Sign up to get updates from us
I am going to present a basic fact. There is ZERO, indisputable proof that there is no God. Atheists are out of their minds when they say this. Why do I say “out of their minds?” Because they have to get outside the realm of rational thinking to get there. They don’t know enough to conclusively say it…and they know it.
But let's examine some facts and begin to answer some question about the existence of God.
Let’s start with “What is philosophy?” In a nutshell—the search for wisdom and knowledge and the rules that establish what is considered valid truth, wisdom, and knowledge. The rules of logic and philosophy transcend, in most cases, religious bias.
Having looked at the definitions and characteristics of religion what, then, is the “philosophy of religion?”
**The seeker of wisdom and knowledge wants to know whether religious beliefs—whatever system asserts them--are true and whether they can be known to be true or reasonably believed to be true.
Truth and Knowledge
What is Truth?:
Foundationalism: theory of knowledge that affirms the need for certain foundational principles as the basis for all thought. They are known as the “First Principles,” and they assert that no knowledge is possible without first establishing ground rules for how knowledge is evaluated. There are 12 of these, but we will be concerning ourselves, for this class, with 3:
Correspondence Theory of Truth (Goes back to Plato): truth is what corresponds to reality.
In this, it makes no difference how the individual views the nature of reality. How can we know truth? The laws of logic tell us we ought to reason in order to conform our thoughts to how things really are (i.e. a triangle has three sides)
Summary: If a thing corresponds to reality and knowledge (facts about the world), it is a justified belief. We can, in most cases, call it “truth.” Justified belief is based on sound premises. Genuine knowledge is based on truths which are known with absolute certainty.
Mention “reasonable doubt” versus “imaginable doubt.” It serves no purpose to “imagine” outside what our reality and what we know to be true. An example is the “the Earth is at least 5 billion years old.” I think they’ve even increased that to 7.5 billion years now. What’s the difference between the two: reasonable doubt is questioning the validity of what’s observable, and imaginable doubt is creating an objection out of nothing that is based on nothing but your imagination—I think of the scene in Revenge of the Nerds where Orge, trying to sound smart says, “What is C-A-T really spelled dog?” That’s an imaginable doubt, not a reasonable one.
How do we know what we know? How do we become in the “know?”
Couple of philosophical terms apply here:
Philosophy of religion aims for a neutral stance…leaning more on the “a posteriori” approach. But the argument is also made that an “a priori” approach is also necessary.
These conflicting approaches put right into the heart of the “faith and reason” question: Are faith and reason hostile to one another? Can the co-exist? Can they be allies?
Let’s talk about faith and reason. Two basic terms are relevant for the discussion:
“Religious” neutrality: Can thinking about religion be neutral? Is it even desirable? Theologians would argue against it. They would argue that a person is either submissive to God/Divine or a rebel against God/Divine. A philosopher might say, “You cannot believe in what you cannot prove” and no Divine entity expects me to accept anything on faith alone.
Fideism:
Note: Defends itself by saying, “You’re just an unbeliever.” Doesn’t lend much opportunity for discussion. Common ground is difficult to find here.
Note: By holding strictly to this view, an opportunity to show the merits of one’s belief system is lost.
Neutralism: The opposite pole of fideism. The insistence that examination of religious matters MUST be presuppositionless. We must set aside our biases and religious commitments and examine all things without assumptions. Knowledge requires this in many cases. We must be open to truth, not dogmatism masquerading as truth.
Is that possible?
I would offer that in our increasingly pluralistic culture, that it’s impossible NOT to critically reflect on where one should place one’s trust (Refer to survey question). It seems wrong-headed to conclude at the outset of the discussion that human thinking about God, the divine, or faith in a religious system is worthless, especially if it governs your moral convictions/decisions and may even have eternal significance.
Commentary: Even Socrates found value in recognizing what he did not know. Some questions seem applicable here:
Neither fideism or neutralism meets the need totally. Fideism proceeds rational reflection. And neutralism places impossible demands on rational reflection.
Both viewpoints offer something useful, however. How can we combine them? Perhaps we rethink what it means to be reasonable. Maybe we need to see “reason” as a willingness to test one’s commitments. And maybe we need to see that our commitments are always carry some pre-conditioning.
Philosophy of religion is a critical reflection on religious questions and beliefs. It may engaged in by thinkers who are not religious at all. Some of the greatest philosophers have been religious thinkers and some of the greatest contributors of religious thought have come from philosophers who were not religious at all.
