PHILOSOPHY 203 (STOLZE)

1. PHILOSOPHY 203 (STOLZE) Notes on Charles Taliaferro, Philosophy of Religion

2. Three Practices Proposed by Taliaferro • The Golden Rule in Philosophy = “one should treat other philosophies as one would like one’s own to be treated” (p. x) • Philosophical Good-Samaritanism = “the practice of going to someone’s aid when in need” (p. xi) • “Find a friend (or two) who welcomes arguments and good-humored, open-ended dialogue” (p. xii)

3. What is the “Philosophy of Religion”? • Philosophy = “love of wisdom” • Religion = “what binds us together”

4. Taliaferro’s Two-fold Definition of Philosophy • “To have a philosophy is simply to have a view of reality and value” (p. 1) • “[T]o practice philosophy is to do what Socrates and Confucius did: to investigate the ways in which reason and experience justify views about justice, the divine, the meaning of birth, life, and death, and so on . . . to engage in disciplined inquiry” (pp. 1-2)

5. Six Possible Definitions of Religion • Beliefs/practices in the supernatural • Beliefs/practices in general symbols • Beliefs/practices that obstruct clear, rational reflection • Beliefs/practices in an ultimate reality • Defined by example (e.g., Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism) • “A body of teachings and prescribed practices about an ultimate, sacred reality or state of being that calls for reverence or awe and guides its practitioners into what they describe as a saving, illuminating, and emancipatory relationship to this reality through a personally transformative life of prayer, realized ritualized meditations, and/or moral practices like repentance and moral and personal regeneration” (p. 15).

6. Religions as Worlds and Worldviews • Taliaferro argues that “exploring a religion is very much like exploring a world…a convert to a religion may be understood as entering a new world” (p. 16). • If religions are like worlds, then the task of philosophy is to provide “a clear account of the beliefs and practices making up such a world and to inquire into reasons for thinking that such a world is actually true” (p. 17).

7. Truth and Meaning in Religion • Social Constructivism • Realism

8. Features of Monotheism • God is one • God exists necessarily not contingently • God is a substantial reality • God has the following attributes: perfectly good, all-powerful, present everywhere, all-knowing, and eternal

9. The Three Monotheistic (Abrahamic) Religions • Judaism • Christianity • Islam

10. The “Maximally Excellent”Divine Attributes • Necessary or non-contingent existence • Incorporeality • Omnipotence • Essential Goodness • Omniscience • Eternity

11. An Objection to God’s Omnipotence • An omnipotent being is a being able to do any act. • If God is omnipotent, God can create a stone so heavy that no one can lift. • If God is omnipotent, God can lift any stone. • But if God can lift any stone, then God cannot create a stone so heavy that no one can lift it. • And if God can create a stone so heavy that no one can lift it, then there could be a stone that not even God could lift. • There is at least one act that God cannot do. • Hence, God is not omnipotent. • But God must be omnipotent to be God. • Therefore, God does not exist.

12. An Objection to God’s Essential Goodness • An omnipotent being is able to do any logically possible act. • An essentially good being is not able to do evil. • Doing evil is a logically possible act. • Because God is essentially good, God cannot do any logically possible act. • Therefore, God is not omnipotent.

13. God vs. Moloch • If God is essentially good, then God is not able to do evil. • There could be a being, Moloch, with all God’s properties except essential goodness. • If Moloch exists, Moloch can do any act God can do, plus any evil act. • In this case, Moloch would be more powerful than God. • Therefore, God is not essentially good or God is not unsurpassable in power or—more radically—there is no God.

14. God’s Omniscience and Human Freedom: Some Options • Divine knowledge undermines human freedom • Divine knowledge doesn’t undermine human freedom • Divine “middle knowledge” • Divine knowledge doesn’t cover future free contingents (open theism) • Concept empiricism

15. Two Kinds of Theology (“God-Talk”) • Cataphatic theology = makes positive claims about God • Apophatic theology = makes negative claims about God

16. The God of Philosophy vs. the God of Revelation • Perfect being theology • Dawkins’ critique of the Biblical God as “vain” and “jealous” (http://youtu.be/DMqTEfeqvmM) • Progressive Revelation • Divine (Im)passability

17. Response to Dawkins Emphasize God’s essential goodness

18. The Limits of God-Talk • Use and mention of the word “God” • Need for loving and worship of God • Distinction between claiming that “God is more than or greater than our best terms and concept” and claiming that “God is not less than our best terms and concepts” (p. 47).

