and unobservable aspects of the world described by the sciences.

X-Club

A society of Victorian agnostics brought together by Thomas Henry Huxley and united by a "devotion to science, pure and free, untrammelled by religious dogmas" who sought "to rid natural science of women, amateurs, and clergy." This group's enduring legacy is the myth of a perennial warfare between science and religion.

Hilbert's Hotel

Absurd thought experiment intended to show that it is impossible for an actual infinite number of things to exist in spatiotemporal reality.

atheism

All religions are false; there is no religion whose central claims are true. One should thus abandon religion altogether.

reliabilism

An approach to epistemology that emphasizes the truth-conduciveness of a belief- forming process, method, or other epistemologically relevant factors, appears in theories of knowledge, of justification, and of evidence.

deductive reasoning

An argument that takes a true premise and another true premise and deducts a truth from the two true premises--a sound argument has true premises (ex: Socrates is a man → All men are mortal → Socrates is mortal); has to follow the order: 1. S is M 2. All M are P 3. Therefore, S is P (where S = subject, M = middle term, and P = predicate).

reductionism or materialism

An epistemological and/or ontological view which holds that "the whole is nothing but the sum of its parts"; That Everything is ultimately just a bunch of atoms and nothing more.

teleological argument

Analysis of instances of apparent purpose or design in the universe.

quantum indeterminism

Apparent necessary incompleteness in the description of a physical system that has become one of the characteristics of the standard description of quantum physics.

epicurus

Argued for a universe of infinite space and infinite time.

Blaise Pascal

Argued for the passionate/emotional dimension of the God argument, "the heart has its reasons" - he offers a pragmatic justification.

Aristotle

Argued that Earth was eternal (without beginning and without end).

Thomas Aquinas

Argued the existence of God through reason (but claimed we can't know through reason alone). "The Five Ways" argument that proved God through an analogy. Also believed that god was in control of all contingent things, but humans were still free, saw body and soul as together, classical foundationalist.

Immanuel Kant

Argued we CAN confirm God through reason alone, proposed a moral argument for God.

cosmological argument

Argument for God's existence in which it is claimed that since whatever begins to exist needs a cause, and since the universe began to exist (and cannot be eternal), the universe must need a cause; it is further argued that this cause must be a personal creator.

methodological naturalism

Assume no supernatural causes (miracles or karma) interfere with the "normal" course of nature.

a posteriori

Based on experience/observation.

a priori

Based on premises that can be known independently of experience of the world. Rely on premises that one can know to be true simply by thinking about them.

scientism

Belief that science alone can solve all problems and answer all our important questions.

Boethius

Boethius (480-525): "Eternity is the complete, simultaneous and perfect possession of everlasting life."

anatta

Buddhism: anatta ("no-self")

horrendous evil

Causes one to question life's goodness or worth.

David Hume

Claimed that faith and reason are NOT compatible (thus irrational); skeptic.

Søren Kierkegaard

Claimed that risk and uncertainty (FAITH) are the highest virtue and only faith can bring you the deepest fulfillment. AKA NOT confirming God is more important--would take the passionate love affair /adventure out of it--SUBJECTIVITY IS TRUTH.

metaphysical naturalism

Claims that only physical entities exist and that transphysical or transcendent factors and/or entities cannot exist (=materialism).

John Locke

Complex cognition, self-awareness, and individuality make a person.

perfect being theology

Describes God as the "greatest conceivable being" and that there is nothing greater that can be conceived.

theoretical rationality

Engaging in reasoning that is directed at the resolution of questions that are in some sense theoretical rather than practical.

teleology

Explanation of phenomenon by the purpose they serve rather than by postulated causes.

materialist monism

Explanation of physical world that all world's objects are composed of a single element; oneness or singleness.

trinity

Father, Son and The Holy Spirit.

block universe

Four-dimensionalism or Eternalism (a.k.a. Block Universe): everything that ever did exist or ever will exist does exist.

natural law theodicy

Freedom, morality, rationality, love, etc., necessarily require a significant awareness of the consequences or results of one's actions.

metaphysics

General features of reality such as existence, time, being, causation.

calvinism

God causes both good and evil; both are the result of God's eternal decree; God's sovereign will is mysterious.

timelessness

God has neither temporal extension nor temporal location: no before, during or after; events that for us are past or future are all present to God simultaneously.

occasionalism

God is the cause of all "occasions"; the things God creates have no real causal powers of freedom (predestination).

open theism

God lacks knowledge of certain future events.

process theism/theology

God needs nothing and made the world from nothing; God not only can, but does intervene in earthly affairs.

deism

God's causal involvement in creation is limited to creation and conservation (not providence).

epistemology

How do we know what we know? Or that something is true or false? -Theory of Knowledge. -That scientism offers is not the consequence of any scientific investigation but rather reaches outside itself into the very realm that it claims does not exist.

noseeum arguments

If one can't see any good reasons, then they probably are not there.

universal causal determinism

If one knows the right physical information, the one can precisely predict the outcome of any event.

evolutionary evil

In evolution, species develop adaptive strategies that "tend to be accompanied by pain, suffering, unhappiness, and conflicts of interest, the major categories of evil".

natural evil

In order for the world to engender intelligent life, it must be put together in very much the way we find it, and will therefore, contain nearly the current range and volume of natural evils.

evidential problem of evil

Logical impossibility of the coexistence of God and evil, while the evidential form tries to show that given the evil in the world, it is improbable that there is an omnipotent, omniscient God.

