HU Philosophy of Religion

I want to approach the issue of the relationship between God (i.e. the foundation of the BE) and goodness.morality from a different angle than the one approached in the book by Rasmussen; an angle that I think will get us pretty much to the same place, but an angle that I think is equally instructive and illuminating.  One thing that I think about a lot is the connection between various things. Think about this: words, phrases, and sentences have a kind of meaning; smoke, big dark clouds, and rings in a tree have a kind of meaning; and human lives have or at least aspire to have a kind of meaning. Did you hear that common term in each of those examples: meaning. Is there a connection? I think that is one, but I won’t go over that here. Now consider these: good trees, good animals, good books, good meals, good lungs, good people and good actions. Did you hear that common term in each of those examples? Of course, you did. It was the term ‘good’. Is there is a connection? In o...

This chapter argues that the fine-tuning of our universe for complexity, life, intelligent life, intelligent life that can grasp the regularities and basic structure of the universe cries out for, demands explanation. And the best explanation is that the universe is fine-tuned by an intelligent, intentional fine-tuner. That is, the foundation of the BE is necessary, self-sufficient, independent, eternally powerful, personal, a conscious mind, and the intender of everything else that exists. A kind of popular reply to this is that there is really nothing to explain; nothing cries out or demands explanation here. Why? Well, our existence in some sense explains the fine-tuning because if the universe were not fine-tuned, then we would not be here to wonder why the universe is fine tuned. The basic idea here is that the fine-tuning argument for the existence of an intelligent and intentional fine-tuner is guilty of what is called "observational selection effect" and that in ...

Proving God’s Existence Throughout the modern period of philosophy and theology (beginning around the 18 th century until now) various thinkers have suggested that there is something problematic about giving arguments for God’s existence. They have given a variety of different reasons: faith requires the absence of proof, faith requires not relying on a proof, even if there are some, no argument for God’s existence is a good one, no argument gets us to God, no argument gets us to the God of the Bible (this is the worry that the God of the philosophers is different from the God of the Bible), arguments for God’s existence assume that our intellects have not been affected by the fall, God’s existence is obvious and a proof assumes that it is not, God’s existence is known by all because it is implanted in us so proofs are superfluous at best, denials of God’s existence are a sin problem, not a philosophy problem, etc. Rather than focus on the above reasons for not giving arguments f...

Jesus Christ and The Proofs In an earlier post, I suggested that we might be able to “take care of” at least some of the issues regarding the personhood of the being that is the conclusion of the proofs by appealing to the incarnation, and that such an appeal can be used to help us understand idolatry a bit better. But before we appeal to the incarnation at least two things need to be done. First, we need to understand what the incarnation means, and second, we need to see if we can make sense of God becoming incarnate given the nature of God as set forth in the proofs we have been studying. In other words, we need to: (1) get a bit clearer on the orthodox understanding of who Jesus really is And (2) attempt to reconcile the orthodox understanding of Jesus with God as pure act, absolutely simple, infinite divine intellect, existence itself, and absolutely necessary In this post, we will briefly look at (1). In 451 c.e. various leaders of the church gathered tog...

A bunch of you wrote about (and spoke about in class) an apparent problem with the doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS). The worry is basically this: DDS:  God is completely partless; there is absolutely no composition whatsoever in the being or nature of God Trinity:  the doctrine that God is three persons and one divine substance/essence It can, perhaps easily, look as though DDS and Trinity are incompatible. That is, if DDS is true, then Trinity is false, and if Trinity is true, then DDS is false.  First, let me commend you for (a) thinking deeply about this stuff, and (b) wanting to test DDS (and other ideas) against other beliefs/commitments you have. The attitude many of you seem to have is that if DDS does conflict with the doctrine of the Trinity, then DDS has got to go. I think that is the right attitude. Speaking personally, my commitment to the doctrine of the trinity is at or very near the center of my web of commitments. Thus, if some other ...