God Talk

Question 1

Problems with truth claims

Answer 1

1. Socio-political dangers of GT

2. Religious diversity - incompatible claims about God.

Question 2

Exclusivism

Answer 2

Only one single revelation is true

Question 3

Pluralism

Answer 3

All religions and philosophies contain elements of truth none can be definitive

Question 4

Inclusivism

Answer 4

Embodies both positions simultaneously; truths can be found in multiple forms in each religion

Question 5

D’costa 1986

Answer 5

Exclusivism, pluralism and inclusiveness

Question 6

D’costa 1996

Answer 6

Oh pluralists Is committed to holding some form of truth criteria anything that falls foul is excluded from the truth

Question 7

Classical foundationalism

Answer 7

Believers are justified if they are grounded in indubitable foundations a proper epistemic base

Question 8

Cartesian foundationalism

Answer 8

Triviality of knowledge unlikely to generate

An approach that is definitive of certain fundamental assumptions that have formed and divided

Question 9

Evidentialism

Answer 9

We have an epistemic duty to examine all the grounds of probability which the evidence provides

Question 10

Locke 1690

Answer 10

Developed evidentialism

Question 11

Internalism

Answer 11

Everything necessary to justify believe is immediately and internally available to the consciousness

Question 12

Externalism

Answer 12

Knowledge something achieved when the person has the right kind of relation to reality – Our beliefs track reality leading to knowledge – not necessarily dependent on evidence

Question 13

Ontological argument

Answer 13

Essential feature of a concept of God that he is thought of as being with superlative characteristics

• for God to not exist would be incompatible with this

Question 14

St Anselm

Answer 14

If we can conceive it it must exist

Question 15

Descartes

Answer 15

Concept of existence belongs to the concept of God

Question 16

Kant’s criticisms

Answer 16

Cannot argue that because something is perfect it must exist. But it could be a logically necessary feature of all possible worlds where that feature is God defined in certain ways

Question 17

Cosmological argument

Answer 17

General features of the universe from the fact that it exists at all - God!
- St Thomas Aquinas : every motion is a motion of change God is that first motion

Question 18

Teleological Argument

Answer 18

Appeals to more specific features of the universe- william paley; watch maker

Question 19

Solution to problem of Evil 1

Answer 19

Evil as non existent illusion, but cannot explain our suffering at hand of said illusion

Question 20

Dualism

Answer 20

Affirms both good and bad qualities in God. Problematic!!

Question 21

Solution to problem of horrendous evil 3

Answer 21

God as dipolar, but is contradiction of terms

Question 22

Natural theology

Answer 22

Suffered from trying to define god whenever it suited human reason

Question 23

Barth

Answer 23

Let God be God!

1. The word is God’s speech not a truth in abstract but the truth
2. This speech of God is the act of God it cannot be separated when God speaks, he actively communicates himself to the hearer
3. The speech of God remains the mystery of God

Question 24

Brunner

Answer 24

Through God alone can God be known

Question 25

The doctrine of the trinity

Answer 25

A proper understanding of revelation cannot be obtained in abstraction- God reveals Godself (the holy spirit) through Godself (the son)

God is the content, the subject and the effect of Revelation

Question 26

Nicene Creed

Answer 26

Jesus is homoousious with the father

Question 27

Plantinga

Answer 27

Ideas of mortal logic

That there is logical incoherency in atheism