PHILOSOPHY 203 (STOLZE)
Notes on Charles
Taliaferro,
Philosophy of
Religion
Three Practices Proposed by Taliaferro
• The Golden Rule in Philosophy = “one should
treat other philosophies as one would like one’s
own to be treated” (p. x)
• Philosophical Good-Samaritanism = “the practice
of going to someone’s aid when in need” (p. xi)
• “Find a friend (or two) who welcomes arguments
and good-humored, open-ended dialogue” (p. xii)
What is the “Philosophy of Religion”?
• Philosophy = “love of wisdom”
• Religion = “what binds us together”
Taliaferro’s Two-fold Definition
of Philosophy
• “To have a philosophy is simply to have a view of
•
reality and value” (p. 1)
“[T]o practice philosophy is to do what Socrates
and Confucius did: to investigate the ways in
which reason and experience justify views about
justice, the divine, the meaning of birth, life, and
death, and so on . . . to engage in disciplined
inquiry” (pp. 1-2)
Six Possible Definitions of Religion
• Beliefs/practices in the supernatural
• Beliefs/practices in general symbols
• Beliefs/practices that obstruct clear, rational reflection
• Beliefs/practices in an ultimate reality
• Defined by example (e.g., Judaism, Christianity, Islam,
Hinduism, and Buddhism)
• “A body of teachings and prescribed practices about an
ultimate, sacred reality or state of being that calls for
reverence or awe and guides its practitioners into what they
describe as a saving, illuminating, and emancipatory
relationship to this reality through a personally transformative
life of prayer, realized ritualized meditations, and/or moral
practices like repentance and moral and personal
regeneration” (p. 15).
Religions as Worlds and Worldviews
• Taliaferro argues that “exploring a religion is very
•
much like exploring a world…a convert to a
religion may be understood as entering a new
world” (p. 16).
If religions are like worlds, then the task of
philosophy is to provide “a clear account of the
beliefs and practices making up such a world and
to inquire into reasons for thinking that such a
world is actually true” (p. 17).
Truth and Meaning in Religion
•Social Constructivism
•Realism
Features of Monotheism
• God is one
• God exists necessarily not contingently
• God is a substantial reality
• God has the following attributes: perfectly good,
all-powerful, present everywhere, all-knowing, and
eternal
The Three Monotheistic
(Abrahamic) Religions
•Judaism
•Christianity
•Islam
The “Maximally Excellent”
Divine Attributes
• Necessary or non-contingent existence
• Incorporeality
• Omnipotence
• Essential Goodness
• Omniscience
• Eternity
An Objection to God’s Omnipotence
1. An omnipotent being is a being able to do any act.
2. If God is omnipotent, God can create a stone so heavy that no one
can lift.
3. If God is omnipotent, God can lift any stone.
4. But if God can lift any stone, then God cannot create a stone so
heavy that no one can lift it.
5. And if God can create a stone so heavy that no one can lift it, then
there could be a stone that not even God could lift.
6. There is at least one act that God cannot do.
7. Hence, God is not omnipotent.
8. But God must be omnipotent to be God.
9. Therefore, God does not exist.
An Objection to God’s Essential
Goodness
1. An omnipotent being is able to do any logically
possible act.
2. An essentially good being is not able to do evil.
3. Doing evil is a logically possible act.
4. Because God is essentially good, God cannot do
any logically possible act.
5. Therefore, God is not omnipotent.
God vs. Moloch
1. If God is essentially good, then God is not able to do evil.
2. There could be a being, Moloch, with all God’s properties
except essential goodness.
3. If Moloch exists, Moloch can do any act God can do, plus
any evil act.
4. In this case, Moloch would be more powerful than God.
5. Therefore, God is not essentially good or God is not
unsurpassable in power or—more radically—there is no God.
