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AQA Philosophy of religion If using a PC, Hold Ctrl to click on the following links: HYPERLINK \l "designargument" Design argument HYPERLINK \l "ontologicalargument" Ontological argument HYPERLINK \l "cosmologicalargument" Cosmological argument HYPERLINK \l "evilandsuffering" Evil and suffering HYPERLINK \l "religiousexperience" Religious experience HYPERLINK \l "religiouslanguage" Religious language HYPERLINK \l "miracles" Miracles HYPERLINK \l "selfandlifeafterdeath" Self, death and the afterlifeDesign argumentTeleological – ‘telos’ or purpose.A Posteriori – knowledge based on experience. Presentation: Paley’s analogical argument.Design qua Purpose argues that the complexity of e.g. the Human eye which is arranged to fulfil the purpose of enabling us to see. He also points to the wings of a bird and fins of a fish.Watch analogy: If you had never seen anything man-made, and came across a watch, you couldn’t argue it had come about by chance nor been there forever because it has Complexity & Purpose. This must mean it had a designer – a watch maker. Paley then points out there are also things in the universe that are complex and have a purpose. Therefore, it follows that there must have been a universe maker which must have been God. “Every manifestation of design, which existed in the watch, exists in the works of nature.”It does not matter if the watch goes wrong or isn’t perfect, the point is the watch’s existence suggests it was designed for a purpose.Design qua Regularity - Paley pointed to the rotations of planets in the solar system and how they obey the same universal laws as shown by Newton’s laws of motion and gravity. Paley argued that unless gravity consistently has strength it does within a narrow boundary then the planets would be unable to maintain their order and life on earth could not exist.Criticisms: HumeHume’s Epicurean hypothesis - This universe could just be a product of some cosmic accident, any universe is bound to have the appearance of design. A chaotic random universe, given an infinite amount of time, will by complete chance occasionally assemble itself into an orderly one. Not just once, but an infinite amount of times! In an infinite time frame, everything possible will happen, an infinite number of times.Currently the view of science is that time began at the big bang however, therefore there has not been an infinite amount of time.Perhaps there were infinite universes before ours or an infinite number of universes (multiverse theory).Like effects don’t infer like causes (Hume). Just because two effects are alike, it doesn’t follow that their cause must be alike. So just because the effect of the watch and the effect of the universe are like each other in that they both have complexity and purpose, it doesn’t follow that the cause of the watch (a watch-maker) must be like the cause of a universe which Paley claims is a universe-maker. Two effects which are alike might in fact have very different causes. This is another criticism of analogy. Just because something is analogous to something else it doesn’t follow that they had analogous causes.However, arguably Paley’s claim isn’t merely that the cause of the universe must be like the cause of the watch simply because the universe and the watch are similar effects. Paley’s claim is just that a designer is the best explanation of the cause of a complex and purposeful effect and that a God is the only sort of thing that could design and create a universe.Hume could respond that we only think a designer is the best explanation of complexity and purpose because that is all we have ever observed, but we have no evidence that the creation of the universe was anything like what we commonly observe.Arguably Paley’s point is that purpose must come from a mind. This is arguably a conceptual claim rather than an empirical one which depends on evidence.Hume’s unsound analogy argument - Our world is not like a machine (whereas the watch is) at all since it is composed of living things, it is more organic than it is mechanical. The world does not closely resemble something man-made, a house can be certainly concluded to have a designer, because we have seen it being built. We cannot infer from this that the universe has a similar (intelligent) cause. Hume is claiming that we know artifacts are designed because we have seen them or heard of them being made. So, we know the watch is designed for a similar reason. This is in contrast to Paley who claims it’s the complexity and purpose that enables us to know it was designed. Imagine an aboriginal who has never seen technology were to discover the watch. Would they know it was designed, despite having never heard of or seen one being made? If so, they arguably inferred its design from the complexity and purpose and so Paley seems right, if not, Hume seems right.There might be some third reason why an aboriginal might realise a watch was designed, such as innate human appreciation for aesthetically mathematical mechanical intricacy due to our innate pattern seeking minds and preference for order over chaos.Ontological argumentA priori (without experience – based on Logic instead)Deductive (If the premises are true, the conclusion must be true)Presentation: Anselm’s a priori argumentAnselm refers to Psalm 14:1 ‘the fool says in his heart, ‘there is no god’.” When the fool can conceive of God (the greatest thing), it would be contradictory to suppose God doesn’t exist. As existence in reality is an intrinsic quality of greatness (by definition). To say there’s no God is simply to misunderstand what the word ‘God’ means.Premise 1 -God is the greatest conceivable beingPremise 2 -It is greater to exist in reality than the mind alonePremise 3 -God exists in the mindConclusion -Therefore God exists in realityCriticisms: Gaunilo and KantGaunilo makes the point that if we apply Anselm’s logic to something other than God like an Island, we get an ‘absurd’ outcome (reductio ad absurdum) We can conceive of a perfect Island but that doesn’t mean it exists, so why should that be the case for God?Anselm’s 2nd version of the ontological argument. Anselm thought Gaunilo had a point, so strengthened his argument into a 2nd form.Contingent – depends on something else for its existenceNecessary – does not depend on anything for its existence – contains the reason for its existence within itself – cannot be denied without contradictionSomething is greater if it doesn’t depend on anything for it’s existence. An Island depends on things such as the ocean etc to exist. Therefore an Island is contingent whereas God is necessary. That’s why the argument works for God but not an Island.Kant argued that existence was not a predicate, meaning not an attribute, but the pre-condition for having attributes.Imagine you did not believe in mermaids but argued with someone who did about whether they exist. You would be agreeing on the definition of the concept of what it meant to be a mermaid (half fish, half human etc) but disagreeing on whether that concept is instantiated (exists) in reality. If you can agree on the concept but disagree about existence, then it seems that the existence status can vary while the concept is held the same, suggesting that existence and the concept of a thing are separable and thus independent.Kant illustrated this with 100 thalers, which are coins. Imagine you have 100 coins in your mind as a mere concept. Then imagine you have 100 coins in existence, not in the mind alone. The coins in existence have existence, the concept of coins in your mind does not. Kant argues that the concept of what it means to be 100 coins is no different whether it is a mere concept in your mind or whether that concept actually manifests in reality as an existing thing. 100 coins is just 100 coins, whether in your mind or reality.If there is no difference in the concept of what it means to be 100 coins between whether it is in the mind alone or in reality then it makes no difference to the concept of a thing whether it has existence or not, which means that existence cannot be part of the concept of a thing, so means it cannot be an attribute or predicate.Cosmological argumentPresentation: Aquinas’ Way 3. The argument from contingency and necessity.Aquinas 3rd Way – Argument from NecessityPremise 1.1- Everything in the universe exists contingently (once didn’t and won’t exist in the future)Premise 1.2- If everything exists contingently, then at one point, nothing must have existedPremise 1.3- If at one point nothing existed, then nothing would exist now (nothing comes from nothing)Conclusion 1- There must be something that exists necessarily – that thing we call GodCriticisms: Hume and Russell.Hume’s view of causation is that cause and effect might not exist. He points out that humans think every event has a cause, but this may just be a misunderstanding. If we are being honest, whenever we think we see cause and effect we really only observe one event following another event. No matter how many times we observe a certain event following another event, such as a ball smashing a window when thrown at it, it is not giving us a valid reason to assume that there is any necessary connection between the events. Just because event B follows