1.
God
–
In monotheism, God is conceived of as the Supreme Being and principal object of faith. The concept of God as described by most theologians includes the attributes of omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, divine simplicity, many theologians also describe God as being omnibenevolent and all loving. Furthermore, some religions attribute only a purely grammatical gender to God, incorporeity and corporeity of God are related to conceptions of transcendence and immanence of God, with positions of synthesis such as the immanent transcendence of Chinese theology. God has been conceived as personal or impersonal. In theism, God is the creator and sustainer of the universe, while in deism, God is the creator, in pantheism, God is the universe itself. In atheism, God is not believed to exist, while God is deemed unknown or unknowable within the context of agnosticism, God has also been conceived as the source of all moral obligation, and the greatest conceivable existent. Many notable philosophers have developed arguments for and against the existence of God, there are many names for God, and different names are attached to different cultural ideas about Gods identity and attributes. In the ancient Egyptian era of Atenism, possibly the earliest recorded monotheistic religion, this deity was called Aten, premised on being the one true Supreme Being and creator of the universe. In the Hebrew Bible and Judaism, He Who Is, I Am that I Am, in the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, God, consubstantial in three persons, is called the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. In Judaism, it is common to refer to God by the titular names Elohim or Adonai, in Islam, the name Allah is used, while Muslims also have a multitude of titular names for God. In Hinduism, Brahman is often considered a concept of God. In Chinese religion, God is conceived as the progenitor of the universe, intrinsic to it, other religions have names for God, for instance, Baha in the Baháí Faith, Waheguru in Sikhism, and Ahura Mazda in Zoroastrianism. The earliest written form of the Germanic word God comes from the 6th-century Christian Codex Argenteus, the English word itself is derived from the Proto-Germanic * ǥuđan. The reconstructed Proto-Indo-European form * ǵhu-tó-m was likely based on the root * ǵhau-, in the English language, the capitalized form of God continues to represent a distinction between monotheistic God and gods in polytheism. The same holds for Hebrew El, but in Judaism, God is also given a proper name, in many translations of the Bible, when the word LORD is in all capitals, it signifies that the word represents the tetragrammaton. Allāh is the Arabic term with no plural used by Muslims and Arabic speaking Christians and Jews meaning The God, Ahura Mazda is the name for God used in Zoroastrianism. Mazda, or rather the Avestan stem-form Mazdā-, nominative Mazdå and it is generally taken to be the proper name of the spirit, and like its Sanskrit cognate medhā, means intelligence or wisdom. Both the Avestan and Sanskrit words reflect Proto-Indo-Iranian *mazdhā-, from Proto-Indo-European mn̩sdʰeh1, literally meaning placing ones mind, Waheguru is a term most often used in Sikhism to refer to God
God
–
"God the Father", a representation of the theistic version of God, by
Ludovico Mazzolino (1480 –
c. 1528)
God
–
Detail of
Sistine Chapel fresco Creation of the Sun and Moon by
Michelangelo (c. 1512), a well-known example of the depiction of
God the Father in Western art
God
–
Depiction of God in the Catholic Church, Latin America
God
–
St. Thomas Aquinas summarized
five arguments which he believed were proof for the existence of God
2.
Isaac Newton
–
His book Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, first published in 1687, laid the foundations of classical mechanics. Newton also made contributions to optics, and he shares credit with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz for developing the infinitesimal calculus. Newtons Principia formulated the laws of motion and universal gravitation that dominated scientists view of the universe for the next three centuries. Newtons work on light was collected in his influential book Opticks. He also formulated a law of cooling, made the first theoretical calculation of the speed of sound. Newton was a fellow of Trinity College and the second Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, politically and personally tied to the Whig party, Newton served two brief terms as Member of Parliament for the University of Cambridge, in 1689–90 and 1701–02. He was knighted by Queen Anne in 1705 and he spent the last three decades of his life in London, serving as Warden and Master of the Royal Mint and his father, also named Isaac Newton, had died three months before. Born prematurely, he was a child, his mother Hannah Ayscough reportedly said that he could have fit inside a quart mug. When Newton was three, his mother remarried and went to live with her new husband, the Reverend Barnabas Smith, leaving her son in the care of his maternal grandmother, Newtons mother had three children from her second marriage. From the age of twelve until he was seventeen, Newton was educated at The Kings School, Grantham which taught Latin and Greek. He was removed from school, and by October 1659, he was to be found at Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth, Henry Stokes, master at the Kings School, persuaded his mother to send him back to school so that he might complete his education. Motivated partly by a desire for revenge against a bully, he became the top-ranked student. In June 1661, he was admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge and he started as a subsizar—paying his way by performing valets duties—until he was awarded a scholarship in 1664, which guaranteed him four more years until he would get his M. A. He set down in his notebook a series of Quaestiones about mechanical philosophy as he found it, in 1665, he discovered the generalised binomial theorem and began to develop a mathematical theory that later became calculus. Soon after Newton had obtained his B. A. degree in August 1665, in April 1667, he returned to Cambridge and in October was elected as a fellow of Trinity. Fellows were required to become ordained priests, although this was not enforced in the restoration years, however, by 1675 the issue could not be avoided and by then his unconventional views stood in the way. Nevertheless, Newton managed to avoid it by means of a special permission from Charles II. A and he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1672. Newtons work has been said to distinctly advance every branch of mathematics then studied and his work on the subject usually referred to as fluxions or calculus, seen in a manuscript of October 1666, is now published among Newtons mathematical papers
Isaac Newton
–
Portrait of Isaac Newton in 1689 (age 46) by
Godfrey Kneller
Isaac Newton
–
Newton in a 1702 portrait by
Godfrey Kneller
Isaac Newton
–
Isaac Newton (Bolton, Sarah K. Famous Men of Science. NY: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., 1889)
Isaac Newton
–
Replica of Newton's second
Reflecting telescope that he presented to the
Royal Society in 1672
3.
Bertrand Russell
–
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, writer, social critic, political activist and Nobel laureate. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist and he was born in Monmouthshire into one of the most prominent aristocratic families in the United Kingdom. In the early 20th century, Russell led the British revolt against idealism and he is considered one of the founders of analytic philosophy along with his predecessor Gottlob Frege, colleague G. E. Moore, and protégé Ludwig Wittgenstein. He is widely held to be one of the 20th centurys premier logicians, with A. N. Whitehead he wrote Principia Mathematica, an attempt to create a logical basis for mathematics. His philosophical essay On Denoting has been considered a paradigm of philosophy, Russell mostly was a prominent anti-war activist, he championed anti-imperialism. Occasionally, he advocated preventive nuclear war, before the opportunity provided by the monopoly is gone. He went to prison for his pacifism during World War I, in 1950 Russell was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought. Bertrand Russell was born on 18 May 1872 at Ravenscroft, Trellech, Monmouthshire and his parents, Viscount and Viscountess Amberley, were radical for their times. Lord Amberley consented to his wifes affair with their childrens tutor, both were early advocates of birth control at a time when this was considered scandalous. Lord Amberley was an atheist and his atheism was evident when he asked the philosopher John Stuart Mill to act as Russells secular godfather, Mill died the year after Russells birth, but his writings had a great effect on Russells life. His paternal grandfather, the Earl Russell, had asked twice by Queen Victoria to form a government. The Russells had been prominent in England for several centuries before this, coming to power, Lady Amberley was the daughter of Lord and Lady Stanley of Alderley. Russell often feared the ridicule of his grandmother, one of the campaigners for education of women. Russell had two siblings, brother Frank, and sister Rachel, in June 1874 Russells mother died of diphtheria, followed shortly by Rachels death. In January 1876, his father died of bronchitis following a period of depression. Frank and Bertrand were placed in the care of their staunchly Victorian paternal grandparents and his grandfather, former Prime Minister Earl Russell, died in 1878, and was remembered by Russell as a kindly old man in a wheelchair. His grandmother, the Countess Russell, was the dominant family figure for the rest of Russells childhood, the countess was from a Scottish Presbyterian family, and successfully petitioned the Court of Chancery to set aside a provision in Amberleys will requiring the children to be raised as agnostics. Her favourite Bible verse, Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil, the atmosphere at Pembroke Lodge was one of frequent prayer, emotional repression, and formality, Frank reacted to this with open rebellion, but the young Bertrand learned to hide his feelings
Bertrand Russell
–
Russell as a four year-old
Bertrand Russell
–
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
–
Childhood home,
Pembroke Lodge
Bertrand Russell
–
Russell in 1907
4.
Albert Einstein
–
Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist. He developed the theory of relativity, one of the two pillars of modern physics, Einsteins work is also known for its influence on the philosophy of science. Einstein is best known in popular culture for his mass–energy equivalence formula E = mc2, near the beginning of his career, Einstein thought that Newtonian mechanics was no longer enough to reconcile the laws of classical mechanics with the laws of the electromagnetic field. This led him to develop his theory of relativity during his time at the Swiss Patent Office in Bern. Briefly before, he aquired the Swiss citizenship in 1901, which he kept for his whole life and he continued to deal with problems of statistical mechanics and quantum theory, which led to his explanations of particle theory and the motion of molecules. He also investigated the properties of light which laid the foundation of the photon theory of light. In 1917, Einstein applied the theory of relativity to model the large-scale structure of the universe. He was visiting the United States when Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933 and, being Jewish, did not go back to Germany and he settled in the United States, becoming an American citizen in 1940. This eventually led to what would become the Manhattan Project, Einstein supported defending the Allied forces, but generally denounced the idea of using the newly discovered nuclear fission as a weapon. Later, with the British philosopher Bertrand Russell, Einstein signed the Russell–Einstein Manifesto, Einstein was affiliated with the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, until his death in 1955. Einstein published more than 300 scientific papers along with over 150 non-scientific works, on 5 December 2014, universities and archives announced the release of Einsteins papers, comprising more than 30,000 unique documents. Einsteins intellectual achievements and originality have made the word Einstein synonymous with genius, Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, in the Kingdom of Württemberg in the German Empire, on 14 March 1879. His parents were Hermann Einstein, a salesman and engineer, the Einsteins were non-observant Ashkenazi Jews, and Albert attended a Catholic elementary school in Munich from the age of 5 for three years. At the age of 8, he was transferred to the Luitpold Gymnasium, the loss forced the sale of the Munich factory. In search of business, the Einstein family moved to Italy, first to Milan, when the family moved to Pavia, Einstein stayed in Munich to finish his studies at the Luitpold Gymnasium. His father intended for him to electrical engineering, but Einstein clashed with authorities and resented the schools regimen. He later wrote that the spirit of learning and creative thought was lost in strict rote learning, at the end of December 1894, he travelled to Italy to join his family in Pavia, convincing the school to let him go by using a doctors note. During his time in Italy he wrote an essay with the title On the Investigation of the State of the Ether in a Magnetic Field
Albert Einstein
–
Albert Einstein in 1921
Albert Einstein
–
Einstein at the age of 3 in 1882
Albert Einstein
–
Albert Einstein in 1893 (age 14)
Albert Einstein
–
Einstein's matriculation certificate at the age of 17, showing his final grades from the Argovian cantonal school (Aargauische Kantonsschule, on a scale of 1–6, with 6 being the highest possible mark)
5.
Mathematics
–
Mathematics is the study of topics such as quantity, structure, space, and change. There is a range of views among mathematicians and philosophers as to the exact scope, Mathematicians seek out patterns and use them to formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proof, when mathematical structures are good models of real phenomena, then mathematical reasoning can provide insight or predictions about nature. Through the use of abstraction and logic, mathematics developed from counting, calculation, measurement, practical mathematics has been a human activity from as far back as written records exist. The research required to solve mathematical problems can take years or even centuries of sustained inquiry, rigorous arguments first appeared in Greek mathematics, most notably in Euclids Elements. Galileo Galilei said, The universe cannot be read until we have learned the language and it is written in mathematical language, and the letters are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without which means it is humanly impossible to comprehend a single word. Without these, one is wandering about in a dark labyrinth, carl Friedrich Gauss referred to mathematics as the Queen of the Sciences. Benjamin Peirce called mathematics the science that draws necessary conclusions, David Hilbert said of mathematics, We are not speaking here of arbitrariness in any sense. Mathematics is not like a game whose tasks are determined by arbitrarily stipulated rules, rather, it is a conceptual system possessing internal necessity that can only be so and by no means otherwise. Albert Einstein stated that as far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, Mathematics is essential in many fields, including natural science, engineering, medicine, finance and the social sciences. Applied mathematics has led to entirely new mathematical disciplines, such as statistics, Mathematicians also engage in pure mathematics, or mathematics for its own sake, without having any application in mind. There is no clear line separating pure and applied mathematics, the history of mathematics can be seen as an ever-increasing series of abstractions. The earliest uses of mathematics were in trading, land measurement, painting and weaving patterns, in Babylonian mathematics elementary arithmetic first appears in the archaeological record. Numeracy pre-dated writing and numeral systems have many and diverse. Between 600 and 300 BC the Ancient Greeks began a study of mathematics in its own right with Greek mathematics. Mathematics has since been extended, and there has been a fruitful interaction between mathematics and science, to the benefit of both. Mathematical discoveries continue to be made today, the overwhelming majority of works in this ocean contain new mathematical theorems and their proofs. The word máthēma is derived from μανθάνω, while the modern Greek equivalent is μαθαίνω, in Greece, the word for mathematics came to have the narrower and more technical meaning mathematical study even in Classical times
Mathematics
–
Euclid (holding
calipers), Greek mathematician, 3rd century BC, as imagined by
Raphael in this detail from
The School of Athens.
Mathematics
–
Greek mathematician
Pythagoras (c. 570 – c. 495 BC), commonly credited with discovering the
Pythagorean theorem
Mathematics
–
Leonardo Fibonacci, the
Italian mathematician who established the Hindu–Arabic numeral system to the Western World
Mathematics
–
Carl Friedrich Gauss, known as the prince of mathematicians
6.
Probability
–
Probability is the measure of the likelihood that an event will occur. Probability is quantified as a number between 0 and 1, the higher the probability of an event, the more certain that the event will occur. A simple example is the tossing of a fair coin, since the coin is unbiased, the two outcomes are both equally probable, the probability of head equals the probability of tail. Since no other outcomes are possible, the probability is 1/2 and this type of probability is also called a priori probability. Probability theory is used to describe the underlying mechanics and regularities of complex systems. For example, tossing a coin twice will yield head-head, head-tail, tail-head. The probability of getting an outcome of head-head is 1 out of 4 outcomes or 1/4 or 0.25 and this interpretation considers probability to be the relative frequency in the long run of outcomes. A modification of this is propensity probability, which interprets probability as the tendency of some experiment to yield a certain outcome, subjectivists assign numbers per subjective probability, i. e. as a degree of belief. The degree of belief has been interpreted as, the price at which you would buy or sell a bet that pays 1 unit of utility if E,0 if not E. The most popular version of subjective probability is Bayesian probability, which includes expert knowledge as well as data to produce probabilities. The expert knowledge is represented by some prior probability distribution and these data are incorporated in a likelihood function. The product of the prior and the likelihood, normalized, results in a probability distribution that incorporates all the information known to date. The scientific study of probability is a development of mathematics. Gambling shows that there has been an interest in quantifying the ideas of probability for millennia, there are reasons of course, for the slow development of the mathematics of probability. Whereas games of chance provided the impetus for the study of probability. According to Richard Jeffrey, Before the middle of the century, the term probable meant approvable. A probable action or opinion was one such as people would undertake or hold. However, in legal contexts especially, probable could also apply to propositions for which there was good evidence, the sixteenth century Italian polymath Gerolamo Cardano demonstrated the efficacy of defining odds as the ratio of favourable to unfavourable outcomes
Probability
–
Christiaan Huygens probably published the first book on probability
Probability
–
Gerolamo Cardano
Probability
–
Carl Friedrich Gauss
7.
