bullet notes: the nature of god, free will, and eternity

we are mortal beings and our language reflects thisgod does not experience this passage of time, so he will not make mistakes or suffer consequencesthings decay in time, and god cannot decayhe is timeless and so he is perfectwhat can his relationship to us be? we don't necessarily have free will just because we think …

bullet summary: problem of evil

there has always been evil and sufferingit is the greatest objection to the existence of godevil is in human nature, and pain is part of our existencewe are capable of great love and great evil is there answer that does does not include god’s neglect? a theoretical answer doesn't fit real pain the logical problem …

bullet summary: the nature of god

believers ask questions about their godthe problem is in anthropomorphising god because he is beyond our reality and understandingto say we know the mind of god is to blasphemegod's infinite power and unknowability are referenced throughout scripture but we are still curiousbut there is no answers to what is meant by 'almighty' and 'creator'the biggest …

bullet summary: apophatic and cataphatic

our language is limited when talking about godwe try to capture in the infinite with the finitegod is infinite and location-less, so how can we, finite and space-bound, understand or describe him? do we limit him when we try? if you do define him, you are anthropomorphising him and blaspheming 'king' or 'shepherd' are human …

bullett summary: verification and meaning

god's unknowability makes it difficult to define him preciselyeven saying god 'exists' has many issuesthe most radical approach is to say that religious language is meaninglessthis is the approach of the vienna circle, a group of scientists interested in logic a.j. ayer discovered the vienna circle's idea and in his book 'language, truth and logic' …

bullet summary: religious experience

william james wrote varieties of religious experiencehe broadly defined them as "the feelings, acts and experiences of individual men"he did interviews to see the effects, and argued verification is not crucial because it is important and real to the personhe says they are psychological phenomena like thinkingjames and william alston argue that something is real …

bullet summary: analogy and symbol

aristotle said we should look at things which belong to the same genus to see whether identical attributes belong to them allwe might see if a horse and a dog both have beating hearts, a man will tooaristotle did not leave instruction on how far to assumeat what point is not helpful? we might say …

bullet summary: the ontological argument

written as an intra-faith argument for men to solidify faith. there are limitations on a posteriori arguments and we cannot trust our sensesfor aquinas god is unknowabletries to understand god using only reason, a priori the claim is that god, by definition, exists. but can we go from definition to fact? proslogion 2 was aimed …

bullet summary: wittgenstein and language games

wittgenstein once said "is speech essential for religion? i can very well imagine a religion in which there are no doctrines and hence nothing is said."his idea of silence here does not mean he thinks religious statements are meaningless he turned away from logical positivist ideas on meaning and focused on use"the meaning of any …

bullet summary: existence of god via observation

how can we prove a non-human and non-physical god is real beyond doubt?attempts have been made via reason, but this can be done through observation fo the world either teleologically or cosmologically the teleological argument is built on aquinas' fifth waybased on aristotle's final cause, it states that everything has a purpose and comes to …