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PHILOSOPHY
A TEXT WITH READINGS

12th EDITION
Manual Velasquez
Chapter 4: “Philosophy and God”
CHAPTER FOUR: PHILOSOPHY AND GOD

Outline of Topics in Chapter 4
• 4.1 The Significance of Religion
• 4.2 Does God Exist?
• 4.3 Atheism, Agnosticism, and the
Problem of Evil
• 4.4 Traditional Religious Belief and
Experience
• 4.5 Nontraditional Religious Experience

4.1 The Significance of Religion
• Belief and unbelief can be influential aspects of
one’s life.
– For example, when thinking about the ultimate nature
and destiny of humanity, contrast a Jew or Christian’s
beliefs, and those of agnostic or atheist.
– Yet, as the John Hick parable, “The Road” shows (see
240) , the choice to accept or reject religious belief will
not be definitively validated or refuted until the end of
our journey.
• Which, then, should we choose? Which choice is more
reasonable during the journey? How reasonable is religion?

Defining Religion
• In discussing religion, the first order of business
is defining it, yet this is surprisingly difficult.
– Religion is difficult to define because some religions
do not believe in God, some have no official beliefs,
some are not institutionalized, and some do not value
personal commitment.
– How would you define religion?
• It is probably easier to note common features of religion than
to define it, and that is the approach this chapter will take,
although qualifications may still be necessary.
• Ninian Smart has developed an influential treatment of
religion.

The Six Dimensions of Religion
• According to Smart, religion has six dimensions.
• Although not all six dimensions are found in all
religions, every religion shares in most of these
to some degree:
1. Doctrinal
2. Experiential
3. Mythological
4. Ritual
5. Moral
6. Organizational/Institutional
Religious Belief, Religious
Experience and Theology
• In this chapter, the term religious belief will be used in
its most general sense as meaning “the doctrines of a
religion about the universe and religion’s relation to the
supernatural.”
– On the other hand, the term religious experience refers to an
experience of this supernatural dimension.
• We also need to clear about the difference between
philosophy of religion and theology, the study of religious
beliefs, which assume that God exists and the beliefs are
true.
– While studying religious belief, the philosophy of religion, does
not assume that they are true or that God exists.

4.2 Does God Exist?
• Theism is the belief in a personal God who is
creator of the world. Monotheism is the belief
that there is only one God.
• The growth in the prestige and power of natural
science is viewed by many as a serious
challenge to theism.
– This raises questions about the rationality of religious
belief.
– Addressing such questions through arguments for
God’s existence has been a perennial feature of the
philosophy of religion.

Arguments for God’s existence
• The arguments for God’s existence are one way
that philosophers have tried to determine the
extent to which humans can have rational
knowledge of God and the extent to which
science has a bearing on our knowledge of God.
– The arguments rely on reason and sense experience
– and so contrast with approaches which foreground
non-rational grounds for belief.
– Well look at three main arguments: Ontological,
Cosmological and Design Arguments.

The Ontological Argument
• This argument was first clearly developed by
Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury (1033–1109).
• The main thrust of the argument is to argue that if we
merely think about what God is, we will see that God has
to exist. The argument, in brief, works as follows:
1. God is that than which nothing greater can be
conceived
2. That than which nothing greater can be conceived
must exist in reality and not merely in the mind.
3. So God exists in reality

In Anselm’s Words
– “Hence, even the fool [who denies that God exists]
must agree that he has in his understanding, at least,
the idea of that than which nothing greater can be
conceived…. But assuredly that than which nothing
greater can be conceived, cannot merely exist in his
understanding. For, suppose he believed it existed
only in his understanding. Then he could conceive of
this being also existing in reality, which would be
greater. Therefore, if that, than which nothing greater
can be conceived, existed only in the understanding, it
would be that than which something greater could be
conceived.” (245)

A Key Notion
• What does Anselm mean when he writes that
God is that than which nothing “greater” can be
conceived, and when he says something that
exists in reality is “greater” than something that
merely exists in the mind?
– In section 3.1 of chapter 3, Robert Nozick suggests
that to say something is real is to say that it has
importance, weight, and power.
• Anselm’s word “greater” can be understood in terms of this
notion of reality. Within Anselm’s argument, we can
understand “greater” to mean something like “more potent” or
“more powerful.”

