- Why Study Religion?
- We as humans want to know things - we have a desire to know and a
need to know - it is important to our existence to know or know how to speculate - such
questions as:
- Questions of human identity
- Who are we as humans?
- What is the basic human dilemma?
- Questions of human destiny
- Why are we here?
- What happens after death?
- Cosmic questions
- How did the world come into being?
- What is the destiny of the universe?
- Questions of morality
- What is right living?
- What is our obligation to others?
- What are our obligations to non-human life?
- Questions of the sacred
- What is the sacred?
- How is the sacred made known?
- Religious experiences
- We have accounts of people experiencing feelings of awe, dread,
adoration, or of being aware of an unseen presence
- Other accounts speak of individuals experiencing union with,
enlightenment by, or encounter with something they believed was greater than themselves
- Biblical examples include Job 4:12-17, Isaiah 6:1-5, Acts 9:3-7
- Other examples come from Socrates
- "This has been about me since my boyhood, a voice, which when it
comes always turns me away from doing something I am intending to do, but never urges me
on. This is what opposes my taking up public business." (Apology, 31 C)
- "It was my good fortune to be sitting by myself in the
changing-room, where you saw me. I was thinking that it was time to go, but when I got up,
my regular supernatural signal occurred, so I sat down again, and not long afterwards
those two, Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, entered, accompanied by lots of other people -
pupils, I supposed." (Euthydemus 272 e)
- Can We Really Study Religion?
- Hard to apply the "scientific method" because the events
and experiences of religion are typically not observable through one or more of the five
senses
- Some, in fact, have stated that propositions which cannot be
established by observation by the five senses may be meaningful or even true but they can
never be known - those propositions will always be speculation
- Theologians have argued the "scientific method" is not the
only method to obtain knowledge
- Still theologians generally agree God is not observable by our senses
- nor can theologians prove God has revealed himself through events or people
- YET, theologians have a specific subject to research and methods to
use in that research - while little can be objectively proven perhaps much can be known
- Arguments for God's Existence
- Cosmological
- Basic argument (Thomas Aquinas)
- In our world things are in motion or causes exist that have set
things into motion
- Nothing ultimately moves itself or causes itself
- We can't look back and assume an infinite regression of movers or
causers
- Something must have been a first mover or first cause
- Difficulties
- Why can't we have an infinite regression back?
- How do we know there must be a first cause? Perhaps nature is just
based on chance
- Ontological
- Basic argument (Anselm, Descartes)
- A Most Perfect Being exists in the understanding - such a being is
possible
- A Most Perfect Being would be better than all other beings
- To actually exist is better than to exist only in the mind - it is
better to be actual than possible
- A Most Perfect Being must exist in reality - such a being must be
actual
- Difficulties
- Can we know or imagine what perfection would be?
- Is it better to exist in reality than only in the mind?
- Teleological
- Basic argument (Thomas Aquinas)
- Natural universe is highly ordered
- That ordering implies design
- That implies an intelligent and powerful designer
- Difficulties
- Assumes universe is like a machine, but is it?
- Order of universe does not imply design to some when they consider
various aspects of the universe
- Makes God probable perhaps, but not necessary
- Cumulative
- Basic argument (Richard Swinburne)
- None of the arguments for God's existence prove certainly that God
exists
- All the arguments contain truth
- The arguments taken as a whole provide an inductive, probabilistic,
or cumulative case for God's existence
- Difficulties
- Difficulties of each type of argument apply to this as well - each
argument brings its difficulties with it
- Makes God only probable at best, not certain