Thomas Aquinas
–
Saint Thomas Aquinas O. P. was an Italian Dominican friar, Catholic priest, and Doctor of the Church. He was an influential philosopher, theologian, and jurist in the tradition of scholasticism, within which he is also known as the Doctor Angelicus. The name Aquinas identifies his ancestral origins in the county of Aquino in present-day Lazio and he was the foremost classical proponent of natural theology and the father of Thomism, of which he argued that reason is found in God. His influence on Western thought is considerable, and much of modern philosophy developed or opposed his ideas, particularly in the areas of ethics, natural law, metaphysics, the works for which he is best known are the Summa Theologiae and the Summa contra Gentiles. His commentaries on Scripture and on Aristotle form an important part of his body of work, furthermore, Thomas is distinguished for his eucharistic hymns, which form a part of the Churchs liturgy. Thomas Aquinas is considered one of the Catholic Churchs greatest theologians, Pope Benedict XV declared, This Order. Acquired new luster when the Church declared the teaching of Thomas to be her own and that Doctor, honored with the praises of the Pontiffs. The English philosopher Anthony Kenny considers Aquinas to be one of the dozen greatest philosophers of the western world, Thomas was most probably born in the castle of Roccasecca, located in Aquino, old county of the Kingdom of Sicily, c.1225. According to some authors, he was born in the castle of his father, though he did not belong to the most powerful branch of the family, Landulf of Aquino was a man of means. As a knight in the service of King Roger II, he held the title miles, Thomass mother, Theodora, belonged to the Rossi branch of the Neapolitan Caracciolo family. Landulfs brother Sinibald was abbot of the first Benedictine monastery at Monte Cassino and it was here that Thomas was probably introduced to Aristotle, Averroes and Maimonides, all of whom would influence his theological philosophy. There his teacher in arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music was Petrus de Ibernia, at the age of nineteen Thomas resolved to join the recently founded Dominican Order. Thomass change of heart did not please his family, in an attempt to prevent Theodoras interference in Thomass choice, the Dominicans arranged to move Thomas to Rome, and from Rome, to Paris. Political concerns prevented the Pope from ordering Thomass release, which had the effect of extending Thomass detention, Thomas passed this time of trial tutoring his sisters and communicating with members of the Dominican Order. Family members became desperate to dissuade Thomas, who remained determined to join the Dominicans, at one point, two of his brothers resorted to the measure of hiring a prostitute to seduce him. According to legend Thomas drove her away wielding a fire iron and that night two angels appeared to him as he slept and strengthened his determination to remain celibate. By 1244, seeing all of her attempts to dissuade Thomas had failed, Theodora sought to save the familys dignity. In her mind, an escape from detention was less damaging than an open surrender to the Dominicans
Thomas Aquinas
–
An altarpiece in
Ascoli Piceno, Italy, by
Carlo Crivelli (15th century)
Thomas Aquinas
–
Detail from
Valle Romita Polyptych by
Gentile da Fabriano (circa 1400)
Thomas Aquinas
–
The Castle of
Monte San Giovanni Campano
Thomas Aquinas
–
Diego Velázquez, Aquinas is girded by angels with a mystical belt of purity after his
proof of chastity
8.
Teleological argument
–
It is an argument in natural theology. The earliest recorded versions of this argument are associated with Socrates in ancient Greece, Socratic philosophy influenced the development of the Abrahamic religions in many ways, and the teleological argument has a long association with them. In the Middle Ages, Islamic theologians such as Al-Ghazali used the argument, although it was rejected as unnecessary by Quranic literalists, later, the teleological argument was accepted by Saint Thomas Aquinas and included as the fifth of his Five Ways of proving the existence of God. In early modern England clergymen such as William Turner and John Ray were well-known proponents, in the early 18th century, William Derham published his Physico-Theology, which gave his demonstration of the being and attributes of God from his works of creation. From the beginning, there have been criticisms of the different versions of the teleological argument. Also starting already in classical Greece, two approaches to the argument developed, distinguished by their understanding of whether the natural order was literally created or not. The non-creationist approach starts most clearly with Aristotle, although many thinkers, such as the Neoplatonists, the Neoplatonists did not find the teleological argument convincing, and in this they were followed by medieval philosophers such as Al-Farabi and Avicenna. Later, Averroes and Thomas Aquinas considered the argument acceptable, religious thinkers in Judaism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Islam and Christianity also developed versions of the teleological argument. Later, variants on the argument from design were produced in Western philosophy, Anaxagoras is the first person who is definitely known to have explained such a concept using the word nous. Aristotle reports an earlier philosopher from Clazomenae named Hermotimus who had taken a similar position, amongst Pre-Socratic philosophers before Anaxagoras, other philosophers had proposed a similar intelligent ordering principle causing life and the rotation of the heavens. For example Empedocles, like Hesiod much earlier, described cosmic order and living things as caused by a version of love. In his Philebus 28c Plato has Socrates speak of this as a tradition, saying that all philosophers agree—whereby they really exalt themselves—that mind is king of heaven, and later states that the ensuing discussion confirms the utterances of those who declared of old that mind always rules the universe. Xenophons report in his Memorabilia might be the earliest clear account of an argument that there is evidence in nature of intelligent design. In Platos Phaedo, Socrates is made to say just before dying that his discovery of Anaxagoras concept of a cosmic nous as the cause of the order of things, was an important turning point for him. But he also expressed disagreement with Anaxagoras understanding of the implications of his own doctrine, Socrates complained that Anaxagoras restricted the work of the cosmic nous to the beginning, as if it were uninterested and all events since then just happened because of causes like air and water. Socrates, on the hand, apparently insisted that the demiurge must be loving. Plato has a character explain the concept of a demiurge with supreme wisdom, Platos teleological perspective is also built upon the analysis of a priori order and structure in the world that he had already presented in The Republic. The story does not propose creation ex nihilo, rather, the demiurge made order from the chaos of the cosmos, Platos student and friend Aristotle, continued the Socratic tradition of criticising natural scientists such as Democritus who sought to explain everything in terms of matter and chance motion
Teleological argument
–
Plato and
Aristotle, depicted here in
The School of Athens, both developed philosophical arguments addressing the universe's apparent order (
logos)
Teleological argument
–
The fifth of Thomas Aquinas' proofs of God's existence was based on teleology
Teleological argument
–
William Paley popularized the "watchmaker analogy" used by earlier
natural theologians, making it a famous teleological argument.
Teleological argument
–
David Hume outlined his criticisms of the teleological argument in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.
9.
Philosophy of religion
–
According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, philosophy of religion is, the philosophical examination of the central themes and concepts involved in religious traditions. It is an ancient discipline, being found in the earliest known manuscripts concerning philosophy, and relates to other branches of philosophy, including metaphysics, epistemology. It is designed such that it can be carried out dispassionately by those who identify as believers or non-believers, some aspects of Philosophy of religion has classically been regarded as a part of metaphysics. In Aristotles Metaphysics, the necessarily prior cause of motion was an unmoved mover. This, according to Aristotle, is God, the subject of study in theology, although the term did not come into general use until the nineteenth century, perhaps the earliest strictly philosophical writings about religion can be found in the Hindu Upanishads. Around the same time, the works of Daoism and Confucianism also dealt, in part, the Buddhist writing in the Pali canon contains acute philosophical thinking, and we have in Buddhism a very shrewd grasp of the nature of religion as philosophy illuminates it. The philosophy of religion has been distinguished from theology by pointing out that, for theology, also, theology is responsible to an authority that initiates its thinking, speaking, and witnessing. Philosophy bases its arguments on the ground of timeless evidence, three considerations that are basic to the philosophy of religion concerning deities are, the existence of God, the nature of God, and the knowledge of God. There are several positions with regard to the existence of God that one might take. Pantheism - the belief that God exists as all things of the cosmos, panentheism - the belief that God encompasses all things of the cosmos but that God is greater than the cosmos, God is both immanent and transcendent. Deism - the belief that God does exist but does not interfere with human life, monotheism - Usually defined as the belief that a single deity exists which is omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent created everything. Polytheism - the belief that deities exist which rule the universe as separate. Henotheism - the belief that multiple deities may or may not exist, henology - believing that multiple avatars of a deity exist, which represent unique aspects of the ultimate deity. Agnosticism - the belief that the existence or non-existence of deities or God is currently unknown or unknowable, a weaker form of this might be defined as simply a lack of certainty about gods existence or nonexistence. Atheism - the rejection of belief in the existence of deities, apatheism - a complete disinterest in, or lack of caring for, whether or not any deity or deities exists. Possibilianism These are not mutually exclusive positions, for example, agnostic theists choose to believe God exists while asserting that knowledge of Gods existence is inherently unknowable. Similarly, agnostic atheists reject belief in the existence of all deities, the attempt to provide proofs or arguments for the existence of God is one aspect of what is known as natural theology or the natural theistic project. This strand of natural theology attempts to justify belief in God by independent grounds, there is plenty of philosophical literature on faith and other subjects generally considered to be outside the realm of natural theology
Philosophy of religion
–
Aristotle
Philosophy of religion
–
Kierkegaard
Philosophy of religion
–
Aquinas
10.
Afterlife
–
The afterlife is the concept of a realm, or the realm itself, in which an essential part of an individuals identity or consciousness continues to exist after the death of the body. Belief in an afterlife, which may be naturalistic or supernatural, is in contrast to the belief in oblivion after death, in this latter view, such rebirths and deaths may take place over and over again continuously until the individual gains entry to a spiritual realm or Otherworld. Major views on the afterlife derive from religion, esotericism and metaphysics, in metaphysical models, theists generally believe some type of afterlife awaits people when they die. Members of some generally non-theistic religions, tend to believe in an afterlife, the Sadducees were an ancient Jewish sect that generally believed that there was a God but no afterlife. Reincarnation refers to a concept found among Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, Sikhs, Rosicrucians, Theosophists, Spiritists. Reincarnation is also a belief described in Kabbalistic Judaism as gilgul neshamot and this succession leads toward an eventual liberation. One consequence of reincarnationist beliefs is that our current lives are both afterlife and a beforelife, according to those beliefs events in our current life are consequences of actions taken in previous lives, or Karma. In most denominations, heaven is a condition of reward for the righteous to go after they die, traditionally defined as eternal union with God. In contrast to heaven, hell is a condition of punishment and torment for the wicked, traditionally defined as eternal separation from God and confinement with other sinful souls and fallen angels. So they are seen as existing in a state of natural. In other Christian denominations it has described as an intermediate place or state of confinement in oblivion. The notion of purgatory is associated particularly with the Catholic Church, the tradition of the church, by reference to certain texts of scripture, speaks of a cleansing fire although it is not always called purgatory. Anglicans of the Anglo-Catholic tradition generally also hold to the belief, traditional African religions are diverse in their beliefs in an afterlife. For each soul remains distinct and each represents a new soul. In some societies like the Mende, multiple beliefs coexist, the Mende believe that people die twice, once during the process of joining the secret society, and again during biological death after which they become ancestors. However, some Mende also believe that people are created by God they live ten consecutive lives. One cross-cultural theme is that the ancestors are part of the world of the living, interacting with it regularly, the afterlife played an important role in Ancient Egyptian religion, and its belief system is one of the earliest known in recorded history. When the body died, parts of its known as ka
Afterlife
Afterlife
–
Domenico Beccafumi 's Inferno: a Christian vision of hell
Afterlife
–
Mictlan
Afterlife
11.
Faith
–
Faith is confidence or trust in a person or thing, or the observance of an obligation from loyalty, or fidelity to a person, promise, engagement. The word faith may refer to a particular system of religious belief. The term faith has numerous connotations and is used in different ways, the English word faith is thought to date from 1200–50, from the Middle English feith, via Anglo-French fed, Old French feid, feit from Latin fidem, accusative of fidēs, akin to fīdere. James W. Fowler proposes a series of stages of faith-development across the human life-span and his stages relate closely to the work of Piaget, Erikson, and Kohlberg regarding aspects of psychological development in children and adults. Fowler defines faith as an activity of trusting, committing, and relating to the world based on a set of assumptions of how one is related to others, intuitive-Projective, a stage of confusion and of high impressionability through stories and rituals. Mythic-Literal, a stage where provided information is accepted in order to conform with social norms, individuative-Reflective, In this stage the individual critically analyzes adopted and accepted faith with existing systems of faith. Disillusion or strengthening of faith happens in this stage, based on needs, experiences and paradoxes. This stage is called negotiated settling in life, no hard-and-fast rule requires individuals pursuing faith to go through all six stages. There is a probability for individuals to be content and fixed in a particular stage for a lifetime. Stage 6 is the summit of faith development and this state is often considered as not fully attainable. There is a spectrum of opinion with respect to the epistemological validity of faith. Fideism is a theory which maintains that faith is independent of reason, or that reason and faith are hostile to each other. It states that faith is needed to determine some philosophical and religious truths, the word and concept had its origin in the mid- to late-19th century by way of Catholic thought, in a movement called Traditionalism. The Roman Catholic Magisterium has, however, repeatedly condemned fideism, in the Baháí Faith, faith is meant, first, conscious knowledge, and second, the practice of good deeds, ultimately the acceptance of the divine authority of the Manifestations of God. In the religions view, faith and knowledge are required for spiritual growth. Faith involves more than outward obedience to authority, but also must be based on a deep personal understanding of religious teachings. Faith is an important constituent element of the teachings of Gautama Buddha— in both the Theravada and the Mahayana traditions, the teachings of Buddha were originally recorded in the language Pali and the word saddhā is generally translated as faith. Faith in Buddhism centers on the understanding that the Buddha is an Awakened being, on his role as teacher, in the truth of his Dharma
Faith
–
Mino da Fiesole, Faith (Armani).
Faith
–
Triumph of Faith over
Idolatry by
Jean-Baptiste Théodon (1646–1713)
Faith
–
Shinto faith.
12.
Intelligent design
–
Intelligent design is a creationist religious argument for the existence of God, presented by its proponents as an evidence-based scientific theory about lifes origins but found to be pseudoscience. Proponents claim that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, the leading proponents of ID are associated with the Discovery Institute, a politically conservative think tank based in the United States. Although they state that ID is not creationism and deliberately avoid assigning a personality to the designer, both irreducible complexity and specified complexity present detailed negative assertions that certain features are too complex to be the result of natural processes. Proponents then conclude by analogy that these features are evidence of design, from the mid-1990s, the intelligent design movement, supported by the Discovery Institute, advocated inclusion of intelligent design in public school biology curricula. This led to the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial in which U. S. District Judge John E. Teaching of evolution was effectively suspended in U. S. Young Earth creationists promoted creation science as a scientific explanation of the world in which we live. This frequently invoked the argument from design to explain complexity in nature as demonstrating the existence of God, the argument from design, the teleological argument or argument from intelligent design, has been advanced in theology for centuries. It can be summarised briefly as Wherever complex design exists, there must have been a designer, nature is complex, Thomas Aquinas presented it in his fifth proof of Gods existence as a syllogism. In 1802, William Paleys Natural Theology presented examples of intricate purpose in organisms, Creation science prefigured the intelligent design arguments of irreducible complexity, even featuring the bacterial flagellum. In the United States, attempts to introduce creation science in schools led to court rulings that it is religious in nature, and thus cannot be taught in public school science classrooms. Barbara Forrest writes that the intelligent design movement began in 1984 with the book The Mystery of Lifes Origin, Reassessing Current Theories, Thaxton, a chemist, with two other authors, and published by Jon A. Buells Foundation for Thought and Ethics. Thaxton held a conference in 1988, Sources of Information Content in DNA, in November of that year, Thaxton described his reasoning as a more sophisticated form of Paleys argument from design. At the Sources of Information Content in DNA conference in 1988, Intelligent design avoids identifying or naming the intelligent designer—it merely states that one must exist—but leaders of the movement have said the designer is the Christian God. The Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District court ruling held the latter to be the case, variations on the phrase appeared in YEC publications, a 1967 book co-written by Percival Davis referred to design according to which basic organisms were created. The first systematic use of the term, defined in a glossary and claimed to be other than creationism, was in Of Pandas and People, co-authored by Davis, a Discovery Institute report says that Charles B. Thaxton, editor of Pandas, had picked the phrase up from a NASA scientist, Stephen C. Meyer was at the conference, and later recalled that The term intelligent design came up. It thus represents the start of the intelligent design movement. Intelligent design was the most prominent of around fifteen new terms it introduced as a new lexicon of creationist terminology to oppose evolution without using religious language, although presented as a scientific textbook, philosopher of science Michael Ruse considers the contents worthless and dishonest
Intelligent design
–
Watchmaker analogy
Intelligent design
–
The concept of
irreducible complexity was popularised by
Michael Behe in his 1996 book,
Darwin's Black Box.
