Atheism and Critiques of Religious Beliefs

Question 1

What does atheism mean?

Answer 1

Without/no god

Question 2

What is weak atheism and strong atheism?

Answer 2

weak - simple skepticism, absence of the belief in God
strong - explicitly held belief that God does not exist. Same as anti-theism offering arguments against religious beliefs considering it wrong or dangerous rather than simply choosing not to believe for themselves

Question 3

Who says ‘theism and atheist - the fight between them is as to whether God shall be called God or have some other name.’

Answer 3

Butler

Question 4

Who argues contradictory affairs in the world count against the existence of God and what is his quote?

Answer 4

Salacrou
‘the existence of a world without God seems to me less absurd than the presence of a God, existing in all of his perfections, creating an imperfect man and making him run the risk of hell.’

Question 5

How does Orwell describe atheists who dislike believers or beliefs?

Answer 5

‘the sort of atheist who does not so much not believe in God as personally dislike him’

Question 6

Who says: ‘to seek the truth may mean overcoming the fear that one’s own certainties and most cherished convictions may be wrong, or the fear of facing the consequences of a claim to the truth.’

Answer 6

Vardy

Question 7

Who coined the term agnostic and what did it mean?

Answer 7

Huxley
the opposite of gnostic - greek term for those who professed to have special revelatory knowledge of God.
An agnostic may claim to be open to the possibility of knowledge leading to belief rather than non belief

Question 8

Who argued that only knowledge of regular, observable sequences could constitute positive knowledge. Science is only capable of dealing with questions that could be tested.

Answer 8

Hume

Question 9

What is a functional explanation of religious beliefs and what is a projective explanation?

Answer 9

identifies the function it serves in society

identifies the way in which humans project their fears, anxieties and subconscious feelings on to the object of worship

Question 10

Explain Durkheim’s sociological critique of religious belief?

Answer 10

religion serves to unite and preserve the community ‘beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community.’
He likened religion to a primitive clan worshipping the totem which symbolised God and the unity of the clan. God doesn’t exist but what does is a unified social system which believes that it owes its being to God. Belief is expressed in shared rituals.
Deities are the projection of power in society. Humans had become dependent on society so had given it sacred significance. Humans make things sacred or profane

Question 11

Explain Marx’s sociological critique of religious belief

Answer 11

God is an invention of the human mind to satisfy emotional needs, the ruling class use it to dominate and oppress people by offering them the illusion of escape 'it eased pain and even created the fantasies.' Religion is so fully determined by economics that it is pointless to consider any of its doctrines or beliefs for their own merits.
Only when a revolution overthrows the ruling class can the oppressed be liberated - only by loving one another rather than God can humanity be restored
religion taught that only supernatural intervention could solve problems on earth so diverted attention from real source of oppression and kept the ruling class in power

Question 12

What is liberation theology in america and how does it go against Marx’s argument?

Answer 12

it blends marxism and christianity in an attempt to change the nature of society for the oppressed without rejecting belief in God.

Question 13

What does Weber argue against Marx?

Answer 13

religion promotes social change and capitalism developed in Europe due to protestant ethic of hard work and self denial

Question 14

Who argues that the christian church offered a radical challenge to the roman authorities?

Answer 14

Engels

Question 15

Who argued religion was a ‘universal neurosis’ an illusion which humans should disregard in its relation to reality.’ origins of religious belief lays in primitive tribes where tension between dominant and subordinate males culminates in the overthrow of the father what is this a manifestation of and explain it
he maintained God was a manifestation of the super ego repressing anti social impulses by inducing fear and guilt which is crucial to civilization. Man relied on God to ‘make his helplessness tolerable.’

Answer 15

Freud
Oedipus complex - once a child is weaned it become aware of a world beyond its mother and sees its father replacing it in its mothers affections, jealously felt towards the father manifests as guilt and leads them to elevate his memory and worship him

Question 16

What did Nelson and Jones find that criticised Freud?