God’s Omniscience and Human Freedom:
Some Options
• Divine knowledge undermines human freedom
• Divine knowledge doesn’t undermine human
•
•
•
freedom
Divine “middle knowledge”
Divine knowledge doesn’t cover future free
contingents (open theism)
Concept empiricism
Two Kinds of Theology (“God-Talk”)
• Cataphatic theology = makes positive claims about
•
God
Apophatic theology = makes negative claims
about God
The God of Philosophy vs. the God of
Revelation
• Perfect being theology
• Richard Dawkins’ critique of the Biblical God as
•
•
“vain” and “jealous”
(http://youtu.be/DMqTEfeqvmM)
Progressive Revelation
Divine (Im)passability
A Possible Response to Dawkins
 Emphasize God’s essential goodness
The Limits of God-Talk
• Use and mention of the word “God”
• Need for the loving and worship of God
• Distinction between claiming that “God is more
than or greater than our best terms and concept”
and claiming that “God is not less than our best
terms and concepts” (p. 47).
The Challenge of Philosophical
Naturalism
Naturalism = “the view that the cosmos itself, or
nature, is all that exists” (p. 48)
Two Forms of Naturalism
• Strict = “reality consists only of what is described
•
and explained by the ideal natural sciences,
especially physics” (p. 49)
Broad = “grants that there may be thoughts,
feelings, emotions, and perhaps even ethical
truths” (p. 49)
The Presumption of Atheism
“Some naturalists adopt what is called a
presumption of atheism, according to which if there
is no good reason to posit God, one should not do
so” (p. 50).
Arguments for the Existence of God
• Ontological = “reflections on the idea and possibility of God’s
•
•
•
existence provides a reason for thinking God actually exists”
Cosmological = “it is reasonable to think that our contingent
cosmos must be accounted for, in part, by the causal
creativity of a necessarily existing being”
Teleological = “our ordered, complex cosmos is better
explained by theism than by naturalism”
Religious Experience = “the widespread reports by persons
across time and culture who experience a transcendent,
divine reality provide grounds for thinking there is such a
reality” (p. 51)
The Ontological Argument
1. God either exists necessarily or God’s existence is
impossible.
2. God’s existence is possible.
3. Therefore, it is not impossible that God exists
(from 1 and 2).
4. Therefore, God’s existence is necessary (from 1
and 3.
5. Therefore, God exists (from 4).
Two Objections to the Ontological Argument
• The Perfect Island
• The Possible Non-existence of God
An Argument for God’s Unicity or Uniqueness (*)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Define God as a “maximally excellent being.”
Assume that there are two maximally excellent beings, X and Y.
But only one of the following can be true:
(a) X is the cause of Y.
(b) Y is the cause of X.
(c) Both X is the cause of Y and Y is the cause of X.
(d) Neither X is the cause of Y nor Y is the cause of X.
If (a) is the case, then X is God.
If (b) is the case, then Y is God.
If (c) is the case, then X and Y are simply two descriptions of the same
individual, namely, God.
If (d) is the case, then neither X nor Y is God, but instead Z, which is the
cause of both X and Y, is God.
(*) Not covered in Taliaferro.
The Kalam Cosmological Argument
1.If the universe began to exist, then the universe has a
cause.
2.The universe began to exist.
3.Therefore, the universe has a cause.
 Watch a brief video overview:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CulBuMCLg0&sns=em
 Also watch Prof. William Lane Craig debate Richard Dawkins (in an empty
chair)
 regarding the Cosmological Argument:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUIFjxYKEAU&list=PL3gdeV4Rk9Ef6jhlYL
-Pp1UwzvnL_kbqw
Another Version of the Cosmological
Argument
1.
2.
3.
The universe is a dependent thing. It cannot exist by itself;
it can exist only if it is sustained by something that is not
dependent.
God, a necessary being, is the only thing that is not
dependent.
Therefore, the universe is sustained by God.
Objections to the Cosmological Argument
• Why think the Necessary Cause is God?
• Why does the cosmos have only one Necessary Cause?
• If God’s creating is necessary, then it is not a free action and the
cosmos is necessary and not contingent after all.
A Version of the Teleological Argument
1. Assume that something is good if it is worthy of pursuing, admiring, or
praising.
