Today

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Todays Lecture

• Preliminary remarks about Philosophy of Religion
• Anselm
• Gaunilo
• Comments about the first assignment

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Preliminary remarks about Philosophy of Religion

• We can divide most of the concerns of Philosophy
  of Religion between epistemology and metaphysics.
• Under epistemology, philosophers consider the
  positive or negative epistemic status of various
  religious beliefs (from belief in God, or an
  Absolute Ground of Being, to belief in an
  after-life).
• Under metaphysics, philosophers consider the
  metaphysical import or lack of metaphysical
  import of various religious beliefs (from whether
  a particular conception of God can be
  instantiated to whether certain views of life
  after death are compatible with plausible
  theories of mind or personhood).

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Preliminary remarks about Philosophy of Religion

• It is customary to distinguish between Natural
  and Dogmatic theology.
• Natural Theology, though pursued within a
  theistic religious tradition, relies on arguments
  which do not depend on premises drawn from
  traditional (e.g. scriptural) sources.
• Dogmatic Theology on the other hand relies on
  arguments which do depend on premises drawn from
  traditional (e.g. scriptural) sources.
• Religious philosophers, on the whole, concern
  themselves with Natural rather than Dogmatic
  Theology.

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Preliminary remarks about Philosophy of Religion

• Philosophers who are either atheist or agnostic
  can be sometimes described as Natural
  Atheologians in the literature.
• It is important to distinguish two senses of
  atheist that reflect historical uses of the
  term An atheist is either (1) someone who does
  not have a positive or negative belief about the
  existence of God, (2) or someone who believes
  that God does not exist.
• An agnostic, then, is an atheist according to (1).

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Preliminary remarks about Philosophy of Religion

• Remember that not all religions involve a belief
  in a divinity. Jainism and certain forms of
  Buddhism are cases in point in this regard.
• Since theology literally means Theory of God
  (from theos or god and logos or theory or
  account), neither Jainism nor certain forms of
  Buddhism contain theologies, natural or dogmatic.

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Preliminary remarks about Philosophy of Religion

• There are various ways to understand divinity
  across traditions and cultures.
• (1) Pantheism This is, crudely, the view that
  All is God/Goddess.
• (2) Panentheism This is crudely, the view that
  God/Goddess encompasses but is not limited to the
  cosmos. Alternatively every-thing that exists is
  in God.
• (3) Deism This is the view that there is a
  Creator God/Goddess that has created the cosmos
  but Who has no further interactions with the
  creation.

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Preliminary remarks about Philosophy of Religion

• (4) Theism This is the view that a personal
  God/Goddess exists, and is both immanent in and
  transcendent to the physical universe.
• (5) Polytheism This is the view that there are
  many Gods/Goddesses.
• (6) Henotheism This is the view that there are
  many Gods/Goddesses, but also one supreme
  God/Goddess from whom all other Gods/Goddesses
  derive their being.
• (7) Monotheism This is the view that there is
  only one God/Goddess.

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Preliminary remarks about Philosophy of Religion

• Certain forms, though only certain forms, of
  devotional Hinduism can be regarded as either
  pantheistic or panentheistic.
• Deism was very popular in Eighteenth and
  Nineteenth Century European philosophy.
• Theism can be found in traditions as diverse as
  the Judaic Tradition and Hinduism.
• Certain Hindus, though only certain Hindus, are
  polytheists.
• Henotheism is represented in the literature by
  (high) Greek and Roman religion. You can also
  find textual echoes of this view in such Biblical
  phrases as God of gods and Lord of lords.

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Preliminary remarks about Philosophy of Religion

• Muslims, Jews, and Christians are monotheists.

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Preliminary remarks about Philosophy of Religion

• Though no one view of divinity should be excluded
  from Philosophy of Religion, discussions in the
  West are often restricted to Theism and
  Monotheism.
• This in itself reveals a disturbing bias in the
  literature.

