Spring 2011 Philosophy of Human Nature Lecture Notes 3

3/31/2011

• Introduction to topics in Philosophy of Religion Unit
• Reminder of Logos/Theos/Mythos model
• Major Questions guiding inquiry

• What is the best way for philosophy to support religious experience through Logos?
• What should religious and non-religoius peple expect to see when they look at each other? What account should they give of each other's beliefs?

Work on Proofs for the Existence of God

1. Argument from Experience

advantages of working from experience.

major problems: diversity of experiences, lack of experience, non-verifiability of experience, sensitivity of experience to upbringing

strong thesis vs. weaker thesis: Experience of God demonstrates. . . vs. Religious experience suggests. . .

notice in relation to epistemology, God and JFK.

2. Cosmological Argument

Basic Form:

P1: If there is no God, there is no world.

P2: There is a world.

C: There is a God.

principle of sufficient reason - for everything that exists there must be an explanation of why it exists.

major objection to framework of the argument: modern critique of use of principle of s.r., Russell/Copleston, p. 186 R1

but, grant that, then there might be 3 options for explanation of cosmos:

1. Cosmos always existed (maybe Bang/Crunch)

but there are no actual infinities, are there? example of person actually counting to or from infinity.

Is it explanatory?

2. Cosmos begins with Singularity (Big Bang)

Uncaused events. Example of the moment of loss of the neutron from a decaying uranium sample.

Why prefer God to a random event?

Oddness of saying that the entire universe is an uncaused event.

Contingent being / necessary being.

3. God explains Cosmos

only a necessary being can explain the existence of the universe in a non-random way.

God is that necessary being.

3. Design Arguments

Found object arguments. Paley's watch, memory chip. Counter arguments?

Can natural science explain the accumulation of design? metaphors of design in biology.

Mind first vs. Mind last

Consider diverse possibilities for explaining the apparent accumulation of order and design.

Traditional Creationism: Faith based arguments, arguments from ignorance, attacks on science.

Naturalistic Explanations (including Theory of Evolution): incomplete at this point on questions of origin of life.

Intelligent Design Creationism: having both explanations: Hoyle on probability. argument against this (193)

Ockham's Razor

4/5/2011

More Proofs for the Existence of God

4. Ontological Arguments

Basic Form:

P1: Either God exists or he doesn't.

P2: The claim that God does not exist is contradictory.

C: God exists.

Denial of God's existence entails a contradiction.

greatest possible .... plus existence? The greatest being you can think of must exist? Try to deny it and you wind up saying, "It is possible to think of something greater than the greatest being that one can think of"

Kant's argument against treating existence as a predicate (R1 p. 198). Not a property of a thing. example of "dream partner" 198.

Reflections on Proofs:

Are they proofs? Were they meant to be proofs or aids to reflection?

What do we mean by proof today in relation to knowledge of science? Mathematics again!

Importance of necessity in the proofs.

Small Group Discussion

Reflect on the proofs for the existence of God, first by noting aspects of the proofs that are appealing from a religious point of view. Then consider some of the problems philosophers find with the proofs. Broaden your discussion by considering what role "demonstration" or "evidence" plays in religious life for you or your generation. Do believers still have the same

The Problem of Evil

Pattern Argument for the Logical Problem of Evil

Problem for faiths in which God is omnipotent and wholly good.

1. Every good being tries everything in its power to prevent innocent

beings from suffering unnecessary evil.

2. If God exists, and if God is all-good, omniscient, and omnipotent, then innocent beings should not suffer from unnecessary evils (like land mines, diseases, or starvation).

3. But they do suffer from these evils.

C: Either God does not exist or he is not a wholly good being.

-the free will argument in response.

Pattern Argument for the Evidentiary problem of Evil

1. (concession) God's existence is compatible with unnecessary suffering.

2. The existence, kinds, and amounts of suffering in the world make the existence of (or our idea of) God highly implausible.

C: Either God does not exist or hi is not a wholly good being.

4/7/2011

Faith and Rationality

• Meanings of terms: rationalism / faith / fideism

• Does "faith" underlie science?

• pro: faith in senses, faith in uniformity of nature.
• con: distinction between acknowledging limits of realism and actively believing in an entity without or against evidence to the contrary.

Flew, "Theology and Falsification"

• Flew -- the view from the secular modern scientific perspective.

• parable of the gardener -- qualifications
• "God has a plan" looks like an assertion, but might not be.

Framing the Discussion of Religious Truth

Notice how 'yes' and 'no' answers to this question affect the epistemological "stakes" of the discussion of the nature of religious belief, and, in turn, of the theories available to the F and NF.

Is relgious belief founded on the same assumptions, rules of evidence, and evidence as beliefs we consider "objective"?
YES - Theos involves belief in the reality of God as a being, as an entity.	NO - The reality of theos may not be disclosed through object-oriented methods of empirical objective knowledge.
Person of Faith commits to either rational theology or "god of the gaps" view	Person of Faith might claim that relgion works more by rules of relationship. Can't ask for evidence of love prior to relationship. Still, relationships are a way of knowing, and there are criteria for their health and sucess. Religious faith might open up a reality in a similar to the way "love" opens up a reality to the lover and beloved. Some evidence we relate to the supernatural through "agent" talk rather than "object" talk.
Person wo/ Faith can make a very strong case that there's not much objective evidence of God, especially using scientific methods. If God's reality is assessed by the same criteria we would assess the reality of a force or particle, theories with God in them wouldn't be contenders.	Person wo/Faith - Fs relate to something they believe to be divine, but they acknowledge is not discoverable by objective means, but rather through faith experience.