event A every time we observe it, it doesn’t mean that event A caused event B. Without the notion of causation, the cosmological argument fails.Arguably modern science can provide us with evidence for cause and effect because we can now have a detailed understanding of how objects operate and interact and can therefore understand the causal mechanism sufficiently to conclude that the ball smashes the window because of our understanding of the chemistry of the brittleness of glass.Hume and the fallacy of composition is that it’s a fallacy to assume that properties of the parts of something must be properties of the whole. In the case of the universe, Aquinas rightly points out that all the parts of the universe must have a cause. However it is the fallacy of composition to assume that therefore the universe itself as a whole must have had a cause. Bertrand Russell illustrated this by pointing out that just because every human has a mother, that doesn’t mean the human race has a mother. Note that Hume is not claiming to know that the universe had no cause. He is merely pointing out that it is invalid to argue from the parts of the universe having a cause to the universe itself having one. While the properties of the parts of something may indeed be the properties of the whole, that isn’t necessarily the case and it is the fallacy of composition to assume so.Bertrand Russell vs Frederick Copleston – The radio DebateThe key focus in this debate is the principle of sufficient reason.Aquinas and Copleston believe that the universe can only be sufficiently explained by the existence of God. Copleston reformulates Aquinas’ 3rd way combining it with Leibniz’ principle of sufficient reason:Copleston:Premise 1- There are contingent beings in the universe Premise 2- The universe is simply the totality of individual (contingent) objectsPremise 3 - In order for the reason for the existence of the universe to be a sufficient reason it cannot be contingent and therefore must be outside of the universeConclusion - Therefore the cause of the universe is an external necessary being Russell:Russell is objecting to Premise 1: “there are contingent beings in the universe”Contingent or necessary existence is not a thing. This builds on Kant’s criticsm of the ontological argument that existence is not a predicate. Russell claims that only propositions can be necessary, not things. So no object is necessary or contingent – it simply exists or doesn’t existCopleston: Argues that ‘necessary being’ and ‘cause of the universe’ are meaningful terms, ordinary people understand what they mean.Russell: objects to Premise 2 Fallacy of composition:What is true for the parts is not necessarily true for the whole. Every man has a mother, but humanity doesn’t have a mother.Copleston: one cannot be sure that this analogy appliesRussell: Copleston is trying to prove God, he is the one who needs to be sureRussell: says the universe could just be a brute fact, meaning there might be no reason for its existence. there could be an infinite regress of objects or even universes. Copleston: Suggests making this argument is like sitting down at a chess board and claiming it’s a draw because you refuse to make a move. How can one do PhilosophyEvil and sufferingThe problem of evil and suffering.Epicurus (ancient Greek philosopher, one of the first to oppose the problem of evil)Is God willing but not able to prevent evil? Then he isn’t omnipotentIs God is able to prevent evil but not willing? Then he isn’t omnibenevolentIf God is both able and willing, then why is there evil?If God is neither able or willing then why call him God?The concepts of natural and moral evil.The logical and evidential problem of evil.The Logical problem of evil is the claim that evil and the God of classical theism (as defined as omnibenevolent, omnipotent and omniscient) cannot exist together. In other words, there is no possible world in which both evil and the God of classical theism exist. Their co-existence is completely impossible. Mackie argued for this.Mackie’s ‘inconsistent triad’ argued that God’s omnipotence, God’s omnibenevolence & Evil cannot all exist together. One of them has to be false. Since Evil seems to exist, this casts doubt on God being all loving or all powerful. Hume and JS Mill pointed out that the God of classical theism doesn’t exist. This caused many at that time to become Deists who in a prime mover that doesn’t intervene or care about creation.The Evidential problem of evil is the claim that the existence of evil counts as evidence against the existence of God. It is possible that they exist together however it is unlikely and therefore we have most reason to believe that they don’t and that therefore God does not exist. Hume argued for this.Hume argues that the theodicies which attempt to respond to the problem of evil by claiming that God and evil could ‘possibly’ exist together, due to some speculation about God’s motives to punish (Augustine) or develop us (iraneaus) fail to really respond to the problem of evil. Hume is saying that it’s easy to make up some story about God’s motivation, but that such stories are mere constructed possibilities, not sufficiently evidenced views that warrant belief by an empiricist.For Hume, those who put forward theodicies seem to feel they have a licence to come up with any logically possible state of affairs as regards God’s will, to explain the problem of evil. That is not a sufficient way to respond to the problem of evil for an empiricist like Hume, who thinks that we should only believe what we have evidence for. The fact that the theodicies invented by Augustine and Irenaeus are possible ways that God and evil could co-exist is insufficient as they do not establish that they are in fact true. Responses to the problem of evil and suffering and their strengths & weaknessHick’s soul making theodicy.John Hick’s - Modern Irenaean Theodicy argued that God allows evil to exist because it serves the good purpose of helping us develop our souls. human beings were not created perfect but develop in two stages:Stage 1: Spiritually immature: through struggle to survive and evolve, humans can develop into spiritually mature beings.The fall is a result of immature humans who are only in the image of God.Stage 2: Grow into a relationship with GodThis raises the question of why didn’t God just make us good to begin with? Why bother with the first step, why not create us good? Irenaeus and Hick answered that creating us fully developed was impossible. A fully developed soul is one which has chosen good over evil. If God made us fully developed, then he would be making us choose good over evil. But if you make someone do something, then they didn’t really choose it. Being fully developed requires having made a choice, therefore it’s logically impossible to make someone fully developed. God had to make us undeveloped and allow us the freedom to choose good over evil.But isn’t some evil so bad that it is soul breaking? Can’t some evil destroy a person’s character rather than build it up and develop it? Some people are crushed into depression or post-traumatic stress disorder when they experience evil.It could be responded that they failed to rise to the challenge of the evil. What about cases where evil doesn’t lead to any good? A child with cancer who dies, for example. Some Christians respond that God is teaching a lesson to the parents in such cases.That seems unfair to the Child however, and furthermore what if the child Has no parents?We could agree with Irenaeus that encountering and overcoming evil leads to good character development. But couldn’t we do just as well in that regard with a little less evil? Couldn’t we grow just as much with 0.1% less evil in the world? Well then that’s 0.1% of evil that Hick & Irenaeus can’t explain. Hick argued for the Epistemic distance. This means that we cannot truly know of God’s existence. If God did make himself known to us, we would follow his commands out of obedience to his authority instead of following them because we had figured out that they were the right thing to do. Hick argued that it’s only if we have faith in God and still do good because we want to do good, rather than because we know for sure there’s a God who wants us to, that we can truly grow spiritually and morally. Peter Vardy illustrated this with the example of a peasant girl who a King falls in love with and forces her to marry him. The girl doesn’t really love the King and only does it due to obedience to authority out of fear. Similarly, if God appeared to us we would obey his authority rather than really loving what is good for its own sake, which is the morally superior move and therefore most conducive of soul making.Arguably religious experience is God revealing himself to a person however, therefore Hick’s epistemic distance theory is inconsistent with religious experience.The epistemic distance does provide a reason why there would be no evidence for a perfect God, but it itself has no evidence for it and so the evidential problem of evil would remain.According to Hick everyone will be saved since a loving God would not send people to heaven – universal salvation but post-mortem soul making is neededThe free will defence.Plantinga’s free will defence argues that evil