They have both engaged in the study of nature, kinds, and objects of religious belief. What is the relationship between faith & reason? What is religion? Can God or the divine be known by direct experience? Can the existence of evil be reconciled with belief in a perfect personal God or gods? Do religious terms have a special meaning? Are rational arguments for the existence of God or the divine sound? The religions we will study have all made an attempt—and continue to attempt—to find the answers to these questions.
Transcript
00:00:00 Speaker 1
Well hello my friends, and welcome to this episode of the Chaplains Chair. Now, we've been talking about the existence of God and how you can know him and what he's given us to know him in Revelation, whether it's nature, the word of God, miracles, prophecy, the Bible, and personal experience on our own or the individuals in the Bible record.
00:00:19 Speaker 1
In this episode, we're going to be moving to the existence of God. Someone else, facts about his existence, and when I say facts I mean facts. So I'm going to present a basic fact.
00:00:29 Speaker 1
There is 0 indisputable proof that there is no God.
00:00:34 Speaker 1
Atheists, I think out of their minds when they say this and why do I say out of their minds? Because they have to get outside the realm of rational thinking to get there. I think we'll we'll show that in this podcast and probably the next one. They don't know enough really to conclusively say it and they know it.
00:00:51 Speaker 1
Your Psalm 14 one says the fool hath said in his.
00:00:55 Speaker 1
Heart there is no God.
00:00:58 Speaker 1
I think that's the only scripture I'm going to reference today, but why is he a fool?
00:01:03 Speaker 1
Now Thomas Chalmers, a Scottish Presbyterian minister, wrote this in the 1800s, during a time when Enlightenment thinking was influential. A man was seeking a scientific explanation for this thing called the deity, or all powerful God.
00:01:17 Speaker 1
Pete said before we can positively assert that there was no God, he must presumptuously assume for himself the wisdom and omnipotence of God, and I would inject. Here I would add that omniscience and omnipresence are necessary.
00:01:31 Speaker 1
But he goes on to say he must explore the entire Circuit of the universe to be sure that no God is there. He must have interrogated all the generations of mankind and all the hierarchies of heaven to be certain that they had never.
00:01:43 Speaker 1
Heard of a God?
00:01:45 Speaker 1
You know, there's a an atheist group out there who organized a a religion based on what they call the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and they postulate that I can no more argue the non existence of the Flying Spaghetti monster than they can argue for the non existence of God based on what Chambers said.
00:02:03 Speaker 1
And how can I know that it isn't the flying Spaghetti Monster who is God and not the biblical God? Kind of ridiculous on its face. But you know, let's flesh out some facts. Let's.
00:02:13 Speaker 1
Let's go with this.
00:02:15 Speaker 1
Mankind has not not even close, grown to reach that standard of evaluation of our universe that Chalmers was talking about all the efforts of space exploration have not gotten us beyond the moon.
00:02:29 Speaker 1
Telescopes, listening devices we've sent into space have only discovered one thing. How much we don't know about the universe. The more we look, the more we discover things we didn't know. And to, you know, to declare that there is no God simply because you haven't found one.
00:02:45 Speaker 1
Or to assert a ridiculous theory like the Flying Spaghetti Monster is a choice. It's not a conclusion based on real evidence or examination.
00:02:54 Speaker 1
Now I'm going to say, as an aside, I think that it's the mark of a true, honest thinker. If he truly cares about learning and knowing truth, someone that can honestly say there's so much, I don't know, I cannot really say conclusively. What I do know for sure. We can act to make decisions and and oftentimes we have to in in life based on what we know, hoping and expecting.
00:03:15 Speaker 1
That we are making wise decisions that that's a part of life, right? So, but to assert emphatically, dogmatically, that there is no God.
00:03:23 Speaker 1
Based on in.
00:03:24 Speaker 1
Immeasurably small amount of knowledge given the vastness of the universe and exploration, is as the Bible says, God fools.
00:03:34 Speaker 1
Now we spend a lot of time in our society taking a position based on emotion or preference and seeking out only the knowledge that reinforces that position.
00:03:44 Speaker 1
You can believe anything today and I assure you that if you go onto social media you will find a circle of people that agree with you and you can get absorbed into that group and be comfortable in what you think, regardless of how ignorant it may be, regardless of how wrong it may be, there's going to be a group of people out there that agree with you and if you stay only within that group of people, you're never going to.