Intelligent design
–
William A. Dembski proposed the concept of
specified complexity.
Intelligent design
–
The
Discovery Institute 's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture used banners based on "
The Creation of Adam " from the
Sistine Chapel. Later it used a less religious image, then was renamed the
Center for Science and Culture.
13.
Miracle
–
A miracle is an event not explicable by natural or scientific laws. Such an event may be attributed to a supernatural being, magic, a miracle worker, other such miracles might be, survival of an illness diagnosed as terminal, escaping a life-threatening situation or beating the odds. Some coincidences may be seen as miracles, a true miracle would, by definition, be a non-natural phenomenon, leading many rational and scientific thinkers to dismiss them as physically impossible or impossible to confirm by their nature. The former position is expressed for instance by Thomas Jefferson and the latter by David Hume, theologians typically say that, with divine providence, God regularly works through nature yet, as a creator, is free to work without, above, or against it as well. The possibility and probability of miracles are then equal to the possibility and probability of the existence of God, a miracle is a phenomenon not explained by known laws of nature. Criteria for classifying an event as a miracle vary, often a religious text, such as the Bible or Quran, states that a miracle occurred, and believers may accept this as a fact. British mathematician J. E. Littlewood suggested that individuals should statistically expect one-in-a-million events to happen to them at the rate of one per month. By Littlewoods definition, seemingly miraculous events are actually commonplace, the Aristotelian view of God does not include direct intervention in the order of the natural world. Jewish neo-Aristotelian philosophers, who are influential today, include Maimonides, Samuel ben Judah ibn Tibbon. Directly or indirectly, their views are still prevalent in much of the religious Jewish community, in his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus Spinoza claims that miracles are merely lawlike events whose causes we are ignorant of. We should not treat them as having no cause or of having a cause immediately available, rather the miracle is for combating the ignorance it entails, like a political project. According to the philosopher David Hume, a miracle is a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity, or by the interposition of some invisible agent. According to the Christian theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher every event, even the most natural and usual, james Keller states that The claim that God has worked a miracle implies that God has singled out certain persons for some benefit which many others do not receive implies that God is unfair. If God intervenes to save life in a car crash. Thus an all-powerful, all-knowing and just God, as predicated in Christianity, the Haedong Kosung-jon of Korea records that King Beopheung of Silla had desired to promulgate Buddhism as the state religion. However, officials in his court opposed him, in the fourteenth year of his reign, Beopheungs Grand Secretary, Ichadon, devised a strategy to overcome court opposition. Ichadon schemed with the king, convincing him to make a proclamation granting Buddhism official state sanction using the royal seal, Ichadon told the king to deny having made such a proclamation when the opposing officials received it and demanded an explanation. Instead, Ichadon would confess and accept the punishment of execution, Ichadon prophesied to the king that at his execution a wonderful miracle would convince the opposing court faction of Buddhisms power
Miracle
–
The
Raising of Lazarus, (c. 1410) from the
Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry,
Musée Condé, France.
Miracle
–
A 16th-century
Persian miniature painting celebrating Muhammad's ascent into the Heavens, a journey known as the
Miraj. Muhammad's face is veiled, a common practice in
Islamic art.
14.
Problem of evil
–
The problem of evil refers to the question of how to reconcile the existence of evil with an omnibenevolent, omniscient and omnipotent God. An argument from evil attempts to show that the co-existence of evil, attempts to show the contrary have traditionally been discussed under the heading of theodicy. Besides philosophy of religion, the problem of evil is also important to the field of theology, the problem of evil is often formulated in two forms, the logical problem of evil and the evidential problem of evil. The problem of evil has been extended to life forms, to include animal suffering from natural evils. Responses to various versions of the problem of evil, meanwhile, a wide range of responses have been made against these arguments. There are also discussions of evil and associated problems in other philosophical fields, such as secular ethics. But as usually understood, the problem of evil is posed in a theological context, the problem of evil refers to the challenge of reconciling belief in an omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent God, with the existence of evil and suffering in the world. The problem may be described either experientially or theoretically, the problem of evil is also a theoretical one, usually described and studied by religion scholars in two varieties, the logical problem and the evidential problem. Originating with Greek philosopher Epicurus, the argument from evil is as follows, If an omnipotent, omniscient. There is evil in the world, Therefore, an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent God does not exist. This argument is of the modus tollens, and is logically valid, If its premises are true. To show that the first premise is plausible, subsequent versions tend to expand on it, such as modern example. God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent, an omnibenevolent being would want to prevent all evils. An omniscient being knows every way in which evils can come into existence, an omnipotent being has the power to prevent that evil from coming into existence. A being who knows every way in which an evil can come into existence, who is able to prevent that evil from coming into existence, If there exists an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent God, then no evil exists. Both of these arguments are understood to be presenting two forms of the problem of evil. They attempt to show that the propositions lead to a logical contradiction. If God lacks any one of these qualities—omniscience, omnipotence, or omnibenevolence—then the logical problem of evil can be resolved, process theology and open theism are other positions that limit Gods omnipotence and/or omniscience
Problem of evil
–
William L. Rowe 's famous example of
natural evil: "In some distant forest lightning strikes a dead tree, resulting in a forest fire. In the fire a fawn is trapped, horribly burned, and lies in terrible agony for several days before death relieves its suffering."
Problem of evil
–
"The Deluge", by
John Martin, 1834. Oil on canvas.
Yale University
Problem of evil
–
Thetis gives her son Achilles weapons forged by Hephaestus (detail of Attic
black-figure hydria, 575–550 BC)
15.
Religious belief
–
Belief is the state of mind in which a person thinks something to be the case, with or without there being empirical evidence to prove that something is the case with factual certainty. Another way of defining belief sees it as a representation of an attitude positively oriented towards the likelihood of something being true. In the context of Ancient Greek thought, two related concepts were identified with regards to the concept of belief, pistis and doxa, simplified, we may say that pistis refers to trust and confidence, while doxa refers to opinion and acceptance. The English word orthodoxy derives from doxa, Jonathan Leicester suggests that belief has the purpose of guiding action rather than indicating truth. In epistemology, philosophers use the belief to refer to personal attitudes associated with true or false ideas. However, belief does not require active introspection and circumspection, for example, we never ponder whether or not the sun will rise. We simply assume the sun will rise, since belief is an important aspect of mundane life, according to Eric Schwitzgebel in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, a related question asks, how a physical organism can have beliefs. Epistemology is concerned with delineating the boundary between justified belief and opinion, and involved generally with a philosophical study of knowledge. The primary problem in epistemology is to exactly what is needed in order for us to have knowledge. Plato dismisses this possibility of a relation between belief and knowledge even when the one who opines grounds his belief on the rule. Among American epistemologists, Gettier and Goldman, have questioned the true belief definition. Mainstream psychology and related disciplines have traditionally treated belief as if it were the simplest form of mental representation, philosophers have tended to be more abstract in their analysis, and much of the work examining the viability of the belief concept stems from philosophical analysis. The concept of belief presumes a subject and an object of belief, Beliefs are sometimes divided into core beliefs and dispositional beliefs. For example, if asked do you believe tigers wear pink pajamas, a person might answer that they do not, despite the fact they may never have thought about this situation before. This has important implications for understanding the neuropsychology and neuroscience of belief, if the concept of belief is incoherent, then any attempt to find the underlying neural processes that support it will fail. Jerry Fodor is one of the defenders of this point of view. Most notably, philosopher Stephen Stich has argued for this understanding of belief. In these cases science hasnt provided us with a detailed account of these theories
Religious belief
–
We are influenced by many factors that ripple through our minds as our beliefs form, evolve, and may eventually change
Religious belief
–
This article is about the general concept. For other uses, see
Belief (disambiguation).
Religious belief
–
Philosopher Jonathan Glover warns that belief systems are like whole boats in the water; it is extremely difficult to alter them all at once (e.g., it may be too stressful, or people may maintain their biases without realizing it).
16.
Soul
–
In many religious, philosophical and mythological traditions, the soul is the incorporeal essence of a living being. Depending on the system, a soul can either be mortal or immortal. In Judeo-Christianity, only human beings have immortal souls, for example, the Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas attributed soul to all organisms but argued that only human souls are immortal. Other religions hold that all organisms have souls, as did Aristotle, while some teach that even non-biological entities possess souls. The latter belief is called animism, Greek philosophers, such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, understood that the soul must have a logical faculty, the exercise of which was the most divine of human actions. Anima mundi is the concept of a world soul connecting all living organisms on planet Earth, the Modern English word soul, derived from Old English sáwol, sáwel, was first attested in the 8th-century poem Beowulf v.2820 and in the Vespasian Psalter 77.50. Further etymology of the Germanic word is uncertain, the Koine Greek word ψυχή psychē, life, spirit, consciousness, is derived from a verb meaning to cool, to blow, and hence refers to the breath, as opposed to σῶμα, meaning body. Vulgate, et nolite timere eos qui occidunt corpus animam autem non possunt occidere sed potius eum timete qui potest et animam et corpus perdere in gehennam. Authorized King James Version And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul, vulgate Creavitque Deus cete grandia, et omnem animam viventem atque motabilem. KJV And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, Paul of Tarsus used ψυχή and πνεῦμα specifically to distinguish between the Jewish notions of נפש nephesh and רוח ruah. The ancient Greeks used the word alive for the concept of being ensouled, the soul was considered the incorporeal or spiritual breath that animates the living organism. Francis M. Cornford quotes Pindar by saying that the soul sleeps while the limbs are active, but when one is sleeping, the soul is active and reveals an award of joy or sorrow drawing near in dreams. Erwin Rohde writes that an early pre-Pythagorean belief presented the soul as lifeless when it departed the body, drawing on the words of his teacher Socrates, Plato considered the psyche to be the essence of a person, being that which decides how we behave. He considered this essence to be an incorporeal, eternal occupant of our being, Socrates says that even after death, the soul exists and is able to think. He believed that as bodies die, the soul is reborn in subsequent bodies and Plato believed this as well, however. Thymos is located near the chest region and is related to anger, eros is located in the stomach and is related to ones desires. Plato also compares the three parts of the soul or psyche to a caste system. According to Platos theory, the soul is essentially the same thing as a states class system because, to function well
Soul
–
Plato (left) and Aristotle (right), a detail of
The School of Athens, a
fresco by
Raphael.
Soul
–
The souls of Pe and
Nekhen towing the royal bargue on a relief of
Ramesses II 's temple in Abydos.
Soul
–
Soul carried to Heaven by
William Bouguereau
Soul
–
The Damned Soul. Drawing by
Michelangelo Buonarroti c. 1525
17.
Spirit
–
The English word spirit, from Latin spiritus breath, has many different meanings and connotations, most of them relating to a non-corporeal substance contrasted with the material body. It can also refer to a subtle as opposed to gross material substance, the word spirit is often used metaphysically to refer to the consciousness or personality. e. A manifestation of the spirit of a deceased person, the term may also refer to any incorporeal or immaterial being, such as demons or deities. In the Bible, the Spirit, specifically denotes the Holy Spirit, the English word spirit comes from the Latin spiritus, meaning breath, but also spirit, soul, courage, vigor, ultimately from a Proto-Indo-European *peis. It is distinguished from Latin anima, soul, in Greek, this distinction exists between pneuma, breath, motile air, spirit, and psykhē, soul. The word spirit came into Middle English via Old French, the distinction between soul and spirit also developed in the Abrahamic religions, Arabic nafs opposite rūħ, Hebrew neshama or nephesh נֶ֫פֶשׁ nép̄eš opposite ruach. In a lecture delivered to the literary Society of Augsburg, October 20,1926, on the theme of “Nature and Spirit, the mistrust of verbal concepts, inconvenient as it is, nevertheless seems to me to be very much in place in speaking of fundamentals. Spirit and Life are familiar enough words to us, very old acquaintances in fact, pawns that for thousands of years have pushed back. It can scarcely be an accident onomatopoeic words like ruach, ruch, roho mean ‘spirit’ no less clearly than the Greek πνεύμα and the Latin spiritus”. In spiritual and metaphysical terms, spirit has acquired a number of meanings, An incorporeal but ubiquitous, unlike the concept of souls a spirit develops and grows as an integral aspect of a living being. This concept of the individual spirit occurs commonly in animism, note the distinction between this concept of spirit and that of the pre-existing or eternal soul, belief in souls occurs specifically and far less commonly, particularly in traditional societies. One might more properly term this type/aspect of spirit life or aether rather than spirit, people usually conceive of a ghost as a wandering spirit from a being no longer living, having survived the death of the body yet maintaining at least vestiges of mind and consciousness. In religion and spirituality, the respiration of a human has for obvious reasons become seen as linked with the very occurrence of life. A similar significance has become attached to human blood, Spirit, in this sense, means the thing that separates a living body from a corpse—and usually implies intelligence, consciousness, and sentience. Latter-day Saint prophet Joseph Smith Jr. taught that the concept of spirit as incorporeal or without substance was incorrect, all spirit is matter, but it is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by purer eyes. In some Native American spiritual traditions the Great Spirit or Wakan Tanka is a term for the Supreme Being, individual spirits envisaged as interconnected with all other spirits and with The Spirit. This concept relates to theories of a unified spirituality, to universal consciousness, the experience of such a connection can become a primary basis for spiritual belief. Christian spiritual theology can use the term Spirit to describe God, or aspects of God — as in the Holy Spirit, Spirit forms a central concept in pneumatology
Spirit
–
Theodor von Holst, Bertalda, Assailed by Spirits, c. 1830
18.
Theodicy
–
Theodicy, in its most common form, is an attempt to answer the question of why a good God permits the manifestation of evil. Unlike a defense, which tries to demonstrate that Gods existence is possible in the light of evil. The German mathematician and philosopher Gottfried Leibniz coined the term theodicy in 1710 in his work Théodicée, Irenaeus German philosopher Max Weber saw theodicy as a social problem, based on the human need to explain puzzling aspects of the world. Sociologist Peter L. Berger argued that religion arose out of a need for order. Following the Holocaust, a number of Jewish theologians developed a new response to the problem of evil, sometimes called anti-theodicy, which maintains that God cannot be meaningfully justified. As an alternative to theodicy, a defense has been proposed by the American philosopher Alvin Plantinga, similar to a theodicy, a cosmodicy attempts to justify the fundamental goodness of the universe, and an anthropodicy attempts to justify the goodness of humanity. As defined by Alvin Plantinga, theodicy is the answer to the question of why God permits evil, the word theodicy derives from the Greek words Θεός Τheos and δίκη dikē. Theos is translated God and dikē can be translated as either trial or judgement, thus, theodicy literally means justifying God. In the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Nick Trakakis proposed an additional three requirements which must be contained within a theodicy, Common sense views of the world, widely held historical and scientific opinion. As a response to the problem of evil, a theodicy is distinct from a defence, a defence attempts to demonstrate that the occurrence of evil does not contradict Gods existence, but it does not propose that rational beings are able to understand why God permits evil. A theodicy seeks to show that it is reasonable to believe in God despite evidence of evil in the world, defenses propose solutions to the logical problem of evil, while theodicies attempt to answer the evident problem. German philosopher Max Weber interpreted theodicy as a problem. Weber framed the problem of evil as the dilemma that the good can suffer and the evil can prosper and he identified two purposes of theodicy, to explain why good people suffer, and why people prosper. Sociologist Peter L. Berger characterised religion as the attempt to build order out of a chaotic world. He believed that humans could not accept that anything in the world was meaningless and saw theodicy as an assertion that the cosmos has meaning and order, despite evidence to the contrary. Berger presented an argument similar to that of Weber, but suggested that the need for theodicy arose primarily out of the situation of human society and he believed that theodicies existed to allow individuals to transcend themselves, denying the individual in favour of the social order. The term theodicy was coined by German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz in his 1710 work, written in French, Essais de Théodicée sur la bonté de Dieu, bayle argued that, because the Bible asserts the coexistence of God and evil, this state of affairs must simply be accepted. Voltaire also includes the theme in his novel, Candide
Theodicy
–
Gottfried Leibniz coined the term "theodicy" in an attempt to justify God's existence in light of the apparent imperfections of the world.
19.