A Famous Objection
• Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) argues that the
ontological argument fails because it confuses
two categories: the concept or idea of a thing,
and its existence, i.e., the fact that it exists.
– In his argument Anselm says that the idea of God
with existence is “greater” than the idea of God
without existence.
– But in saying this, the argument is in effect saying that
existence can be part of the idea or concept of God.
• Kant expresses this criticism with the now famous slogan
that “existence is not a real predicate.”

Reply to Kant
• Kant claimed that Anselm wrongly assumed
existence is a real property (or “predicate”) that
can be part of the concept of a thing—of the
concept “that than which nothing greater can be
conceived.”
– Some philosophers have defended Anselm’s
argument against this criticism by arguing that
existence can be a property.
• If we understand the notion of “greater” in terms of being
more powerful, and agree that if something exists in reality it
has more power than if it is only in our minds, then we are in
effect agreeing that existence is a predicate.

A Second Objection and Reply
• Guanilo argued that if Anselm was right then
one could “foolishly” prove that anything existed
by defining it as “the x than which nothing
greater can be conceived.”
– For example, one could prove that a perfect island
existed since it was that than which no greater island
could be thought.
– Anselm replies to this argument by asserting that his
argument worked only with an infinitely perfect being,
and only God was infinitely perfect.

The Cosmological Argument
• The thirteenth-century Christian philosopher
Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) also
proposed a series of arguments for God’s
existence.
– Because the two proofs covered in this chapter begin
with an observation about the physical universe, they
are said to be a kind of cosmological argument.
– The two cosmological arguments we cover start from
motion and the fact of causation, respectively.

The Argument from Motion
• Aquinas first cosmological argument works as
follows:
1. Some things move.
2. What moves must be moved by another moving
thing, which must be moved by another moving
thing, and so on.
3. This series of moving movers cannot be infinite, for
then their motion would have no origin.
4. The origin of their motion cannot be moving, for then
it would have to be moved by another.
5. So, this unmoving origin of motion is God.

The Argument from Causation
• Aquinas’s second cosmological proof says:
1. Some things are caused to exist by other things.
2. What is caused to exist must be caused by another
thing, for nothing can cause itself to exist.
3. The series of causes cannot extend back infinitely,
for then there would be no beginning to the
existence of the series of causes, so no causes
would exist at all.
4. So, there is a first cause of existence, and this is
God.

Objection
• Numerous objections to Aquinas’ arguments
have been advanced. We’ll cover only a few of
them, together with replies to them.
– One objection to Aquinas’s argument from motion is
suggested by Sir Isaac Newton three laws of motion
and universal gravitation.
– Newton’s first law of motion showed that a moving
object continues moving forever on its own without
needing anything to keep it moving, so long as an
external force does not interfere with its motion.
• So, critics conclude, God is not needed to explain why the
objects we see all around us are moving as they are.

Reply
• Defenders of Aquinas have responded to this
objection by saying that his argument should be
interpreted as applying to the initiation of
motions or, more simply, to acceleration.
– For an object to accelerate or begin moving, even
according to Newton’s laws, it must be acted on by an
outside force.
• Something, therefore, is needed to explain how all of the
motion we see in the universe ultimately began, and this
“something” is God.
• Are you convinced by this reply?

