Irenaean theodicies

Hi all,

I have emailed all of you the ppt from today's lesson.  I have also emailed the Hume one again so you can see his objections to design arguments again, but this will need to be read alongside the photocopy I gave you on him as that gives you the detail you need.

Please come prepared on Monday with notes on Irenaeus so that you can pick his theodicy to bits and tell me why you think he was wrong!!!

You could also read my previous blog to get more on Irenaeus.  Could you please blog me back to tell me that you have read this and my last blog?

Mrs Rawson.

Irenaeus and John Hick - Theodicy

Irenaeus lived about 200 years before Augustine and had a very different way of reconciling the belief that God is all-powerful and loving with the fact that evil exists.  He did not seek to show that evil is not real (like Augustine).  He decided that God created the world with good and bad deliberately designed in.  He says there has to be evil for us to appreciate good and also that we can't develop as human beings without free moral choice and challenge.

The idea of goodness is comparative and a qualitative judgement.  How do we know what is good unless there are varying degress of goodness?   How can we tell whether someone is kind or brave unless there are varying degrees of these qualities to make that judgement?  And then there must be some things that are not good at all.

How can we be made in the image of God unless we have the ability to make moral choices?

Also Irenaeus says there is a difference between being made in God's image and being in his likeness.  He says we are made in his image but have to grow into his likeness.  In order to grow into his likeness then we must have freedom to choose, to develop and mature; we can only reach our potential by learning to overcome difficulty and by resisting temptation.

If God stepped in and stopped people making the wrong choices or if he prevented the suffering that is a natural consequence or poor decisions or lack or morality then we may as well not be free and there would be no potential to learn from our mistakes.  Irenaeus uses the example of a baby only being able to drink milk and then moving onto pureed food before being able to manage solids.

John Hick says this,
"A world which is to be a person-making environment cannot be a pain free paradise but must contain challenges and dangers, with real possibilities of many kinds of accident and disaster, and the pain and suffering which they bring."  He says the world is a "vale of soul-making."

What do you think?
Does Irenaeus make a better theodicy than Augustine?

Introduction to evil - please respond...

I thought it would be nice to get you to blog on the reading.  When you have completed the reading I set (Vardy and Arliss - 'What is Evil?') then you can respond here to what you have read.  You could use the stimulus questions at the end of the chapter.  For example:

How would you define evil?  We were discussing this at home (try raising the question at dinner with your family and see what they say?) and I thought that evil seems to be ascribed to a person who is responsible for the deaths of a great many innocent people e.g. Hitler is always one of the first people who are named when this question is posed.  Saddam Hussein and Bin Laden are two other examples that people seem to name as 'evil'.  How else can evil be defined?

The second question the chapter raises is, 'Name two actions and two people whom you would consider evil and explain why.'  I have touched on this above.  One evil action could be being responsible for the deaths of a great number (1000s let's say) of innocent people.  How do you define 'innocent' in this scenario?  Who is innocent?  How do you persuade others to help you in your aim to wipe out a people group or destroy the lives of 1000s of other people, be they the same culture and nationality as you or belonging to another nation?

One of questions at the end of the chapter asks you to think of anything you may have done that you may describe as evil!!  I cannot think of anything I have done that I would say is 'evil'.  But then I would say that wouldn't I?!!  I may have committed some of acts described on page 19 of the reading, but are they evil?

Does evil lie in intent, in motivation?  As the chapter says, Hitler probably wouldn't have thought that he was evil or that what he was doing was evil.  He thought his motivation was right.  We consider him evil.  If he had done everything he did but not built the concentration camps or try to wipe out the Jews (and gypsies, gay people and those with mental health issues)  would we still call him evil?

Just some thoughts.
What are your thoughts on this?

Tennant and Swinburne

Hi you lot,

CHECK YOUR EMAILS!!!!!  And don't forget to do the reading on evil for Monday (and bring it with you too).  The exam question I set today is for Tuesday.

But also as I am quite enjoying this blogging lark, I'll put more info here too.

Tennant was the first to coing the phrase "anthropic principle" and also the first to put forward a design argument which included evolution and natural selection.  He said evolution is consistent with design arguments because evolution seems to have a purpose. •Creatures do not randomly evolve this way and that.  Progress is made all the time, life is ever more complex, ever more intelligent and has had an increasing amount of moral awareness. •Therefore evidence which supports evolution is evidence to support belief in God.  If something is moving towards a goal there must be a ‘guiding hand’ behind it.

