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What Is a Meaningful Life? Unit 2 – HZB3M - Raso

What Is a Meaningful Life? Unit 2 – HZB3M - Raso

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Page 1: What Is a Meaningful Life? Unit 2 – HZB3M - Raso

What Is a Meaningful Life?

Unit 2 – HZB3M - Raso

Page 2: What Is a Meaningful Life? Unit 2 – HZB3M - Raso

Questions for the unit…

▪What is a meaningful life?

▪ Does God exist? And what role does God play in your life?

▪What is a good life?

▪What is a purposeful life?

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Some thoughts on life…

▪ Socrates said “The unexamined life is not worth living”

▪Martin Luther King Jr. said “if a man hasn’t got something in life worth dying for, he isn’t fit to live.”

We need to ask ourselves these questions

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Did God Create Everything?

▪ The question you must ask is: “where did I come from?”

▪ Some will reply…”God!”

▪ As philosophers, we are interested if there is evidence in support of the existence of God

▪ Is there truth in any of the ideas about God that exist in the world?

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How Do Philosophers Think About God?

▪ Over the last thousand years, much of Europe was dominated by Judeo-Christian ideas of God

▪ People who followed these beliefs settled much of Europe

▪ Prominent Western Philosophers (Judaic, Christian, and Islamic) discuss God from a monotheistic perspective

▪ Monotheism: belief that there is one God, not many

▪ Polytheism: belief that there are many Gods, not one (weather God)

▪ Buddhism: belief in a spiritual dimension, not necessarily a God

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Page 7: What Is a Meaningful Life? Unit 2 – HZB3M - Raso

Are Logic and Faith Separate?

▪ Are faith in God and Philosophy incompatible?

▪ Logical arguments have to add up

▪ Logic is designed to offer accurate results

▪ Faith – does not depend on argumentation of the sort math requires

▪ Some believe that there is evidence to support the existence of God

▪ “evidence” as feelings rather than proofs

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Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

▪ Christian Philosopher

▪ Distinguished between God of faith and the God of Philosophy

▪ “it is the heart which experiences God, and not the reason”

▪ He argued that, while it may be reasonable for Philosophers to undertake rational investigations into the existence of God, rason has no role to play in matters of faith”

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▪“Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” – Hebrews 11:1, the BIble

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Theists

▪ People who believe in god

▪ Their religious beliefs vary around the world

▪ As do their treatments of faith, and descriptions and depictions of God

▪ Faith is a particular way of knowing

▪ It is about hope and feeling, rather than logic, reason, or evidence

▪ Philosophers will argue that even theists will look for evidence to sustain their faith (warm feelings, dreams, or visions)

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Does Theism make life meaningful?

▪ For some it does

▪Meaningfulness of peoples’ lives has been tied to what is was thought God expects of, and desires for, his creatures

▪Many religions teach of an afterlife

▪ Your actions in life can dictate the rewards you can expect in the afterlife!

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Is there such a place called Heaven?

▪ Article on “Proof of Heaven”

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Alternatives to Theism

Agnostics:

- Neither accept nor deny God’s existence

- Believe that it is not possible either to prove or to disprove the existence of God

- Judgement should be suspended on such matters

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Atheists:

- Believe that God does not exist!

- Usually involved the rejection of the God of Christianity

- Believe their atheism is compatible with the possibility of a meaningful life

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Karl Marx on Religion

▪ Appeal to the working class

▪ “Religion is the sign of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.”