00:04:04 Speaker 1
You're never going to learn the truth.
00:04:06 Speaker 1
This this has no basis of interest. In truth, is only interest in proving to oneself that you're right, and I use proving in air quotes and right in air quotes.
00:04:17 Speaker 1
That doesn't change truth, regardless of how many people believe something that's wrong.
00:04:22 Speaker 1
Everybody can believe one thing that's wrong and one person can believe what it's it's not. The truth is not a democracy. The truth is truth.
00:04:30 Speaker 1
This doesn't change truth. It only makes someone feel.
00:04:32 Speaker 1
Better about being wrong.
00:04:34 Speaker 1
And that also is a truth. So here's the honest question in the search for honest truth.
00:04:40 Speaker 1
Is God the God of?
00:04:41 Speaker 1
The Bible? True.
00:04:43 Speaker 1
Now I'm going to add an aside observation.
00:04:48 Speaker 1
God is not concerned about you asking God is not concerned about what you might find when you ask one's questions. Live an honest heart, seeking honest answers so that you might embrace honest truth. That also is a truth you will find that in the biblical.
00:05:03 Speaker 1
You know, CS Lewis, the great literary and and probably one of the most influential Christian apologists of the 20th century, identified himself as the most dejected and reluctant convert.
00:05:15 Speaker 1
To Christianity.
00:05:16 Speaker 1
Then he once wrote.
00:05:18 Speaker 1
I believe in no religion is absolutely no proof for any of them, and from a philosophical standpoint, Christianity is not even the best.
00:05:26 Speaker 1
So what happened?
00:05:28 Speaker 1
Lewis and Avid Reader read, he reasoned. He examined the evidence.
00:05:34 Speaker 1
And abided by the outcome.
00:05:36 Speaker 1
So let's do that.
00:05:38 Speaker 1
So let's get into this and.
00:05:40 Speaker 1
I'm going to point out.
00:05:41 Speaker 1
Facts as we move forward here.
00:05:44 Speaker 1
First religion. Yes, there are many and most claim to deity of.
00:05:49 Speaker 1
Some kind or a?
00:05:51 Speaker 1
You know, demonized human founder of Allah, Confucius, Buddha, Zeus, Vishnu, countless others and a basic study of world religions is in the plans for a future podcast. But I don't have time to get into all of that today.
00:06:04 Speaker 1
Just on the surface here.
00:06:05 Speaker 1
Are they all the same?
00:06:08 Speaker 1
Are they all equal? Are all belief systems created equal?
00:06:14 Speaker 1
Certainly denial of any belief system.
00:06:18 Speaker 1
Requires applying what CHUM has said, and we've already admitted that mankind hasn't done that.
00:06:24 Speaker 1
But we can give a fair examination and place what we find on the scales of justice.
00:06:29 Speaker 1
And abide by the outcome. We can do that and we should do that.
00:06:34 Speaker 1
You know, I taught comparative religions.
00:06:36 Speaker 1
At a small private college, and when I opened the class that semester.
00:06:40 Speaker 1
I can see it to the class that existence of other faith traditions was in fact true. I conceded that many people believe differently about faith and religion, and everyone who embraced a certain faith tradition believed they were right, or at the very least they weren't wrong. But it challenged the.
00:06:57 Speaker 1
Class to a question.
00:06:59 Speaker 1
How can two diametrically opposed systems both be right?
00:07:06 Speaker 1
Now the foundation of truth is required to examine this fairly, and it requires a little bit of knowledge about basic logic and philosophy, and they used to teach this in schools, not so much anymore. Truth is separate from emotions. That's a fact, and they should be. Truth is truth and remains so, even if it makes you mad.
00:07:27 Speaker 1
Hurts your feelings or forces you to admit that.
00:07:30 Speaker 1
You were wrong about something.
00:07:33 Speaker 1
Religions go back many millennia. The question must be asked what caused religion?
00:07:38 Speaker 1
How was the idea of any religion conceived? Was it man himself? Was it divine revelation to man? Was it scientific inquiry and observation?
00:07:47 Speaker 1
When did the concept of religion originate? What caused man to consider it? To codify it, even to write it down?
00:07:53 Speaker 1
To adhere to it.