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Preliminary remarks about Philosophy of Religion

• In our section on Philosophy of Religion we will
  be primarily concerned with the rationality or
  irrationality of theistic belief.
• We will also critically evaluate certain
  traditional arguments for the belief that God
  exists is true.
• We will also briefly consider whether certain
  conceptions of divinity are compatible with what
  we do know about the universe. This will aid us
  in deciding which conceptions of God can be
  reasonably thought to be instantiated.

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Preliminary remarks about Philosophy of Religion

• Some scholars have usefully divided up the
  landscape into three available camps on the issue
  of the rationality of religious belief Strong
  Rationalism, Critical Rationalism and Fideism.

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Preliminary remarks about Philosophy of Religion

• Strong Rationalists are the evidentialists within
  Philosophy of Religion. They hold that in order
  for a religious belief-system to be properly and
  rationally accepted, it must be possible to prove
  that the belief system is true where prove
  means show that a belief is true in a way that
  should be convincing to any reasonable person
  (Peterson, Michael, William Hasker, Bruce
  Reichenbach and David Basinger. 1998. Reason and
  Religious Belief An Introduction to the
  Philosophy of Religion. New York Oxford
  University Press, p.45).

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Preliminary remarks about Philosophy of Religion

• Fideism emphaiszes the role of faith in religious
  belief (fide is Latin for faith). It is
  basically the view that religious belief-systems
  are not subject to rational evaluation
  (Peterson, Michael, William Hasker, Bruce
  Reichenbach and David Basinger. 1998. Reason and
  Religious Belief An Introduction to the
  Philosophy of Religion. New York Oxford
  University Press, p.49).
• Fideists view their position in one of at least
  three ways (1) That it is, in itself, a rational
  position to adopt, (2) that it is an arational
  position to adopt, or (3) that it is an
  irrational position to adopt (and thats fine).

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Preliminary remarks about Philosophy of Religion

• Critical Rationalism comes somewhere in between
  Strong Rationalism and Fideism. It is the view
  that religious belief-systems can and must be
  rationally criticized and evaluated although
  conclusive proof of such a system is impossible
  (Peterson, Michael, William Hasker, Bruce
  Reichenbach and David Basinger. 1998. Reason and
  Religious Belief An Introduction to the
  Philosophy of Religion. New York Oxford
  University Press, p.53).

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Preliminary remarks about Philosophy of Religion

• Note that the likes of Descartes, Locke, Russell
  and Clifford are Strong Rationalists.
• Soren Kierkegaard was famously a Fideist.
• A growing number of contemporary religious or
  theistic philosophers are critical rationalists.

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The Ontological Argument for the existence of God

• The Ontological Argument for the existence of God
  is, perhaps, the strangest of the family of
  traditional arguments for the existence of God
  that we will be examining.
• It typically moves from a conception of God to
  that Gods necessary existence.
• It typically involves an argument form known as a
  Reductio ad Absurdum (or Argument from
  Absurdity).
• It promises, if successful, to yield a relatively
  rich view of the nature of God.

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The Ontological Argument for the existence of God

• Descartes himself suggests an Ontological
  Argument for the existence of God in the Third
  Meditation or Fifth Meditation (i.e. depends
  on how you interpret Descartes in the Third
  Meditation).
• The most famous of this argument type in the
  Western literature is Anselms argument.

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Anselm

• He was born in 1033 and died in 1109 C.E.
• He was a devote Benedictine Monk.
• He is often credited with being the first thinker
  in the Western Canon to develop the Ontological
  Argument.
• This argument is designed to yield a priori
  knowledge that God exists.

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Reductio

• Imagine a set of premises P1, P2, P3 ... PN.
  Imagine further that these premises are true. To
  create a reductio, suppose another proposition to
  be true. If such a supposition, in conjunction
  with the original premises, generates a
  contradiction (using valid rules of deductive
  inference), you then have good reason to believe
  that it is false. If the supposition is false,
  its negation must be true. From the generation of
  this contradiction, then, you can conclude that
  the negation of the supposition is true.