Objection
• A second objection focuses on Aquinas’
assertion in both argument that there cannot be
an infinite regress of movers or causes.
• However, it’s possible that the universe has
simply existed forever and that things in it have
simply been moving forever?
• Aquinas

Reply
• Aquinas knew that it was possible that the
universe may have existed forever.
– However, Aquinas argued that even if we assume that
the universe has existed forever and that the chain of
motions and causes stretches back in an infinite
regress, a First Cause is still necessary.
• While it’s true that each individual link in an infinite regress of
moving things or causes would be accounted for by a
previous link, the existence of the entire chain itself would
still need to be explained.
– Dave Hume challenged Aquinas’ assumption that one
should expect an explanation of the whole, beyond the
sum of its linked parts. Is he right?
The Big Bang and the
Cosmological Argument
• Most scientists now accept that the universe
began 13.75 billion years ago with “The Big
Bang.”
– Many philosophers have asserted that the Big Bang is
exactly the kind of starting point of the universe that
the cosmological argument points toward.
• If the Big Bang theory is correct, then the universe has not
existed forever.
• And, supporters of the cosmological arguments claim, only
an infinitely powerful being—God—can account for the big
bang beginning of the universe.

Objection to the
Big Bang Argument
• Critics question whether the Big Bang theory
proves that there is a God that created the
universe.
• They assert that something other than God have
caused our universe to come into existence?
– Some cosmologists have speculated, for example,
that the universe we know was caused by events in
some other unknown universe, which in turn was
caused by some other unknown universe, and so on
to infinity.
• This lead us back to the debate over infinite regresses.

Explanation not Causation.
• Recently a number of philosophers have
attempted to clarify the debate. They have
argued that the endless series that the argument
tries to dismiss should not be understood as a
mere regress of events in time but as a regress
of explanations.
– The issue would then be does the universe as a
whole have an explanation?
•
A Choice
• John Hick (1922–), for example, argues that the
cosmological argument sets a choice before us.
– We can choose to see the universe around us as an

ultimately intelligible home that makes sense and can
be explained in a rational way; that choice is the
choice to accept the basic rightness of the
cosmological argument.
– Or we can see the universe as something that is just
an unexplainable, unintelligible, ultimately “absurd”
place into which we have been cast for no reason at
all; to make that choice is to reject the cosmological
argument. CHAPTER FOUR: PHILOSOPHY AND GOD
Introducing the Design
Argument
• A final problem with the cosmological argument
that we should consider is the objection that it
does not seem to prove that a loving personal
God exists
– The argument shows only that there is some powerful
force that is the source of all the motions and causes
we see operating in the cosmos.
– Aquinas acknowledges this shortcoming, and thus
proposes another type of argument, the Design
Argument, to get us closer to proving the existence of
a personal God.

How the
Design Argument Works
• In 1802, theologian William Paley presented
what is now the classic exposition of the design
argument. Here’s how it works:
1. If we find an artifact, like a watch, that is designed to
achieve a purpose, we can conclude it was made by
an intelligent being.
2. But things we find in nature, especially living things
and their parts, such as eyes, are designed to
achieve a purpose.
3. So, by analogy, we can conclude they were made by
an intelligent being, and this is God.

In Paley’s Words
• “Were there no example in the world of
contrivance, except that of the eye, it would be
alone sufficient to support the conclusion which
we draw from it, as to the necessity of an
intelligent Creator. . . . If there were but one
watch in the world, it would not be less certain
that it had a maker. . . . So it is with the
evidences of a Divine agency.” (254)

Hume’s Objection
• David Hume (1711-1776) raised an objection to
Paley’s argument, even before he wrote it.
– Hume pointed out that while we have experience of
people making and designing watches, and thus know
that the orderly design we see in the mechanism of
the watch was put there by an intelligent agent.
– But we have never experienced how an animal, or an
eye, or a universe is made.
– So for all we know, the order we see in an animal, or
an eye, or the entire universe may not have been
produced in the same way that the order we see in a
watch was produced.