19. The Challenge of Philosophical Naturalism Naturalism = “the view that the cosmos itself, or nature, is all that exists” (p. 48)

20. Two Forms of Naturalism • Strict = “reality consists only of what is described and explained by the ideal natural sciences, especially physics” (p. 49) • Broad = “grants that there may be thoughts, feelings, emotions, and perhaps even ethical truths” (p. 49)

21. The Presumption of Atheism “Some naturalists adopt what is called a presumption of atheism, according to which if there is no good reason to posit God, one should not do so” (p. 50).

22. Arguments for the Existence of God • Ontological = “reflections on the idea and possibility of God’s existence provides a reason for thinking God actually exists” • Cosmological = “it is reasonable to think that our contingent cosmos must be accounted for, in part, by the causal creativity of a necessarily existing being” • Teleological = “our ordered, complex cosmos is better explained by theism than by naturalism” • Religious Experience = “the widespread reports by persons across time and culture who experience a transcendent, divine reality provide grounds for thinking there is such a reality” (p. 51)

23. The Ontological Argument • God either exists necessarily or God’s existence is impossible. • God’s existence is possible. • Therefore, it is not impossible that God exists (from 1 and 2). • Therefore, God’s existence is necessary (from 1 and 3. • Therefore, God exists (from 4).

24. Two Objections to the Ontological Argument • The Perfect Island • The Possible Non-existence of God

25. An Argument for God’s Unicity or Uniqueness (*) • Define God as a “maximally excellent being.” • Assume that there are two maximally excellent beings, X and Y. • But only one of the following can be true: (a) X is the cause of Y. (b) Y is the cause of X. (c) Both X is the cause of Y and Y is the cause of X. (d) Neither X is the cause of Y nor Y is the cause of X. • If (a) is the case, then X is God. • If (b) is the case, then Y is God. • If (c) is the case, then X and Y are simply two descriptions of the same individual, namely, God. • If (d) is the case, then neither X nor Y is God, but instead Z, which is the cause of both X and Y, is God. • (*) Not covered in Taliaferro.

26. The Kalam Cosmological Argument • If the universe began to exist, then the universe has a cause. • The universe began to exist. • Therefore, the universe has a cause. • Watch a brief video overview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CulBuMCLg0&sns=em • Also watch Prof. William Lane Craig debate Richard Dawkins (in an empty chair) • regarding the Cosmological Argument: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUIFjxYKEAU&list=PL3gdeV4Rk9Ef6jhlYL-Pp1UwzvnL_kbqw

27. Another Version of the Cosmological Argument • The universe is a dependent thing. It cannot exist by itself; it can exist only if it is sustained by something that is not dependent. • God, a necessary being, is the only thing that is not dependent. • Therefore, the universe is sustained by God.

28. Objections to the Cosmological Argument • Why think the Necessary Cause is God? • Why does the cosmos have only one Necessary Cause? • If God’s creating is necessary, then it is not a free action and the cosmos is necessary and not contingent after all.

29. A Version of the Teleological Argument • Assume that something is good if it is worthy of pursuing, admiring, or praising. • The universe is good. • If naturalism is true, then the goodness of the universe is not part of why this universe exists. • If theism is true, then an all-good, all-powerful, and all-knowing, and intentional being has a reason for creating a good universe. • The goodness of the universe appears to be the result of intentional activity. • Therefore, theism is true.

30. Objections to Teleological Arguments • The objection from simplicity • The objection from uniqueness • The infinity objection • The goodness objection

31. A Form of the Argument from Religious Experience • There are widespread reports by persons across time and culture who claim to have experienced a transcendent, divine reality • These persons couldn’t all be mistaken or lying about their experiences. • Therefore, there exists such a transcendent, divine reality.

32. Objections to the Argument from Religious Experience • Religious experiences aren’t the same as perceptual experiences • Religious experiences have naturalistic explanations

33. Evidence and Evidentialism • Evidentialism = “the thesis that if some belief is warranted it must be based on evidence” (p. 83); vs. • Reformed epistemologists = “challenge the idea that beliefs in general are only warranted if they are based on evidence” (p. 84)

34. Theodicy vs. Defense A “theodicy” provides a complete justification of God’s actions, whereas a “defense” only sketches out a possible explanation.

