Exam 3: God

The "least of the evils" solution to the problem of evil raises the question about whether it is fair to allow an innocent man to suffer even if he will receive an elaborate reward later on.

According to Pascal, if we wagered that God exists but it turned out God did not exist, then the worst that could happen is that we would have given up a few sinful pleasures that we might otherwise have enjoyed.

A ccording to Immanuel Kant, because there is a clear connection between happiness and morality, we do not need to believe in the existence of God in order to be moral.

According to Immanuel Kant, God's existence

Explain what Kierkegaard means by the "leap of faith."

W hat is Kant's main criticism of the ontological argument for God's existence?

Hegel paints a dynamic and complex picture of God in which we humans are

One of the things that makes rituals and traditions of primary, and not merely secondary, importance to religious practitioners is

W rite an essay critically discussing Immanuel Kant's moral proof for belief in God. What is this moral proof? Do you agree with Kant that one needs to believe in God to be moral?   What is your conception of the relationship of religious belief and morality?

Sigmund Freud argued that what really makes belief in God irrational is that

Explain the cosmological, ontological, and design arguments and the moral proof for God's existence. Do these arguments share any points in common? How do they differ?   What are the strengths and weaknesses of each kind of argument?   Develop one objection to each of the arguments. Which of the arguments seems the strongest and why?

If, according to the free-will solution to the problem of evil, God cannot interfere with our actions, then

Although Karl Marx believed religion was an illusion, he thought that it was an expression of real suffering and a protest against that suffering.

When people attempt to resolve the problem of evil by claiming that everyone who suffers somehow deserves to suffer, they are

According to Hegel, absolute Spirit expresses itself and acts through human beings, but is also not different from human beings.

That the universe may have always existed and thus does not need to be explained by a "first cause" that created it

What does it mean to say Western conceptions of God tend to be anthropomorphic?

How does Aquinas's cosmological argument for God's existence differ from the argument from design?

In ancient religions, believers tended to worship the same gods and/or goddesses.

One thing that all religions seem to have in common is the general sensibility that we call spirituality, the feeling that we are part of something much greater than ourselves.