Darwin’s Objection
• A powerful, empirical objection to Paley was the
theory of evolution that Charles Darwin
proposed.
– Darwin provided a mechanism that could produce
order and the appearance of design but one that was
not intelligent: natural selection (see Section 2.2)
– Darwin argues that the appearance of purpose in the
eye is an illusion since the eye (and the organism with
the eye) is the result of the long-acting and
unintelligent processes of natural selection.

In Darwin’s Words
• “In living bodies, variation will cause the slight
alterations, generation will multiply them almost
infinitely, and natural selection will pick out with
unerring skill each improvement. Let this
process go on for millions on millions of years;
and enduring each year on millions of individuals
of many kinds; and may we not believe that a
living optical instrument might thus be formed as
superior to one of glass, as the works of the
Creator are to those of man?” (257)

Reply to Paley’s Critics
• Despite Darwin’s challenge, some philosophers
continue to embrace the argument from design.
– They argue that although Darwin showed that living
organisms evolved through natural selection, this
merely means that natural selection is the instrument
God used to design and produce life.
– One version of this response is called Intelligent
Design.

Paley’s Defenders:
Intelligent Design
• William A. Dembski, for example, has argued
that the complexity of living organisms cannot be
explained by random processes but requires the
admission of “intelligent design” or purpose.
– He claims that the genes that direct how every living
organism is formed and how it operates provide
evidence of intelligent design.
– Arrangements of genes exhibit “complexity” as well as
“specificity,” i.e., directedness to a specific goal.

Intelligent Design
• Dembski makes an argument to the best
explanation – different from Paley’s argument by
analogy.
– He argues that it requires intelligence to produce such
an arrangement because it requires selecting a
specific arrangement whose complexity is so great
that it is improbable that it would ever be selected
without the intervention of an intelligent agent.
– Critics have attacked this argument, claiming that
there are mechanical non-intelligent forces that can
produce specified complexity.

Paley’s Defenders:
The Fine-Tuning Argument
• Fine-Tuinng arguments offer still a different
approach to the notion of an Intelligent Designer.
• Proponents of this argument contend that if the
features of the universe that make human life
possible were slightly different, human life could
not exist.
– For example, if the force of gravity had been stronger
by a tiny degree or weaker by a tiny amount, then
galaxies, stars, and planets could not have formed.
• The best explanation for these extremely improbable facts is
an intelligent designer.

Criticisms of the
Fine-Tuning Argument
• Some critics of this new argument, borrowing a
page from Hume, argue that for all we know,
some physical process, not God, selected the
“improbable” features that make life possible.
– Others suggest that an infinite number of universes
exist and that it is to be expected that in such a
“multiverse”, at least one universe would have the
features that make life possible.
– Supporters of the fine tuning argument respond that
these “multiverse” scenarios are bizarre and
farfetched speculations unsupported by evidence.

4.3 Atheism, Agnosticism, and
the Problem of Evil
• Noting the indecisiveness of the arguments for
God’s existence, many philosophers have
adopted agnosticism.
– Agnosticism is the position that one does not know if
God exists.
• Other philosophers have embraced atheism.
– Atheists claim to know or have warranted belief that
God does not exist.

Atheism
• Most atheists share some common beliefs.
1. Sense observation and public verification are
instrumental to truth; the scientific method is the best
approach to gain reliable knowledge.
2. Reality is made up of matter, or reducible to matter.
3. We ought to focus our attention on moral and social
concerns in the world.
4. There are good reasons to believe that God does
not exist.
• The most powerful arguments that atheists point to center on
the problem of evil.

The Problem of Evil
• Everyday we run into examples of suffering,
caused by humans but by nature.
• Are these kinds of events compatible with belief
in an all-good, all-knowing, all-powerful Creator?
– If God is all-good, wouldn’t God want to prevent
suffering?
– If God is all-knowing, wouldn’t God be aware of it,
and know how to prevent it?
– If God is all-powerful, wouldn’t God be able to prevent
any suffering he wants to prevent?

