Midterm Prompt

Demea argues for the position of religious Orthodoxy, and insists that we cannot possibly come to know the nature of God through reason. He believes, in fact, that we cannot ever know the nature of God at all because God’s nature is inherently beyond the capacity of human comprehension.

Upon listening to this debate, I noticed that both of you had some interesting points. There are times where I believe in this mystical supernatural being called God, then there’s time where I question him and my faith. According to the Bible: God is glorious, infinite, without beginning or end or any limitation at all, he is unconditional love. He is self-existent, he is consistent and unchanging. Over the years people have formed countless opinions on the existence of God due to religion or other cultural factors. However, religion is such a controversial and broad topic which cannot prove nor disprove the existence of God.

After reading David Hume’s thoughts, I believe that religion is something humans created to have a sense of higher power and order. many people use religion as guidance or an excuse for their behavior in difficult situations. To some it’s less difficult to live with some sort of explanation, even one that may be incorrect, than it is to live with complete ignorance. We, as humans, do not like being in the unknown. In a way, it torments us and puts us through suffering because we need a reason for why things happen. So, we created reasoning, for these unknowns, by establishing a God.

Many of us get our religion primarily from our parents and secondarily from our culture. It’s common for people to let their religion lapse; this means that they no longer follow traditional practices, but they often continue to use the religion as a basis for their beliefs about everything going on in the world. Across all forms of religion, there are many problems which conflict with reason. One of which, is the fact that all religions are mutually exclusive. In the new testament, this text uses fear to get followers to believe that they face damnation to hell if not salvaged by their lord Jesus Christ. However, this is in conflict with all the other “only” gods seen in other religions. In Islam, for example, if you were to not believe in Allah and consider Jesus to be your savior, you would be considered an infidel. If one is reasonable, and they assert there is only one god, as is the case in these monotheistic religions, they can rationally conclude that only one of these religions is correct. This contradiction is seen across all religions and believers in these religions do in fact believe that this is true. A Christian person does not believe Allah is god, and a person who believes in Islam does not believe Christ is god.

For many of us, the first time that we understood the indescribable complex design of the universe, the complexity of humans and animals, and more we were driven by a strong motivation to know and to be known by the creator of these creations. For many others however, the universe and all its inhabitants, while amazing is the result of the big bang theory or some believe that it was formed by chance.

I was raised in a Caribbean catholic family. My parents are catholic but they lapse for many years at a time. All of my siblings either went through a baptism or communion besides me. We didn’t attend regular church services regular, but once I turned eight years old I started attending church every Sunday and Wednesday with my neighbors. I learned about the 10 commandments, bible stories, and all the love God has for me and everything in it. Consequently, going to church twice every week then going back home to a family that rarely goes to church effected the relationship that I have with God. Most Catholics believe that the Bible is the literal, unerring word of God. Such a belief produces claims out of step with the modern day. If you accept Biblical literalism, you must accept that the entire universe was created by God in six days and he rest on the sabbath, he gave up his son to wipe away our sins, commanded his followers to commit mass genocides. Which in turns makes many people question God. The problem of suffering is usually posed as a question: ‘If God is all-powerful and all good, why does he allow evil to exist in the world?’

That’s one prominent argument that atheist has and one question I found myself asking after the death of a family friend. The self-identified atheist asserts that if God were real, then God would be real to everyone and God’s reality would make a difference for the sufferings of everyone in the world.

In natural history of religion, Philo gives his most famous and most decisive arguments against empirical theism. Until this point, the discussion has centered around God’s natural attributes—his infiniteness, his eternality, and his perfection. Now Philo examines the idea of God’s moral attributes (for instance, his goodness) and asks whether these can be inferred through an investigation of nature. Together, Demea and Philo paint a bleak picture of our universe. In stark contrast to the perfectly harmonious machine that Cleanthes considers the universe to be, they tell us that our world is actually a miserable place, filled with evil. As Philo puts it, if the universe is a machine, its only goal is the bare survival of each species, not that any species be happy. Given how much evil there is in the world, we cannot possibly look at the world and infer that God is infinitely good, infinitely wise, and infinitely powerful. In fact, we cannot even look at the world and infer from the evidence that he is at all good, wise, and powerful. If we were to try to infer God’s moral attributes from the evidence in nature (which, of course, Philo does not think that we should do), the only reasonable conclusion to draw would be that God is morally neutral. (Hume’s Natural History of Religion)