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Marx continued…

Karl Marx: German Philosopher, (1818-1883)

- To him, religion did not begin with the rational recognition of the existence of God

- Believed religions origins were rooted in the miserable conditions that most people endure in oppressive societies

- Since working conditions were poor, and few made decisions and money, religion is where people turned for comfort (opium)

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Marx’s main objection to religion

▪ Fosters idea that hard lives are inevitable

▪ God allows social inequities

▪ Working people are consequently kept from engaging I the revolutionary activity required to eliminate domination of societies by oppressive minority classes

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Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

▪ Thought less of people than Marx did

▪ Most humans are no better than cattle

▪ Need God-like figure to look up to

▪ Average person has “herd mentality”

▪ Believe that whether or not God exists, people need to create one to give them someone, or something, around which they can focus their lives

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▪ Like cattle following farmer the barn for food, people need a shepherd to follow

Argument for existence of God – people have the potential to be good, if goodness of this sort cannot be traced to genetics its must have a divine source, there must be a God – if there were no God there would be no reason to be good

- Nietzsche believe whatever the motivate for people being good should be rooted in human reasons, rather than authority religious leaders – saw them as cynically manipulating the foolish masses of people

- Declared “GOD IS DEAD!!!” – to shock people

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Page 21: What Is a Meaningful Life? Unit 2 – HZB3M - Raso

David Hume (1711-1776)

▪ Critical of the types of evidence or proof presented by world religions in support of their creeds

▪ Made claims of the nature and treatment of miracles

▪ Pointed out that all religions use miraculous events to establish credibility (New Testament and Miracles – truth of Christianity)

▪ if miracles are supposed to establish the truth for a particular religion – if they did occur, and viewed as evidence, that truthfulness of the claim presented in all other religions would have to be denied

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▪ Do all religions make the same claim? How can one be true while others untrue?

▪ Hume noted that such miracles do not happen in our days

▪ Points to possibility that claims of miracles recorded in the past were fabricated – “nothing strange, I hope that men should lie in all ages”

▪ Claimed that no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless it is one that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it is trying to establish (risen from the dead – deceive the witness)

▪ Scriptures essentially fabrications or erroneous reports

▪ Faith may lead people to believe in things contrary to reason

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Philosophy and Existence of God

▪ Aristotle and First Cause – motion in universe must mean a prime mover must exist and must be divine – since movements in the universe are so complex

▪ Most other arguments we have seen have been emotional responses and perceptional illusions (feelings, seeing a light in a dream as proof)

▪ having ordinary explanations and those said to have involved an encounter with the divine

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FIRST CAUSE

▪ Which came first the chicken or the egg?

▪ Origins of the universe – what do you want to know? Its origin?

▪ Big bang theory – what precedes the big bang?

▪ What is the first cause of everything?

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St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)

▪ Christian Philosopher

▪ Called God the “uncaused first cause”

▪ Chicken egg cycle could not have an infinite history

▪ Argues that there has to have been a “first egg” or “first chicken”

▪ Someone or something more powerful to create everything – GOD, did not consider big bang

▪ Assumes universe can be traced back to one thing, the first cause – does not consider many things which caused it or that the universe has no beginning

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Aquinas’ Defenders!!!

▪Many different things which caused the universe idea – misses the point, which is to ask why anything exists in the first place

▪ Better that finite things came out of God rather than nothingness

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DIVINE DESIGN

Isaac Newton (1642-1727)

▪ Like Aristotle, sought to explain the motion of the objects in the universe

▪ Adopted a mechanical model, parts of solar system worked like parts of a clock

▪ Believe that the part of the universe moved in a precise and predictable way (moon around the earth in 28 day cycle)

▪ A designer to carefully design each part – each part has a purpose

▪ All parts of the universe move in a particular way – and someone or something has designed their movements

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God the Designer

William Paley (1743-1805)

- Suggested that just as watches are complex structures, so are body parts, like the eye

- Therefore body parts, like eyes, must have designers

- A being who could design something so complex, must be much more powerful than a human designer – must be God

- DESIGN ARGUMENT (existence of God argument)

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▪ How can flaws in the human body be accounted for?

▪ Are our parts perfect? Is this why accidents are acts of God because they are beyond our control?

▪ Should human flaws, those not subject to human control, be regarded as God’s design for the world?