2. The universe is good.
3. If naturalism is true, then the goodness of the universe is not part of
why this universe exists.
4. If theism is true, then an all-good, all-powerful, and all-knowing, and
intentional being has a reason for creating a good universe.
5. The goodness of the universe appears to be the result of intentional
activity.
6. Therefore, theism is true.
Objections to Teleological Arguments
• The objection from simplicity
• The objection from uniqueness
• The infinity objection
• The goodness objection
A Form of the Argument from Religious
Experience
1. There are widespread reports by persons across time and
culture who claim to have experienced a transcendent, divine
reality
2. These persons couldn’t all be mistaken or lying about their
experiences.
3. Therefore, there exists such a transcendent, divine reality.
Objections to the Argument
from Religious Experience
• Religious experiences aren’t the same as
perceptual experiences
• Religious experiences have naturalistic
explanations
Evidence and Evidentialism
• Evidentialism = “the thesis that if some belief is warranted it
•
must be based on evidence” (p. 83); vs.
Reformed epistemologists = “challenge the idea that beliefs
in general are only warranted if they are based on evidence”
(p. 84)
Theodicy vs. Defense
A “theodicy” provides a complete justification of God’s
actions, whereas a “ defense ” only sketches out a
possible explanation.
Genuine Evil
There are at least some examples of what we could
call “genuine evil.” In other words, these instances of
evil are not illusory or simply mischaracterized as bad
but are in fact cases of objective pain, suffering, or
some other harm.
Natural vs. Human-Caused Evil
However, this distinction breaks down when we consider such
apparently “natural” evils that (indirectly) result from human activities,
for example:
--birth defects due to toxic exposure in the workplace or community
--chronic conditions like asthma that result from air pollution
--deaths that result from extreme weather patterns (hurricanes, floods,
and droughts) caused by global warming
Two Levels of Evil (*)
• Individual (e.g., limited or selective altruism, contempt or hatred for
others deemed “inferior”: psychopathy, racial prejuduce, sexism,
classism, ageism, homophobia, speciesism…)
• Structural (e.g., institutionalized group advantage/disadvantage: racist,
heterosexist oppression, poverty, class exploitation, “world alienation”
[Hannah Arendt])
 NOTE: Structural evil may result from unintended or even well-intended
actions by individuals, what Jean-Paul Sartre called “counter-finalities,”
e.g. climate change
 (*) Not covered by Taliaferro
Evil as a Problem for Monotheism
1.God is an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving being.
2.If God is all-powerful, then God could create a world without
genuine evil.
3.If God is all-knowing, then God knows that there is genuine
evil in the world.
4.If God is all-loving, then God would want there to be a world
without genuine evil.
5.But there is genuine evil in the world.
6.So, God (at least as defined above) does not exist.
Arguments for and against the Existence of
God based on the Problem of Evil







The primacy of the good
The free will defense
Non-human animal suffering
Comparing possible worlds
The hiddenness of God objection
Absolute wrongs
The ethics of creature and creator
The Hiddenness of God Objection
1. We live in a world in which people persist in disbelieving
God or having cruel views of God.
2. God does not appear to correct these states.
3. An all-good God would never allow a creature to seek God
without finding God in an evident fashion.
4. Therefore, God does not exist.
NOTE: Consider the plot of the 1950 movie, The Next Voice
You Hear: www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRxf9qS5PUk
Darwin on the Problem of Natural Evil
“That there is much suffering in the world no one disputes. Some have
attempted to explain this in reference to man by imagining that it serves for his
moral improvement. But the number of men in the world is as nothing
compared with that of all other sentient beings, and these often suffer greatly
without any moral improvement. A being so powerful and so full of knowledge
as a God who could create the universe, is to our finite minds omnipotent and
omniscient, and it revolts our understanding to suppose that his benevolence
is not unbounded, for what advantage can there be in the suffering of millions
of the lower animals throughout almost endless time? This very old argument
from the existence of suffering against the existence of an intelligent first
cause seems to me a strong one; whereas, as just remarked, the presence of
much suffering agrees well with the view that all organic beings have been
developed through variation and natural selection.”