exists because of free will. His argument intended to respond to Mackie’s logical problem of evil, which argues that it is impossible for God (as classically defined) and evil to exist together. Plantinga argues that it is possible for God and evil to exist together because evil is the result of free will. Moral evil results from human actions, natural evil results from the free will of demons and Satan. This raises the question of why God gave us free will at all though. Wouldn’t it have been better for us to live in a perfectly good world yet not have free will? Plantinga argued that if God didn’t give us free will, our universe would have no value. Not that it would have been of negative vale, but that it would have been value-less. Therefore, no matter how much negative value you think giving us free will results in, value itself would not be possible without it. So unless you are going to question the value of value, you have to accept that our universe is better for having value despite the downsides. Questioning whether value has value even presupposes value so questioning that might even be illogical.Arguably we do not have free willGod could put us in a slightly better world yet still enable us to have free will, surely.This doesn’t solve the evidential problem of evil.Process theodicy as presented by Griffin.Griffin’s Process theology answered the problem of evil by suggesting that God is not powerful enough to stop the evil. God has enough power to create the world but not to sustain total control of it. In fact since God is limited he also suffers with us.While this solves the problem of evil, it results in a God different from the God of classical theism.Religious experienceThe challenges of verifying religious experiences.The challenges to religious experience from science.Freud called religion an 'obsessional neurosis' and said it ultimately derived from two main psychological forces. The first is the fear of death. We have an instinctual animalistic fear of death which we can't control but we can control our human thoughts and cognitions. While animals only have their fear of death triggered when in a dangerous situation, humans are the only animal that constantly are aware that they are going to die. We have the animalsitic part of ourselves, but have since developed cognitive processes, which then unfortunately constantly trigger the fear of death on our anaimalstic side. So the solution is to manipulate those to believe that death is not the end. Also Freud argued that the reason Christians call God 'father' is because they have a desire to be a child forever. It's a desire for eternal innocence in the face of the painful reality of the world. Freud thought these psychological forces were so strong that they resulted in delusions which could explain religious experience.Calling religion a neurosis is quite extreme. There seem to be plenty of non-neurotic religious people. The problem with psychological arguments is that while they could be true for many maybe even the majority, it's hard to argue they are true for all and even if they don't work for one person, that's one person they can't explain.Freud is curently regarded by psychologists as being too unempiricial in his methods to count as real science.?Popper argued that Freud's method was unfalsifiable. What could Freud point to that would prove his view wrong? It's hard to see, but therefore this is not true falsifiable science.William James rejected psychological attempts to explain away religious experiences as coming from a prejudice against religion. So James counters psychological explanations with their own psychological explanation.Persinger was a neuroscientist who created a machine dubbed the ‘God helmet’ which manipulated people’s brain waves and often caused them to have a religious experience where they felt the presence of unseen beings. If this is the case, arguably religious experiences originate from the brain, not God.However, maybe that brain manipulation is simply the mechanism by which God creates religious experience. Also, we know we can cause hallucinations by manipulating the brain with drugs like LSD. This shouldn’t necessarily count against the validity of religious ?experiences that occur without such manipulations.Arguably Persinger at least proves that religious experiences could have a naturalistic explanation, which suggests it’s up to religious believers to prove that they have a supernatural explanation at that point.Religious responses to those challenges.William James was a philosopher and a psychologist. In his book ‘The varieties of religious experience’ James presents a number of first-hand case studies of religious experiences. James argued that religious experiences were the core of religion, whereas religious teachings and practices were ‘second hand’ religion, i.e not what religion is really about. This makes the argument from religious experience centrally important, though it means James doesn’t exactly believe in ‘God’ in the traditional sense. James thinks all religions are true in that they point to a higher spiritual reality.It could be argued that these first hand experiences are examples of psychological disorders, brain hallucinations, fasting, epilepsy, etc. But James saw them as central to understanding religion. He could respond that religious experiences are often not random hallucinations but deeply emotionally meaningful and profound experiences. Why should that be the case? Why should a random brain hallucination have such life changing effects? James thinks the more plausible explanation is that they really are tapping into a higher spiritual reality.James viewed conversion experiences as a transformation from a divided or imperfect self (unhappy, conscious of being wrong) to a more unified consciousness (happy, knows right).Consider the case of St Paul, is James right to say Paul was unhappy and conscious of being wrong while persecuting and killing Christians before his conversion experience?In defence of James, perhaps Paul was secretly unhappy with his persecutory actions.James believes religious experiences indicated the probability of God, though not completely proving God. Since James was a pluralist who thought all religions were different cultural manifestations of the divine, he didn’t exactly think religious experiences pointed to ‘God’ but to the ‘spiritual’ or ‘higher aspects’ of humanity. Different religions on different sides of the earth have similarities, which to James suggest there must be an objective higher spiritual reality which they all partake in.Arguably it is simply that all humans have a similar psychology and similar concerns e.g life & death which accounts for the similarities in religions.James was most interested in the effects religious experiences had on people’s lives and argued that the validity of the experience depended upon those effects. This is because James was a Pragmatist – a philosophical view on epistemology which states that if something is good for us, that is evidence of its truth. James pointed to the case study of an Alcoholic who was unable to give up alcohol but then had a religious experience, after which he was able to give up the alcohol. They were unable to give up the alcohol before the experience, implying they lacked the power. After the experience, they had gained that power they lacked before. Where did it come from? James would argue that this is evidence for the validity of the experience, meaning it was probably ‘true’. Though again, James would only think this was evidence for the validity of ‘the spiritual’, not necessarily whichever God that alcoholic happened to believe in. However arguably just because something is good for us or bad for us, that is no evidence for its truth or falsity. I could easily invent a religion which was psychologically satisfying and encouraged people to act well, and some might even have religious experiences in that religion, however it would all be made up.James would respond that although the details particular to that religion were made up, nonetheless the details of any religion are ‘second hand’ to the experiences, which allow any human, whatever they believe, to tap into ‘the spiritual’Isn’t Pragmatism essentially going by the logic that if, for example, nuclear bombs are very destructive and bad for us, then the science behind them must be false? That is absurd but it seems to be the logic of Pragmatism.James argues for God in very general terms – religious experience pointing to a higher order of reality.Perhaps this ‘higher order’ of reality is merely in our minds. It may be a valid spiritual potential of human conscious experience, but it may be purely psychological and have no supernatural element whatsoever. James might be able to accept this conclusion however. His main aim is to prevent religion from being dismissed as meaningless superstition. It has a very important psychological function and use that we must acknowledge. However when it comes to the argument for religious experience, it’s arguably hard to see how this could leave us arguing for anything supernatural.William James gives four criteria which characterise all religious experiences:Ineffable – the experience is beyond language and cannot be put into words to