4/12/2011

Carleton Pearson's Story

• Background -

• role of devil in his faith upbringing, casting out devil from gf
• singing fame, education ORU (OR gospel included connection to prosperity).
• main church, Higher Dimensions,

• Heresy and the problem of identity of religious community. Problem of denying need for redemption in a Christian faith.
• Heresy can include divergent spirituality. In group / out group dynamics.

Mathieu, Male Chauvanist Religion

• Intro - important work religion does.
• Claim - connection between God's maleness and view of superiority of men.

• Mathieu's argument gives us a basis for asking if religions should operate within a contemporary notion of justice. Should a Christian's God be just in the way we think of justice today, including gender equality?

• Tension between a commitment of a revealed religion to a tradition and past related to the revelation VS. our commitment to contemporary views of virtue, moral goodness, and justice which may not have been part of the context of revelation.

4/14/2011

Evolutionary Science of Religion

• Naturalistic study of religion (note comparison to "rational and natural theology"
• false initial theories: belief in progressive evolution and belief in social darwinism.
• recentness of application of evolution to religion (2)
• alternative theories vs. consistent theories.
• Example of rational choice theory.
• Six Evolutionary Hypotheses about religion. Religious traits maybe be:

1. group adaptations
2. individual adaptations
3. parasitic on human reproduction
4. previously adaptive, now neutral or non-adaptive
5. non-adaptive by-products -- spandrels
6. neutral

• Proximate vs. ultimate explanations -- could be quite separate. religious practices may be group enhancing yet not experienced that way.
• Vertical/horizontal dimensions --
• one-many relationship between ultimate / proximate causes -- may help account for diversity of religions, unity of goals.
• Ontogeny / Phylogeny
• ESR projects

1. Afterlife study --
2. Bering's research on "natural born dualists" -- Mouse and Alligator / Princess Alice
3. Religion as adapation for cooperation / altruism.

• social control and punishment
• responses to "presence" (15)
• priming (16) Dictator game
• hard to fake commitment
• costly signal theory

• Religion - War - Peace

• rules out extreme hypotheses
• Miles article on historicity of OT/NT God
• working for peace as an evolutionist means reducing the conditions that favor war as a strategy

• Cronk Analogy
• ESM -- Relgion and Well-being

4/19/2011

Non-realism about God

• Recall previous discussions of realism in science (stronger and weak versions).
• Cupitt's nonrealism --
• What is belief for a postmodern, non-realist theologian?

• Cupitt on God and Jesus

Haidt Chapter 9: Divinity with or without God

• Flatland
• Speculative hypothesis: 183: In addition to relationship and status, we perceive/experience "divinity" as a kind of "moral purity". A theory of relationship and culture.
• Research on disgust. Why do we experience disgust? 186
• Psychological anthropologist Richard Shweder, U Chicago: Haidt worked with him on research in morality in India: "Shweder's research on morality in Bhubaneswar and elsewhere shows that when people think about morality, their moral concepts cluster into three groups, which he calls the ethic of autonomy, the ethic of community, and the ethic of divinity." 188 -- evidence on diff. distribution over class. Note observations on research in India. Link bt. purity/divine.
• Cites approvingly: Eliade, The Sacred and Profane -- perceiving sacredness universal among humans.

Elevation and Agape

• Looking for a name for the emotions that we experience when we observe morally outstanding deeds. "Elevation" (ex. Greg Mortensen talk)
• Jefferson onto it. Experience of aesthetic value triggers physical changes in the body and recognizable feeling of elevated sentiments.
• 196: wants to see if elevation is a kind of happiness. research with student Sara Algoe, results seem to separate out different responses: moral elevation vs. response to non-moral excellence like basketball player.
• initial research documents elevation as response. Unclear how moral/non-moral triggers work.
• Vagus Nerve theory -- operation of vagus nerve, relationship to oxytocin. Since oxcytocin causes bonding rather than action, this theory might explain the lack of evidence in an earlier study that elevation leads to action.
• Lactating moms study 198
• Letter from religious person distinquishing two kinds of tears in church. compassion/celebration
• Latter like agape : objectless love

Awe and Transcendence

• cites Darwin / Emerson, idea of elevation from exp of nature.
• Drugs - -entheogens. reports old experiment with mushrooms and religion.
• Awe: "As we traced the word "awe" back in history, we discovered that it has always had a link to fear and submission in the presence of something muchgreater than the self." 202
• Emotion of awe: "Keltner and I concluded that the emotion of awe happens when two conditions are met: a person perceives something vast (usually physically vast, but sometimes conceptually vast, such as a grand theory, or socially vast, such as great fame or power); and the vast thing cannot be accommodated by the person's existing mental structures." 203
• Story of Arjuna Pandava from Gita. Gets a cosmic eye. Extreme case, but Haidt implies this is a model for how we describe spiritual transformation.
• Maslow's work on peak experiences. Side note on clash about the nature of science in psychology. Maslow is considered a founder of humanistic psych.
• Mark Leary, Curse of the Self: Self as obstacle to -- mental chatter -- self as obstacle to vertical development . Read p. 207.

4/21/2011

Paper Workshop (class optional)