some philosophy papers i found on my computer before i ask jim to nuke my memory
The Logic of Religion
Religion is a stronghold for many in this life. It is a comfort, a point of solace in an otherwise cold world. The many major world religions involve an explanation for the creation of humanity and provide a moral code that will help its followers achieve salvation. Paramount to religion is its requirement for belief, for faith, mostly because its doctrine deviates from simple logic, such as in Christianity, we place our believe in a man who lived 2000 years ago and is said to be the flesh incarnation of God himself. There can never be any way to prove such an assertion so faith in necessary if one wishes to call himself a Christian.
This leads us to the question; does religion in general make any sense? There are many things one needs to accept point blank if he wishes to associate himself with any particular religion. Such as, in Christianity, God is outlined as an omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent being. There are, however, things in this faith that contradict this statement, things that have caused philosophers to squabble about for centuries.
The first in my mind is the problem of evil. Simply, if God is benevolent as is said, how can he allow such evil in the world? It is a predicament, for sure. An agreed upon solution for many Christians is the assertion that God has the power to prevent humans from evil action but allows us to choose whether to take the path of evil or not. God allows his creation to have free will and use it as such. It is hard to swallow though that human action is the cause of so many natural disasters in the world, disasters that always are concluded with much death and destruction.
Another very prominent problem with Christianity in the minds of philosophers is the problem of the aforementioned human free will. Or, simply put, if God is truly omniscient how are humans really able to make their own decisions if God already knows what we will do. A Christian will assert that just because God knows what we will do doesn’t mean that he forces us into such an action. The choice is still ours. But the question one must ask is that if we truly make our own decisions, what if they differ from what God has in mind? That would detract from God’s said omniscience. The decision we have is Free will or God.
People spend much time thinking or trying not to think about these large questions, as they define what it is to be a faithful Christian. I have my own question, though: why does religion have to make sense? It seems to me that the very basis of religion is believing what could never be proven by any sort of formula or method, so why do we waste time trying to apply one as such? Faith, by definition, is belief. You must just believe that a man walked on water, cured the sick, raised the dead, then rose from the dead himself. There is no way to prove that. But you have to believe it. Why? Because he leads the road to salvation. It just comes down to what you have in your heart.
Religious Experience
It is difficult to delve into the subject of experience without playing with the idea concerning the faultiness of human perception, a fact that an atheist would most quickly cite. In that a religious experience is rarely as solid as a tangible one, this further detracts from its credibility in the eyes of the nonbeliever. However, despite my own skepticism, I have a little faith in religious experience.
Experience is what defines Christianity. We wouldn’t have the gospels if the disciples hadn’t been there and then recorded all that they saw and felt. Every mention of something significant (or not significant) has been conceptualized and taken down on paper or passed down verbally. To take away the experiences, you strip the religion of any shred of proof that it possesses. All that is left of it is a theology, a structure of codes and beliefs that don’t hold any weight. I find it interesting that while evangelists urge us to have faith and believe without proof, they provide an array of “miracles” just in case. OF COURSE! It is human nature to question. Those who deny their questions are denying their very humanity, in a sense.
So then, the questioning person will wonder if these experiences are 100 percent true. It is hard to know as they happened so many years ago. They have also been subject to many years of possible meddling for political gain (read: Constantine). How are we supposed to know for sure? How can we analyze a situation when it is fraught with uncertainty?
The only foreseeable solution in my mind is a religious experience of your own. An intelligent person will not take someone’s word for it; they instead wish to seek out the experience for themselves.
Thankfully for my religious beliefs, I have had an experience of religious nature. Actually, now that I think of it, there are the general experiences, one moment in time where you feel his presence. Then there are the periods of your life, so awful, so low that you reach out for help and feel Him similarly. Things work out. Though your life should be spiraling down the drain by all means of logic, you are still there.
On to my own religious experience. There are a few that are worth mentioning. Once when I was 8, we were in church and the Sunday school class was putting on a play on the different forms of prayer. I was to stand and spread my arms and when I did so, a warmth that was not related to the freezing church at all filled my body and spirit. I have kept that particular one to myself until now, but I know that it was God I was feeling. Nothing can dissuade me. It is hard to explain but there was no question in my mind that that was what I was feeling.