00:07:55 Speaker 1
Well, 4 arguments have been offered in history and I'm just going to go over these really quick. The first one is what they call the column cosmological argument, which is.
00:08:05 Speaker 1
First cause things in existence, require a cause, and that causes the divine. The 2nd is the teleological argument. There is design in the universe and it implies a designer. We look at William Paley. He talked about the watchmaker. If you came across the watch lying on the ground and you picked it up, you would naturally assume that something intelligent had created it.
00:08:25 Speaker 1
There is the ontological argument which basically says, because we can conceive a perfect divine in our minds, it must exist.
00:08:33 Speaker 1
And there's the moral argument. There's a sense of morality in our world.
00:08:38 Speaker 1
And that must come from a standard.
00:08:40 Speaker 1
It had to come from somewhere. We we had to have gotten that from some sort of measuring stick. Now these arguments are going to be given some more scrutiny and explanation in the next podcast or the next two, perhaps. But this general definition will suffice for today. And and I would add, a fifth, the chance argument of evolutionary theory. But that's also for later. So where does our examination?
00:09:02 Speaker 1
Well, let's start with epistemology.
00:09:05 Speaker 1
Now that's the discipline that deals with the theory of knowledge, and it also deals with test for truth. It concerns itself with certainty and with doubt. How do we start this and apply it to the?
00:09:15 Speaker 1
Study of religion well.
00:09:17 Speaker 1
Let's start with what is philosophy. In a nutshell, philosophy is the search for wisdom and knowledge and the rules that establish what is considered valid.
00:09:26 Speaker 1
Truth, wisdom and knowledge and the rules of logic and philosophy transcend in most cases, if applied properly, religious bias.
00:09:36 Speaker 1
Look at some of the definitions here. Then let's look at what is the philosophy of religion.
00:09:42 Speaker 1
Well, let's define that philosophy of religion is defined as the attempt to think hard and deeply and to search for the truth, wisdom, and knowledge about such fundamental questions as is there a God? Is there a divine why is there suffering in the world? What happens when we die? Why do I exist? What's the meaning of life in addition to many other questions?
00:10:03 Speaker 1
Concerning the human condition and the truth claims made by religious systems.
00:10:08 Speaker 1
Now the seeker of wisdom and knowledge wants to know whether religious beliefs, whatever system is asserting it wants to know if they're true, and whether they can be known to be true or reasonably believed to be true.
00:10:22 Speaker 1
So that's going to take us to truth and knowledge we have to, we have to define well what is truth. And we heard pilots say that to Jesus in the gospel truth. What is truth?
00:10:32 Speaker 1
OK, so let's let's start with foundationalism.
00:10:35 Speaker 1
And I'm going to post these notes so you can reference these if you'd like. They're going to be on the website, though, so if you want to get the notes, you're gonna have to go to www.thechaplainschair.com and we'll be under this episode. But let's move on to the definition of foundationalism, which.
00:10:50 Speaker 1
Theory of knowledge that affirms the need for certain foundational principles as the basis for all thought.
00:10:57 Speaker 1
They're known as first principles.
00:11:00 Speaker 1
And they assert there's no knowledge no knowledge is possible without first establishing ground rules for how knowledge is evaluated.
00:11:07 Speaker 1
00:11:24 Speaker 1
Be and you know what happens.
00:11:26 Speaker 1
The definition in the head of the person asking the question.
00:11:30 Speaker 1
And the meaning of what he implies in the question is different from the person leading the question.
00:11:36 Speaker 1
So in in all political debate, all religious debate, all theological debate, when somebody asks you a question, I often sit back and.
00:11:43 Speaker 1
Say well, what what?
00:11:44 Speaker 1
Do you mean by and whatever that word happens to be? This happened to me last week.
00:11:50 Speaker 1
One guy said.
00:11:52 Speaker 1
How? How? How? How do I if if I believe that Jesus is is the son of God and died for my sins and I haven't received?
00:12:01 Speaker 1
What does that mean?
00:12:03 Speaker 1
And so I had to stop for a second, I said to him, like, well, let's let's stop it there for a second. What do you?
00:12:07 Speaker 1
Mean by you haven't received him? What do you mean by that?
00:12:10 Speaker 1
To get really to the foundation of this question. So when we look at foundationalism, there has to be some ground rules.
00:12:17 Speaker 1
For how knowledge is evaluated now, there's twelve of these, but I'm going to be concerning ourselves for this podcast with three, and the first one is the law of identity. This basic logic here.