Hume’s Speculation
• In David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural
Religion, the character Philo speculates:
– “If a very limited intelligence whom we shall suppose
utterly unacquainted with the universe were assured
that it were the production of a very good, wise, and
powerful being, however finite, he would, from his
conjectures, form beforehand a different notion of it
from what we find it to be by experience; nor would he
ever imagine, merely from these attributes of the
cause of which he is informed, that the effect could be
so full of vice and misery and disorder, as it appears
in this life.” (264)
Two Problems of Evil
• Philo is saying that even if one were convinced
that the world were the product of a finite (not
infinite) God, one would expect the world to be
filled with much less suffering and misery than it
is.
• Hume’s point can fashioned into either
– The logical problem of evil – a deductive argument.
– The evidential problem of evil – a probabalistic
argument.

The Logical Problem of Evil
• The logical problem of evil is usually fashioned
as a deductive argument:
1. If a benevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent God
exists, then there could be no evil in our world.
2. But there is evil in our world.
3. Therefore, a benevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent
God does not exist.
• Explain why the first two premises seem to imply
the conclusion.
– The challenge for believers is to come up with a
situation that disproves either premise 1 or 2.

The Evidential Problem of Evil
• The evidential problem of evil is a probabalistic
argument and works as follows:
1. There is evil in our world.
2. The best explanation of the evil in our world is that
there is no benevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent
God.
3. Therefore, there probably is no benevolent,
omniscient, and omnipotent God.
• Explain how this argument differs from the
logical problem of evil.
– How might a believer respond to this argument?

Theistic Responses to the
Problem of Evil
• Philosophical theists have offered a number of
different responses to the problem of evil:
– Evil is the absence of something good.
– There is a significant good, free will, that justifies evil.
– Without evil, human being would be unable to fully
develop as responsible agents.

Evil is the Absence
of Something Good.
• According to Augustine, evils, such as sickness,
are negative things, the absence of something
good, such as bodily integrity.
– Only God is perfectly and completely good, so
anything that is not God – God’s creation-- must
necessarily lack some good and contain evil
– Moreover, because God produces only what is good,
He does not produce that part of the world where
goodness is absent, so He is not responsible for evil,
nor does He produce it.
– How do critics respond to Augustine’s argument?

The Free Will Defense
• Many theists have adopted a defense of religious
belief that appeals to a significant good that
justifies the existence of evil.
• One common justification is the existence of free
will:
– According to proponents of this view, God made us
free.
– Because we are free, we are free to do evil as well as
good.
– It would be contradictory for a God to make us free in
all other respects but not free to do evil.

Criticisms of the
Free Will Defense
• The most common criticism of the free will
defense is that it fails to distinguish between
natural and moral evils.
– Natural evils are produced by natural processes, and
do not require intentional actions.
– Moral evils are intentionally produced by a human
being.
• Give two examples of natural and moral evils.
• How do critics use this distinction to argue
against the free will defense?
Evil as Necessary
for Human Development
• The philosopher John Hick, has offered a
different response to the problem of evil, that
can be traced back to the Christian theologian
Irenaeus.
– Hick argues that evil “in a paradise” without pains,
harms, injuries, needs, suffering, dangers, or
difficulties, ethical concepts would be meaningless
and people could not develop into virtuous beings.
– Thus, evil is the consequence of living in a world that
allows for the development of responsible agency.

In Hick’s Words
• “It would seem, then, that an environment intended to
make possible the growth in free beings of the finest
characteristics of personal life, must have a good deal in
common with our present world. It must operate
according to general and dependable laws; and it must
involve real dangers, difficulties, problems, obstacles,
and possibilities of pain, failure, sorrow, frustration, and
defeat. If it did not contain the particular trials and perils
which—subtracting man’s own very considerable
contribution—our world contains, it would have to
contain others instead.” (268-269)

The Atheist’s Faith
• Atheists tend not to be satisfied with any of the
theist’s responses to the problem of evil.
• Atheists themselves however are vulnerable to
the charge that their position is based on a
commitment that rests on a kind of faith.
– The atheist’s commitment rests on empiricism as a
method of knowing a material world.
– If this is so, what makes the atheist’s faith in
empirical-rational reasons for commitment better than
the religionist’s faith?