(The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, edited by Nora Barlow [NY: Norton,
2005 (1958)], p. 75.)
Possible Theories of Life after Death
 Immortal Personal Soul (Socrates/Plato: http://www.iep.utm.edu/phaedo/;
Bhagavad Gita: http://www.bhagavad-gita.us/)
 Quantum Entanglement (Vedanta: http://vedanta.org/; Stuart Hameroff:
http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/)
 Emergent Materialist Self (Epicurus: http://www.epicurus.net/; Christoph
Koch: http://www.klab.caltech.edu/~koch/)
 Soul Fragment (The Buddha: www.accesstoinsight.org; Thich Nhat Hanh:
http://deerparkmonastery.org/, Stephen and Martine Batchelor:
http://www.stephenbatchelor.org/index.php/en/); Douglas Hofstadter:
http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/hofstadter/)
 Bodily Resurrection (Paul of Tarsus:
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Corinthians+15&version=N
IV; N.T. Wright: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fki5wq48fpc)
A Materialist Objection to an Afterlife
Human beings are simply bodies and, therefore, at
death, they cannot survive but will just decompose
like any other body.
Two Possible Theistic Replies
• Substance dualism
• Materialism
The Model Argument for Substance Dualism
1. If A is B, whatever is true of A is true of B.
2. If a person is his body, whatever is true of the person is true
of his body.
3. It is possible that a person can exist without their body and it
is possible that their body can exist without the person.
4. There is something true of a person but not true of their
body.
5. Therefore, a person is not identical with their body.
A Substance Dualist Argument for an Afterlife
1. If a person is not identical with his or her body,
then he or she will survive the death of his or her
body.
2. By the model argument, a person is not identical
with his or her body.
3. Therefore, a person survives the death of his or
her body.
Objections to the Model Argument
• Begs the question
• Only about concepts
• First premise fails in some cases
• Can’t account for the evil of death
Materialist Models for an Afterlife
• Resurrection
• Replica
• Recreation
• Reconstitution
What is the Point of an Afterlife?
• Objection: It would be empty of meaning
• Three replies
The Afterlife as a Miracle
A miracle = “an event brought about by God for a
holy or divine purpose, an event that differs from
God’s general creative activity of sustaining the
world and its laws regulating organic decomposition
and regeneration” (p. 133).
David Hume’s Objection to Miracles
 Although miracles are not impossible, they are
highly improbable.
Theistic Replies to Hume
• Hume begged the question
• Challenge Hume’s use of probability
Good, Evil, and the Afterlife
• The argument from love
• The problem of restitution
The Problem of Religious Diversity:
One Path or Many?
Possible philosophical positions:
• Naturalism/atheism = All religions are false.
• Relativism = All religions are true (with respect to their
cultures or historical periods).
• Exclusivism = One religion is true, and the rest are false.
• Inclusivism/pluralism = All religions potentially contain
truth, but extensive interfaith dialogue is required in order
to develop a more adequate account of religious truth.
NOTE: John Hick was one of the most thoughtful philosophical
advocates for religious inclusion or pluralism.
Religion as a Cross-Cultural Phenomenon
 Religions have “family resemblances” just like sports or
games.
 There are some basic questions that occur across religious
traditions:




What is the self?
What is the best way to live?
Where do we come from?
What happens when we die?
Two Categories of Indian Sacred Texts
 Sruti: “revealed truths”
 Vedas
 Upanishads
 Smrti = “memory”
 Mahabharata
 Bhagavad Gita
 Ramayana
Nine Indian Philosophical Perspectives (Darśanas)
Astika = “affirmers”
Nastika = “non-affirmers”
 Nyaya = the school of logic
 Carvaka = the school of
 Vaisesika = the school of
materialist and hedonist
atheists
 Jaina = the school originating
from the teachings of Mahavira
 Buddhist = the school
originating from the teachings
of the Buddha




atomism
Samkhya = the school of
dualistic discriminations
Yoga = the school of classical
yoga
Mimamsa = the school of Vedic
exegesis
Vedanta = the school based on
the “end of the Vedas” or the
Upanishads)
Ignorance
In Indian philosophy ignorance is a principal source of
suffering because it gives rise to the attachments that lead to
rebirth.