Aristotelian theology
–
Aristotelian theology and the scholastic view of God have been influential in Western intellectual history. In his first philosophy, later called the Metaphysics, Aristotle discusses the meaning of being as being, thus captivated, their tireless performance is entirely the result of their own desire. This is one way in which the movers are said to be unmoved, in the Metaphysics, Aristotle discusses actuality and potentiality. The former is perfection, realization, fullness of being, the latter imperfection, incompleteness, the former is the determining, the latter the determinable principle. The unmoved movers are entirely actual, Actus Purus, because they are unchanging, all material beings have some potentiality. The Physics introduces matter and form and the four causes—material, formal, efficient, for example, to explain a statue, one can offer, The material cause, that out of which the statue is made, is the marble or bronze. The formal cause, that according to which the statue is made, is the shape that the sculptor has learned to sculpt, the efficient cause, or agent, is the sculptor. The final cause, is that for the sake of which the statue is made, contrary to the later so-called traditional view of prime matter, Aristotle asserts that there can be no pure potentiality without any actuality whatsoever. All material substances have unactualized potentials, Aristotle argues that, although motion is eternal, there cannot be an infinite series of movers and of things moved. Therefore, there must be some, who are not the first in such a series, because they eternally inspire uniform motion in the celestial spheres, the unmoved movers must themselves be eternal and unchanging. The life of the unmoved mover is self-contemplative thought, according to Aristotle, the gods cannot potentially be distracted from this eternal self-contemplation because, in that instant, they would cease to exist. John Burnet noted The Neoplatonists were quite justified in regarding themselves as the heirs of Pythagoras, and, in their hands, philosophy ceased to exist as such. And this tendency was at all along, hardly a single Greek philosopher was wholly uninfluenced by it. In later days, Apollonios of Tyana showed in practice what this sort of thing must ultimately lead to, the theurgy and thaumaturgy of the late Greek schools were only the fruit of the seed sown by the generation which immediately preceded the Persian War. Aristotles principles of being influenced Anselms view of God, whom he called that than which nothing greater can be conceived, Anselm thought that God did not feel emotions such as anger or love, but appeared to do so through our imperfect understanding. The incongruity of judging being against something that not exist. Many medieval philosophers made use of the idea of approaching a knowledge of God through negative attributes, for example, we should not say that God exists in the usual sense of the term, all we can safely say is that God is not nonexistent. We should not say that God is wise, but we can say that God is not ignorant and we should not say that God is One, but we can state that there is no multiplicity in Gods being
Aristotelian theology
–
Aristotelianism
Aristotelian theology
–
Aristotle, by
Francesco Hayez
20.
Brahman
–
In Hinduism, Brahman connotes the highest Universal Principle, the Ultimate Reality in the universe. In major schools of Hindu philosophy, it is the material, efficient and it is the pervasive, genderless, infinite, eternal truth and bliss which does not change, yet is the cause of all changes. Brahman as a concept is the single binding unity behind the diversity in all that exists in the universe. Brahman is a Vedic Sanskrit word, and it is conceptualized in Hinduism, states Paul Deussen, Brahman is a key concept found in the Vedas, and it is extensively discussed in the early Upanishads. The Vedas conceptualize Brahman as the Cosmic Principle, in the Upanishads, it has been variously described as Sat-cit-ānanda and as the unchanging, permanent, highest reality. Brahman is discussed in Hindu texts with the concept of Atman, personal, impersonal or Para Brahman, or in various combinations of these qualities depending on the philosophical school. In dualistic schools of Hinduism such as the theistic Dvaita Vedanta, Brahman is different from Atman in each being, Brahman is thus a gender-neutral concept that implies greater impersonality than masculine or feminine conceptions of the deity. Brahman is referred to as the supreme self, puligandla states it as the unchanging reality amidst and beyond the world, while Sinar states Brahman is a concept that cannot be exactly defined. In Vedic Sanskrit, Brahma, brahman from root bṛh-, means to be or make firm, strong, solid, expand, promote. Brahmana, from stems brha + Sanskrit -man- from Indo-European root -men- which denotes some manifested form of power, inherent firmness. In later Sanskrit usage, Brahma, brahman means the concept of the transcendent and immanent ultimate reality, the concept is central to Hindu philosophy, especially Vedanta, this is discussed below. Brahm is another variant of Brahman, Brahmā, Brahman, means the deity or deva Prajāpati Brahmā. He is one of the members of the Hindu trinity and associated with creation, but does not have a cult in present-day India. This is because Brahmā, the creator-god, is long-lived but not eternal i. e. Brahmā gets absorbed back into Purusha at the end of an aeon, and is born again at the beginning of a new kalpa. These are distinct from, A brāhmaṇa, is a commentary on the Vedic mantras—an integral part of the Vedic literature. A brāhmaṇa, means priest, in this usage the word is rendered in English as Brahmin. This usage is found in the Atharva Veda. Ishvara, in Advaita, is identified as a partial manifestation of the ultimate reality
Brahman
–
Impact of a drop of water in water, a common analogy for Brahman and the
Ātman
Brahman
–
Swan (Hansa, हंस) is the symbol for Brahman-Atman in Hindu iconography.
Brahman
21.
Demiurge
–
In the Platonic, Neopythagorean, Middle Platonic, and Neoplatonic schools of philosophy, the demiurge is an artisan-like figure responsible for the fashioning and maintenance of the physical universe. The term was adopted by the Gnostics, depending on the system, they may be considered to be either uncreated and eternal, or considered to be the product of some other entity. The philosophical usage and the proper noun derive from Platos Timaeus, written c.360 BC and this is accordingly the definition of the demiurge in the Platonic and Middle Platonic philosophical traditions. In the various branches of the Neoplatonic school, the demiurge is the fashioner of the real, perceptible world after the model of the Ideas, Plato, as the speaker Timaeus, refers to the Demiurge frequently in the Socratic dialogue Timaeus, c.360 BC. The main character refers to the Demiurge as the entity who fashioned and shaped the material world, Timaeus describes the Demiurge as unreservedly benevolent, and hence desirous of a world as good as possible. The world remains imperfect, however, because the Demiurge created the world out of a chaotic, Platos work Timaeus is a philosophical reconciliation of Hesiods cosmology in his Theogony, syncretically reconciling Hesiod to Homer. In Numeniuss Neo-Pythagorean and Middle Platonist cosmogony, the Demiurge is second God as the nous or thought of intelligibles and sensibles, Plotinus and the later Platonists worked to clarify the Demiurge. To Plotinus, the second emanation represents a second cause. In order to reconcile Aristotelian with Platonian philosophy, Plotinus metaphorically identified the demiurge within the pantheon of the Greek Gods as Zeus, the first and highest aspect of God is described by Plato as the One, the source, or the Monad. This is the God above the Demiurge, and manifests through the work of the Demiurge, the Monad emanated the demiurge or Nous from its indeterminate vitality due to the monad being so abundant that it overflowed back onto itself, causing self-reflection. This self-reflection of the indeterminate vitality was referred to by Plotinus as the Demiurge or creator, the second principle is organization in its reflection of the nonsentient force or dynamis, also called the one or the Monad. Plotinus form of Platonic idealism is to treat the Demiurge, nous as the contemplative faculty within man which orders the force into conscious reality. In this he claimed to reveal Platos true meaning, a doctrine he learned from Platonic tradition that did not appear outside the academy or in Platos text. This tradition of creator God as nous, can be validated in the works of philosophers such as Numenius. Before Numenius of Apamea and Plotinus Enneads, no Platonic works ontologically clarified the Demiurge from the allegory in Platos Timaeus. The idea of Demiurge was, however, addressed before Plotinus in the works of Christian writer Justin Martyr who built his understanding of the Demiurge on the works of Numenius. The figure of the Demiurge emerges in the theoretic of Iamblichus, here, at the summit of this system, the Source and Demiurge coexist via the process of henosis. The One is further separated into spheres of intelligence, the first and superior sphere is objects of thought, then within this intellectual triad Iamblichus assigns the third rank to the Demiurge, identifying it with the perfect or Divine nous with the intellectual triad being promoted to a hebdomad
Demiurge
–
A lion-faced deity found on a Gnostic gem in
Bernard de Montfaucon ’s L’antiquité expliquée et représentée en figures may be a depiction of the Demiurge.
Demiurge
–
Drawing of the leontocephaline found at the
Mithraeum of C. Valerius Heracles and sons, dedicated 190 AD at
Ostia Antica, Italy (CIMRM 312).
22.
Holy Spirit
–
Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost is a term found in English translations of the Bible that is understood differently among the Abrahamic religions. Holy Spirit is stated to be a realm beyond the ability of words to properly convey and it must be experienced, realized, kindled within like a holy fire. The term is used to describe aspects of other religions. The word Spirit appears as either alone or with words, in the Hebrew Bible. Combinations include expressions such as the Holy Spirit, Spirit of God, the word Spirit is rendered as רוּחַ in Hebrew-language parts of the Old Testament. In its Aramaic parts, the term is rûacḥ, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, translates the word as πνεῦμα. This is the word that is used throughout the New Testament. The English term Spirit comes from its Latin origin, spiritus, the alternative term, Holy Ghost, comes from Old English translations of spiritus. The Hebrew Bible contains the term Spirit of God in the sense of the might of a unitary God and this meaning is different from the Christian concept of Holy Spirit as one personality of God in the Trinity. According to theologian Rudolf Bultmann, there are two ways to think about the Holy Spirit, animistic and dynamistic, both kinds of thought appear in Jewish and Christian scripture, but animistic is more typical of the Old Testament whereas dynamistic is more common in the New Testament. The distinction coincides with the Holy Spirit as either a temporary or permanent gift, in the Old Testament and Jewish thought, it is primarily temporary with a specific situation or task in mind, whereas in the Christian concept the gift resides in man permanently. The Holy Spirit also has an equivalent in non-Abrahamic Hellenistic mystery religions and they included a distinction of the Spirit and psyche, which Paul the Apostle later incorporated into his epistles. According to proponents of the History of religions school, the Christian concept of the Holy Spirit cannot be explained from Jewish ideas alone without reference to the Hellenistic religions. However, according to theologian Erik Konsmo, the views are so dissimilar that the only legitimate connection one can make is with the term πνεῦμα itself, Another link with ancient Greek thought is the Stoic idea of the Spirit as anima mundi—or world soul—that unites all people. In his Introduction to the 1964 book Meditations, the Anglican priest Maxwell Staniforth wrote, cleanthes, wishing to give more explicit meaning to Zenos creative fire, had been the first to hit upon the term pneuma, or spirit, to describe it. The Hebrew language phrase ruach ha-kodesh is a used in the Hebrew Bible. It literally means spirit of the holiness or spirit of the holy place, the Hebrew terms ruacḥ qodshəka, thy holy spirit, and ruacḥ qodshō, his holy spirit also occur. The Holy Spirit in Judaism generally refers to the aspect of prophecy
Holy Spirit
–
Depiction of the Christian Holy Spirit
as a dove, by
Gian Lorenzo Bernini, in the
apse of
Saint Peter's Basilica.
23.
Pandeism
–
Pandeism is a theological doctrine which combines aspects of pantheism with aspects of deism. It holds that the deity became the universe and ceased to exist as a separate. Pandeism is proposed to explain, as it relates to deism, why God would create a universe and then abandon it, and as to pantheism, the origin and purpose of the universe. The word pandeism is a blend of the root words pantheism and deism, combining Ancient Greek, πᾶν pan all with Latin. It was perhaps first coined in the present meaning in 1859 by Moritz Lazarus, Pandeism falls within the traditional hierarchy of monistic and nontheistic philosophies addressing the nature of God. For the history of the words, pantheism and deism, see the overview of deism section. Weinstein noted the distinction between pantheism and pandeism, stating even if only by a letter, we fundamentally differ Pandeism from Pantheism and it has also been suggested that many religions may classify themselves as pantheistic but fit more essentially under the description of panentheistic or pandeistic. The earliest seeds of pandeism coincide with notions of monotheism, which generally can be traced back to the Atenism of Akhenaten, Weinstein in particular identified the idea of primary matter derived from an original spirit as found by the ancient Egyptians to be a form of pandeism. Weinstein similarly found varieties of pandeism in the views held in China, India, especially in the Hindu Bhagavad Gita. He similarly found that ideas of pandeism were reflected in the ideas of Heraclitus, religious studies professor, F. E. Peters, however, found with respect to the Pythagoreans and the Milesians that hat appeared. At the center of the Pythagorean tradition in philosophy, is another view of psyche that seems to owe little or nothing to the pan-vitalism or pan-deism that is the legacy of the Milesians. Gottfried Große in his 1787 interpretation of Pliny the Elder’s Natural History, describes Pliny, a contemporary statement of this idea is that, Since God is not a being, he is therefore not intelligible. This means not only that we understand him, but also that he cannot understand himself. Creation is a kind of effort by God to understand himself. Of Nicholas of Cusa, who wrote of the enfolding of creation in God and the unfolding of the human mind in creation, Weinstein wrote that he was, to a certain extent. This was reiterated by others including Discover editor Corey S. Powell, in the 1820s to 1830s, pandeism received some mention in Italy. Nannetti further specifically criticized pandeism, declaring, To you, fatal Pandeist, the laws that create nature are contingent and mutable, not another being in substance with forces driven by motions and developments. Neither Nannetti nor the 1838 author defines pandeism distinctly enough to distinguish it from pantheism
Pandeism
–
Physicist and philosopher
Max Bernhard Weinstein wrote that 6th century BC philosopher
Xenophanes of Colophon spoke as a pandeist in stating that there was one god which "abideth ever in the selfsame place, moving not at all" and yet "sees all over, thinks all over, and hears all over."
Pandeism
–
Italian theologian
Giordano Bruno was charged with heresy and burned at the stake for propounding what has been deemed by some commentators to be a pandeistic ideology.
Pandeism
–
Pandeism has been proposed to be a traditional religious view that accords with modern science.
24.
Supreme Being
–
Supreme Being is a term for God used by theologians and philosophers of many religious faiths, including Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, and deism. In Christian theology, the term Supreme Being is used to refer to God, although God is mostly reserved for God the Father in the New Testament, Supreme Being can be used to refer to Jesus Christ or the Holy Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Deists use the term Supreme Being to refer to the Godly, following the French Revolution, the Cult of the Supreme Being was intended to become the state religion of the new French Republic. In Hinduism, the term is used by several traditions and it is used by the Vaishnavite traditions in reference to Vishnu/Krishna, and by the Shaiva tradition in reference to Shiva. Islamic scholars have used the term Supreme Being to refer to Allah, the holy scripture of the Sikhs, Guru Granth Sahib, uses terms that are sometimes translated as Supreme Being. Sikhs personally use Waheguru, or the term Ik Onkar, meaning One God, in the Yoruba religion the term Supreme Being is used in reference to Olorun, one of the three manifestations of the Supreme God in the Yoruba pantheon. In Yoruba cosmology, Olorun is the Supreme Being whose supremacy is absolute
Supreme Being
–
Festival of the Supreme Being, 8 June 1794
Paris
25.