Agnosticism
• Many thinkers find neither the theist nor atheist
position convincing and so adopt a form of
agnosticism.
– For example, for Thomas Huxley (1825-1895),
agnosticism expressed absolute faith in the validity of
the principle that “it is wrong for a man to say that he
is certain of the objective truth of any proposition
unless he can produce evidence which logically
justifies that certainty.” (269)
• Thus, Huxley suspended judgment, about the existence of
God, just as he did on the real nature of such ultimates as
matter and mind

Why Do We Believe?
• If the agnostic is correct, why then do so many
of us continue to believe? Freud and Kant offer
contrasting answers to this question:
– Freud argues that religion fills our infantile needs for a
protective father figure.
– Kant claims our morality forces us to believe in the
possibility of a just world where evil is punished and
good is rewarded, and this is possible only if there is a
God and an afterlife. So, we have to believe in a God
and afterlife.
• Do either of their answers make sense to you?

4.4 Traditional Religious Belief
and Experience
• The faith of many religious believers is based on
their experience – not on rational arguments.
– They believe because believing allows them to make
sense of what they have experienced and fits who
they are.
– They choose to believe “for reasons of the heart”
even though they do not have conclusive evidence
that the beliefs they have chosen to adopt are true
beliefs.

To Believe or Not to Believe
• William James (1842-1910) argues that when the
decision to believe is a genuine option, one may
decide to believe on passional grounds, in the
absence of decisive proof.
– The passional grounds for a choice are those arising
from our emotions, hopes and fears and non-
intellectual interests.
– James identifies three sets of options:
1. living or dead;
2. forced or avoidable;
3. momentous or trivial.

Genuine Options
• For James options are genuine when they are:
– Living : proposing a belief that we can take seriously.
– Forced: you cannot escape making the choice.
– Momentous : the opportunity is unique, the stakes are
important, and the decision is irreversible.
• For James, this does not imply we can always or
even usually rely on our emotions alone for
decisions.
– When options are not living, forced, and momentous,
we should save ourselves from making mistakes by
deciding only after all the evidence is in.

James’ Argument
• Here’s how James makes his argument in “The
Will to Believe:”
– “Our passional nature not only lawfully may, but must,
decide an option between propositions, whenever it is
a genuine option that cannot by its nature be decided
on intellectual grounds; for to say, under such
circumstances, “Do not decide, but leave the question
open,” is itself a passional decision,—just like
deciding yes or no,—and is attended with the same
risk of losing the truth.” (274)

Clifford’s Challenge
• James’ seemed especially to be responding to a
challenge posed by the philosopher W. K.
Clifford.
– Clifford argued in “The Ethics of Belief” that “it is
wrong always, everywhere and for anyone, to believe
anything upon insufficient evidence.”
– Against Clifford, James argued we have two options:
• We can choose to protect ourselves from ever believing
something false by strictly withholding our belief when the
evidence is insufficient;
• Or we can choose to protect ourselves from missing out on
the truth by choosing to believe even when evidence is
insufficient.
The Fundamental Option
• James’ seems to be arguing that either of these
options carries a cost:
– If we adopt the policy of withholding our belief until we
have sufficient evidence, the cost is that we may miss
out on discovering the truth.
– If we adopt the policy of choosing to believe when
faced with a “genuine” option, despite having
insufficient evidence, the cost may be that we believe
in something false.
– James’ might be suggesting that prior to the choice of
religious belief, one must choose – on passional
grounds --between these two fundamental options
CHiAPTER FOUR: PHILOSOPHY AND GOD