accurately described.Noetic – some sort of knowledge or insight is gainedTransient – the experience is temporaryPassive – the experience happens to a person, the person doesn’t make the experience happen.Arguably not all religious experiences are transient – some claim every moment of very day is a religious experience. Also, there seems to be a contradiction between Noetic and ineffable. How can we gain some sort of knowledge or insight which cannot be put into words? Rudolf Otto. Numinous experiences are feelings of awe and wonder in the presence of an almighty and transcendent God.Otto claims Numinous experiences are the core of any religion ‘worthy of the name’. So Otto is sort of a pluralist (someone who think all religions can be true) but he rejects as truly religious any religion that does not have Numinous experiences at their core. For Otto, it is fundamental to true religion that individuals should have a sense of a personal encounter with the divine. This means that Numinous religious experiences are the true core of religion, whereas the teachings and holy books and so on are not the true core of a religion.Otto was a protestant who clearly advanced religious experiences as a direct line to God in opposition to the Catholic view that the church was a necessary intermediary between common people and God. Otto tried to identify what made an experience religious rather than just an experience. Otto described the numinous experience as follows:It is an experience of something ‘Wholly other’ – completely different to anything human.The revelation of God is felt emotionally, not rationally.Mysterium – the utter inexplicable indescribable mystery of the experienceTremendum – the awe and fear of being in the presence of an overwhelmingly superior beingFascinans – despite that fear, being strangely drawn to the experience Otto rejected the idea that God could be known through logical argument or sensory experiences.It’s not clear whether we gain knowledge of God through experience, since the experience is emotional rather than rational.Otto claims the theological ideas of different religions come after the experience. However it seems more correct to say that people see the God they believe in as a result of their social conditioning.There are many religious experiences which are not numinous. E.g seeing an AngelIt also seems difficult for Otto to rule out alternative naturalistic explanations of religious experience such as Mental illness, Epilepsy, random brain hallucinations, drugs, alcohol, fasting, sleep deprivation, etc.Otto could respond with the question of why such deep important life changing and defining experiences should so consistently result from such naturalistic things? It’s one thing to have a bizarre random hallucination, it’s another to have one that feels like you’re connecting to an ultimate spiritual reality where there is a being. Naturalistic explanations do explain why we have hallucinatory delusory experiences, but it can’t really explain why they are of such deep profundity and spiritual significance.Swinburne’s principles of credulity and testimony.Swinburne?argued for the principles of testimony and credulity. The principle of credulity argues that you should believe what you experience unless you have a reason not to. The principle of testimony argues that you should believe what others tell you they have experienced, unless you have a reason not to.Swinburne is an empiricist who argued that an experience of God should count as evidence towards belief in God, although it doesn’t constitute complete proof. Swinburne argued that whenever we gain some new evidence, we can’t dismiss it for no reason – that would be irrational. It is only if we have other better-established evidence which contradicts that new evidence that we may rationally dismiss it. This is the rationale behind the principles of testimony and credulity. Experiencing God is evidence for God, unless we have some other evidence to justify dismissing the experiences.However, is a mere experience of God sufficient evidence to justify belief in God? Arguably the existence of God is a extraordinary claim which therefore might require extraordinary evidence.Any religious experience could be explained by mental illness, epilepsy, random brain hallucinations, fasting, drugs, alcohol, lack of sleep, etc. So we will always have a reason not to believe any religious experience. Religious languageThe issue of whether religious language should be viewed cognitively or non-cognitively.The challenges of the verification and falsification principles to the meaningfulness of religious language.Verificationism was invented by the logical positivists of the Vienna Circle, a group of philosophers, the most famous of which was A. J. Ayer. Their theory of meaning was that words get their meaning by connecting to the world or by being true by definition. If a word connects to the world, that connection should be verifiable. The verification principle states that in order to be meaningful, something must be either 1) analytically true or 2) empirically verifiable. Religious language is neither analytically true nor empirically verifiable because ‘God’ is a metaphysical term according to Ayer which means it is about something beyond the empirical world, so there can be no way to empirically verify it. Ayer’s theory was criticised for being overly restrictive of meaning. Wouldn’t History be considered meaningless because it can’t be empirically verified? To respond to this, Ayer came up with weak and strong verification. We can strongly verify whatever we can conclusively verify by observation and experience, so there is no doubt about it. We can weakly verify anything for which there is some evidence which points to its probably being the case. E.g. Historical documents and archaeological findings can be strongly verified, and on the basis of those we can weakly verify that there were certain civilisations in the past with certain histories to them.Ayer argued for weak verification, that if it’s possible to know what would verify a statement in principle, then it is meaningful. However Ayer was dissatisfied with this strong/weak distinction. The problem with strong verification is that it can’t apply to anything, since mere observation cannot establish conclusive proof of anything beyond all doubt. The problem with weak verification is that it could potentially justify anythingAyer accepted this and finally improved his theory into:Direct verification – a statement that is verifiable by observationIndirect verification – when things we have directly verified support a statement which we can’t directly verify, we can be said to have indirect verification for it.The verification principle cannot verify itself. It states that to be meaningful a statement must be analytic or empirically verifiable. However, that means that in order for the verification principle itself to be meaningful, it must be analytic or empirically verifiable. If we try to take the verification principle empirically then it would be an empirical claim that if we investigate what kind of meaning people use then we will see that it is either analytic or empirical. But that appears to be false since empirical evidence shows that people have meant something else by meaning throughout history e.g. Plato found it meaningful to talk of the world of forms and theologians find it meaningful to talk of God, both of which involve unempirical metaphysical terms.Ayer responds by admitting that the verification principle cannot be a factual statement about the meaning of factual statements and claims instead that it is a methodological stipulation, a rule which the logical positivist adopts for methodological purposes. However, this appears to reduce the verification principle into a tool one might use if you already agree with empiricism. Metaphysical statements are now only meaningless to this particular empirical tool, rather than categorically meaningless.Falsificationism was invented by Karl Popper who thought he could capture empiricism better than verificationism could. Popper was impressed with Einstein who claimed Mercury would wobble in its orbit at a certain time in the future because if he was wrong, his theory would be falsified. Popper was less impressed with marxists and freudians because they only looked for verifications of their views without ever admitting a way they could be falsified. Popper illustrated this with swans the claim ‘all swans are white’ which to be verified would require knowing that at no point in time nor at any place in the universe did a non-white swan ever exist. However, the claim is falsifiable because we can say what would prove it wrong; seeing a non-white swan. Anthony Flew applied this to religious language. He claimed that because religious people can’t say what logically possible state of affairs is incompatible with their claim that God exists (in other words, because they can’t say what would prove them wrong), they are not actually asserting anything about the way things are (since there is no entailed claim about the way things are not). Therefore Flew considers religious language meaningless.P1 - A claim about the way the world is entails a claim about the way the world is not. (e.g saying the chair