Everyone has their own perception of life and everything that occurs with religion being such a complicated topic we cannot expect for everyone to have the same opinions about the amount of suffering and pain in the world. Suffering and pain does not disprove the existence of God it just shows that he doesn’t respond to every atrocity in the world and our human minds will never be able to truly understand Gods strength.

Without the practice of cruelty, there would be no sense of duty or moral conscience as we understand it today. Nietzsche argues that there is always a purity and innate quality to suffering; thus, protesting it is essentially protesting life itself. “Today, when suffering is always brought forward as the principal argument against existence, as the worst question mark, one does well to recall the ages in which the opposite opinion prevailed because men were unwilling to refrain from making suffer and saw in it an enchantment of the first order, a genuine seduction to life’ (Nietzsche 67). Because of the emphasis we place on guilt, Nietzsche ultimately believes we created religion as a means to measure our pain as individuals: God and guilt are mutually exclusive when viewed through a bad conscience. I believe God allow suffering because he doesn’t want to rob us of free will. Much of evil comes from a direct consequence of our wrong doings. Yet God has given us the ability to choose between right and wrong.

Let me tell you both a bible story in regards to pain and suffering this is the story of a man named Job. Job was a good man that followed the word of God. Ultimately, he suffered terribly. He lost his riches, his children, his wife, his friends, and much more. He was struck by lighting that caused boils to form on his body. Before Job lost his three friends due to assumption they came to visit him. Each assuming that he was guilty of crimes. They believe this because they in their mind the only people who are punished so severely are those who commit great sin and disobey God. They saw and heard about the triatic experiences that he was facing. They had an intervention with Job, urging him to confess his sins. Job said that he had done no wrong and was confused as to why he was experiencing such hardship, but he would not speak ill about God letting him suffer. Job did not understand God’s ways, but he believed that God was good; and he left himself in God’s hands. And at last God himself spoke to Job and to his friends, telling them that it is not for man to judge God, and that God will do right by every man. And the Lord said to the three friends of Job: ‘You have not spoken of me what is right, as Job has. Now bring an offering to me; and Job shall pray for you, and for his sake I will forgive you.’

Job prayed for his friends, and God forgave them. Through all his trouble Job had been faithful to god, the Lord blessed Job once more, and took away his boils from him that the lighting had caused, and made him well. Then the Lord gave to Job double of everything that has own in the past. And God gave again to Job seven sons and three daughters; and in all the land there were no women found so lovely as the daughters of Job. After his trouble, Job lived a long time, in riches, and honor, and goodness, under God’s care. This story shows that just because there’s suffering in the world doesn’t mean that there isn’t a god however it doesn’t prove that there is a God. The story is similar to cases of cancer. Many people are diagnosed with cancer today. Cancer is the development of abnormal cells that divide uncontrollably and have the ability to infiltrate and destroy normal body tissue throughout the whole-body Cancer can affect anyone from infant to the elderly.

A cancer diagnosis can have a huge impact on patients, families, and friends. It causes many people to question God asking him “WHY GOD”? “WHY ME”? Feelings of fear, anger and depression can arise from this life changing experience.

I also wanted to touch on David Hume’s point that morality is more important than religion. When I first interpreted this statement, my initial thought was that he had a point and that his thinking was understandable. However, once you consider Hume’s narrow-minded perspective on the events of religion, I thought otherwise. Hume lived in a period of political and religious conflict, so his experience of religion could explain why he would think morality is more relevant. If you are only looking at violent examples of religion such as the sacrifices of the crusades, then of course it would be easy hold religion to a critical perspective. On the other hand, there are many positive events of religion.