00:12:28 Speaker 1
Law of identity states that a thing or a statement is identical with itself. As an example, I am Chaplain 10 means I am in fact Chaplain Tim.
00:12:38 Speaker 1
That's the law of identity. The law of non contradiction is the second one, and this is the principle that states if something, it's is true.
00:12:46 Speaker 1
Its contradiction cannot also be true. In other words, 2 + 2 = 4 and 2 + 2 = 5. They cannot both be true.
00:12:57 Speaker 1
They contradict each other. They can't both be true.
00:13:01 Speaker 1
The law of the excluded middle kind of traces back to Socrates, which states that I must be one or the other. Every statement whatsoever must be either true or false. Either I am chaplain to him.
00:13:14 Speaker 1
Or not chap on him. I cannot be chaplain to him and not chaplain him at the same time.
00:13:22 Speaker 1
One of those has to be one or the other.
00:13:26 Speaker 1
So moving from all of that so far, let's go to the correspondence theory of truth. Well, this goes back to Plato and it's very, very simple definition. Truth is, what corresponds to reality.
00:13:37 Speaker 1
Not a perception of reality. What is actually real?
00:13:41 Speaker 1
And so in this it makes no difference how the individual views, the nature of reality, how how can we know truth or the laws of logic. Tell us we ought to use reason in order to conform our thoughts to how things really are, like a triangle has three sides.
00:13:56 Speaker 1
Water is wet.
00:13:58 Speaker 1
I know those are simple examples, but I think you get where I'm trying to go well, so what's knowledge? It's the definition of knowledge and knowledge is simply defined as justified belief.
00:14:09 Speaker 1
How do we know if a statement corresponds to reality? Well, there's various ways to examine that.
00:14:15 Speaker 1
First one is facts.
00:14:18 Speaker 1
A set of circumstances in the world, a fact cannot be either true or false. It simply is because that's the way the world is.
00:14:26 Speaker 1
Or the definition of belief. A belief is an opinion about those circumstances. A belief is capable of being both true or false because it may not accurately describe the world.
00:14:37 Speaker 1
I might believe in my heart that if I step off a tall building that gravity is not going to suck me down to the ground, but that's not based on knowledge of fact. That's not that does not conform to the correspondence theory of truth. Gravity exists. We all know this, and whether I believe gravity is there or not doesn't matter.
00:14:54 Speaker 1
I have a belief that does not correspond to reality. So to summarize quickly.
00:14:59 Speaker 1
If the thing corresponds to reality and knowledge, IE facts about the world, it's what we call a justified belief, and we can in most cases call it truth.
00:15:09 Speaker 1
Because justified belief is based on sound premises, we have genuine knowledge and genuine knowledge is based on truths which are known with absolute certainty, something like gravy.
00:15:21 Speaker 1
I want to address reasonable doubt versus imaginable doubt and I will use the Flying Spaghetti Monster aforementioned example.
00:15:32 Speaker 1
Let me put it this way. It serves no purpose to imagine.
00:15:36 Speaker 1
Outside what? Our reality. Excuse me. It serves no purpose to imagine outside what our reality is and what we.
00:15:43 Speaker 1
Know to be true.
00:15:45 Speaker 1
An example is that the assertion on the earth is at least 5 billion years old.
00:15:50 Speaker 1
And I think they've even increased that to to 7 1/2 billion years now.
00:15:54 Speaker 1
You know that's that's a guess at best. But you know, what's the difference between the two? Reasonable doubt is questioning the validity of what's observable.
00:16:03 Speaker 1
Things that you can see, you see this in a courtroom. Here's the evidence when we think the evidence suggests thus, and the defense can say, well, you know, there's that. And there's this other stuff. And, you know, we can't really be sure based on what they presented in comparison to what I presented that such a case is true is there is.
00:16:21 Speaker 1
There reasonable belt.
00:16:23 Speaker 1
When we talk about.
00:16:24 Speaker 1
The difference between.
00:16:27 Speaker 1
Reasonable doubt and imaginable doubt. Reasonable doubt is to question the validity of what's observable and imaginable. Doubt is creating an objection out of nothing that is based on nothing but your imagination. I think the scene in the movie Revenge of the Nerds Way back in the 80s. Yes, I'm.
00:16:43 Speaker 1
Dating myself where Ogre.