is blue entails that it is not red)P2 - Disproving something involves showing the world is not as it claims. P3 - If something cannot be disproven than it is not committed to a claim about the way the world is not.C1 – In that case, an unfalsifiable claim cannot be a claim about the way the world is. St Paul claimed that if Jesus’ body were discovered then belief and faith in Christianity would be pointless. This suggests Flew is incorrect to think religious language is always unfalsifiable as there are at least some believers whose belief is incompatible with some logically possible state of affairs. That would show that Paul’s religious language would pass Flew’s test of falsification and so would be meaningful.The parable of the gardener is how Flew illustrated his response to claims like St Paul’s. Two people are walking and see a garden. One claims there is a gardener who tends to it, so the other suggest waiting and seeing if that is true. After a while, the other says ‘actually, they are an invisible gardener’, so they set up barbed wire fences and so on to try and detect this invisible gardener, at which point they then say ‘actually, it’s a non-physical gardener’. Flew’s point is that this is what religious people do whenever anyone tries to empirically test their belief. Some excuse is made about why that test is not appropriate. But for every excuse made, a potential empirical foothold for God is removed, thereby causing the concept of God to ‘die a death of a thousand qualifications’ – Flew. If there is no logically possible state of affairs which we could investigate that would be incompatible with the belief in God, then it is unfalsifiable and so meaningless.Flew’s response to Paul, based on the parable of the gardener, would be that if we actually found Jesus’ body, Paul would make up some excuse as to why that test was not a valid empirical test of his religious belief after all. Perhaps he would claim the devil put a fake body there, for example.The falsification principle cannot falsify itself and is therefore meaningless. Popper responded to this criticism by claiming that falsificationism was not a criterion of meaning, just a method of distinguishing the empirical from the non-empirical. Since Flew used falsificationism as a criterion of meaning, however, it seems he makes falsificationism vulnerable to the same criticism verificationism had.Responses to these challenges:Hick’s Eschatological verification.Hick argued that there is a way to verify religious language, because when we die we’ll see God and then we’ll know. Hick told the story of the celestial city. Two travellers were walking on a road. One (symbolizing the theist) believed a city was at the end of the road, the other (symbolizing the atheist) did not. Hick remarked however that once they got to the end of the road (symbolizing death) one of them would have been right all along. Arguably this only establishes that religious language is possibly verifiable. The verification principle requires that something be verifiable, not merely ‘possibly’ verifiable, however.Hare’s Blicks.Blicks. R. M. Hare disagreed with the cognitivism of veriticationism and falsificationism and instead argued for non-cognitivism. Hare argued that religious language doesn’t get its meaning from attempting to describe the world, but from expressing ‘attitudes’ – which he called a Blick. The expression of attitudes is not an attempt to describe the world, therefore they cannot be true or false. Hare illustrated this with the example of a paranoid student who thought his professors were trying to kill him. Even when shown the evidence that they were not trying to kill him, by meeting them and seeing they were nice people, the student did not change their mind. Hare argued this shows that what we say about the world is really an expression of our Blick rather than an attempt to describe the world. If it were an attempt to describe the world, the meaning could be changed by that description being shown to be false. Because the meaning in the students mind was not changed by contrary evidence, Hare concluded that meaning must be connected to a non-cognitive attitude or Blick.Although Hare saves religious language from being disregarded as a meaningless failed attempt to describe the world, nonetheless he only does so by sacrificing the ability of the meaning of religious language to have any factual content. So when a religious person says ‘God exists,’ for Hare they are really expressing their attitude rather than actually claiming that there objectively exists a God. Many religious people would claim however, that they really do mean that ‘there objectively exists a God’, irrespective of their attitude. Aquinas wrote many long books attempting to prove the seemingly cognitive belief in God true. So arguably Hare fails to capture the true meaning of religious languageHare could respond that although many religious people may indeed feel like they are making factual claims about reality, their conception of reality is really just an aspect of their Blick. Saying God exists therefore really serves to add psychological force and grandeur to what is actually just their attitude. Wittgenstein’s language games.Language Games – Wittgenstein advanced two theories of meaning in his life. The first was quite similar to verificationism however his second theory – language games – completely contradicted it.The first theory is called the picture theory of meaning where Wittgenstein argued that words get their meaning by connecting to the world. More specifically, the logic of our language somehow connects to the logic of reality. Our words ‘picture’ reality by connecting to its logic.Wittgenstein later in his life repudiated the idea that words got their meaning by connecting to the world and instead argued they got their meaning by connecting to social reality. A language game exists when multiple people communicate. Wittgenstein called it a ‘game’ because he argued that language games consisted of rules. In each social situation the people participating in it act in a certain way because they have internalised and are following a certain set of rules which govern behaviour including speech. Therefore, the meaning of their speech will be connected to those rules i.e to the social situation. There can be as many different language games as there can be different types of social interaction, I.e potentially unlimited. Nonetheless, they will all be differentiated by the set of rules which constitute them.Religious people play the religious language game. Scientists play the scientific language game. For Wittgenstein, to uproot a word from the religious language game and try to analyse it within the context of the scientific language game is to misunderstand how meaning works. Words get their meaning from the language game in which they are spoken. So it’s no surprise to Wittgenstein that Ayer finds religious language meaningless, since Ayer is not religious and therefore isn’t a participant in the religious language game as he doesn’t know the rules of it.When Wittgenstein remarks that we have to ‘know’ the rules of a game to play it, he doesn’t necessarily mean consciously. For perhaps most of human social interaction we are following rules that we have unconsciously internalised. For that reason it can be very hard to say exactly what the rules of the religious language game are, as opposed to the scientific language game which is more cognitively formalised. Wittgenstein argued that the scientific language game can be about reality, since it is about evidence, experience and reason, whereas the religious language game is about faith and social communities, conventions & emotions.Arguably the scientific and religious language games can in fact be fused together. Behe believed you could prove god through science for example because of irreducible complexity.However, we could respond on behalf of Wittgenstein that this particular fusion of religion and science is really itself a unique language game, dissimilar to either the religious or scientific games. Alternatively, Behe could be argued to not be playing the scientific language game since most scientists reject his ideas.If all language is only meaningful within the context of a language game, in which language game is Wittgenstein’s theory of language games meaningful? Surely if it’s only meaningful within certain language games and not others, doesn’t that mean it’s not true? Isn’t Wittgenstein trying to rely on a meta-non-language game to describe language games, while also trying to insist there is no such thing as a meta-non-language game?Most religious people would object that they really do mean that there objectively exists a God. This point is most salient when considering the works of Aquinas who attempted to argue for the existence of God. Aquinas believes the proposition ‘God’s goodness is analogous to ours’ to be cognitively and objectively true. He doesn’t think he’s just following a social convention in saying so.It’s true that religious people claim to be describing reality when they say God exists, however perhaps their word ‘reality’ is informed by their religious language game and is different to the word ‘reality’ as used in the scientific language game. So