Ontology in Indian Philosophy
In the history of Indian Philosophy there have existed three broad
approaches to ontology (the philosophical study of what exists and
what is ultimately or fundamentally real):
•
•
•
Pluralism (Nyaya/Vaisesika) = “reality is composed of an irreducible
plurality of different kinds of object”
Dualism (Samkhya/Yoga) = “reality is composed of two
fundamentally different substances (matter and mind)”
Monism (Advaita Vedanta) = “despite appearances to the contrary, at
the most fundamental level only one thing is real”
Śankara on Three Levels of Reality
Śankara (788-820? CE) argued for nondualism =
Layer 1: Absolute reality.
Nirguna Brahman, Qualityless Brahman, Brahman/Ātman.
Layer 2: Absolute reality seen through categories imposed by human
thought.
Saguna Brahman, Brahman with qualities. Creator and governor
of the world and a personal god (Īśvara).
Layer 3: Conventional reality.
The material world, which includes “empirical selves.”
Objections to Śankara
By contrast, Rāmānuja (c. 1017-1137) defended only a qualified
nondualism. He denied that Brahman could exist without qualities and
argued that the qualities of Brahman are real in an absolute sense:
According to Rāmānuja, the absolutely real is a trinity of Brahman (as a
personal God), a plurality of selves and the material world. These three
together form a unity in which selves and the material world are portrayed
as Brahman’s body. Brahman is the cause of the existence of selves and
the material world. However, in creating them Brahman has transformed
itself into these things in an absolute sense. Hence, Brahman has
become dependent upon them. Each of these items is thought of as
ultimately real in the sense that none can be reduced to the others. Nor
could any of them exist without each of the others.
Śankara vs. Rāmānuja on Liberation
 Liberation (mōksa) for Śankara is achieved when ātman
realized that it was already united with qualityless
Brahman, whereas Rāmānuja argues that liberation is a
state of freedom from ignorance in which one is aware of
one’s essential nature and of one’s relationship to
Brahman.
 An underlying question: “Would you rather taste sugar or
be sugar?”
Krisha Teaches Arjuna about the Self (Ātman)
“The self is not born
nor does it ever die.
Once it has been, this self will
never cease to be born again.
Unborn, eternal,
continuing from the old,
the self is not killed
when the body is killed….
Just as one throws out old clothes
and then takes on
other, new ones;
so the embodied self
casts out old bodies
as it gets
other, new ones.
Weapons do not
cut the self,
nor does fire
burn it,
nor do waters
drench it,
nor does wind
dry it.
The self is not to be pierced,
nor burned,
nor drenched,
nor dried;
it is eternal,
all-pervading and fixed—
unmoving from the beginning.
The self
is not readily seen;
by sight or mind;
it is said to be formless
and unchanging;
so, when you
have known this,
you should not mourn.”
(Excerpted from The Bhagavad Gita 2.20, 22-25,
translated by Laurie L. Patton [New York: Penguin
Books, 2008, pp. 21-25.)
The Rotation Argument
1. I could have been Spinoza.
2. Ted Stolze could not have been Spinoza.
3. Therefore, “I” is not the same as “Ted Stolze.”
An Objection to the Rotation Argument
 The thought experiment has no intuitive
plausibility.