Perhaps that is what inspired the writers of the bible, the disciples who wrote the gospels. They felt something in their soul and there was no question in any place in their being as to what they were experiencing. Perhaps that is why they spread their messages with such fevor, in hopes that the world could know what they know. And what a knowledge to have, that amidst all the doubt and questions, there is an answer beyond the door. You merely have to open it.
Foreknowledge: A Solution?
We were first introduced to the concept of God’s foreknowledge in the dialogue between
Boethius and the goddess Philosophy. A summary of the concept; in order for God to truly
be god-like, He must be omniscient and omnipotent. If He wasn’t omniscient or omnipotent
he simply would not be worthy of worship. So everything is great now that we have a godly
God, right? Wrong. In order for God’s omniscience to truly be veritable, he would have to
know everything about our actions, what we have done, are doing, and what we will do. He
knows before and after what we have done. Because He knows what we will do, it would seem
that there is no free will to speak of.
How can this be so? Well, when a man makes a decision he has two variables placed
before him. It is possible for him to have more than two choices, but for the sake of my
illustration let us just assume he has two. Say, he has to make a decision whether to drink
chocolate milk or orange juice for breakfast. If the concept of God’s foreknowledge is sound, this would mean that God will know every thought that the man has on the subject leading to the decision. Such as, God will know when the man leans towards chocolate milk because it tastes better, but then decides to drink the orange juice because it is healthier for him. This man thinks that his decision was made completely on his own, but because God is invariably omniscient, the other option was not open to him. He was going to drink the orange juice and nothing would change that.
Suppose the man, somehow by the forces of nature, managed to drink the chocolate milk
instead of the orange juice. This would not be possible because if it actually occurred it would
cause God’s omniscience to be faulty. He would not be God in such an instance.
So once again, we have a dilemma. Succinctly put, we have free will, or we have God.
Christians would opt to give us both with this solution; just because God knows what
we will do doesn’t mean he forces us into such an action. He knows we are going to drink the
orange juice but he doesn’t hold a gun to our head and say “drink the juice!”. His role of
knowing what we will do is entirely passive, since he knew what we would do in everyday
decisions and great life ones before we were even born. If this is correct, we can have our cake
and eat it too!
I feel this solution skirt the real issue. Most Christians ignore that because God knows
what we will do, we must do it or he wouldn’t be God. It doesn’t matter if his role in our
decisions is passive or aggressive, for we still do what he knows we will do.
What ultimately makes this dilemma even worse is that it contradicts God’s own word!
In the bible, it states that God’s gift to his creation is the gift of free will. No matter what, man
would be able to make his own decisions. So for God’s promise to be true, His omniscience
would be defied. But for His own purpose as God to be true, it would have to contradict
his own promise to His people.
In the search for a solution, I take into account where I stand on the hierarchy of things.
God is god, and I am just a creature inhibiting this planet. I take away any self importance
that I perhaps may have assigned to myself and I look at the facts. God must be omniscient.
Perhaps do we need to be keepers of free will?
In this strain of thought, I will assert that maybe we don’t have free will. Perhaps we are
simply animals inhabiting this world, just like the other animals. Perhaps we need to relinquish
our pride in the matter and accept that we cannot be more than we already are; animals.
But then, that contradicts God’s own word! It contradicts the fact that in His book, He
promises us free will, autonomity, and the ability to make our own decisions without his influence.
This is what this issue will be. I feel it has no solution. I have explored it the best I can,
being a simple animal after all. I accept that God knew what I was going to say on this paper. I
accept that God knows what grade you, Professor Ellin, will give me on this paper. I suppose thereal point is that I don’t know. I didn’t know what I was going to say on this paper and I don’t know what grade I am going to get on it. I’m not God, so therefore I could never know.
So perhaps in this absence of knowledge can we find both our omniscient God and our promised free will.
2 Comments:
I've enjoyed reading the paper, Jillian, but I must ask, where in the Bible does God promise us free will?
i'm not sure, i think in genesis. i'm really not sure..they bang over our heads in the class that He did..so i used it in my papers.
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