when religious people like Aquinas say ‘God exists in reality’, the word ‘reality’ is actually not referring to the scientific conception of reality.Tillich on symbolic languageSymbol (Paul Tillich)Paul Tillich developed a theory of religious language that centres on the notion of symbols. Language is only meaningful – in so far as it – participates in the being of God. This active participation by language in a thing’s existence is the fundamental characteristic of being a symbol.Tillich makes a clear distinction between: words as signs v words as symbols. What is the difference from a sign saying Fiji, and the 0 A sign attaches a label, but the symbol participates in it what it points to (e.g. the cross is a powerful symbol because it represents Christianity and points to the death of Jesus) This is Tilich’s theory of participation by which he defines the core aspects of what gives something symbolic meaning:Pointing: words have to point to something, a meaning (“I threw a ball” – tells you something v “I ball a throw” – tells you nothingParticipation: It means that it is more than just a label. The symbol has a participation in what it is pointing to. For example, “I love you” participates in the act of loving someone.Revealing: To be symbolic has to reveal a deeper meaning, they open up levels of reality that are otherwise closed to us.Changeable: Symbols can change what they point to or may fail to consistently point to them. They open up the levels of dimensions of the soul that correspond to those levels of reality. E.g. the American flag used to be yellow with a snake, this flag doesn’t point to America anymore.Tillich thought that the language of faith was symbolic language. He thought symbolic language was like a poetry or a piece of art - it can offer a new view of life or a new meaning to life, but is hard to explain to people who haven’t experienced it, or not heard the poetry or seen the piece of art. Tillich thought that religious language is a symbolic way of pointing towards the ultimate realityThe vision of God which he called the ‘ground of being’. We have come to know this through symbols.Relationship with truth and empiricism:A phrase like “I love you” goes beyond simple empirical measure. There is a deep truth revealed by symbolic language but it is not an empirical truth. It is a different existential domain.Aquinas would argue that ‘God’ is not just a symbol but a cognitive belief about reality.Very hard to distinguish when language is being used normally and symbolically. For example, the religious language that Jesus was born in Bethlehem seems to be a fact not symbolic. When is language meaningful? It is hard to understand - the idea of a deeper meaning we know but cannot explain is ineffable and weak. Unpersuasive and empirically invalid.John Hick argued that ‘symbols participate in the reality they point’ is not entirely clear, especially this symbolic language is affirmed and negated by what they participate in. Many religious people would argue some religious language is literal.Symbolic language is changeable and prone to mistakes, stale through overuse, lost meanings over time.Tillich counter: we cant rediscover the questions Christian symbols are an answer to, that are understandable in our time.Aquinas on analogyAnalogy. Aquinas agreed with the Via Negativa to an extent since he thought humans were fundamentally unable to know God in his essential nature. However he thought we could go a bit further than only talking about God negatively – he argued we can talk about God meaningfully in positive terms by analogy. An analogy is an attempt to explain the meaning of something which is difficult to understand by using a comparison with something familiar and easier to understand. Aquinas rejected univocal and equivocal language when talking about God.Univocal: statements that mean the same thing for God and humans (e.g. God’s love and my love – love means the same thing)Equivocal: statement that mean different for God and humans (e.g. God is wise and I am wise)We cannot interpret God univocally because we are anthropomorphising him, how could words describing us apply to a transcendent infinite being? We cannot interpret God equivocally because it leaves us unable to understand what our words mean when applied to God since we don’t know God. That would leave religious language meaninglessSo, it’s wrong to say we are completely the same as God, but it’s also wrong to say we’re completely different. The middle ground Aquinas finds is to say we are ‘like’ God – Analogous to God.Aquinas thought through analogy (explaining something complex by comparing it to something simple/brain and computers), we can talk about God meaningfully. Religious language attempts to describe the attributes or qualities of God. Aquinas believed there were 3 types of analogy that could allow religious language to be meaningful.Analogy of Attribution:· The qualities that we observe of something, tells us about the source of that thing.· From seeing the urine of a Bull is healthy, we can conclude that the Bull is healthy· We can attribute qualities to the nature of God by looking at what he has created.· For example, regularity and purpose infers a designer.· For example, motherhood and protection infers a loving God.· We can draw limited conclusion about the makerAnalogy of Proportion:· The quality of attribute of something (musical talent), depends on the nature of the being (age)· The quality of these attributes are proportionally related to the nature of the being· For example, as you get older, you will get better at playing music· Finite qualities in the mundane are related proportionally to infinite qualities in the divine· For example, a baby’s linguistics are proportionally related to the speaking ability of an adult· A mother’s finite love is proportionally related to God’s infinite loveProper Proportion:1. Humans possess the same qualities like those of God (goodness/wisdom/love)2. Because we were created in the image and likeness of God3. But, because we are inferior, we possess the qualities in lesser proportionVerificationists can criticize analogy for religious language as what is being illustrated cannot be empirically verified.Richard Swinburne argues that speaking univocally is better, when we say ‘we are good’ and ‘God is good’, we mean the same by good.(counter: Aquinas would say that we cannot apply the same meaning to a transcendent, limitless being)The accuracy problem: the analogy that ‘electricity behaves like water’ works because we can determine the shared qualities (flow, current and power), and the differences (danger, state of matter). But we can only know this by comparing knowledge of both things. When we make analogies to God, we cannot know how accurate we are.Aquinas arguably doesn’t require that we know how accurate we are, just that we know that we are like God. If that’s all we claim, then we are speaking positively about God and so the cataphatic way is successful, perhaps in a very limited sense but successful nonetheless.Karl Barth thinks humans are incapable, on their own, of understanding God. ‘The finite has no capacity for the infinite’. He argues the analogical approach is flawed because it starts from a human understanding, and via attribution and proportion, claims to understand God. Analogy anthropomorphises God.While some might anthropomorphise God, arguably Aquinas guards against that because he is very clear that we cannot know God’s essential nature, just that it is like ours in some way.Arguably the infinite is not proportional to the finite. So we can’t say that God is like us just proportionally greater. Attribution also fails because there are instances where things create something radically different to or at least simply without one attribute that the creator had. E.g. a potter is conscious but creates unconscious pots. For all we know, God’s attributes are totally unlike ours.The bible claims we were created in God’s image and likeness, however. So we must be like God in some respect, which seems to leave room for analogy.Proponents of revealed theology like Barth thinks that the fall corrupted the imagio dei however. Arguably it’s an assumption to claim to know which attribute of ours (e.g. goodness, wisdom or power) are the ones that are analogous to God’s attributes. The bull and urine is an example which supports Aquinas because both urine and a bull can be healthy and indeed the health of the urine justifies attributing health to the bull. However, our creation by God might not be of the sort where attributes in the creator are bestowed to its creation. We can at least say that we are like God in some way, however, which although a very limited statement would count as successful via positiva.The Via Negativia.Via Negativa – Pseudo-Dionysus argued that God is ‘beyond every assertion’, beyond language. He therefore cannot be described is positive terms i.e by saying what he ‘is’. God can only be described negatively or ‘via negativa’ – by saying what God is ‘not’. Maimodenies also argued for the via negative because humans cannot know God in his essential nature and therefore cannot speak about what God is. Maimodenies used the illustration of a ship. By describing what a ship is not, we get closer to describing