Personal Experience
of the Divine
• Many people trace their religious faith to the
personal experience of the divine – such as
described in this passage:
– “Sometimes as I go to church, I sit down, join in the
service, and before I go out I feel as if God was with
me, right side of me, singing and reading the Psalms
with me… When I am taking Holy Communion at the
altar, I try to get with him and generally feel his
presence.” (277)
• William James and Rudolph Otto have offered
influential accounts of religious experience.
James on Religious Experience
• In his Varies of Religious Experiences, William
James claims that religious experiences have 2
common attributes:
– ineffability—that is, the experience cannot be
adequately described in words.
– a noetic quality—that is, to the individual the
experience is a source of knowledge, often containing
illuminations full of meaning, truth, and importance.

Otto on Religious Experience
• Rudolf Otto used the term “numinous
experience” to describe an experience in which
the power or presence of a divinity or
supernatural reality was felt or perceived.
– Otto claimed such experiences were accompanied by
a kind of amazement, fear, even terror, at the power
and awesome nature of what is being experienced.
– At the same time they attract and fascinate the
person undergoing the experience, who feels
unworthy and insignificant in the presence of a sacred
reality, while also filled with bliss and contentment.

An Argument Based on
Religious Experience
• The philosopher Stephen T . Davis offers an
argument based on religious experience:
1. Throughout human history, and in very many human
societies and cultures, people claim to have
experiences of God or of some Godlike being.
2. The claim that those experiences are veridical is
more probable than the claim that they are delusive.
3. Therefore, probably God or some Godlike being
exists. (278-279)
• How convincing is this argument?

The Principle of Credulity
• Davis defends premise (2) by appealing to the
“principle of credulity” proposed by philosopher
Richard Swinburne.
– The principle of credulity basically says that we are
justified to rely on our perceptions, unless we have a
special reason not to trust a particular perception.
• Such “special considerations” might include things like: I was
dreaming when I had the perception; I was diagnosed with
schizophrenia at the time, etc.
– Explain Swinburne’s argument for why we must rely
on something like the principle of credulity? (279)

Criticisms
• Critics of Swinburne may object that even if we
must accept the principle of credulity for ordinary
perceptions, it is not acceptable to apply it to
perceptions during a “numinous experience.”
– They might argue that the very unusualness of
numinous experiences should count as a “special
consideration” against relying on one’s perceptions
during such experiences.
– How does Swinburne reply?
– What are your views on the reliability of religious
experience as a basis for belief?

4.5 Nontraditional Religious
Experience
• Many thinkers have sought to explore radically
different approaches to the questions of God
and religion.
– These thinkers have developed distinctive experiential
religious frameworks and rethought our relationship to
God in a manner that deviates significantly from the
assumptions of traditional theistic religion and
philosophy.
– In the West, we can trace the modern roots of these
viewpoints to the Danish philosopher Søren
Kierkegaard (1813–1855).

Kierkegaard on Objective versus
Subjective Thinkers
• Kierkegaard begins his radical theology by
distinguishing objective and subjective thinkers.
– The objective thinker strikes an intellectual,
dispassionate, scientific posture toward life, adopting
the point of view of an observer.
– In contrast, the subjective thinker is passionately and
intensely involved with truth, which is not a matter of
accumulating evidence to establish a viewpoint, but
something of profound personal concern.
– How does Kierkegaard conceive of the relationship
between faith and objective and subjective thinking?

Confronting the Unknown
• Kierkegaard contends that life’s most important
questions defy objective analysis.
– Religious belief in particular, says Kierkegaard, is not
open to objective thinking because it involves a
relationship with God.
– Stated more exactly, religious belief is a confrontation
with the unknown, not something knowable.
• “But if when I speak of proving the God’s existence I mean
that I propose to prove that the Unknown, which exists, is the
God, then I express myself unfortunately. For in that case I do
not prove anything, least of all an existence, but merely
develop the content of a conception. . . .” (282)

Anguish
• On the one hand, rational approaches to God,
through argument and proof, give individuals
little on which to erect a relationship with God.
• On the other hand, the very inconclusiveness of
objective analysis and rational debate leaves us
anguished, which is compounded by the
anticipation of our own death and our feeling of
smallness and insignificance.
– All of this leaves us with the necessity of making a
decision – but without an objective guarantee.