Atman = Brahman
The Three Jewels of Buddhism
 Buddha = a title not a personal name (“Awakened One”)
especially Siddhartha Gautama (born c. 563 BCE in
Lumbini, modern Nepal; died c. 483 BCE [or 411-400 BCE]
in Kushinagar, modern Uttar Pradesh, India)
 Dharma = teaching about the way things are (from linguistic
root dhr = “to fasten, support, or hold”)
 Sangha = the community of Buddhists, especially monks
and nuns
 For an excellent overview of the Three Jewels (and the
historical development of Buddhism), watch the BBC
documentary Seven Wonders of the Buddhist World:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQRCGBeXiow&feature=youtu.be
Buddhist Ontology: Three Signs/Marks of Existence
 Anitya/Anicca = “impermanence”
 Anatman/Anatta = “not-self”
 Dukkha = “suffering, unsatisfactoriness, distress”
The Four Noble Truths
 Dukkha (= suffering, unsatisfactoriness, distress)
 The Cause of Dukkha (= thirst, craving, attachment,
excessive desire)
 The Cessation of Dukkha (= Nirvana/Nibbana, “blowing
out”)
 The Way leading to the Cessation of Dukkha (= The
Noble Eightfold Path)
The Noble Eightfold Path
 Wisdom



Right Understanding
Right Thought
Right Speech
 Virtue


Right Action
Right Livelihood
 Meditation



Right Effort
Right Mindfulness
Right Concentration
The Buddha’s Theory of Anātta or “Not-Self”
According to the Buddha, every human being is composed
of physical and non-physical components that can be
categorized as belonging to one of the following five
categories or “aggregates”:
• Body
• Feelings
• Perceptions
• Mental Formations/Dispositions/Tendencies
• Consciousness
The Buddha’s Argument for Not-Self
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
If any of the five aggregates (body, feelings, perceptions,
mental formations, or consciousness) were (an aspect of)
a permanent self, then it could be controlled, and so it
would not lead to suffering.
But none of these aggregates can be controlled, and so
each of them does lead to suffering.
Therefore, none of the five aggregates is (an aspect of) a
permanent self.
But every individual human being is comprised of nothing
but a combination of these five aggregates.
Therefore, no individual human being has a permanent
self.
Language and the Sacred:
Three Options in Asian Philosophy
• Retain the identity and difference regarding the
•
•
sacred and stress the difference between
contradictions and contraries (Hinduism).
Philosophy is a tool that can lead us beyond the
world of appearances (Buddhism).
Philosophy should cultivate reverential silence
before the sacred (Taoism).
God and Morality
• Strong divine command theory
• Moderate divine command theory
• Platonic theism
The Strong Divine Command Theory
• X is morally wrong = God prohibits X.
• Y is morally right = God commands Y.
• Z is morally neutral = God neither commands nor
prohibits Z.
The Good Atheist Objection
 “Aren’t there atheists who grasp moral rightness
and wrongness and act accordingly?” (p. 174)
The Moderate Divine Command Theory
X is morally right = an essentially good God
commands X.
Platonic Theism
“The objectivity of morality…is not derived from God, but the
existence of a universe of moral beings is itself purposively
willed by God. Morality and values have a teleological
structure: their very existence and the ultimate function of the
pursuit of values are part of God’s intentional will” (p. 176)
Ethics with or without God
• Bertrand Russell’s naturalistic rejection of cosmic
•
purpose: “from the standpoint of the cosmos,
human and other forms of life count for zero” (pp.
177-78).
By contrast, most theistic religious traditions
“affirm that God works to redeem or save that
which is good in this world and beyond” (p. 178).
Divine Ownership of the Cosmos and Ethics
“God owns the cosmos and, as such, God is within
God’s rights to direct the lives of creatures” (p. 180)
Objections to Divine Ownership
• Aren’t humans are turned into God’s slaves?
• Shouldn’t there exist a separation between
religious and political authorities?
An Ideal Observer Theory of Morality
Ideal observer theory (IOT) = “moral reflection can .
. . be understood as our seeking a God’s eye point
of view” (p. 188).
Objections to IOT
• It is a view from nowhere.
• It wrongly upholds detachment and disinterest.
• Impartiality is not an attainable ideal.
• Can’t adjudicate contrary moral claims.
Ethics and Evidence
• What counts as sufficient evidence when
•
assessing rival philosophical and religious
worldviews?
A thought experiment: The Reckless Ship Owner
(p. 194)
Three Domains of Value in Religious Ethics
• Ritual
• Cross-generational
• Non-violence