Marx's view of religion

Marx sees ideology as a belief system that distorts people's perception of reality in ways that serve the interests of the ruling class. Those who control economic production (the bourgeoisie) also control the production of ideas in society through institutions such as the church, the education system and the media. The bourgeoisie uses these institutions as 'weapons' to legitimate inequality.

religious pluralism

Multiple religious traditions will constitute equally valid attempts to achieve the goals of religion, and equally valid responses to the diverse "religious phenomena" that give rise to religious belief.

Principle of Sufficient Reason

No fact can be real or existing and no statement true without a sufficient reason for it being so and not otherwise.

William Paley

Objections to Paley's argument: the analogy is weak at best and even with IBE, evolution is a far better explanation than that of an intelligent design.

evidentialism

One of descartes basic beliefs--two thoughts that can be held WITHOUT evidence - these are thoughts about myself and thoughts that are self-evident (obvious, ex. 1+1=2)--dont need reason.

religious exclusivism

Only one religion is objectively true.

presentism

Only present objects and events objectively exist; common sense view of time: the past is gone (no longer exists) and the future does not yet exist.

ontological argument

Ontological Argument: rests on the use of a paradox. Essentially, God is a being which none greater exists, but exists only in the understanding. God has a possibility of existing and if he did exist, he would be greater. Therefore, he cannot possibly be a being which none greater exists but only exist in the understanding, since existing in reality would create a greater being. Therefore, God exists.

evolutionary convergence

Organisms "navigate" to or arrive at the same biological "solution" from very different starting points.

Anselm of Canterbury

Perfect being theology, was the bishop of canterbury in 11 century, saw god as rational.

atman

Personhood is defined via a non-physical or non-material component (a supernatural substance often identified as the soul or atman).

existentialism

Philosophical theory or approach that emphasizes the existence of the individual person as a free and responsible agent determining their own development through acts of the will.

eternalism

Planet Earth is eternal (having no beginning) and its processes and basic features have essentially been the same forever.

Alvin Plantinga

Plantinga proposed a "free will defense" which attempts to refute the logical problem of evil, the argument that the existence of evil is logically incompatible with the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good God.

Leibniz Gottfried

Principle of Sufficient Reasoning: God is first reason or first cause of the universe.

providence

Protective care of God or of nature as a spiritual power.

reincarnation

Rebirth of a soul in a new body.

noetic

Relating to mental activity or the intellect.

counterfactual

Relating to or expressing what has not happened or is not the case.

Richard Swinburne

Responses to Hume on Miracles: -Could there ever be evidence that a true law of nature was violated or broken? -Could there be evidence that the violation was due to a God? -We must consider our whole comprehensive system of beliefs. -If there is good independent evidence for a providential God, then miracles will be more likely.

Galileo

Rumor: nearly put to death by the church for constructing his telescope and discovering the moons of Jupiter. Reality: broke contract with church and was put on "house arrest".

Samuel Clark

Samuel Clarke (1675-1729) Principle of Sufficient Reason: "no fact can be real or existing and no statement true without a sufficient reason for its being so and not otherwise." Based on premise that there must be a sufficient reason, or explanation, for the existence of any contingent being and for the contingent universe as a whole.

Simon Conway-Morris

Simon Conway-Morris: the path of evolution is highly constrained by laws of nature deeper than natural selection. -Evolution"'discovers' prior organizational templates" that exist in the laws of nature. -"The constraints of evolution and the ubiquity of convergence make the emergence of something like human beings a near- inevitability".

everlastingness

That God exists without beginning or end, through everlasting time.

contingent

The Contingent Cause Argument -Fact 1:there are certain beings or events in the world that are contingent (they could have not been or have been otherwise). -Fact 2: that the universe (as the totality of contingent things) is contingent in that it could have been other than it is. -Assertion: it is possible that the Universe (the 'Big Contingent Fact') has an explanation.

sunyata

The Mahayana notion of emptiness, meaning that the university is empty of permanent reality.

ontology

The branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of being.

design arguments

The complex, ordered system from nature provides evidence for an intelligent designer.

samsara

The cycle of life and rebirth in Hinduism.

free will defense and theodicy

The free will and responsible choice that God gave humans is responsible for good, but also for evil. However, to have free and responsible choice, it's necessary for agents to have a choice to do evil. Therefore, a maximally good world is one where evil may occur.