what a ship is.Arguably we only get closer to describing what a ship is because we already know what it is. If we describe everything a ship is not, this leaves a ship shaped hole in our description. However describing everything that God is not does not leave a God shaped hole in our description. So we don’t get closer to describing what God is by saying what he is not.If we say that God is not human or physical or earthly then we do at least avoid anthropomorphasising God which gets us closer to describing God than if we were left with our confused via positiva view.MiraclesDiffering understandings of ‘miracle’.Realist and anti-realist views.Violation of natural law or natural event. Comparison of the key ideas of David Hume and Maurice Wiles on miracles.The significance of these views for religion.Hume’s argument from evidence and probability. Hume is an empiricist meaning he thinks our beliefs should be based on evidence and experience. Throughout our life, we gain an understanding the laws of nature through such experience. A miracle for Hume is ‘a violation of the law of nature’. The laws of nature are observed through evidence to apply everywhere in the universe. Therefore the existence of a miracle has to be weighed against that evidence. Hume says anyone who claims to have seen or heard about a miracle therefore has to ask themselves a simple question – what is more likely, that a miracle really did occur, contrary to everything we have understood about the laws of nature, or that some sort of mistake or misapprehension occurred?According to Hume, a miracle by definition goes against our regular evidenced experience of how the world works. So, based on our experience, the likelihood that a miracle actually happened is by necessity always less than the likelihood that it hasn’t. So, we are never justified in our belief in them, since it’s always more likely that they didn’t occur.Arguably this view is unempirical. If we followed Hume’s logic we would reject all new evidence that hadn’t been experienced before if it contradicted our current understanding of the natural laws since it’s simply ‘less likely to be the true’. However, it may well in fact be true. Empiricists should not be closed to that possibility otherwise knowledge would never progress. We could never gain new knowledge. Also, while the laws of nature may indeed be fixed, our knowledge of them is not. How could we possibly improve our understanding of the laws of nature if we simply rejected any contrary new evidence as unlikely to be real?Hume on ignorance and barbarism. Hume argued that if you look at the history of countries, in their early times miracle stories were abundant, however once development and progress occurred, these stories tended to go away. So belief in miracles is just the result of ignorance. E.g. ancient Nordic people believed rainbows were the pathways the Gods walked on from the heavens to earth. Once science game along and replaced such beliefs, the idea of divine intervention in the world had less room to exist in than it did. The supernatural explanations of the world became less needed.Don’t developed countries like America still have significant rates of belief in miracles?Swinburne argues that it’s hard to really define when people are ‘educated’ and thereby what counts as ‘ignorant and barbarous’.Hume’s multiple claims argument. Hume argued that since there are many religions, many of which have miracle stories, their claims ‘cancel each other out’. All religions cannot be true. At most, one could be true and the rest false, or none of them could be true. So, any religious person’s claim that a miracle happened has to be considered in the context that their religion could be one of the false ones.One could reply with pluralism – the view that all religions are just different cultural manifestations of the divine, therefore all are true. This view is held by William James, Otto and Hick. Hick says the different religions of the world are like blind men each touching a different part of an elephant. They each report they are feeling something different, yet that is because they are just too blind to see how they are really part of the same thing.Hume’s argument from psychological disposition. Hume argued that it is human nature to feel drawn to surprise and wonder, which makes us likely to believe strange and unusual things despite the belief not being justified. He also claimed there are no miracles attested to by ‘people of good sense’, education, integrity and reputation, where the miracle is observed by multiple such people.It may be true that humans are drawn to beliefs that are wondrous, it may even be true that but that doesn’t mean miracles don’t happen!Wiles. Wiles believed in God but argued that God does not intervene in the universe, i.e. no miracles. Wiles rejected miracles from a moral perspective. For example, if God acted in the world to cure a child at Lourdes or to make statues weep or help some individual in relatively trivial ways, yet did not intervene in events like the Holocaust or earthquakes or the Rwanda Genocide, then Wiles argues that God would not be worthy of worship because the arbitrariness and caprice of his interventions would mean he lacked omnibenevolence. Wiles pointed to the example of Jesus turning water into wine. Given the immense suffering that was occurring in the world at that moment, it seems odd for Jesus to direct his supernatural interventionist powers in such a trivial manner.So, there are two options – either God is not omnibenevolent or he never does miracles. Wiles accepted the latter option.Is the bible not true then? Wiles argued that the bible is to be interpreted metaphorically. The bible stories where God or Jesus did miracles like healing sick people were just meant to tell us about God’s loving and powerful nature – not factual descriptions of events which occurred.But isn’t it contradictory to say miracle stories tell us about God’s love and power and then go on to say he doesn’t intervene in the world?Peter Vardy argues that Wiles is judging what an omnibenevolent God would and wouldn’t do, but such judgements are beyond human ability. How do we know there wasn’t some reason God allowed the Holocaust or Hiroshima to occur? Isn’t Wiles claiming to know more than a human can?What is the point of Prayer if God actually can’t answer prayers which request intervention?Wiles could use Aquinas’s argument that Prayer is about connecting the individual to God rather than actually making requestsPolkinghorne argues however that this doesn’t really fit with what Christians experience when they pray to God – they really do feel like they are making requestsR F Holland. Holland argued for a different definition of miracles – they are nothing more than an extraordinary coincidence that is interpreted in a religious way. Holland gives the example of a boy stuck on a railway track with a train approaching. The train driver faints, causing the train to stop which saves the life of the boy. The boy’s mother sees it as a miracle. Therefore, for Holland miracles depend on interpretation and a sense of divine purpose and significance. ‘A coinscidence can be taken religiously as a sign and called a miracle’This definition of miracles results in their being completely subjective as they are purely down to interpretation. There is no way to verify whether the miracle really happened.Arguably miracles don’t actually happen at all with Holland’s definition – it’s more like an attitude or perspective we take on happenings in the world.C.S Lewis argued that you either believe in the supernatural and therefore believe miracles can occur, or you don’t. If not, then you can’t believe in free will. If that’s the case, you have no free will to choose to believe in free will. Lewis regarded this as a logical inconsistency anyone who claimed there was no supernatural must commit themselves to, thereby making it an impossible position to believe. Even if Lewis is right that it’s contradictory to not believe in the supernatural and by extension free will, that doesn’t mean free will and by extension the supernatural actually exist – it just means our minds are such that we cannot help but believe in them.Aquinas – Identified three types of miracles1 – Events done by God that nature could never do e.g create something out of nothing2 – Events when God does something nature can do but not in the order God does it in. E.g resurrection of Christ. Nature can make someone live, just not after they have died.3 – An event which nature could do but God breaks the rules or principles of nature. E.g God curing someone of a disease. Nature could cure them of a disease, but it’s part of the principles of nature that curing a disease takes time. God does it instantly, thereby breaking the principle of nature despite doing something nature could nonetheless do.Polkinghorne – Argues that science can tell us whether a certain event is against the normal expectation. Science cannot disprove the possibility that God is the cause of some of such events. However, since God designed the laws of nature, for God to violate them would be like God going against God, which would be ‘absurd’. So the question is whether it makes sense to suppose that God has acted in a new