Early start this morning, which means I may get to watch some more football this evening....... not sure my priorities are in the right order...... oh well.... on to the last book,
Religion/Delusion
ISMs
polytheism, pantheism, theism, atheism, fideism
Fideism
Blaise Pascal's Wager, William James,
Reasons To Believe in God
1. Personal Experience
2. Hstory
3. The Way the World Is
4. The nature of the idea (ontological argument)
Way The World Is
1. Argument from Design (teleological argument)
2. Fact the world exists at all (cosmological argument)
3. Existence of orders of causes -Aquinas's Second Way.
Cleanthes
World like a machine adjusted to an accuracy that ravishes in to admiration all men who have ever contemplated them. ANALOGY Machines have creators, so must the world.
Paley
Watch on the heath. Precise organisation and function. same basic ANALOGY.
Behe
Discredited creationalist moron. Proof of God within evolution.......
Meyer
Proof of God as a prerequisite to evolution - DNA / RNA.
Swinburne
Proof of God as creator of the world.
If God created the Earth, who created God. Is the God of this creation a God we would recognise?
Problem of Evil - Epicuras
If God is all powerful and all loving, why is there evil.
1. He doesn't interfere with the natural processes.
2. He hides his face to give humans choice
3. To give people a desire to put things right.
i. 2+2=4 God can not change this, so he is not all powerful.
ii.Freewill Defense
iii. Why can't God design humans that do good things.
iv. Future Hope Defense - It will all be OK in the end.... whenever that is.
Acts of God
Arguments for God's existence from miracles.
Miracles "violation of the laws of nature by the immediate interposition of a deity" Hume
Hume - It is never rational to believe a report of a miracle,
i. How many witnesses
ii. Do they have a vested interest in being believed.
iii. Are they of sufficient character.
Proof v. Proof
Confidence in the reporter can be high, but the unlikely event means confidence should be low, so cancels out. Violation of a law of nature - confidence should be non-existant.
Hume - Which is less unlikely, that someone misinterpreted or misrepresented what they experienced ? or that a miracle occurred?
Hume.
i. Past experience not perfect in predicting the future.
ii. More often it happens the more reliable
iii. reliability of reports depends on past reliability
iv. Person's character can be unreliable in many ways.
Miracles - other arguments.
1. Those reporting have in general low credibility
2. Passion of surprise and wonder an agreeable emotion
3. Reports from backward cultures
4. Different religions have miracles - so cancel out.
Sillyness v. Selectiveness.
Religious Experience
1. Not just a sense of God, anything wonderful or morally positive.
2. Should make you a better person.
3. Culturally bound.
4. Comes with interpretations that can differ.
Parallels of argument to Miracles
Miracles Experience
Hume's Argument Should be rejected because it
doesn't fit in to Scientific explanation
selective-ness selective-ness
agreeable emotion it has a scientific and not religious explanation
i. We can explain belief in miracles without supposing they happened.
ii. silly, sentimental and self-serving
iii. Chapman and Suttcliffe experience
iv. Why would God have silly and sinister experiences.
v. Cultural differences show experience are man made.
That has ended up as a bit of a ramble through the book, but it is there in essence, and I'm quite happy for a question on Pascal's Wager 'cos as my son said,
"Well if you apply that sort of slack thinking to everything, the government would be building anti-alien attack missile silos and safety bunkers, and we'd have a dragon trap in the back garden, just in case, you never know, can't be too sure, better safe than sorry and all that......in fact better strengthen the front door there may be a YETI collecting for charity and you know how hard they knock on doors...."
I'm not sure he's helped matters.
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