Freud's view of religion

The psychological theory of religion of Freud: religion is a mental defense against the more threatening aspects of nature. (Religion is an illusion) God = dead father.

nirvana

The state of enlightenment for Buddhists.

fideism

The view that religious belief should be based solely on "blind" faith rather than reason.

reductionism

The whole is nothing but the sum of its parts, everything is ultimately just a bunch of atoms.

natural theology

Theory of knowledge of God based on observed facts and experiences apart from divine revelation.

emergentism

There are many levels to reality and each level is true/valid without being reduced to what is below it--THERE IS A QUALITATIVE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE SUM AND ITS PARTS.

agnosticism

There is no way to determine which, if any, of the religions is most likely to be true, and thus the best response is to remain doubtful or undecided about the claims of any religion.

Thomas Aquinas

This Dominican medieval philosopher and theologian integrated Aristotelian philosophy with Christian theology and enumerated five ways or arguments demonstrating God's reality.

reductio ad absurdum

This type of logical argument begins with a claim that is contradictory to what one desires to prove and then demonstrates that the contradiction of this supposition must be true.

brahman

This understanding of Ultimate Reality in Hinduism is the undifferentiated Absolute that includes no attributes, and no distinctive characteristics.

moral evil

To create creatures capable of moral good God must create creatures capable of moral evil; pain and suffering that results from a perpetrator, or one who acts intentionally.

divine attributes

Traditional attributes of God: omnibenevolence, omnipotence, omniscience, eternity, providence.

gratuitous evil

Unmerited suffering and pain which seem to be random and meaningless.

Pascal's wager

Uses cost-benefit analysis to justify religious belief--its in our best interest, if God exists and you don't believe, you lose everything but if you do believe and he doesn't exist you lose nothing.

theodicy

Vindication of divine goodness and providence in view of the existence of evil.

incompatibilist free will

We act freely only if determinism is false (belief that all events, including human action, are ultimately determined by causes external to the free will).

Stephen Jay Gould

We may yearn for a higher answer but none exists.

euthyphro dilemma

When questioning the validity of moral acts, the question is: are they authentic in itself or just vaild in the eyes of God?

Which of the following is NOT a typical response theists give to the argument against God's existence from the problem of evil?

a. Evil is not real; it is an illusion and only seems real from our limited and unenlightened perspective. (Buddhism)

According to scientific researchers Andrew Newberg and Justin Barrett, belief in God is:

a. Rooted in the biology of the brain. c. Cognitively intuitive (or natural) and typically commences automatically at a very young age. e. Answers a. and c.

The theleological argument for God's existence gets its name from the fact that it begins with an analysis of:

b. Instances of apparent purpose or design in the universe.

Which of the following is NOT one of Hume's objections to the theological argument from design?

b. Since order in the universe is due to natural processes, God is only indirectly responsible for it.

"If everything that exists in the world (including the world itself) is not the cause of its own existence, then there must be a cause of the world's existence which itself does not need to be caused by anything else: that uncaused cause is God." This line of argument is called:

b. The cosmological argument.

One important objection to the Argument from Design is that

c. Even if it were sound, it wouldn't prove the existence of the personal God of Theism.

The absurdities of this thought experiment intend to show that it is impossible for an actual infinite number of things to exist in spatiotemporal reality.

c. Hilbert's Hotel (video of infinite hotel)

Which of the following is NOT one of the four conditions for soul-making in John Hick's theodicy?

c. The environment must have a (lawful, amoral, and impersonal structure) structure that points the human mind toward the existence of God.

Which of the following was NOT reflective of Søren Kierkegaard's understanding of the relationship between faith and reason?

d. A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence, and the conclusions philosophers and theologians have drawn go well beyond the available evidence.

This term refers to pain and suffering that results from a perpetrator, or one who acts intentionally.

d. Moral Evil (involves intentionality)

Which of the following is NOT a key understanding of divine providence?

d. Presentism (theory of time; "today")

Which of the following is NOT one of the standard philosophical responses to the discovery that the Universe appears to be 'finely-tuned' for the existence of intelligent life?

d. The universe is not 'finely-tuned' according to most physicists.

The idea that every event in the cosmos is necessitated by antecedent events and conditions together with the laws of nature. Or the view that if the state of all physical events could be known, along with all relevant laws, then all future states could (in principle) be precisely calculated.

d. Universal causal determinism

According to contemporary historians of science:

e. None of the above statements are true.

This philosophical approach to religious diversity holds that while each religion can be regarded as "true" and "effective" for its adherents, there is no objective or tradition-transcending sense in which we can speak of religious truth.

e. Religious Relativism (what is true for me (you) is true for me (you))