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Religious Studies RELIGIOUS STUDIES Religious Studies An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion Unit AS 8 Specification Section Page Arguments for the existence of God 2 God, Atheism and the problem of evil 9 The Problem of Miracle 17 Religious experience and its credentials 28 Other aspects of human experience 36 Glossary 54 pg 1 RELIGIOUS STUDIES 1. Arguments for the existence of God Learning Objective – demonstrate knowledge and understanding of, and critically evaluate the origins and nature of the ontological argument. A good outline of the ontological argument with an assessment is to be found in Brian Davis’s book, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (1982), Chapter 4. Also in Jordan, Lockyer and Tate, Philosophy of Religion for A level (1999), chapter 4. A number of other textbooks also cover the subject adequately. The ontological Argument is an a priori argument (not based on evidence or experience but on reason) as it relies on logic. It is a deductive argument which means that it is an argument that is structured in such a way as to only lead to one conclusion. © Jupiterimages/Thinkstock.com The ontological argument has its origins in the Proslogion (1078 AD) which was written by Anslem, the second Archbishop of Canterbury after the Norman conquest. In essence, Anselm deduced the existence of God from an analysis of the concept of God. The concept of God, when analysed, is according to Anselm ‘that which no greater can be conceived’ or thought. This being so, God must be more than an idea in the mind (in intellectu), if he is to be defined as the greatest possible being. The greatest possible being is therefore one that must exist. If God did not exist how could he be defined as the greatest possible being? Therefore God’s existence (in re) is entailed in the concept of God and thus it would be a contradiction to say that God doesn’t exist. For Anselm then the concept or the idea of God cannot be separated from his existence. Rene Descartes in the 17th century also has a version of the argument. His point is that just as we can have clear and distinct ideas about numbers or geometrical figures, so equally we can have clear and distinct ideas about God. Like Anselm, Descartes assumes that any definition of God defines him as a ‘supremely perfect being’. Descartes argues that existence is a necessary ‘predicate’ of a perfect being, the non-existence of which would be self-contradictory. Descartes goes on to say that to imagine God without the predicate of his existence is illogical. It would be the equivalent to imagining a triangle without three sides. pg 2 RELIGIOUS STUDIES Critique: Finally, a ‘critique of the argument and its value for religious faith’ must be considered. The first philosopher of importance is someone who lived contemporaneously with Anselm. His name was Gaunilo, a monk from Marmoutier in Switzerland, who illustrated what he considered to be the absurdity of the argument. According to Gaunilo, if someone were to imagine the idea of ‘the most perfect island’, then following Anselm’s reasoning he suggested, that island must exist which is of course nonsense, since islands just don’t pop up because we think of or imagine them as perfect. Anselm’s reply was that his argument can only apply to God who by definition is the most perfect being. The argument does not apply to contingent objects like islands. Anselm’s reply was a good one for he is saying that the ontological argument can only apply to God and to nothing else. Another important critic of the argument was Immanuel Kant who in The critique of Pure Reason (1781) argued that existence is not a real predicate. A predicate tells us what something is like and describes qualities or characteristics of something. The ontological argument as well as describing various characteristics or predicates of God also concludes that one of the essential characteristics of God is that he exists, thus making existence an essential predicate of God. It is precisely this side of the argument that Kant objects too. What is real is no more than what is possible and thus a concept is not made greater by adding existence. Kant makes one other crucial point: The ontological argument makes God ‘logically necessary’. For Kant such a statement is analytic. An example of an analytic statement would be: ‘a triangle has three sides’, but three sidedness is already contained in the concept of triangliarity and such statement as well as being an analytic statement is also a tautology (i.e. saying the same over again). This would amount to saying, ‘an existing God exists’ and this would not be an informative statement. It would therefore seem that definitions of God can only tell us what God would be like if he existed. In the twentieth century, the Cambridge philosopher Bertrand Russell made a similar point to Kant. His argument is that though in English grammar ‘exists’ functions as a predicate, logically and correctly it functions differently. The existence of a thing just means there is an ‘instance of’ the concept of this thing in the world. The concept is not altered by its existence or non-existence. Russell was an important logician and thus he makes the point in the following translation: “Cows exist” means that “There are x’s such that ‘x is a cow’ is true”. That is to say ‘cows exist’ is not to attribute a certain quality, namely existence to cows, but to suggest that there are objects in the world to which the description ‘cow’ applies. This is made even clearer in the following negative existential statement: “Unicorns do not exist” can be translated as “There are no x’s such that ‘x is a unicorn’ is true”. In the case of unicorns, we are distinguishing the concept of unicorn and then saying that the concept has no instances in the world. The application of this to the ontological argument is: if existence is not a predicate, it cannot be a predicate for God and thus in spite of the ontological argument, the issue of whether God exists or not is still open to inquiry. Students should, as the specification recommends, look at ‘reformulations of the argument’ as one finds them in figures likeNorman Malcolm and Alvin Plantinga. Once again the two books mentioned earlier outline the contribution of both figures both succinctly and clearly, though other textbooks also include useful information on the contribution of these authors. pg 3 RELIGIOUS STUDIES Activities 1. Try to put the ontological argument as presented by Anselm into your own words. The following links will help you: www.youtube.com/watch?v=riV09AcYXAQ www.iep.utm.edu/ont-arg/#SH2a www.existence-of-god.com/ontological-argument.html 2. How does Descartes develop this argument? www.youtube.com/watch?v=tl-ohpcoQJo www.humanreligions.info/god_ontological.html#Proof www.scandalon.co.uk/philosophy/ontological_descartes.htm 3. Create a spider diagram to evaluate the strengths and weakness of the ontological argument using the following links: www.existence-of-god.com/ontological-objections.html www.scandalon.co.uk/philosophy/ontological_kant.htm www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaOg7jMfmkQ www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsNdL_ANjAA www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIkVU0AcSMw pg 4 RELIGIOUS STUDIES Learning Objective – demonstrate knowledge and understanding of, and critically evaluate the cosmological argument including the three forms of the argument in Aquinas. More detailed accounts, discussions and critique of the cosmological argument can be found in Davis, Hick, Jordan/Lockyer/Tate and other text books. Students should also be aware of reformulations of the arguments to be found in authors like Descartes, Leibniz and Richard Swinburne. What is given below provides an outline of the cosmological argument. The cosmological argument is an a posteriori argument which means that we can, from experience of the world infer that there is a God. An early form of the argument is found in Plato’s Timaeus where Plato argues that everything in creation must of necessity have a cause. The best known and perhaps the clearest form of the argument that has been most commented upon by philosophers came from the pen of the medieval scholastic philosopher Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) who in his great work the Summa Theologica produced his famous Five Ways; the first three of which contain the cosmological argument. His three forms of the argument are outlined as follows: (i) Motion (motus): this includes any form of movement or motion, but it can also include change of any kind. Now Aquinas notices that nothing changes by itself, but it must be changed by something else. But change cannot go back ad infinitum; there has to be a cause that generated all movement/motion and that first cause, Aquinas concludes, must be God. God then stands at the beginning and is ‘the unchanged changer’. (ii) Causation: Aquinas observes that we could never observe anything causing itself for this is impossible. If it did cause itself, then it would mean that it preceded itself and that would be impossible. Aquinas also observes that everything that exists requires a cause. Again causes cannot go back ad infinitum, so at the back of all the causes, there must be a first cause which is not itself caused and to which as Aquinas says ‘everyone gives the name God.’ (iii) Contingency (e contingentia mundi): This is the argument that addresses the question as to why there is a universe, rather than nothing at all, since at least in theory the latter was also a possibility.
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