Go back to my first blog and have a look at the website that shows you examples of the anthropic principle.

Swinburne agrees with Tennant and says scientific discoveries provide good evidence for believing there is a God. •We need to explain why the fundamental laws of nature operate with such regularity.  Such regularity in the laws of Physics can’t be a coincidence.  It is simpler and more rational to believe in a divine intelligence. Swinburne also tried to categorise religious experiences:

•He totally supports Paley and he also agrees with Tennant’s Aesthetic Design Argument.

•The main force of his argument is:

1 – it is good scientific practise to look for the most simple explanation

2 – the alternative explanations offered to explain why there is order in the universe are more complicated than belief in God

3 – it requires a greater leap of faith to believe the alternatives as it does to believe in God.

Swinburne formulated five categories into which all religious experiences fall:

• Public - a believer 'sees God's hand at work', whereas other explanations are cited (e.g., looking at a beautiful sunset).
• Public - an unusual event that breaches natural law (e.g., walking on water).
• Private - describable using normal language (e.g., Jacob's vision of a ladder).
• Private - indescribable using normal language, usually a mystical experience (e.g., "White did not cease to be white, nor black cease to be black, but black became white and white became black.").
• Private - a non-specific, general feeling of God working in one's life.

Swinburne also coined two principles for the assessment of religious experiences:

• Principle of Credulity - with the absence of any reason to disbelieve it, one should accept what appears to be true (e.g., if one sees someone walking on water, one should believe that it is occurring)
• Principle of Testimony - with the absence of any reason to disbelieve them, one should accept that eye-witnesses or believers are telling the truth when they testify about religious experiences.

Criticising Dawkins

Hi Year 12,

I have made some notes on Libby Ahluwalia, which is the reading I gave you to do for this Friday.  Here is what she says on Dawkins and how a critic may respond to his points.

Criticising Dawkins,

Dawkins assumes the universe’s existence as a brute fact.  Can you remember what Hume said when he criticised design arguments?  Can you remember his scales argument?

He uses the example of a pair of scales.  One end we can see has a weight (kilogram maybe) on it.  The other end is out of sight but has something on the end that is much heavier.  We have no idea what is on the other end or by how much more it weighs.  It is hidden from us.  The cause of the world is hidden from us in the same way.  We also do not know if the God who created the world (if he did) is good, clever, stupid etc.  We do not know if he made only one world, if our world is just a practise world or a copy of another god’s world!

Hume also says that there are many possibilities as to why this world is as it is, we just do not know and cannot prove that there is an intelligent designing mind behind it.  Amongst the possibilities are the ideas that there may be more than one god or goddess behind the apparent design of this world, this universe may be a practise run for a more perfect universe elsewhere, it may have been designed by a team of gods who then died or left and there are many other possibilities too.

Likewise one may say that Dawkins is assuming that natural selection and evolution are the reason this world is as it is.  He may be right.  Even if he is right does that mean we can disregard the idea of God?  Isn’t it an assumption to say this means there is no designing intelligence behind the universe?

Dawkins criticises religion for making assumptions about God, for making blind leaps of faith, but isn’t he doing the same thing?  After all no-one has proved God isn’t there.

Dawkins is using an inductive argument (this means his conclusions are only probabilities and not proven).  He has said that science has shown that chance is the cause of the universe, but this is not incontrovertible – randomness cannot be tested – it is impossible to prove it all happened by chance.

Dawkins says scientific theories can be tested, he says “Airplanes built by scientific principles work”.  He says we can’t test religious theories.  But the wats in which life began can’t be tested, we have to guess through inductive reasoning.  Evidence may be found to support our ideas, but it cannot do any more than show probability.

Dawkins wants to object to religion on the grounds that it put limitations onto science.  But equally his he should not allow science to dictate the usefulness of religion.

Lastly Dawkins is criticising Paley’s point of view and which is over 200 years old.  If Christians got together and began criticising scientific approaches from 200 years ago, they would easily find fault with them too.

Year 12 Philosophy Blog

Hi Lizzie, Bethany, Jess, Charlotte, Jess and Ellen,

This term I will be putting reminders for you on the Cooper School website blog. If I can work out how (!) I may put my ppts from class here as well as emailing them to you. I will also put links to good websites and notes that I make on it.

To start you off I have included a link that will give you more information about the Anthropic Principle.  We will discuss this next time.

Check your emails because I have sent you the ppt from today.

Hurrah!!!
Mrs Rawson.

http://www.gotquestions.org/anthropic-principle.html