00:16:45 Speaker 1
Trying to sound.
00:16:47 Speaker 1
Smart and intellectual around all these smart nerds comes out and says what if CAT?
00:16:54 Speaker 1
Really spelled dog.
00:16:58 Speaker 1
That's an example of imaginable doubt, not a reasonable one. So when we talk about questions of religion.
00:17:05 Speaker 1
I hear a.
00:17:05 Speaker 1
Lot of objections that come from imaginable doubt.
00:17:09 Speaker 1
Now, there are serious questions and valid questions about the Christian faith and the apologetics of the Christian faith. I think they're reasonable. I think they can be answered these ridiculous imaginable doubt.
00:17:20 Speaker 1
Are, you know people are just trying to find a reason to argue with you or or to win the argument. And I don't. I don't find engaging those particularly fruitful. But just so you know, the difference between a reasonable doubt and an imaginable doubt when you're looking at doubts and you're examining the faith for yourself, are you imagining a doubt, or is it a? Is it a reasonable one?
00:17:39 Speaker 1
OK.
00:17:40 Speaker 1
So how do we know what we know?
00:17:44 Speaker 1
And how do we become?
00:17:45 Speaker 1
In the know.
00:17:47 Speaker 1
How do we know what we know and how can we go to know those things that we want to know?
00:17:54 Speaker 1
There's a couple of philosophical terms to apply here, too. The first one is a priori, which is deductive logic which is knowledge or justification that's independent of your experience. OK. And we compare that with a posterior E inductive logic, which is knowledge or justification dependent on experience.
00:18:14 Speaker 1
Or empirical evidence, science or personal knowledge, as an example.
00:18:19 Speaker 1
Fire was hot.
00:18:23 Speaker 1
If I'm looking at that knowledge from independent experience, it's like, oh, my friend stuck his hand in it and got burned.
00:18:29 Speaker 1
I know fire is hot, but I don't have direct personal experience of that.
00:18:34 Speaker 1
If I stuck up my fire, excuse me. My hand on the fire myself, that would be different now. Philosophy of religion aims for a a neutral stance, and it leans more on the a posteriori approach.
00:18:46 Speaker 1
But the argument is also made that a priori is also necessary, that there are things in religion you are you are going to know, independent of your experience. And there are going to be things you're going to know because of your experience or what you observed with empirical evidence.
00:19:01 Speaker 1
These conflicting approaches put us right into the heart of the faith and reason.
00:19:06 Speaker 1
Question our faith.
00:19:07 Speaker 1
And reason hostile to one another. Can they coexist?
00:19:10 Speaker 1
And can they be allies? Well, that's a question you have to think about, but let's talk about faith and reason for a second. Two basic terms are relevant for the purpose of this discussion and the first one is the word feudalism.
00:19:22 Speaker 1
It's an epistemological theory.
00:19:25 Speaker 1
Epistemological theories. The study of nature, knowledge, justification, and the rationality of belief. That's what that means. But it says that faith is independent of reason, because faith and reason are hostile to each other.
00:19:37 Speaker 1
That's the definition. Faith is necessary for an individual to understand the divine. There's also neutralism, which says the insistence that thinking about religious matters must be without presuppositions.
00:19:50 Speaker 1
That's things assumed beforehand at the beginning of the argument. In this case, in implicit presumption that the divine exists, for example.
00:20:00 Speaker 1
Now, religious neutrality can thinking about religion be neutral? Is that even a desirable position? No. Theologians would argue against that. They would argue that a person is either submissive to God and the divine or rebel against God and the divine. A philosopher might say you cannot believe in what you cannot prove.
00:20:20 Speaker 1
And no divine entity expects me to accept anything on faith alone. So if we look at now, today is I'm a little bit closer. It claims that faith is the precondition for any correct thinking about.
00:20:34 Speaker 1
And it defends itself by saying you're just an unbeliever. Well, that doesn't lend much opportunity for discussion, and common ground is really, really difficult to find in that position.
00:20:46 Speaker 1
And by strictly holding to this view an opportunity to show merits in your belief system, if they exist, is lost. So let's compare that with Neutralism, which is the opposite pole. I think of of feudalism, which is the insistence that examination of religious matters must be presupposition less. OK, you're supposed to take a blank slate.
00:21:07 Speaker 1
Must set aside our biases and our commitments to religion and dogma, etc, and examine all things without any assumptions or presumptions.