Answer 16

that the individuals relation to God depended more on the person’s relationship with their mother

Question 17

Who distinguished between projective religion which is immature and intrinsic religion which is serious and reflective and argued that Freud assumed all aspects of religion were immature and neglected the diversity and development or religious beliefs

Answer 17

Lowenthal

Question 18

Who says ‘most post-freudians think his need to explain everything by sex tells us more about his obsessional neurosises than ours.’

Answer 18

Moore

Question 19

Who disagree with Freud that sexuality was more important than spirituality to a persons psychological development. religion integrates the personality
he was concerned with the interplay between conscious and unconscious forces
what is the personal unconscious and collective unconscious?

Answer 19

Jung
the personal unconscious includes those things we know about ourselves that we would like to forget
the collective unconscious refers to events that we all share, by virtue of having a common heritage.

Question 20

Explain Dawkin’s critique of religious belief

Answer 20

Religious belief is unnecessary. The fact humans exist at all is a remarkable enough coincidence of biology so why look for greater significance.
Faith claims of religion are a retreat from an evidence-based quest for truth - supernatural explanations for the world stop us investigating further
humans are purpose driven beings who assume purpose in the universe because we are driven to invest purpose is everything we do, however to assume purpose and meaning to the world is found outside the world closes the door on further investigation
religion leads to evil misleading education and inciting fear and child abuse. he visits a hell house outreach presentation in Colorado where graphic scenes of homosexuals and women having abortions are seen as heading straight to hell

Question 21

Who observes that ‘Dawkins goes in search of grotesques in the Middle East and had no difficulty making them seem absurd.’

Answer 21

Wilson

Question 22

Who suggests that Dawkin’s idea that religious is an infectious virus/meme then so is atheism, in this way he applies the concept of a meme as a blik (Hare)

Answer 22

Tinker

Question 23

what does Tinker say about the accusation that religion is harmful?

Answer 23

‘he makes a value judgement that extremism and terror and bad things, but for whom? not for the terrorists who get their way and pass on their genes.’

Question 24

What does Tinker say about how Dawkins should be more precise when talking about religion since his statements suggest everything he says applies equally to them all

Answer 24

as ‘intellectually irresponsible as lumping all animals together and saying what goes for elephants must go for ants.’

Question 25

Who says that Dawkins assumes God should be provable by evidence but that belief in God isn’t stupid, thinking we can prove him by scientific evidence is.

Answer 25

Wilson

Question 26

What is Ockham’s razor?

Answer 26

The principle that in trying to understand something, getting unnecessary information out of the way is the fastest way to the truth or the best explanation ‘entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily’

Question 27

What is the law of simplicity?

Answer 27

goes back to Aristotle who claimed nature operates in the shortest possible way.

Question 28

What is theism?

Answer 28

a system of belief which attempts to provide an explanation for certain phenomena in the world

Question 29

what is the epistemic distance?

Answer 29

existence of God isn’t overwhelmingly obvious and the universe itself isn’t self explanatory so people hold different and sometimes contradictory explanations

Question 30

Who says ‘A may be explained by B and B by C, but in the end there will be some one object on whom all other objects depend.’

Answer 30

Swinburne

Question 31

Who argues that the human need to fins explanation for things suggests we are not satisfied with saying things just are. What example does he give?

Answer 31

Ward
if the scientist were asked ‘why does water boil when it is heated?’ no one would be satisfied with ‘no reason in just does’

Question 32

How can it be argued theistic explanations overly complicate things?

Answer 32

they could serve other functions, to control society, justify law and morality etc

Question 33

Sire conducted a survey and found people believed in God for a number of reasons like

Answer 33

Miracles and they felt God was the best explanation for tough issues in life

Question 34

Who argued that nobody is a non-believer, ‘ the scientist has faith in nature and in himself’

Answer 34

Blanchard

Question 35

What did Aquinas argue?

Answer 35

that all natural things can be reduced to one principle, nature, and all voluntary things can be reduced to human will. he solved this dilemma by observing that neither nature nor human could act without the agency of a higher agent