Unmoved mover
–
The unmoved mover or prime mover is a monotheistic concept advanced by Aristotle, a polytheist, as a primary cause or mover of all the motion in the universe. As is implicit in the name, the unmoved mover moves other things, in Book 12 of his Metaphysics, Aristotle describes the unmoved mover as being perfectly beautiful, indivisible, and contemplating only the perfect contemplation, itself contemplating. He equates this concept also with the active intellect, st. Thomas Aquinas, for example, elaborated on the unmoved mover in the Quinque viae. In the Physics Aristotle finds surprising difficulties explaining even commonplace change, Aristotles first philosophy, or Metaphysics, develops his peculiar theology of the prime mover, as πρῶτον κινοῦν ἀκίνητον, an independent divine eternal unchanging immaterial substance. While the number of spheres in the model itself was subject to change, Aristotles account of aether, as such, it would be physically impossible for them to move material objects of any size by pushing, pulling or collision. Their influence on lesser beings is purely the result of an aspiration or desire, the first heaven, the outmost sphere of fixed stars, is moved by a desire to emulate the prime mover, in relation to whom, the subordinate movers suffer an accidental dependency. Many of Aristotles contemporaries complained that oblivious, powerless gods are unsatisfactory, nonetheless, it was a life which Aristotle enthusiastically endorsed as one most enviable and perfect, the unembellished basis of theology. As the whole of nature depends on the inspiration of the unmoved movers. It is through the action of the Sun upon the terrestrial spheres. The intellect, nous, or whatever else it be that is thought to rule and lead us by nature and it is also the most sustainable, pleasant, self-sufficient activity, something which is aimed at for its own sake. This aim is not strictly human, to achieve it means to live in accordance not with mortal thoughts, according to Aristotle, contemplation is the only type of happy activity which it would not be ridiculous to imagine the gods having. In Aristotles psychology and biology, the intellect is the soul and he argues that in the beginning, if the cosmos had come to be, its first motion would lack an antecedent state, and as Parmenides said, nothing comes from nothing. The Cosmological argument, later attributed to Aristotle, thereby draws the conclusion that God exists, however, if the cosmos had a beginning, Aristotle argued, it would require an efficient first cause, a notion that Aristotle took to demonstrate a critical flaw. The purpose of Aristotles cosmological argument, that at least one eternal unmoved mover must exist, is to support everyday change, of things that exist, substances are the first. But if substances can, then all things can perish. and yet, time, now, the only continuous change is that of place, and the only continuous change of place is circular motion. Therefore, there must be a circular motion and this confirmed by the fixed stars which are moved by the eternal actual substance substance thats purely actual. Even though the foregoing might have suggested that generation of substances is fundamental for all the kinds of changes. Aristotle argues at the opening of Physics bk.8 that motion and change in the universe can have no beginning, with this argument Aristotle can establish an eternal chain of motions and refute those who hold that there could have been a previous stationary state of the universe
Unmoved mover
–
Aristotelianism
26.
God in Abrahamic religions
–
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are sometimes called Abrahamic religions because they all accept the tradition that God revealed himself to the prophet Abraham. The Abrahamic God in this sense is the conception of God that remains a common attribute of all three traditions, God is conceived of as eternal, omnipotent, omniscient and as the creator of the universe. God is further held to have the properties of holiness, justice, omni-benevolence and omnipresence, the Baháí writings describe a monotheistic, personal, inaccessible, omniscient, omnipresent, imperishable, and almighty God who is the creator of all things in the universe. The existence of God and the universe is thought to be eternal, though transcendent and inaccessible directly, God is nevertheless seen as conscious of creation, with a will and purpose that is expressed through messengers termed Manifestations of God. The purpose of creation is for the created to have the capacity to know and love its creator, through such methods as prayer, reflection, and being of service to humankind. The Manifestations of God reflect divine attributes, which are creations of God made for the purpose of spiritual enlightenment, in the Baháí view, all physical beings reflect at least one of these attributes, and the human soul can potentially reflect all of them. The Baháí view rejects all pantheistic, anthropomorphic, and incarnationist beliefs in God, Most Christian denominations believe Jesus to be the incarnation of God as a human being, which is the main theological divergence with respect to Judaism and Islam. For most Christians, beliefs about God are enshrined in the doctrine of Trinitarianism, the doctrines were largely formalized at the Council of Nicea and are enshrined in the Nicaene creed. The Trinitarian view emphasizes that God has a will, and that God the Son has two wills, divine and human, though these are never in conflict but joined in the hypostatic union. A small minority of Christians, largely coming under the heading of Unitarianism, in the Mormonism represented by most of Mormon communities, God means Elohim, whereas Godhead means a council of three distinct gods, Elohim, Jehovah, and the Holy Spirit. The Father and Son have perfected, material bodies, while the Holy Spirit is a spirit and this conception differs from the traditional Christian Trinity, in Mormonism, the three persons are considered to be physically separate beings, or personages, but united in will and purpose. As such, the term Godhead differs from how it is used in traditional Christianity and this description of God represents the orthodoxy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, established early in the 19th century. In Islam, God is believed to be the real supreme being, all-powerful and all-knowing creator, sustainer, ordainer. Islam puts an emphasis on the conceptualization of God as strictly singular. He is unique and inherently one, all-merciful and omnipotent, according to the Quran there are 99 Names of God each of which evoke a distinct characteristic of God. All these names refer to Allah, the supreme and all-comprehensive divine Arabic name, among the 99 names of God, the most famous and most frequent of these names are the Most Gracious and the Most Merciful. Creation and ordering of the universe is seen as an act of mercy for which all creatures sing his glories and bear witness to his unity. According to the Quran, No vision can grasp Him, and he is above all comprehension, yet is acquainted with all things
God in Abrahamic religions
–
Allah Jalla Jalālah in
Arabic calligraphy
27.
God in Christianity
–
In Christianity, God is the eternal being who created and preserves all things. Christians believe God to be both transcendent and immanent, although the Judæo-Christian sect of the Ebionites protested against this apotheosis of Jesus, the great mass of Gentile Christians accepted it. This began to differentiate the Gentile Christian views of God from traditional Jewish teachings of the time, in the 8th century, John of Damascus listed eighteen attributes which remain widely accepted. As time passed, theologians developed systematic lists of these attributes, some based on statements in the Bible and this never becomes a tritheism, i. e. this does not imply three Gods. The doctrine of the Trinity can be summed up as, The One God exists in Three Persons and One Substance, as God the Father, God the Son, Trinitarians, who form the large majority of Christians, hold it as a core tenet of their faith. Nontrinitarian denominations define the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in a number of different ways, early Christian views of God are reflected in Apostle Pauls statement in 1 Corinthians, written ca. In John 14,26 Jesus also refers to the Holy Spirit, by the middle of the 2nd century, in Against Heresies Irenaeus had emphasized that the Creator is the one and only God and the maker of heaven and earth. These preceded the presentation of the concept of Trinity by Tertullian early in the 3rd century. This did not exclude either the fact the father of the universe was also the Father of Jesus the Christ or that he had even vouchsafed to adopt as his son by grace. Eastern creeds began with an affirmation of faith in one God and almost always expanded this by adding the Father Almighty, as time passed, theologians and philosophers developed more precise understandings of the nature of God and began to produce systematic lists of his attributes. These varied in detail, but traditionally the attributes fell into two groups, those based on negation and those based on eminence. Throughout the Christian development of ideas about God, the Bible “has been, in Christian theology the name of God has always had much deeper meaning and significance than being just a label or designator. It is not an invention, but has divine origin and is based on divine revelation. This is reflected in the first petition in the Lords Prayer addressed to God the Father, in Revelation 3,12 those who bear the name of God are destined for Heaven. John 17,6 presents the teachings of Jesus as the manifestation of the name of God to his disciples, the Bible usually uses the name of God in the singular, generally using the terms in a very general sense rather than referring to any special designation of God. However, general references to the name of God may branch to other forms which express his multifaceted attributes. Scripture presents many references to the names for God, but the key names in the Old Testament are, God the High and Exalted One, El-Shaddai, in the New Testament Theos, Kyrios and Pater are the essential names. The theological underpinnings of the attributes and nature of God have been discussed since the earliest days of Christianity
God in Christianity
–
A 12th-century copy of the
Pauline Epistles
God in Christianity
–
The
Tetragrammaton YHWH, the name of God written in Hebrew, old church of
Ragunda, Sweden
28.
God in Hinduism
–
In Hindu monotheism, the concept of God varies from one sect to another. Hinduism is not exclusively monotheistic, and has described as spanning a wide range of henotheism, monotheism, polytheism, panentheism, pantheism, pandeism, monism, atheism and nontheism etc. This non-dualism postulates the identity of the Self or Atman with the Whole or Brahman, forms of explicit monotheism find mention in the canonical Bhagavad Gita. Explicit monotheism in the form of emotional or ecstatic devotion to an external and personal deity became popular in South India in the early medieval period. Ecstatic devotion to Krishna, a form of Vishnu, gained popularity throughout India during the Middle Ages, ecstatic devotion to Goddess Durga became popular in some parts of India in the later medieval and early modern ages. Vaishnavism, particularly Krishnaism, Shaktism and some forms of Shaivism remain the most explicit forms of worship of a personal God within Hinduism. Other Hindus, such as many of those who practice Shaivism, tend to assume the existence of a singular God, rather they envisage God as an impersonal Absolute, who can be worshipped only in part in a human form. The term Ishvara may refer to any of the monotheistic or monistic conceptions within Hinduism, in Hinduism, Brahman is the all-pervading, supreme, universal Spirit that is the origin and support of the phenomenal universe. Brahman is sometimes referred to as the Absolute or Godhead, Brahman is conceived as personal, impersonal and/or supreme depending on the philosophical school. The sages of the Upanishads teach that Brahman is the essence of material phenomena that cannot be seen or heard. According to Advaita, a human being has realised Brahman as his or her own true self. The Isha Upanishad says, Auṃ – That supreme Brahman is infinite, if you subtract the infinite from the infinite, the infinite remains alone. The sages of the Upanishads made their pronouncements on the basis of experience as an essential component of their philosophical reflection. Several mahā-vākyas from the Upanisads indicate what the principle of Brahma is, In the Upanisads the sages teach that brahman is infinite Being, infinite Consciousness, and infinite Bliss. Advaita Vedanta school of Hinduism posits that Brahman cannot be known by empirical means — that is to say, as an object of our consciousness — because Brahman is our very consciousness and being. Therefore, it may be said that moksha, yoga, samādhi, nirvana, etc. do not merely mean to know Brahman, but rather to realise ones brahman-hood, to actually realise that one is and always was Brahman. Indeed, closely related to the Self-concept of Brahman is the idea that it is synonymous with jiva-atma, or individual souls, according to Adi Shankara the nirguna brahman is non-different from the supreme personality, God, whatever qualities we attribute to the divine. By the power of Maya the supreme lord playfully creates multiple worlds and deludes all beings and this world is only relatively real and the real self is not affected by it
God in Hinduism
–
Bhagavan
Krishna with
Radharani
29.
God in Islam
–
In Islamic theology, God is the all-powerful and all-knowing creator, sustainer, ordainer and judge of everything in existence. Islam emphasizes that God is strictly singular, unique, inherently One, also all-merciful, the Surat 112 Al-Ikhlāş says, He is God, One. He neither begets nor is born, Nor is there to Him any equivalent, in Islam, there are 99 known names of God, each of which evoke a distinct attribute of God. All these names refer to Allah, the supreme and all-comprehensive god, among the 99 names of God, the most familiar and frequent of these names are the Compassionate and the Merciful. Creation and ordering of the universe is seen as an act of mercy for which all creatures sing Gods attributes. Allah is the Arabic word referring to God in Abrahamic religions and it is distinguished from ilāh, the Arabic word meaning deity, which could refer to any of the gods worshipped in pre-Islamic Arabia. God is described and referred to in the Quran and hadith by certain names or attributes, the Quran refers to the attributes of God as most beautiful names. According to Gerhard Böwering, They are traditionally enumerated as 99 in number to which is added as the highest Name, there are numerous conventional phrases and expressions invoking God. Islams most fundamental concept is a strict monotheism called tawhid, affirming that God is one, the basic creed of Islam, the Shahada, involves لا إله إلا الله, or, I testify there is no god other than God. Muslims reject the Christian doctrine of the Trinity and divinity of Jesus, according to Vincent J. Tawhid constitutes the foremost article of the Muslim profession. The deification or worship of anyone or anything other than God is the biggest sin in Islam, the entirety of the Islamic teaching rests on the principle of Tawhid. God is the creator of the universe and all the creatures in it, praise is to Allah, Creator of the heavens and the earth, made the angels messengers having wings, two or three or four. He increases in creation what He wills, indeed, Allah is over all things competent. And it is We Who have constructed the heavens with might and verily and we created man from an extract of clay. Then We made him as a drop in a place of settlement, so blessed be Allah, the Best of creators. Be dutiful to your Lord, Who created you from a person and from Him He created his wife. And verily Allah is my Lord and your Lord, the most commonly used names in the primary sources are Al-Rahman, meaning Most Compassionate and Al-Rahim, meaning Most Merciful. God is said to love forgiving, with a hadith stating God would replace a sinless people with one who sinned but still asked repentance
God in Islam
–
Allah Jalla Jalālah in
Arabic calligraphy
30.
God in Jainism
–
In Jainism, godliness is said to be the inherent quality of every soul. This quality however is subdued by the association with karmic matter. All souls who have achieved the state of infinite bliss, infinite knowledge, infinite power. Jainism rejects the idea of a deity responsible for the manifestation, creation. According to Jain doctrine, the universe and its constituents have always existed, all the constituents and actions are governed by universal natural laws and perfect soul, an immaterial entity cannot create or affect a material entity like the universe. From the essential perspective, the soul of every living organism is perfect in every way, is independent of any actions of the organism, but the epithet of God is given to the soul in whom its properties manifest in accordance with its inherent nature. There are countably infinite souls in the universe, there are two possible views after this point. One is to look at the soul from the perspective of the soul itself, another view is to consider things apart from the soul and its relationships with the soul. According to this view, the qualities of a soul are subdued due to karmas of the soul, Karmas are the fundamental particles of nature in Jainism. One who achieves this state of soul through right belief, right knowledge and this perfection of soul is called Kevalin. A god thus becomes a liberated soul – liberated of miseries, cycles of rebirth, world, karmas and this is called nirvana or moksha. Jainism does not teach the dependency on any supreme being for enlightenment, the Tirthankara is a guide and teacher who points the way to enlightenment, but the struggle for enlightenment is ones own. Jains believe that to attain enlightenment and ultimately liberation from all karmic bonding, one must practice the principles not only in thought. Such a practice through lifelong work towards oneself is regarded as observing the Mahavrata, Gods can be thus categorized into embodied gods also known as arihantas and non-embodied formless gods who are called Siddhas. Jainism considers the devīs and devas to be souls who dwell in heavens owing to meritorious deeds in their past lives and these souls are in heavens for a fixed lifespan and even they have to undergo reincarnation as humans to achieve moksha. Thus, there are gods in Jainism, all equivalent, liberated. The Self and karmas are separate substances in Jainism, the former living, the attainment of enlightenment and the one who exists in such a state, then those who have achieved such a state can be termed gods. Therefore, beings whove attained omniscience are worshipped as gods, the quality of godliness is one and the same in all of them
God in Jainism
–
Mahavira 24th and last Tirthankara
God in Jainism
–
Although the Siddhas (the liberated beings) are formless and without a body, this is how the
Jain temples often depict the Siddhas
God in Jainism
–
Idol of
Padmāvatī devī, śāsanadevī of Lord
Parshva at Walkeshwar Temple. She is one of the most popular demi-goddess amongst the Jains. Worship of such persons is considered as mithyātva or wrong belief and many jains unknowingly get involved in such worship.
31.
God in Judaism
–
God in Judaism is understood to be the absolute one, indivisible, and incomparable being who is the ultimate cause of all existence. Traditional interpretations of Judaism generally emphasize that God is personal, while some interpretations of Judaism emphasize that God is a force or ideal. God has a name, written YHWH in the Hebrew Bible. In Jewish tradition another name of God is Elohim, the name of God used most often in the Hebrew Bible is the Tetragrammaton. Jews traditionally do not pronounce it, and instead refer to God as HaShem, in prayer this name is substituted with Adonai, meaning Master or Lord. The worship of gods and the concept of God having multiple persons are equally unimaginable in Judaism. The idea of God as a duality or trinity is heretical in Judaism – it is considered akin to polytheism, God, the Cause of all, is one. This does not mean one as in one of series, nor one like a species, nor one as in an object that is made up of many elements, rather, God is a unity unlike any other possible unity. In this way Judaism can be regarded as being similar to panentheism, Kabbalistic tradition holds that the divine consists of ten sefirot. Any belief that an intermediary between humanity and God could be used, whether necessary or even optional, has traditionally been considered heretical, all our prayers should be directed towards God, nothing else should even be considered. Some rabbinic authorities disagreed with this view, notably, Nachmanides was of the opinion that it is permitted to ask the angels to beseech God on our behalf. This argument manifests notably in the Selichot prayer called Machnisay Rachamim, modern printed editions of the Selichot include this prayer. Godhead refers to the aspect or substratum of God that lies behind Gods actions or properties, there is, in truth, no relation in any respect between God and any of Gods creatures. In Kabbalistic thought the term Godhead usually refers to the concept of Ein Sof, the knowability of the Godhead in Kabbalistic thought is no better that what is conceived by rationalist thinkers. As Jacobs puts it, Of God as God is in Godself—Ein Sof—nothing can be said at all, Ein Sof is a place to which forgetting and oblivion pertain. Because concerning all the sefirot, one can search out their reality from the depth of supernal wisdom, from there it is possible to understand one thing from another. However, concerning Ein Sof, there is no aspect anywhere to search or probe, nothing can be known of it, for it is hidden and concealed in the mystery of absolute nothingness. In traditional Judaism, God is conceived of as the eternal, omnipotent and omniscient creator of the universe, God has the power to intervene in the world
God in Judaism
–
The mass-revelation at the
Mount Horeb 1312 BCE in an illustration from a Bible card published by the Providence Lithograph Company, 1907
32.