00:21:17 Speaker 1
Knowledge requires this in many cases, so we have to be open to truth, not dogmatism, masquerading as truth. And there's a difference is that even possible?
00:21:27 Speaker 1
Is the natural. Excuse me? Is the neutralist position right in claiming that reason must abandon all prior assumptions? That's a question we have to ask. And what if those assumptions are based on truth? And I would point you back to the discussion that we just had on justified belief.
00:21:43 Speaker 1
Now I would offer that in our increasingly pluralistic culture that it's not that it's impossible not to critically reflect on where one should place.
00:21:55 Speaker 1
One's trust. What deity? What belief system? Then? I think it seems we're all headed to conclude at the outset of the discussion that human thinking about God, the divine, or faith in a religious system is worthless, especially if it governs your moral convictions and decisions, and and may even have eternal significance.
00:22:16 Speaker 1
They even Socrates, found value in recognizing what he did not know.
00:22:22 Speaker 1
And some questions seem applicable here. We'll we'll we'll look at some of these. Does the divine or God or cosmic influence even want you to reflect about religious truth?
00:22:33 Speaker 1
The second one, if you don't subscribe to anything at all, is religious truth even worth thinking about?
00:22:39 Speaker 1
And is it fair to critically evaluate claims of religion to challenge them, even to refute them?
00:22:45 Speaker 1
To expose the move if as false, if that's applicable. If they don't correspond to truth, let's look at some of the the well known culturally is. Look at the Branch Davidians and David Koresh, and that one the Peoples Temple and Jim Jones. They drank the kool-aid in in Guam.
00:23:00 Speaker 1
Should those people have been challenged, is it fair to criticize what they affirmed and asserted about their faith position now either for theism or neutralism meets that need totally and and federalism proceeds rational reflection really and neutralism places impossible demands on rational reflection in some cases.
00:23:20 Speaker 1
I think both viewpoints, though, offer something useful, but how can we combine them? Perhaps we rethink what it means to be reasonable. Maybe we need to see reason as a willingness to test one's commitments.
00:23:31 Speaker 1
And maybe we need to see that our commitments are always carrying some sort of preconditioning philosophy of religion is a critical reflection on religious questions and beliefs. And this all of this stuff is relevant to examining this whole question. Can I know God?
00:23:49 Speaker 1
We can engage in this.
00:23:51 Speaker 1
And it may be engaged in by thinkers who aren't religious at all, or some of the greatest philosophers have been religious thinkers, and some of the greatest contributors of.
00:23:58 Speaker 1
Religious thought have come from philosophers who are not.
00:24:01 Speaker 1
Religious at all.
00:24:02 Speaker 1
And they both.
00:24:03 Speaker 1
Engaged in the study of nature kinds and objects of religious belief. What's the relationship between faith and reason? What is religion? Can God or the divine be known by direct experience?
00:24:13 Speaker 1
Can the existence of evil be reconciled with belief in a personal God or gods?
00:24:18 Speaker 1
Do religious terms have special meaning or rational arguments for the existence of God or the divine? Are they sound?
00:24:25 Speaker 1
We're going to.
00:24:25 Speaker 1
Go through a lot of these questions as we go through this study. Can I know God and some of?
00:24:30 Speaker 1
The podcasts that come after that.
00:24:33 Speaker 1
For your part, however, I think it's more than simply asking the questions. It's also to critically evaluate the answers given by a particular worldview, and I think it's.
00:24:43 Speaker 1
Critical reflection on religious beliefs and in that sense the philosopher of religion is different than the theologian, but theologian largely examines religious beliefs from within, and the philosopher of religion examines them from without. This is the whole faith versus reason.
00:25:01 Speaker 1
And this is the foundation we need to take into our examination of the existence of God in in in the coming weeks. In fact, maybe even the coming months in our, you know, examination of the existence of God and and. And I'm going to say God is not afraid of where this examination will take you.
00:25:18 Speaker 1
00:25:30 Speaker 1
And we're going to continue with it next time. So this is laying a foundation of philosophical and, you know, thought and reason as we take some of these, these building bricks have knowledge if you will into the the question that's going to be coming up which is the existence of God and some of the facts around that.
00:25:48 Speaker 1
So I hope you join me for those. And this is Chaplain Tim signing off today. I want to thank you for stopping by. You. Have a great day. And the Lord bless you.
