Problems With The Philosophy of Religion
Problems with the Philosophy of ReligionThe philosophy of religion is an examination of the meaning and justification of religious claims. Claims about how the world is, often embodied in creeds, are more typical of Western religions - Christianity, Judaism, and Islam - than of Eastern religions such as Buddhism, Hinduism, and Confucianism, which tend to concentrate much more on the practice of a way of life than on a theoretical system by means of which (among other things) to justify that practice. Hence Western religions have proved a more natural target for the philosophy of religion. The central claim of Western religions is the existence of God; and the two major problems here are: Can a coherent account be given of what it means to say that there is a God, and, if it can, are there good reasons to show that there is or that there is not such a God?God is said to be personal, bodiless, omnipresent, creator and sustainer of any universe there may be, perfectly free, omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good, and a source of moral obligation, and to have these properties eternally and necessarily. It has been a major concern of the philosophy of religion to investigate whether a coherent account can be given of each of thes
The most important of these is provided by the problem of evil: that an omnipotent and perfectly good God would not allow the occurrence of pain and suffering. The initial philosophical task is to see how far a clear meaning can be given to these doctrines; and the next task is to consider if there are any grounds for believing them true. An obvious response is that the sums are not quite so simple: evidence of observers for what happened on other occasions is only indirect evidence for what happened at t, whereas the evidence of the observers at t is direct evidence and so has much more force. The existence of God is not in that category, and it has been more usual for philosophers to claim that such a belief needs to be supported by argument, if only argument from religious experience. He wishes to bring about good in response to human request; and, to make that possible, he leaves nature capable of improvement. Philosophy of religion has a concern with whether God would be expected to provide a revelation, and with what the tests are that he has done so (e. Arguments for the existence of God have to be weighed against arguments against the existence of God. 10) has a famous argument purporting to show that there could never be a balance of evidence in favour of the occurrence of a miracle thus understood. Some Wittgensteinian fideists have acknowledged that they are reinterpreting religious language, claiming that the language-game so interpreted is worth playing, whereas interpreted in the traditional way it amounts to unjustified superstition. A hypothesis that many different individuals, not in collusion with each other, did quite separate acts which caused the clues would be much more complicated, and so would satisfy criterion 3 far less well.
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Acceptance Essays