God in Mormonism
–
Also, Mormonism teaches that the intelligence dwelling in each human is coeternal with God. The Mormon conception of God also differs substantially from the Jewish tradition of monotheism in which elohim is a completely different conception. This description of God represents the Mormon orthodoxy, formalized in 1915 based on earlier teachings, other currently existing and historical branches of Mormonism have adopted different views of god, such as the Adam–God doctrine and Trinitarianism. Most early Latter Day Saints came from a Protestant background, believing in the doctrine of Trinity that had developed during the early centuries of Christianity. Before about 1835, Mormon theological teachings were similar to that established view, however, founder Joseph Smiths teachings regarding the nature of the Godhead developed during his lifetime, becoming most fully developed in the few years prior to his murder in 1844. Beginning as a description of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as being One, Smith taught that the Father. Mormons view their concept of the Godhead as a restoration of original Christian doctrine as taught by Christ, elements of this doctrine were revealed gradually over time to Smith. The book describes the Spirit of the Lord in the form of a man, prior to the birth of Jesus, the book depicts him as a spirit without flesh and blood, with a spirit body that looked the same as he would appear during his physical life. Moreover, Jesus described himself as follows, Behold, I am he who was prepared from the foundation of the world to redeem my people, I am the Father and the Son. In me shall all mankind have life, and that eternally, even they who shall believe on my name, and they shall become my sons and my daughters. In another passage of the Book of Mormon, the prophet Abinadi states, I would that ye should understand that God himself shall come down among the children of men, and shall redeem his people. After Jesus was resurrected and ascended into heaven, the Book of Mormon states that he visited a group of people in the Americas, who saw that he had a resurrected, tangible body. During his visit, he was announced by the voice of God the Father, and those present felt the Holy Spirit, the Book of Mormon states that Jesus, the Father and the Holy Spirit are one. The LDS Church interprets this oneness as a metaphorical oneness in spirit, purpose, on the other hand, some Latter Day Saint sects, such as the Community of Christ, consider the Book of Mormon to be consistent with trinitarianism. Some scholars have suggested that the view of Jesus in the Book of Mormon is also consistent, or perhaps most consistent. In 1835, Joseph Smith, with the involvement of Sidney Rigdon, publicly taught the idea that Jesus Christ, lectures on Faith were included as part of the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants. They were eventually removed from the Doctrine and Covenants by the LDS Church, most modern Latter Day Saints do not accept the idea of a two personage Godhead, with the Father as a spirit and the Holy Spirit as the shared mind of the Father and the Son. In 1838, Smith published a narrative of his First Vision, in the endowment ceremony, introduced by Smith in 1842, the name Elohim is used to refer to God the Father
God in Mormonism
–
Beginning in 1838,
Joseph Smith taught that he had
seen two personages in the spring of 1820. In 1843, Smith taught that these personages,
God the Father and
Jesus, had separate, tangible bodies.
God in Mormonism
–
Latter-day Saints believe in the resurrected Jesus Christ, as depicted in the
Christus statue in the North Visitors' Center on
Temple Square in
Salt Lake City
33.
Wiccan views of divinity
–
Wiccan views of divinity are generally theistic, and revolve around a Goddess and a Horned God, thereby being generally dualistic. In some newer forms of Wicca, such as feminist or Dianic Wicca, in some forms of Traditional Witchcraft that share a similar duotheistic theology, the Horned God is given precedence over the Goddess. Some see divinity as having a real, external existence, others see the Goddesses, the Goddess is especially connected to the Moon and stars and the sea, while the Horned God is connected to the Sun and the forests. The Goddess is often seen as having an aspect, that of the maiden, mother. The God is traditionally seen as being the Horned God of the woods, a key belief in Wicca is that the gods are able to manifest in personal form, either through dreams, as physical manifestations, or through the bodies of Priestesses and Priests. Gardnerian Wicca as a denomination is primarily concerned with the priestess or priests relationship to the Goddess, Wiccan theology largely revolves around ontological dualism. Ontological dualism is traditionally a sacred gender polarity between the polar opposites of male and female, who are regarded as divine lovers. Ontological dualism is distinct from moral dualism in that moral dualism posits a supreme force of good, there is no supreme force of evil in Wicca. In Wicca, the God is seen as the form of divinity, and the polar opposite. The God is traditionally seen as the Horned God, a deity with links to the Celtic Cernunnos, English folkloric Herne the Hunter, Greek Pan, Roman Faunus. Horns are traditionally a symbol of male virility, and male gods with horns or antlers were common in pagan religious iconography throughout the ancient world. In Wicca, the Green Man is also associated with the Horned God. At different times of the Wiccan year the God is seen as different personalities and he is sometimes seen as the Oak King and the Holly King, who each rule for half of the year each. Oak and Holly are two European trees, another view of the God is that of the sun god, who is particularly revered at the sabbat of Lughnasadh. Many Wiccans see these many facets, such as the sun god, horned god, sacrificial god, as all aspects of the same God, the most exhaustive work on Wiccan ideas of the God is the book The Witches God by Janet and Stewart Farrar. Traditionally in Wicca, the Goddess is seen as the Triple Goddess, meaning that she is the maiden, the mother and the crone. The mother aspect, the Mother Goddess, is perhaps the most important of these, certain Wiccan traditions are Goddess-centric, this view differs from most traditions in that most others focus on a duality of goddess and god. Many have a conception of deity as a Goddess and a God
Wiccan views of divinity
–
The divine couple in Wicca, with the Lady as Diana, the moon goddess, and the Lord as Pan, the horned god of the wild Earth. The lower figure is Mercury or Hermes, the god or divine force of magic - as shown by his wings and caduceus.
34.
Cosmological argument
–
It is traditionally known as an argument from universal causation, an argument from first cause, or the causal argument. Whichever term is employed, there are three variants of the argument, each with subtle yet important distinctions, the arguments from in causa, in esse. The basic premise of all of these is the concept of causality, contemporary defenders of cosmological arguments include William Lane Craig, Robert Koons, Alexander Pruss, and William L. Rowe. Cosmological argument has been used by atheists and theists. Plato and Aristotle both posited first cause arguments, though each had certain notable caveats, in The Laws, Plato posited that all movement in the world and the Cosmos was imparted motion. This required a self-originated motion to set it in motion and to maintain it, in Timaeus, Plato posited a demiurge of supreme wisdom and intelligence as the creator of the Cosmos. Aristotle argued against the idea of a first cause, often confused with the idea of a prime mover or unmoved mover in his Physics and Metaphysics, like Plato, Aristotle believed in an eternal cosmos with no beginning and no end. From an aspiration or desire, the spheres, imitate that purely intellectual activity as best they can. The unmoved movers inspiring the planetary spheres are no different in kind from the prime mover, correspondingly, the motions of the planets are subordinate to the motion inspired by the prime mover in the sphere of fixed stars. Aristotles natural theology admitted no creation or capriciousness from the immortal pantheon, plotinus, a third-century Platonist, taught that the One transcendent absolute caused the universe to exist simply as a consequence of its existence. His disciple Proclus stated The One is God, centuries later, the Islamic philosopher Avicenna inquired into the question of being, in which he distinguished between essence and existence. Thus, he reasoned that existence must be due to an agent cause that necessitates, imparts, gives, to do so, the cause must coexist with its effect and be an existing thing. Referring to the argument as the Kalam cosmological argument, Duncan asserts that it received its fullest articulation at the hands of Muslim and Jewish exponents of Kalam. Thomas Aquinas adapted and enhanced the argument he found in his reading of Aristotle and his conception of First Cause was the idea that the Universe must have been caused by something that was itself uncaused, which he asserted was God. In the scholastic era, Aquinas formulated the argument from contingency, since the Universe could, under different circumstances, conceivably not exist, its existence must have a cause – not merely another contingent thing, but something that exists by necessity. In other words, even if the Universe has always existed, it owes its existence to an Uncaused Cause, Aquinas further said. Aquinass argument from contingency allows for the possibility of a Universe that has no beginning in time and it is a form of argument from universal causation. Aquinas observed that, in nature, there were things with contingent existences, since it is possible for such things not to exist, there must be some time at which these things did not in fact exist
Cosmological argument
–
Plato and
Aristotle, depicted here in
Raphael 's
The School of Athens, both developed first cause arguments.
35.
Fine-tuned Universe
–
The possible explanations for fine-tuning are discussed among philosophers, scientists, theologians, and proponents and detractors of creationism. The fine-tuned Universe observation is closely related to, but is not exactly synonymous with, the anthropic principle, in 1913, the chemist Lawrence Joseph Henderson wrote The Fitness of the Environment, one of the first books to explore concepts of fine tuning in the Universe. In 1961, the physicist Robert H. Dicke claimed that certain forces in physics, such as gravity and electromagnetism, fred Hoyle also argued for a fine-tuned Universe in his 1984 book Intelligent Universe. He compares the chance of obtaining even a single functioning protein by chance combination of acids to a star system full of blind men solving Rubiks Cube simultaneously. John Gribbin and Martin Rees wrote a history and defence of the fine-tuning argument in their book Cosmic Coincidences. According to Gribbin and Rees, The conditions in our Universe really do seem to be suitable for life forms like ourselves. But the question remains - is the Universe tailor-made for man, the premise of the fine-tuned Universe assertion is that a small change in several of the dimensionless physical constants would make the Universe radically different. The remarkable fact is that the values of these seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life. This would drastically alter the physics of stars, and presumably preclude the existence of similar to what we observe on Earth. The existence of the diproton would short-circuit the slow fusion of hydrogen into deuterium, hydrogen would fuse so easily that it is likely that all of the Universes hydrogen would be consumed in the first few minutes after the Big Bang. This diproton argument is disputed by other physicists, who calculate that as long as the increase in strength is less than 50%, the precise formulation of the idea is made difficult by the fact that physicists do not yet know how many independent physical constants there are. The current standard model of physics has 25 freely adjustable parameters with an additional parameter. In some candidate theories, the number of independent physical constants may be as small as one. Martin Rees formulates the fine-tuning of the Universe in terms of the following six dimensionless physical constants, N, the ratio of the strength of electromagnetism to the strength of gravity for a pair of protons, is approximately 1036. According to Rees, if it were smaller, only a small. Epsilon, a measure of the efficiency of fusion from hydrogen to helium, is 0.007. The value of ε is in part determined by the strength of the nuclear force. If ε were 0.006, only hydrogen could exist, according to Rees, if it were above 0.008, no hydrogen would exist, as all the hydrogen would have been fused shortly after the big bang
Fine-tuned Universe
–
Watchmaker analogy
36.
Argument from morality
–
The argument from morality is an argument for the existence of God. Arguments from morality tend to be based on moral normativity or moral order, Arguments from moral normativity observe some aspect of morality and argue that God is the best or only explanation for this, concluding that God must exist. Argument from moral order are based on the asserted need for order to exist in the universe. They claim that, for moral order to exist, God must exist to support it. The argument from morality is noteworthy in that one cannot evaluate the soundness of the argument without attending to almost every important philosophical issue in metaethics, German philosopher Immanuel Kant devised an argument from morality based on practical reason. Kant argued that the goal of humanity is to achieve happiness and virtue and believed that an afterlife must exist in order for this to be possible. In his book Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis argued that conscience reveals to us a law whose source cannot be found in the natural world. Newman argued that, because the conscience suggests the existence of moral truths. All variations of the argument from morality begin with an observation about moral thought or experiences, some of these arguments propose moral facts which they claim evident through human experience, arguing that God is the best explanation for these. Other versions describe some end which humans should strive to attain, many arguments from morality are based on moral normativity, which suggests that objective moral truths exist and require Gods existence to give them authority. For morality to be binding, God must exist, in its most general form, the argument from moral normativity is, A human experience of morality is observed. God is the best or only explanation for this moral experience, some arguments from moral order suggest that morality is based on rationality and that this can only be the case if there is a moral order in the universe. The arguments propose that only the existence of God as orthodoxly conceived could support the existence of order in the universe. Alternative arguments from moral order have proposed that we have an obligation to attain the perfect good of both happiness and moral virtue. They attest that whatever we are obliged to do must be possible, a natural moral order requires the existence of God as orthodoxly conceived, so God must exist. In his Critique of Pure Reason, German philosopher Immanuel Kant stated that no argument for Gods existence arises from reason alone. In his Critique of Practical Reason he went on to argue that, despite the failure of these arguments, morality requires that Gods existence is assumed, rather than proving the existence of God, Kant was attempting to demonstrate that all moral thought requires the assumption that God exists. Kant argued that humans are obliged to bring about the summum bonum, as ought implies can, Kant argued, it must be possible for the summum bonum to be achieved
Argument from morality
–
Portrait of Immanuel Kant, who proposed an argument for the existence of God from morality
Argument from morality
–
Portrait of John Henry Newman, who used the conscience as evidence of the existence of God
37.
Ontological argument
–
An ontological argument is a philosophical argument for the existence of God that uses ontology. Many arguments fall under the category of the ontological, and they tend to involve arguments about the state of being or existing, more specifically, ontological arguments tend to start with an a priori theory about the organization of the universe. If that organizational structure is true, the argument will provide reasons why God must exist, the first ontological argument in the Western Christian tradition was proposed by Anselm of Canterbury in his 1078 work Proslogion. Anselm defined God as that than which nothing greater can be thought and he suggested that, if the greatest possible being exists in the mind, it must also exist in reality. If it only exists in the mind, then a greater being must be possible — one which exists both in the mind and in reality. Therefore, this greatest possible being must exist in reality, seventeenth century French philosopher René Descartes deployed a similar argument. Descartes published several variations of his argument, each of which centred on the idea that Gods existence is immediately inferable from a clear, in the early eighteenth century, Gottfried Leibniz augmented Descartes ideas in an attempt to prove that a supremely perfect being is a coherent concept. A more recent ontological argument came from Kurt Gödel, who proposed a formal argument for Gods existence, attempts have also been made to validate Anselms proof using an automated theorem prover. Other arguments have been categorised as ontological, including made by Islamic philosopher Mulla Sadra. Since its proposal, few philosophical ideas have generated as much interest, nearly all of the great minds of Western philosophy have found the argument worthy of their attention, and a number of criticisms and objections have been mounted. The first critic of the argument was Anselms contemporary, Gaunilo of Marmoutiers. He used the analogy of an island, suggesting that the ontological argument could be used to prove the existence of anything. This was the first of many parodies, all of which attempted to show that the argument has absurd consequences, later, Thomas Aquinas rejected the argument on the basis that humans cannot know Gods nature. Also, David Hume offered an empirical objection, criticising its lack of reasoning and rejecting the idea that anything can exist necessarily. Immanuel Kants critique was based on what he saw as the premise that existence is a predicate. He argued that existing adds nothing to the essence of a being, broad dismissed the coherence of a maximally great being, proposing that some attributes of greatness are incompatible with others, rendering maximally great being incoherent. The traditional definition of an argument was given by Immanuel Kant. He contrasted the ontological argument with the cosmological and physio-theoretical arguments, according to the Kantian view, ontological arguments are those founded on a priori reasoning
Ontological argument
–
Anselm of Canterbury was the first to attempt an ontological argument for God's existence.
Ontological argument
–
French thinker René Descartes composed several arguments that could be termed ontological.
Ontological argument
–
German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz attempted to prove the coherence of a "supremely perfect being".
Ontological argument
–
Alvin Plantinga criticized Malcolm's and Hartshorne's ontological arguments and proposed a variation of his own
38.