35. Genuine Evil There are at least some examples of what we could call “genuine evil.” In other words, these instances of evil are not illusory or simply mischaracterized as bad but are in fact cases of objective pain, suffering, or some other harm.

36. Natural vs. Human-Caused Evil However, this distinction breaks down when we consider such apparently “natural” evils that (indirectly) result from human activities, for example: --birth defects due to toxic exposure in the workplace or community --chronic conditions like asthma that result from air pollution --deaths that result from extreme weather patterns (hurricanes, floods, and droughts) caused by global warming

37. Two Levels of Evil (*) • Individual (e.g., limited or selective altruism, contempt or hatred for others deemed “inferior”: psychopathy, racial prejuduce, sexism, classism, ageism, homophobia, speciesism…) • Structural (e.g., institutionalized group advantage/disadvantage: racist, heterosexist oppression, poverty, class exploitation, “world alienation” [Hannah Arendt]) • NOTE: Structural evil may result from unintended or even well-intended actions by individuals, what Jean-Paul Sartre called “counter-finalities,” e.g. climate change • (*) Not covered by Taliaferro

38. Evil as a Problem for Monotheism • God is an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving being. • If God is all-powerful, then God could create a world without genuine evil. • If God is all-knowing, then God knows that there is genuine evil in the world. • If God is all-loving, then God would want there to be a world without genuine evil. • But there is genuine evil in the world. • So, God (at least as defined above) does not exist.

39. Arguments for and against the Existence of God based on the Problem of Evil • The primacy of the good • The free will defense • Non-human animal suffering • Comparing possible worlds • The hiddenness of God objection • Absolute wrongs • The ethics of creature and creator

40. The Hiddenness of God Objection • We live in a world in which people persist in disbelieving God or having cruel views of God. • God does not appear to correct these states. • An all-good God would never allow a creature to seek God without finding God in an evident fashion. • Therefore, God does not exist. NOTE: Consider the plot of the 1950 movie, The Next Voice You Hear: www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRxf9qS5PUk

41. Darwin on the Problem of Natural Evil • That there is much suffering in the world no one disputes. Some have attempted to explain this in reference to man by imagining that it serves for his moral improvement. But the number of men in the world is as nothing compared with that of all other sentient beings, and these often suffer greatly without any moral improvement. A being so powerful and so full of knowledge as a God who could create the universe, is to our finite minds omnipotent and omniscient, and it revolts our understanding to suppose that his benevolence is not unbounded, for what advantage can there be in the suffering of millions of the lower animals throughout almost endless time? This very old argument from the existence of suffering against the existence of an intelligent first cause seems to me a strong one; whereas, as just remarked, the presence of much suffering agrees well with the view that all organic beings have been developed through variation and natural selection. • (The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, edited by Nora Barlow [NY: Norton, 2005 (1958)], p. 75.)

42. A Materialist Objection to an Afterlife Human beings are simply bodies and, therefore, at death, they cannot survive but will just decompose like any other body.

43. Two Possible Theistic Replies • Substance dualism • Materialism

44. The Model Argument for Substance Dualism • If A is B, whatever is true of A is true of B. • If a person is his body, whatever is true of the person is true of his body. • It is possible that a person can exist without their body and it is possible that their body can exist without the person. • There is something true of a person but not true of their body. • Therefore, a person is not identical with their body.

45. Objections to the Model Argument • Begs the question • Only about concepts • First premise fails in some cases • Can’t account for the evil of death

46. A Substance Dualist Argument for an Afterlife • If a person is not identical with his or her body, then he or she will survive the death of his or her body. • By the model argument, a person is not identical with his or her body. • Therefore, a person survives the death of his or her body.

47. Materialist Models for an Afterlife • Resurrection • Replica • Recreation • Reconstitution

48. What is the Point of an Afterlife? • Objection: It would be empty of meaning • Three replies

49. The Afterlife as a Miracle A miracle = “an event brought about by God for a holy or divine purpose, an event that differs from God’s general creative activity of sustaining the world and its laws regulating organic decomposition and regeneration” (p. 133).

50. Hume’s Objection to Miracles Although miracles are not impossible, they are highly improbable.