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Charles Darwin (1809-1882)

▪ Theory of Evolution

▪ “No Design”

▪ Accepted possibility of God’s existence – but Christian belief in a perfect creation and design contrary to the ordinary observation that living things are constantly evolving

▪ No creator who created nature’s structures and life forms

▪ Evolved over millions of years

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Can experience prove the existence of God?

▪ Religious records have described individuals interacting with angels, spirits, or even Gods

▪ For many people of faith, these recorded experiences, are evidence of God’s existence

▪ For people of faith, participation in religious life through faith and spiritual exploration, is the key to understanding how God makes life meaningful

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St. Augustine – Experience with the divine

▪ (354-430 CE)

▪ Wrote of weeping in his garden in need of personal guidance

▪ Recounts he heard a voice that instructed him to “take up and read, take up an read”

▪ He tells of going to his books and reading the first things his eyes fell upon –a verse from New testament “but put ye on the lord Jesus Christ, and make no provisions of the flesh”

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▪ These experiences gave him the courage to put his energy into Philosophy and Christianity

▪ Deal with the nature of God, the universe, and the problem of evil

▪ As a first millennium Philosopher, he is known as the greatest and last of Christian fathers – spent most of his life defending and promoting Christianity and establishing it as the most predominant religion in Europe

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Mohammed’s experience with the divine

▪ (570-632 CE)

▪ Muslim Prophet

▪ Described his encounter with the divine

▪ Until he was in his 40s, he was considered nothing more than a successful business man

▪ During his life time, people worshipped God “ALLAH” indirectly through 3 goddesses

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▪ Mohammed concerned with lack of unity in Arab religion

▪ Concerned with prevalence of such sinful things, as violence and adultery

▪ Began spending time secluded in a cave near the city of Mecca

▪ It was there that his meditations were rewarded from Allah – Muslim Qur’an is made up of his revelations from Allah

▪ He was persecuted and ridiculed – his claim of only one God was a criticism of local religious leaders

▪ After 3 years of preaching, he only had a few dozen followers – today over 1 billion Muslims in over 40 countries

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Is it all just a trick of the mind?

▪ Aside from Mohammed and St. Augustine – some do not say these experiences prove the existence of God

▪ Some Philosophers dismiss these experiences as tricks of the mind

▪ Sometimes such experience are ordinary or familiar, despite the fact that those who have them attach supernatural significance to them

▪ Another reason to be skeptical – testimony of those who had the experience cannot be corroborated (will offer the same account of the experience)- spiritual reports cannot be repeated

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▪ Is it common sense? Some Philosophers may dismiss claims of God’s existence – because the defy common experience and common sense

▪ Some critics may argue that UFO and Elvis sightings exists as supernatural encounters

▪ If you believe people’s claims that God exists on the basis of their out-of-the-ordinary experience, to be consistent shouldn’t you believe in UFO sightings?

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Faith Approach – provides a legitimate basis for belief

▪ Their view is known as fiedeism, faith over logic

Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)

- Faith superior to logic, and essential to knowledge of God

- Reason or logic relies on human understanding, and power of the human mind

- People are mentally unable to reason about a being as perfect as God

- Since God is by definition beyond human understanding, logical argument is a foolish way to try to apprehend God

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▪ He described faith as TRANSRATIONAL – meaning faith is above logic and reason

▪ It may not prove his existence in a Philosophical way, but for some Philosophers this is unnecessary

▪ He also thought that people are to take a leap of faith if they are to know God at all

▪ Reason makes people trust in human mental abilities, which are flawed

▪ Faith comes with an uncertainty which must be accepted with courage and conviction – freedom to choose their own lives

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▪ Does God bring meaning to life? Or can you live a meaningful life without God?

▪ REVIEW!!REVIEW!!REVIEW!!

▪ Ideas from this chapter

▪ Philosophical inquiry – our philosophers

▪ NEXT –> What is a Good Life?