Watchmaker analogy
–
The watchmaker analogy or watchmaker argument is a teleological argument. By way of an analogy, the argument states that design implies a designer, others, however, consider the watchmaker analogy to be compatible with evolutionary creation, opining that the two concepts are not mutually exclusive. The watchmaker analogy consists of the comparison of some natural phenomenon to a watch, the complex inner workings of a watch necessitate an intelligent designer. As with a watch, the complexity of X necessitates a designer, the scientific revolution nurtured a growing awareness that there were universal laws of nature at work that ordered the movement of the world and its parts. With these laws perfectly in place, events have unfolded according to the prescribed plan, for Sir Isaac Newton, the regular motion of the planets made it reasonable to believe in the continued existence of God. Like Newton, René Descartes viewed the cosmos as a time machine operating according to fixed laws. Watches and timepieces have been used as examples of complicated technology in philosophical discussions, for example, Cicero, Voltaire and René Descartes all used timepieces in arguments regarding purpose. The watchmaker analogy, as described here, was used by Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle in 1686, Paley used the watchmaker analogy in his book Natural Theology, or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity collected from the Appearances of Nature, published in 1802. In it, Paley wrote that if a pocket watch is found on a heath, it is most reasonable to assume that someone dropped it, Paley went on to argue that the complex structures of living things and the remarkable adaptations of plants and animals required an intelligent designer. He believed the world was the creation of God and showed the nature of the creator. According to Paley, God had carefully designed even the most humble and insignificant organisms and he believed, therefore, that God must care even more for humanity. Paley recognised that there is suffering in nature and nature appears to be indifferent to pain. His way of reconciling that with his belief in a benevolent God was to assume that life had more pleasure than pain, William Paley taught the works of Joseph Butler and appears to have built on Butlers 1736 design arguments of inferring a designer from evidence of design. Butler noted, As the manifold Appearances of Design and of final Causes, in the Constitution of the World, the appearances of Design and of final Causes in the constitution of nature as really prove this acting agent to be an intelligent Designer. Ten thousand Instances of Design, cannot but prove a Designer, rousseau also mentioned the watchmaker theory. Let us compare the special ends, the means, the relations of every kind, then let us listen to the inner voice of feeling. Unless the eyes are blinded by prejudices, can fail to see that the visible order of the universe proclaims a supreme intelligence. What sophisms must be together before we fail to understand the harmony of existence
Watchmaker analogy
–
Watchmaker analogy
Watchmaker analogy
–
William Paley
Watchmaker analogy
–
Charles Darwin in 1880
Watchmaker analogy
–
Richard Dawkins
39.
Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit
–
The Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit is a counter-argument to modern versions of the argument from design for the existence of God. It was introduced by Richard Dawkins in chapter 4 of his 2006 book The God Delusion, according to Dawkins, this logic is self-defeating as the theist must now account for the gods existence and explain whether or how the god was created. Richard Dawkins begins The God Delusion by making it clear that the God he talks about is the Abrahamic concept of a god who is susceptible to worship. Therefore, Dawkins concludes, the kind of reasoning can be applied to the God hypothesis as to any other scientific question. After discussing some of the most common arguments for the existence of God in chapter 3, Dawkinss name for the statistical demonstration that God almost certainly does not exist is the Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit. This is an allusion to the junkyard tornado, arguments against empirically based theism date back at least as far as the eighteenth-century philosopher David Hume, whose objection can be paraphrased as the question Who designed the designer. Dawkins summarizes his argument as follows, the references to crane and this cause is seen as omnipotent, omniscient and totally free. Dawkins argues that an entity that monitors and controls every particle in the universe and listens to all thoughts and its existence would require a mammoth explanation of its own. The theory of selection is much simpler – and thus preferable – than a theory of the existence of such a complex being. Dawkins then turns to a discussion of Keith Wards views on divine simplicity to show the difficulty the theological mind has in grasping where the complexity of life comes from, Dawkins says that this scepticism is justified, because complexity doesnt come from biased mutations. Dawkins writes, as far as we know, is the only process ultimately capable of generating complexity out of simplicity, the theory of natural selection is genuinely simple. So is the origin from which it starts and that which it explains, on the other hand, is complex almost beyond telling, more complex than anything we can imagine, save a God capable of designing it. Theist authors have presented extensive opposition, most notably by theologian Alister McGrath and philosophers Alvin Plantinga, Daniel Dennett also took exception to Orrs review, leading to an exchange of open letters between himself and Orr. The philosopher Sir Anthony Kenny also considers this argument to be flawed, cosmologist Stephen Barr responded as follows, Paley finds a watch and asks how such a thing could have come to be there by chance. Dawkins finds an immense automated factory that blindly constructs watches, both Alvin Plantinga and Richard Swinburne raise the objection that God is not complex. Plantinga writes, So first, according to classical theology, God is simple, more remarkable, perhaps, is that according to Dawkinss own definition of complexity, God is not complex. According to his definition, something is complex if it has parts that are arranged in a way that is unlikely to have arisen by chance alone, but of course God is a spirit, not a material object at all, and hence has no parts. A fortiori God doesnt have parts arranged in ways unlikely to have arisen by chance, therefore, given the definition of complexity Dawkins himself proposes, God is not complex
Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit
–
The "ultimate Boeing 747 gambit" was originally proposed by
Richard Dawkins in his 2006 book
The God Delusion.
40.
Argument from free will
–
The argument may focus on the incoherence of people having free will or on God having free will. These arguments are deeply concerned with the implications of predestination, some arguments against God focus on the supposed incoherence of humankind possessing free will. These arguments are deeply concerned with the implications of predestination and this is the move made by compatibilistic philosophies. The sovereignty of God, existing within a free agent, provides strong inner compulsions toward a course of action, the actions of a human are thus determined by a human acting on relatively strong or weak urges and their own relative power to choose. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada has stated that man does have limited free will, all other material happenings and their implications are inconceivably predestined. Truths of the latter sort are called counterfactuals of freedom, molinsts say that such foreknowlege cant determine such outcomes, because thats not the kind of thing foreknowledge can do. Compatibilistic Calvinism re-defines a free act as one that is done in accordance with ones desires, while this view avoids incoherence, it is arguable that this is the kind of freedom Theists are concerned to reconcile with divine foreknowledge. Open Theism holds that free decisions are known under the category of possibility. In his book Mere Christianity, Lewis argues that God is actually outside time and therefore does not foresee events and he explains, But suppose God is outside and above the Time-line. In that case, what we call tomorrow is visible to Him in just the way as what we call today. All the days are Now for Him and he does not remember you doing things yesterday, He simply sees you doing them, because, though you have lost yesterday, He has not. He does not foresee you doing things tomorrow, He simply sees you doing them, because, though tomorrow is not yet there for you and you never supposed that your actions at this moment were any less free because God knows what you are doing. Well, He knows your tomorrows actions in just the same way—because He is already in tomorrow, in a sense, He does not know your action till you have done it, but then the moment at which you have done it is already Now for Him. A criticism of this argument is that this does not seem to grant free will, predestination, regardless of how God perceives time, still seems to mean a persons actions will be determined. A logical formulation of this criticism might go as follows, God timelessly knows choice C that a human would claim to make freely, if C is in the timeless realm, then it is now-necessary that C. If it is now-necessary that C, then C cannot be otherwise and that is, there are no actual possibilities due to predestination. If you cannot do otherwise when you act, you do not act freely Therefore and this argument can be criticized in that it misunderstands timelessness. This argument requires that there is a now in time, which by the definition of timelessness, is impossible and it can be seen that C. S. Lewis used the word Now in his explanation merely to illustrate his argument
Argument from free will
–
If God made the game, its rules, and the players, then how can any player be free?
41.
Omnipotence paradox
–
The omnipotence paradox is a family of semantic paradoxes that arise with some understandings of the term omnipotent. The paradox arises, for example, If one assumes that an omnipotent being has no limits and is capable of realizing any outcome, even logically contradictory ideas such as creating square circles. A no-limits understanding of such as this has been rejected by early theologians such as Thomas Aquinas to contemporary scholars in the philosophers of religion. The omnipotence paradox has medieval origins, dating at least to the 12th century and it was addressed by Averroës and later by Thomas Aquinas. Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite has a version of the paradox, asking whether it is possible for God to deny himself. The most well-known version of the paradox is the so-called paradox of the stone. This phrasing of the paradox is vulnerable to objections based on the physical nature of gravity. And Can God create a prison so secure that he escape from it. A common modern version of the paradox is expressed in the question. The being can create a stone it cannot lift, or it cannot create a stone it cannot lift. If the being can create a stone that it cannot lift, If the being cannot create a stone it cannot lift, then it seems it is already not omnipotent. A related issue is whether the concept of logically possible is different for a world in which omnipotence exists than a world in which omnipotence does not exist, peter Geach describes and rejects four levels of omnipotence. He also defines and defends a notion of the almightiness of God. Y is absolutely omnipotent means that Y can do everything absolutely, everything that can be expressed in a string of words even if it can be shown to be self-contradictory, Y is not bound in action, as we are in thought by the laws of logic. This position is advanced by Descartes and it has the theological advantage of making God prior to the laws of logic. Some claim that it in addition gives rise to the disadvantage of making Gods promises suspect. On this account, the paradox is a genuine paradox. Y is omnipotent means Y can do X is true if and this position was once advocated by Thomas Aquinas
Omnipotence paradox
–
Detail depicting
Averroes, who addressed the omnipotence paradox in the 12th century, from the 14th-century Triunfo de Santo Tomás by
Andrea da Firenze (di Bonaiuto).
42.
Theology
–
Theology is the critical study of the nature of the divine. It is taught as a discipline, typically in universities, seminaries. Augustine of Hippo defined the Latin equivalent, theologia, as reasoning or discussion concerning the Deity, the term can, however, be used for a variety of different disciplines or fields of study. Theologians use various forms of analysis and argument to help understand, explain, test, critique, the English equivalent theology had evolved by 1362. Greek theologia was used with the discourse on god in the fourth century BC by Plato in The Republic, Book ii. Drawing on Greek Stoic sources, the Latin writer Varro distinguished three forms of discourse, mythical, rational and civil. Theologos, closely related to theologia, appears once in some manuscripts, in the heading to the book of Revelation, apokalypsis ioannoy toy theologoy. The Latin author Boethius, writing in the early 6th century, used theologia to denote a subdivision of philosophy as a subject of study, dealing with the motionless. Boethius definition influenced medieval Latin usage, Theology can also now be used in a derived sense to mean a system of theoretical principles, an ideology. They suggest the term is appropriate in religious contexts that are organized differently. Kalam. does not hold the place in Muslim thought that theology does in Christianity. To find an equivalent for theology in the Christian sense it is necessary to have recourse to several disciplines, and to the usul al-fiqh as much as to kalam. Jose Ignacio Cabezon, who argues that the use of theology is appropriate, can only do so, he says, I take theology not to be restricted to its etymological meaning. In that latter sense, Buddhism is of course atheological, rejecting as it does the notion of God, within Hindu philosophy, there is a solid and ancient tradition of philosophical speculation on the nature of the universe, of God and of the Atman. The Sanskrit word for the schools of Hindu philosophy is Darshana. Nevertheless, Jewish theology historically has been active and highly significant for Christian. It is sometimes claimed, however, that the Jewish analogue of Christian theological discussion would more properly be Rabbinical discussion of Jewish law, the history of the study of theology in institutions of higher education is as old as the history of such institutions themselves. Modern Western universities evolved from the institutions and cathedral schools of Western Europe during the High Middle Ages
Theology
–
Augustine of Hippo (354–430),
Latin theologian. His writing on
free will and
original sin remains influential in Western Christendom.
Theology
–
Albert the Great (1193/1206–1280),
patron saint of
Roman Catholic theologians
Theology
–
Tommaso D'aquino was the greatest Western theologist of the Middle Ages.
Theology
–
Allamah Sayyid Abul A'la Maududi was the most influential Islamic theologist of the 20th century.
43.
Agnosticism
–
Agnosticism is the philosophical view that the existence of God or the supernatural are unknown and unknowable. Agnosticism is a doctrine or set of rather than a religion. English biologist Thomas Henry Huxley coined the word agnostic in 1869, the Nasadiya Sukta in the Rigveda is agnostic about the origin of the universe. Agnosticism is of the essence of science, whether ancient or modern and it simply means that a man shall not say he knows or believes that which he has no scientific grounds for professing to know or believe. Consequently, agnosticism puts aside not only the part of popular theology. On the whole, the bosh of heterodoxy is more offensive to me than that of orthodoxy, because heterodoxy professes to be guided by reason and science, and orthodoxy does not. Agnosticism, in fact, is not a creed, but a method, positively the principle may be expressed, In matters of the intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take you, without regard to any other consideration. And negatively, In matters of the intellect do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable, being a scientist, above all else, Huxley presented agnosticism as a form of demarcation. A hypothesis with no supporting objective, testable evidence is not an objective, as such, there would be no way to test said hypotheses, leaving the results inconclusive. His agnosticism was not compatible with forming a belief as to the truth, or falsehood, karl Popper would also describe himself as an agnostic. Others have redefined this concept, making it compatible with forming a belief, george H. Smith rejects agnosticism as a third alternative to theism and atheism and promotes terms such as agnostic atheism and agnostic theism. Agnostic was used by Thomas Henry Huxley in a speech at a meeting of the Metaphysical Society in 1869 to describe his philosophy, early Christian church leaders used the Greek word gnosis to describe spiritual knowledge. Agnosticism is not to be confused with religious views opposing the ancient religious movement of Gnosticism in particular, Huxley used the term in a broader, Huxley identified agnosticism not as a creed but rather as a method of skeptical, evidence-based inquiry. In recent years, scientific literature dealing with neuroscience and psychology has used the word to mean not knowable, in technical and marketing literature, agnostic can also mean independence from some parameters—for example, platform agnostic or hardware agnostic. Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume contended that meaningful statements about the universe are always qualified by some degree of doubt and he asserted that the fallibility of human beings means that they cannot obtain absolute certainty except in trivial cases where a statement is true by definition. A strong agnostic would say, I cannot know whether a deity exists or not, a weak agnostic would say, I dont know whether any deities exist or not, but maybe one day, if there is evidence, we can find something out. Therefore, their existence has little to no impact on human affairs. Agnostic thought, in the form of skepticism, emerged as a philosophical position in ancient Greece
Agnosticism
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Thomas Henry Huxley
Agnosticism
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Robert G. Ingersoll
Agnosticism
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Bertrand Russell
44.
Animism
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Animism is the worlds oldest religion. Animism teaches that objects, places, and creatures all possess distinctive spiritual qualities, potentially, animism perceives all things—animals, plants, rocks, rivers, weather systems, human handiwork, and perhaps even words—as animate and alive. Animism is the oldest known type of system in the world that even predates paganism. It is still practiced in a variety of forms in traditional societies. Although each culture has its own different mythologies and rituals, animism is said to describe the most common, foundational thread of indigenous peoples spiritual or supernatural perspectives. The currently accepted definition of animism was only developed in the late 19th century by Sir Edward Tylor, Animism may further attribute souls to abstract concepts such as words, true names, or metaphors in mythology. Some members of the world also consider themselves animists. Earlier anthropological perspectives – since termed the old animism – were concerned with knowledge surrounding what is alive, the old animism assumed that animists were individuals who were unable to understand the difference between persons and things. Critics of the old animism have accused it of preserving colonialist and dualist worldviews, according to Tylor, animism often includes an idea of pervading life and will in nature, i. e. a belief that natural objects other than humans have souls. This formulation was little different from that proposed by Auguste Comte as fetishism, thus, for Tylor, animism was fundamentally seen as a mistake, a basic error from which all religion grew. The earliest known usage in English appeared in 1819, Tylors definition of animism was a part of a growing international debate on the nature of primitive society by lawyers, theologians, and philologists. The debate defined the field of research of a new science – anthropology and their religion was animism – the belief that natural species and objects had souls. With the development of property, these descent groups were displaced by the emergence of the territorial state. These rituals and beliefs eventually evolved over time into the vast array of developed religions, in 1869, the Edinburgh lawyer, John Ferguson McLellan, argued that the animistic thinking evident in fetishism gave rise to a religion he named Totemism. Primitive people believed, he argued, that they were descended of the species as their totemic animal. Subsequent debate by the armchair anthropologists remained focused on totemism rather than animism, indeed, anthropologists have commonly avoided the issue of Animism and even the term itself rather than revisit this prevalent notion in light of their new and rich ethnographies. Certain indigenous religious groups such as the Australian Aboriginals are more typically totemic, stewart Guthrie saw animism – or attribution as he preferred it – as an evolutionary strategy to aid survival. He argued that humans and other animal species view inanimate objects as potentially alive as a means of being constantly on guard against potential threats
Animism
Animism
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Edward Tylor developed animism as an anthropological theory
Animism
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Five Ojibwe chiefs in the 19th century; it was anthropological studies of Ojibwe religion that resulted in the development of the "new animism"
45.