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Reductio

• The idea is this. Contradictions are statements
  that cannot be true (e.g. God exists and God
  does not exist). If, by supposing the truth of a
  statement and using sound rules of deductive
  inference you can derive a contradiction, then
  the statement you supposed must be false. This is
  because sound rules of deductive inference will
  preserve the truth of the statements in an
  argument as you move from premises to
  conclusion.So if they preserve the truth of the
  premises, but the conclusion of the argument is
  false (contradictions are false), then one of
  more of the premises had to be false.

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Anselm Distinctions

• Object in the understanding An object is said to
  exist in the understanding exactly when it exists
  as a mental object - something towards which a
  thought (broadly construed) can be directed.
  Anselm believes that God can be such an object.
• Object in reality An object exists in reality
  exactly when it exists in the actual world, our
  world (broadly construed).
• An object may exist in the understanding but not
  in reality, and exist in reality but not in the
  understanding (see FP, p.21).

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Anselms Ontological Argument

• (1) Suppose that than which nothing greater can
  be conceived exists in the understanding alone.
• (2) That which can conceivably exist in the
  understanding, can conceivably exist in reality.
• (3) It is conceivable that that than which
  nothing greater can be conceived exists in
  reality.
• (4) That which can conceivably exist in the
  understanding and in reality is greater than that
  which can conceivably exist in the understanding
  alone.

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Anselms Ontological Argument

• (5) So, from (1) through (4), it is conceivable
  that there exists a being which is greater than
  that than which nothing greater can be conceived.
  
• (6) But this is contradictory.
• (7) So, it is false that that than which nothing
  greater can be conceived exists in the
  understanding alone.
• (8) So, that than which nothing greater can be
  conceived must also exist in reality (FP, p.25).

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A second possible argument in the reading

• (1) Suppose that it is conceivable that that than
  which nothing greater can be conceived does not
  exist.
• (2) It is possible to conceive of a being which
  cannot not exist.
• (3) That which cannot conceivably not exist is
  greater than that which can conceivably not
  exist.
• (4) So, one can conceive of a being which is
  greater than that than which nothing greater can
  be conceived.

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A second possible argument in the reading

• (5) But this is contradictory.
• (6) So, it is false that it is conceivable that
  that than which nothing greater can be conceived
  does not exist.
• (7) So, that than which nothing greater can be
  conceived cannot conceivably not exist.
• (8) That which cannot conceivably not exist must
  exist.
• (9) So, that than which nothing greater can be
  conceived exists (FP, p.25).

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A second possible argument in the reading

• No one, indeed, understanding what God is can
  think that God does not exist, even though he may
  say these words in his heart either without any
  objective signification or with some peculiar
  signification (FP, p.25).
• What do you think?

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A second possible argument in the reading

• Some questions that fall out this discussion
• (1) Should we grant that it is possible that God
  does exist? What if the concept of God is
  incoherent?
• (2) What if we deny that God exists based on,
  say, the problem of evil? Wouldnt that entail,
  given the form of this argument that it isnt
  possible that God exists?

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Comments about the first assignment

• (1) Dont take my criticisms personally.
• (2) Do look over the comments.
• (3) If you dont agree with the grade come and
  see me and we can talk about it.
• (4) Remember to submit your papers to
  Turnitin.com. If you dont, or forget to do so,
  you wont receive an official grade for your
  assignment.

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Comments about the first assignment

• Common problems
• (1) Dont use more than one direct quote.
• (2) Dont use gender exclusive language. This is
  Department policy.
• (3) Take care to properly footnote or cite your
  sources. If you get your ideas from anyone, they
  have to be acknowledged.
• (4) Proof read your work before you submit it. I
  can only go on what you write. If its unclear it
  will adversely affect your grade.

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Comments about the first assignment

• (5) Take care not to make claims you dont
  defend. Remember that nothing should be taken as
  obvious.
• (6) Take care to get the philosopher right on
  whom you are focusing.
• (7) Take care not to make any fallacious moves.
• (8) Take care not to contradict yourself.
• (9) Fight the urge to include material that is
  irrelevant to the discussion at hand.