way. There will have to be a theological reason why the violation of the law occurred. For example, it makes sense for God to have resurrected Jesus, even though it violates the law that dead people don’t come back to life, because there was a deep and important purpose for God doing so on that occasion.So for Polkinghorne, ‘Mircales are only credible … if they represent new possibilities occurring because experience has entered some new regime’. The consistent experiences of the past by which we ascertain the laws of nature must be ‘open to enlargement’ if there is some new valid theological reason for it.Aren’t these ‘new valid theological reasons’ down to interpretation, and therefore subjective? Couldn’t anything be classified as a miracle then, if theological support could be found for it? How do we know we have interpreted correctly?Arguably Polkinghorne doesn’t provide any actual evidence for Miracles, just shows that they are coherent and possible. Hume’s arguments could still work against him then since Hume admits they are possible, just that there is insufficient evidence for believing in them. Polkinghorne’s claim that theological justification could be that evidence is arguably insufficient since it is down to interpretation and assumes the existence of God in the first place.Swinburne – Argues there are three sources of evidence for miracles:1 – Memories of experiences2 – testimony of others3 – Physical tracesSwinburne argued for the principles of testimony and credulity. The principle of credulity argues that you should believe what you experience unless you have a reason not to. The principle of testimony argues that you should believe what others tell you they have experienced, unless you have a reason not to. Swinburne is an empiricist who argued that an experience of a miracle should count as evidence towards belief that it occurred, although it doesn’t constitute complete proof. Swinburne argued that whenever we gain some new evidence, we can’t dismiss it for no reason – that would be irrational. It is only if we have other better-established evidence which contradicts that new evidence that we may rationally dismiss it. This is the rationale behind the principles of testimony and credulity. Experiencing God is evidence for God, unless we have some other evidence to justify dismissing the experiences.However, is a mere experience of a Miracle sufficient evidence to justify belief in it? Arguably the existence of a miracle is an extraordinary claim which therefore might require extraordinary evidence.Don’t all of Hume’s argument provide us with ‘a reason not to’ believe the miracle?Self, death and the afterlifeThe nature and existence of the soul; Descartes’ argument for the existence of the soul.Descartes argued that the soul exists. He was a dualist which means he believed there are two substances (a substance is a fundamental type of existence which doesn’t depend on anything else) - mental and physical. The essence of mental substance is thinking, the essence of physical substance is extension.?The indivisibility argument. Leibniz’ law is that identical things must share the same properties. The physical has the property of being divisible but the mental does not. Therefore, they are not identical.The mental is divisible. The mind can be divided into perception, memory, emotions and so on. Freud proposed the Id, Ego and Superego.Descartes argued that although the mind has these separate abilities or modes, that does not count as division of the mind because it is still the same mind that perceives, that remembers, that has emotions, experiences the animalistic desires of the Id and conditioned information of the Superego, and so on.blindsight & separate awareness of the brain hemispheres.Not everything thought of as physical is divisible e.g. quarks.Arguably science might one day discover that quarks can be divided.The conceivability argument - we can conceive of the mind without the body, therefore it is possible for the mind to be separate from the body, therefore the mind is not identical to the body.P1 – I have a clear and distinct idea of myself as a thinking non-extended thingP2 – I have a clear and distinct idea of my body as a non-thinking extended thingP3 – what is conceivable is possibleC1 – therefore the mind and body can possibly be separate, so they are not identicalE.g. we cannot conceive of a triangle without 3 sides because it is truly identical with the property of having 3 sides.The mind can only be conceived separate from the body by someone ignorant of the nature of its connection to the body. E.g imagining yourself as a ghost floating through walls not interacting with the physical. What is being conceived of there is actually not the true mind, but a concept of the mind based on ignorance.Dennett seems to be presupposing that consciousness is the sum of the parts of bodily functions and not anything additional.Dennett’s point is that it is dualists who use conceivability arguments to claim to be imagining consciousness separate from the body whose conception of consciousness presupposes its separability from the body in order for what they are imagining to genuinely be consciousness. Until we have decided what consciousness actually is, how are we to decide that what people claim to imagine it to be really is consciousness? This seems to cast doubt on the validity of any conceivability argument.What is conceivable may not be possible. E.g the masked man fallacy. Imagine I heard that someone had robbed a bank wearing a mask. I can conceive that they are not my father. However, if they really were my father then it wouldn’t be possible for them to not be my father. Therefore, I had conceived of something that was not possible. Therefore, what is conceivable isn’t necessarily what is possible. Just because we can conceive of the mind and body as separate, doesn’t mean it’s actually possible for them to be separate.Dualist arguments do so much work to separate the mental from the physical, it opens up the question of how, then, it could be that they seem so connected and thus perhaps unseparated when they interact. E.g. I have a mental desire to move my hand and then my physical body moves. This seems to be the mind causing the body. How can two such radically different kinds of substance or property interact such that they can be in causal relationship? Physicists say that the universe is ‘causally closed’ because of the second law of thermodynamics that energy can be neither created nor destroyed – only transferred from one state to another. This means that energy cannot come from outside the physical universe and affect things within it. However that seems to be how substance dualism would have to work since the mental is supposedly outside the physical universe. Therefore substance dualism is false.The body/soul relationshipThe possibility of continuing personal existence after death.Religious/spiritual views on the afterlife:??William Lane Craig argued that the resurrection of Jesus is credible because in the story, the people who discovered his tomb were women. In those days, the testimony of women was considered less credible than that of a man. So, if the story were completely made up, surely the story tellers would have made it men who discovered Jesus’s body. The fact that they didn’t, is evidence that it wasn’t just made up.Aquinas Beatific vision - Aquinas claimed that all humans have a desire to know God, but our currently earthly finite form makes that impossible. However, God would not have put this desire in us, as part of the end to which we are directed, unless it were possible to know God. Aquinas concluded, therefore, that there must be an afterlife in which we transcend our current form and know God. Coming face to face with our creator is the Beatific vision.What if there was another way for us to know God other than an afterlife? What if we are given knowledge of God at the exact moment of death and then we are annihilated so we no longer exist.??Near death experiences - When people are either close to death, or medically die for a short while before being resuscitated, sometimes they claim to have had an experience. There is an interesting similarity between these experiences different people have - seeing a bright light, feeling like they are in a tunnel, etc. Could this be evidence for an afterlife they are catching a glimpse of before being brought back to life? There are examples of people who reportedly have such experiences, while no brain activity is being detected.However, how does the person know that the NDE was occurring while they were dead? All they really know is they are now alive again and have a memory of having ‘just’ experienced something, but perhaps this experience occurred before they died, or as they were just coming back to life.During the process of death, the brain is under extreme amounts of strain and stress. It’s logical to think that this could result in hallucinations. The fact that NDE’s share common traits could be taken as evidence there is an objective afterlife being experienced, or it could be taken as evidence there is an objective neurochemistry that when disrupted produces a particular hallucination. ................
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