Leap of Faith
• Kierkegaard calls the decision to believe the
“leap of faith.”
– This is a commitment to a relationship with God that
exceeds rational justification or grounds.
– We can choose not to make the leap of faith, by
minimizing our suffering through rational
understanding and knowledge and objective analysis.
– Kierkegaard speaks sarcastically of this second
alternative to faith, when he says of the two “ways:” :
“one is to suffer; the other is to become a professor of
the fact that another suffered.” (283)

Tillich’s Radical Theology
• Paul Tillich (1886-1965) is the chief
contemporary proponent of a radical theology.
– Tillich argues that traditional theism posits a tyrannical
conception of God which leaves us in a inferior
position, the controlled to the controller. An
antagonistic tension results:
– “He deprives me of my subjectivity because he is all-
powerful and all-knowing. I revolt and try to make him
into an object, but the revolt fails and becomes
desperate. God appears as an invincible tyrant, the
being in contrast with whom all other things are
without freedom and subjectivity.” (283)
The Ground of Being
• In place of traditional theistic conceptions and
categories, Tillich creates a new understanding
of God as:
– Ground of being
• the foundation and source of all existence, the hidden
Ground of Being is neither an object nor a subject.
– Depth
• the religious aspect points to that which is ultimate, infinite,
unconditional in man’s spiritual life.
– Source of Ultimate Concern
• whatever one takes seriously without reservation.

What Atheism Really Means
• Tillich claims atheism is virtually impossible.
– A genuine atheist would have to be someone who
does not believe that there is anything that is worth
caring about deeply.
– Anyone who has an “ultimate concern” believes in
God.
– The only people who can rightly call themselves
atheists are those who can say, “Life has no depth.
Life is shallow. Being itself is surface only.” (284)

Objections to Tillich
• Critics have offered a number of objections to
Tillich’s theology, including:
– By identifying God as the object of a person’s ultimate
concern, Tillich contradicts what most people mean
by God, and waters down the meaning of religion.
– Tillich’s personalized view of God effectively makes it
unquestionable, placing it outside the bounds of
reasoned discourse.

Feminist Theologies
• Feminist philosophers and theologians have
offered both a critique of the traditional notion of
God and an alternative conception
– For example, the feminist philosopher and theologian
Mary Daly has argued that the traditional notion of
God (God the “father”) is profoundly male, has had an
oppressive impact on women and legitimates
patriarchy.
– The concept must be abandoned, allowed to wither
and die, and replaced with new religious symbols and
concepts associated with “the Goddess.”

Eastern Religious Traditions:
Hinduism
• Eastern religious traditions such as Hinduism
and Buddhism also offer radical alternatives to
Western religions.
– For Hinduism ultimate reality is the absolute, or
Brahman, a reality that is present behind everything,
that causes whatever there is, and that is unlimited,
incomprehensible, all-pervasive, omnipresent, and
unchangeable.
• The realities we perceive with our sense are really
manifestations of Brahman, their independence is an
illusions.

Eastern Religious Traditions:
Buddhism
• Buddhism departs even more radically from
traditional Western religion.
– The Buddha did not advocate belief in a personal
God, or an impersonal Brahman, but instead offered a
diagnosis of the causes of suffering and a prescription
for ending it.
• At the heart of the Buddha’s philosophy is the notion that
suffering is caused by ignorance (avidya) about the ultimate
nature of reality, which is impermanent (annica) and empty of
self (annata). Our ignorance leads us to cling to things, which
causes suffering.
• Liberation arises from insight and letting go of clinging.

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PHILOSOPHY

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– We can choose to see the universe around us as an

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