Knowledge of God's Existence A02 Flashcards
1
Q
The existence of God can be known through reason with the support of natural theology
A
- natural and revealed theology work together
- natural theology provides people with a sound and rational basis for faith, revealed theology supplies the details of that faith
- natural theology (reason) provides opportunity to share discussion about God
- everyone human and has access to the natural world and able to draw conclusions
- NT is a starting point for dialogue between people of different or no faith
2
Q
The existence of God cannot be known through reason alone
A
- RT only means to know God - only those who believe in that revelation consider themselves to have any knowledge of God
- Christians may argue God only known through Christianity
- Barth - NT is a kind of idolatry where people made up and worshipped false ideas believing they were so clever they could access absolute and eternal truths
- Barth - its arrogant to imagine fallible human reason can lead to knowledge of God
3
Q
what may have influenced Barth’s strong opposition to NT and human reason as revealing God
A
- perhaps influenced by his witnessing of the rise of Nazism - reason alone leads people in the wrong direction
- reinforced his Protestant conviction that human nature is flawed and cannot be relied upon
4
Q
what is the only way to know God for Barth
A
- RT
- God can only be known when he chooses to disclose himself
- people are clearly incapable of working out right and wrong by themselves - need God’s commandments as revealed in the Bible
- God ultimately revealed in Christ
- no truth to be found in other world religions except where they happen to say the same things as Christianity
- only Christ could break through the barrier of human sin to reveal God
- any attempt to understand God without Christ was bound to be corrupt and wrong
5
Q
how do defenders of NT refute Barth
A
- his view is too extreme
- if human reason is given no part to play in knowledge of God then people have know way of judging between true and false beliefs
- one person may claim God disclosed truth to him and another might make a similar claim
- but the two revealed truths may be contradictory
- how would it be possible to know whether either was right or wrong unless human reason were allowed a role
6
Q
what is one of the problems with Natural Theology
A
- human reason is too limited to reach an understanding of God
- nature of God is beyond reason - not-rational
- whatever rational justifications can be given for concluding God must be like this or that the difficulty still remains that God is not something that can be grasped and understood through logical reasoning
- arguments for the existence of God based on reason are not able to lead people to certain knowledge of God
7
Q
faith is sufficient reason for belief in God’s existence
A
- there are many aspects of life where we have insufficient empirical evidence to base our decisions on
- we cannot know with certainty whether we have free will or the sun will rise tomorrow
- the balance of probability based on our past experienced leads us to carry on our daily lives without being in a permanent state of doubt
- but faith that the future will resemble the past is not supported by firm evidence
8
Q
faith is not sufficient reason for belief in God’s existence (Dawkins)
A
- Dawkins - “faith is the great cop-out the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence”
- faith not just insufficient but harmful - encourages lazy thinking and avoid certainty
- avoids dealing with gaps by claiming its a mystery and God did it
- likens it to belief that there is a teapot orbiting mars - cannot be conclusively disproven but there is no evidence to support them and thus no good reason toc commit to them
9
Q
faith is not sufficient reason for belief in God’s existence (Hume)
A
- “A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence”
- on miracles - rather than allowing faith to cloud our judgement we should look to the evidence before us and decide on that basis what is appropriate to believe
10
Q
discuss Christians seeing faith as essential but not sufficient
A
- might question the view that faith is all that is necessary
- faith is not held in a vacuum but builds on knowledge
- the fact we exist at all and live in a beautiful ordered world underpins faith
- belief in the claims of Christianity is not like belief in a teapot orbiting mars because there is no knowledge to support the teapot and yet plenty to support belief in God
- but the knowledge that can be gained through sense experience and reason does not provide conclusive evidence which is why faith is necessary
11
Q
what other way to sense experience and reason can belief be justified
A
- emotion
- people buy houses because they ‘feel right’
- some beliefs based on intuition or memory
- thus perhaps faith is a good a basis as emotion
12
Q
the fall completely removed all natural human knowledge of God
A
- Augustine - so catastrophic it placed an insurmountable barrier between God and humanity
- original sin prevented people form being able to know God as had become corrupt in their will - could never be holy enough to approach God through their own efforts
- Barth only RT sufficient
- attempts to gain knowledge on our own will fail
- we have finite capacities to form concepts and to understand
- through our own efforts we will only create distorted ideas about God
- Barth - NT is unnecessary as God revealed himself finally and perfectly in Jesus
- no need to work out ourselves we already have been given the truth
13
Q
the fall did not completely remove all natural human knowledge of God
A
- Aquinas - God gave us the ability to use our senses and reason for a purpose as well as giving us revealed knowledge of God
- use RT to guide us when we use our reason to work out natural knowledge of God
- both complement each other
- Aquinas’ five ways which use reason to discover God are an important part of arguments for existence of God
- against Barth - RT of the Bible does suggest humans can gain natural knowledge
- both helpful
14
Q
what conclusion did Aquinas reach at the end of his life
A
- gave up writing about God
- said all he had written seemed like straw
- not saying his writings worthless but that they were like the most basic of building materials
- decided knowledge of God in this world can only reach the most basic level and that God is essentially unknowable
- fall got rid of some knowledge but left us with basic level
15
Q
natural knowledge of God is the same as revealed knowledge of God
A
- everything that exists does so because God has chosen that it should
- God is the source of all knowledge
- nothing known that he has not revealed to us
- Aquinas - God can reveal truths to us through our reason and our reason was given to learn more about God - distinction becomes blurred