Atheism
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Atheism is, in the broadest sense, the absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is the rejection of belief that any deities exist, in an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities. Atheism is contrasted with theism, which, in its most general form, is the belief that at least one deity exists, the etymological root for the word atheism originated before the 5th century BCE from the ancient Greek ἄθεος, meaning without god. The term denoted a social category created by orthodox religionists into which those who did not share their religious beliefs were placed, the actual term atheism emerged first in the 16th century. With the spread of freethought, skeptical inquiry, and subsequent increase in criticism of religion, application of the term narrowed in scope, the first individuals to identify themselves using the word atheist lived in the 18th century during the Age of Enlightenment. The French Revolution, noted for its unprecedented atheism, witnessed the first major movement in history to advocate for the supremacy of human reason. Arguments for atheism range from the philosophical to social and historical approaches, although some atheists have adopted secular philosophies, there is no one ideology or set of behaviors to which all atheists adhere. Since conceptions of atheism vary, accurate estimations of current numbers of atheists are difficult, an older survey by the British Broadcasting Corporation in 2004 recorded atheists as comprising 8% of the worlds population. Other older estimates have indicated that atheists comprise 2% of the worlds population, according to these polls, Europe and East Asia are the regions with the highest rates of atheism. In 2015, 61% of people in China reported that they were atheists, the figures for a 2010 Eurobarometer survey in the European Union reported that 20% of the EU population claimed not to believe in any sort of spirit, God or life force. Atheism has been regarded as compatible with agnosticism, and has also been contrasted with it, a variety of categories have been used to distinguish the different forms of atheism. Some of the ambiguity and controversy involved in defining atheism arises from difficulty in reaching a consensus for the definitions of words like deity, the plurality of wildly different conceptions of God and deities leads to differing ideas regarding atheisms applicability. The ancient Romans accused Christians of being atheists for not worshiping the pagan deities, gradually, this view fell into disfavor as theism came to be understood as encompassing belief in any divinity. Definitions of atheism also vary in the degree of consideration a person must put to the idea of gods to be considered an atheist, Atheism has sometimes been defined to include the simple absence of belief that any deities exist. This broad definition would include newborns and other people who have not been exposed to theistic ideas, as far back as 1772, Baron dHolbach said that All children are born Atheists, they have no idea of God. Similarly, George H. Smith suggested that, The man who is unacquainted with theism is an atheist because he does not believe in a god. This category would include the child with the conceptual capacity to grasp the issues involved. The fact that this child does not believe in god qualifies him as an atheist, ernest Nagel contradicts Smiths definition of atheism as merely absence of theism, acknowledging only explicit atheism as true atheism
Atheism
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Paul Henri Thiry, Baron d'Holbach, an 18th-century advocate of atheism. — d'Holbach,
The System of Nature
Atheism
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Epicurus is credited with first expounding the
problem of evil.
David Hume in his
Dialogues concerning Natural Religion (1779) cited Epicurus in stating the argument as a series of questions: "Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"
46.
Creationism
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Creationism is the religious belief that the universe and life originated from specific acts of divine creation, as opposed to the scientific conclusion that they came about through natural processes. Creationists base their beliefs on a fundamentalist reading of texts, including the creation myths found in Genesis. For young Earth creationists, these beliefs are based on a literalist interpretation of the Genesis creation narrative, literalist creationists believe that evolution cannot adequately account for the history, diversity, and complexity of life on Earth. Pseudoscientific branches of creationism include creation science, flood geology, and intelligent design, as well as subsets of pseudoarchaeology, pseudohistory and this story is the basis of Creationist cosmology and biology. The Genesis flood narrative tells how God destroys the world and all life through a great flood and this forms the basis of Creationist geology, better known as flood geology. Several attempts have been made to categorize the different types of creationism, Creationism covers a spectrum of beliefs which have been categorized into the general types listed below. Most young Earth creationists believe that the universe has an age as the Earth. A few assign a much older age to the universe than to Earth, Creationist cosmologies give the universe an age consistent with the Ussher chronology and other young Earth time frames. The Christian organizations Institute for Creation Research and the Creation Research Society both promote young Earth creationism in the US. Another organization with similar views, Answers in Genesis —based in both the US and the United Kingdom—has opened the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky, to promote young Earth creationism. Creation Ministries International promotes young Earth views in Australia, Canada, South Africa, New Zealand, the US, among Roman Catholics, the Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation promotes similar ideas. Old Earth creationism holds that the universe was created by God. This group generally believes that the age of the universe and the age of the Earth are as described by astronomers and geologists, but that details of modern evolutionary theory are questionable. Old Earth creationism itself comes in at least three types, Gap creationism, also called restoration creationism, holds that life was created on a pre-existing old Earth. This version of creationism relies on an interpretation of Genesis 1. It is considered that the words formless and void in fact denote waste and ruin, taking account the original Hebrew. Genesis 1, 1–2 is consequently translated, In the beginning God created the heaven, and the earth was without form, and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters, thus, the six days of creation start sometime after the Earth was without form and void
Creationism
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Martin Luther taught
young Earth creationism, a literal interpretation of the Genesis creation narrative.
Creationism
Creationism
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The
Institute for Creation Research (ICR) is a young-Earth creationist organization.
Creationism
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The
Genesis Expo is a young Earth creationism museum in
Portsmouth, England.
47.
Dharma
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Dharma is a key concept with multiple meanings in the Indian religions — Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism. There is no single word translation for dharma in western languages, in Buddhism dharma means cosmic law and order, but is also applied to the teachings of the Buddha. In Buddhist philosophy, dhamma/dharma is also the term for phenomena, Dharma in Jainism refers to the teachings of tirthankara and the body of doctrine pertaining to the purification and moral transformation of human beings. For Sikhs, the word means the path of righteousness. The Classical Sanskrit noun dharma is a derivation from the root dhṛ, the word dharma was already in use in the historical Vedic religion, and its meaning and conceptual scope has evolved over several millennia. The antonym of dharma is adharma, the Classical Sanskrit noun dharma is a derivation from the root dhṛ, which means to hold, maintain, keep, and takes a meaning of what is established or firm, and hence law. It is derived from an older Vedic Sanskrit n-stem dharman-, with a meaning of bearer, supporter. In the Rigveda, the word appears as an n-stem, dhárman-, figuratively, it means sustainer and supporter. It is semantically similar to the Greek Ethos, in Classical Sanskrit, the noun becomes thematic, dharma-. The word dharma derives from Proto-Indo-European root *dʰer-, which in Sanskrit is reflected as class-1 root √dhṛ, etymologically it is related to Avestan √dar-, Latin firmus, Lithuanian derė́ti, Lithuanian dermė and darna and Old Church Slavonic drъžati. Classical Sanskrit word dharmas would formally match with Latin o-stem firmus from Proto-Indo-European *dʰer-mo-s holding, were it not for its development from earlier Rigvedic n-stem. In Classical Sanskrit, and in the Vedic Sanskrit of the Atharvaveda, in Pāli, it is rendered dhamma. In some contemporary Indian languages and dialects it occurs as dharm. Dharma is a concept of central importance in Indian philosophy and religion and it has multiple meanings in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. It is difficult to provide a concise definition for dharma, as the word has a long and varied history and straddles a complex set of meanings. There is no equivalent single word translation for dharma in western languages, there have been numerous, conflicting attempts to translate ancient Sanskrit literature with the word dharma into German, English and French. The concept, claims Paul Horsch, has caused difficulties for modern commentators and translators. Dharma root is dhri, which means ‘to support, hold and it is the thing that regulates the course of change by not participating in change, but that principle which remains constant
Dharma
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Rituals and rites of passage
Dharma
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Sannyasa and
stages of life
Dharma
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Above rock inscription is from Indian
Emperor Asoka, from 258 BC, and found in
Afghanistan. The inscription renders the word Dharma in Sanskrit as
Eusebeia in Greek, suggesting Dharma in ancient India meant spiritual maturity, devotion, piety, duty towards and reverence for human community.
Dharma
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Sikhism
48.
Deism
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Deism is a philosophical position which posits that a god does not interfere directly with the world. Deism gained prominence among intellectuals during the Age of Enlightenment, especially in Britain, France, Germany, included in those influenced by its ideas were leaders of the American and French Revolutions. These lead to many subdivisions of modern deism which tends, therefore, Deism is a theological theory concerning the relationship between the Creator and the natural world. Deistic viewpoints emerged during the revolution of 17th Century Europe. Deism stood between the narrow dogmatism of the period and skepticism, though deists rejected atheism, they often were called atheists by more traditional theists. There were a number of different forms in the 17th and 18th Centuries, in England, deism included a range of people from anti-Christian to non-Christian theists. See the section Features of deism, following, Deism is related to naturalism because it credits the formation of life and the universe to a higher power, using only natural processes. Deism may also include an element, involving experiences of God. The words deism and theism are both derived from words for god, the former from Latin deus, the latter from Greek theós, prior to the 17th Century the terms were used interchangeably with the terms theism and theist, respectively. Theologians and philosophers of the 17th Century began to give a different signification to the words, both asserted belief in one supreme God, the Creator. Perhaps the first use of the term deist is in Pierre Virets Instruction Chrétienne en la doctrine de la foi et de lÉvangile, Viret, a Calvinist, regarded deism as a new form of Italian heresy. I have heard there are of this band those who call themselves Deists, an entirely new word. In England, the term deist first appeared in Robert Burtons The Anatomy of Melancholy, Lord Herbert of Cherbury is generally considered the father of English Deism, and his book De Veritate the first major statement of deism. Deism flourished in England between 1690 and 1740, at which time Matthew Tindals Christianity as Old as the Creation, also called The Deists Bible, later deism spread to France, notably through the work of Voltaire, to Germany, and to the United States. The concept of deism covers a variety of positions on a wide variety of religious issues. Sir Leslie Stephens English Thought in the Eighteenth Century describes the core of deism as consisting of critical and constructional elements, critical elements of deist thought included, Rejection of religions that are based on books that claim to contain the revealed word of God. Rejection of religious dogma and demagogy, Skepticism of reports of miracles, prophecies and religious mysteries. Constructional elements of deist thought included, God exists and created the universe, God gave humans the ability to reason
Deism
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"Life and works of Confucius", by
Prospero Intorcetta, 1687.
Deism
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Edward Herbert, portrait by
Isaac Oliver (1560–1617)
Deism
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David Hume
Deism
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Voltaire at age 24 by
Nicolas de Largillière
49.
Demonology
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Demonology is the study of demons or beliefs about demons, especially the methods used to summon and control them. The original sense of demon, from the time of Homer onward, was a benevolent being, the word demonology is from Greek δαίμων, daimōn, divinity, divine power, god, and -λογία, -logia. According to some societies, all the affairs of life are supposed to be under the control of spirits, each ruling a certain element or even object, and themselves in subjection to a greater spirit. For example, the Inuit are said to believe in spirits of the sea, earth and sky, the winds, every cove of the seashore, every point, every island and prominent rock has its guardian spirit. All are potentially of the malignant type, to be propitiated by an appeal to knowledge of the supernatural, traditional Korean belief posits countless demons inhabit the natural world, they fill household objects and are present in all locations. By the thousands they accompany travelers, seeking them out from their places in the elements, in ancient Babylon, demonology had an influence on even the most mundane elements of life, from petty annoyances to the emotions of love and hatred. The numerous demonic spirits were given charge over various parts of the body, one for the head, one for the neck. Many religions and cultures believe, or once believed, that what is now known as soothsaying, was, or is, the ascription of malevolence to the world of spirits is by no means universal. In Central Africa, the Mpongwe believe in spirits, just as do the Inuit. Demons are generally classified as spirits which are believed to enter into relations with the human race. As such the term includes, angels in the Judeo-Christian tradition that fell from grace, human souls regarded as genii or familiars, such as receive a cult, excluded are souls conceived as inhabiting another world. The incubi and Succubi of the Middle Ages are sometimes regarded as spiritual beings, belief in demons goes back many millennia. The Zoroastrian faith teaches that there are 3,333 Demons, some with specific dark responsibilities such as war, starvation, sickness, in Babylonian mythology, the seven evil deities were known as shedu, or storm-demons. It was from Chaldea that the name came to the Israelites. They also spoke of the destroyer as a Lord who will strike down the Egyptians, in II Samuel xxiv,16 and II Chronicles xxi.15 the pestilence-dealing angel, that is spirit, called the destroying angel. The followers of Mara were also called mara, the devils, the mara became fully assimilated into the Chinese worldview, and were called mo. D. Demonic forces had attained power in the world. Medieval Chinese Buddhist demonology was heavily influenced by Indian Buddhism, in his autobiography, The Blazing Splendor, Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, a prominent Tibetan Buddhist master of the 20th century describes encounters with such beings
Demonology
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"
Nightmare ", 1800, by
Nikolaj Abraham Abildgaard
Demonology
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Zawba‘a, the demon king of Friday, depicted with other demons in the
Book of Wonders, a 14th/ 15th century Arabic manuscript
50.
Divine command theory
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Divine command theory is a meta-ethical theory which proposes that an actions status as morally good is equivalent to whether it is commanded by God. The theory asserts that what is moral is determined by what God commands, followers of both monotheistic and polytheistic religions in ancient and modern times have often accepted the importance of Gods commands in establishing morality. He also contended that, as knowledge of God is required for morality by divine command theory, atheists and agnostics could not be moral, he saw this as a weakness of the theory. Others have challenged the theory on grounds by arguing that, even if Gods command and morality correlate in this world. In addition, the Euthyphro dilemma, first proposed by Plato, presented a dilemma which threatened either to leave morality subject to the whims of God, or challenge his omnipotence. Various forms of divine command theory have been presented by philosophers including William of Ockham, St Augustine, Duns Scotus, the theory generally teaches that moral truth does not exist independently of God and that morality is determined by divine commands. Stronger versions of the theory assert that Gods command is the reason that a good action is moral. The theory asserts that good actions are good as a result of their being commanded by God. Because of these premises, adherents believe that moral obligation is obedience to Gods commands, saint Augustine offered a version of divine command theory that began by casting ethics as the pursuit of the supreme good, which delivers human happiness. Augustines ethics proposed that the act of loving God enables humans to orient their loves, leading to human happiness. His view of morality was thus heteronomous, as he believed in deference to a higher authority, scholastic philosopher John Duns Scotus argued that the only moral obligations that God could not take away from humans are to love one another and love God. He proposed that some commandments are moral because God commands them, Duns Scotus argued that the natural law contains only what is self-evidently analytically true and that God could not make these statements false. He suggested that the rest of the Ten Commandments, and any other commandments God makes, are morally obligatory because God commands them, kelly James Clark and Anne Poortenga have presented a defence of divine command theory based on Aquinas moral theory. Aquinas proposed a theory of law which asserted that something is moral if it works towards the purpose of human existence. Clark and Poortenga argued that God created human nature and thus commanded a certain morality, the deontological ethics of Immanuel Kant has been cast as rejecting divine command theory by several figures, among whom is ethicist R. M. Hare. American philosopher Lewis White Beck takes Kants argument to be a refutation of the theory that morality depends of divine authority, John E. Hare challenges this view, arguing that Kantian ethics should be seen as compatible with divine command theory. American philosopher Robert Merrihew Adams proposes what he calls a modified divine command theory, Adams presents the basic form of his theory by asserting that two statements are equivalent, It is wrong to do X. It is contrary to Gods commands to do X and he proposes that Gods commands precurse moral truths and must be explained in terms of moral truths, not the other way around
Divine command theory
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John Duns Scotus, who proposed a variant of divine command theory
Divine command theory
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Robert Merrihew Adams proposes what he calls a "modified divine command theory"
Divine command theory
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Plato presents the Euthyphro dilemma in one of his dialogues.
