Exam 3: God

The problem of evil only arises because we believe that

What are the two aspects of religion that are not simply a matter of belief?

Immanuel Kant challenges the ontological argument's second premise which states that

According to Kierkegaard, what is important is not our conception of God, but

What is spirituality , and how is it different from religion ?

According to the story of the Book of Job,

To say that mystical experiences are "ineffable" is to say that

According to Aquinas, God is a first cause, both as the cause of the universe's coming into existence and as the cause of its being preserved in existence from one instant to the next.

According to Kierkegaard, total commitment to God requires that a person must at least arrive at a plausible conception of God.

How does the religious perspective of pantheism make the question "Do you believe in God?" confusing?

The fact that religion is usually thought to be a matter of belief and not a kind of knowledge that can be proven means that religious arguments have limits.

William Paley developed a version of the

The Egyptian philosopher Akhnaton and the American philosopher Charles Hartshorne both believed that God was constantly self-creating.

Theodicies are an attempt to show that the existence of God is compatible with the existence of evil.

Many people have commented on how many of our conceptions and images of God are anthropomorphic. One version of this is the image of God as an old man. Why can't this image be literally true?   Feminist theologians focus on masculine and patriarchal images of God that involve more subtle patriarchal biases. Some have argued that the conception of God as totally transcendent, all-powerful, unchanging, and all-knowing is especially masculinist/patriarchal and, as a result, exclusionary. Do you agree? Why or why not?   How might conceptions of God as immanent, pantheistic, and in process escape this charge? Are they (in your estimate)superior to the masculinist conceptions?

Write a fictional dialogue featuring two characters who are attempting to grapple with evil, as they witness it in the world.   The substance of the dialogue should be a critical discussion in which the characters describe the problem of evil, as they understand it, and then argue about how the problem is best resolved. As the dialogue unfolds, the traditional problem of evil should be described, and three of the theodicies from Chapter 3 should be discussed-although the characters are not limited to these viewpoints. The dialogue can end in the two characters agreeing, in their agreeing to disagree, or in their arriving at a new viewpoint that synthesizes both points of view. You might also stage this dialogue as an oral presentation to your class, or make a video of it.

W hat is the difference between the concepts of God as transcendent and God as immanent ?

Because Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and natural selection makes an attempt to explain exactly how a complex world could come into existence over time without assuming a divine creator, it challenges the

Voltaire made fun of the ontological argument in his novel Candide.

If, as process philosophy says, God is constantly creating himself and the universe as well, then this means that