The Philosophy of

Religion
MARCO V. & DENIEL F.

Origins: Ancient Developments

Plato

Metaphysical theory of Forms

Attempt to prove the existence of

God.

Aristotle

Natural Theology

Stoicism of the Hellenistic Age

(300 BCE 300 CE)

Philosophical Naturalism

Idea of Natural Law

Titus Carus/Sextus Empiricus

Marcus Cicero

Skeptical doctrines

De natura deorum

St. Augustine of Hippo

God, like the Forms, was eternal,

incorruptible, and necessary.

God as an agent of supreme

power and creator of universe
from nothing.

Origins: Medieval Tradition

Anselm of Canterbury

Ontological Argument for Gods

Existence

St. Thomas Aquinas

The Five Ways

Combination of Aristotelian and

Augustinian

Multiple Philosophers

William of Ockham

Reason and Revelation

Creation and Time

Nature of Divine and Human

Action

Moved from traditional views to a

nominalist view.

Rejected claim that properties are

universals that exist independent
of objects.

The Five Ways

Argument from Motion

Everything in universe that moves is

moved by something else.
Aristotle termed it the prime mover or
god

Argument from Causation

Efficient cause, an entity or event

responsible for a change in a particular
thing.

Argument from Contingency

Possible and Necessary

Everything is possible or necessary, but

only God is only necessary.

Argument from Degrees of

Perfection

All things have greater or lesser

degrees of perfection

God as the supreme perfection.

Argument from Final Causes

Everything must have a purpose and

an end.

Things that lack intelligence must be

guided to their end by some higher
intelligence, which is God.

Enlightenment and Rationalism

Rene Descartes

Rationalism

Immanuel Kant

Reason is the chief source of knowledge

John Locke

Empiricism

Experience is the chief source of

knowledge

Features of reality are innate conceptual

categories human minds imposes order
on experience.

No knowledge exists beyond this.

Concept of religion from his idea of

morality.

Morally right acts bring good to the

majority.

One cannot rationally will to bring total

good unless one believes in such a state.

Metaphysics and the Concept of a

God

Idea of God

Nature of reality and existence

Simplicity and complexity

Properties of godhood

God and the Universe

Accountability

Freedom

Determinism

Mind-Body dualism of Abrahamic

faith

Physicalism/Materialism

Religion and Morality

God and Human Action

The Soul and Immortality

Whether morality is dependent

on religion or is independent of it.

The Quandry of Evil

The Existence of God

Ontological Argument

Abstract reasoning that God exists

because God exists.

Cosmological Argument

Modal Argument

Temporal Argument

Teleological Argument

Argument of purpose.

Orders and Systems

Pascals Wager

Based on appeal to self-interest.

In our interest to believe in him and
therefore rational to do so.

Moral Argument

Formal Morals

Perfectionist Morals

Argument from Religious Experience

Personal experience that God must exist because there

are those that have experience him.

The fact that a large portion have such experiences and

will testify having them indicates evidence of his
existence even to those who havent.

Argument from Miracles

Christian argument of the impossible becoming possible

and signs.

Resurrection of Jesus taken as greatest sign because of

supernatural event meaning that a supernatural being
must exist as well.

Theism: How They View Things

Monotheism

Agnosticism

Pantheism

Humanism

Panentheism

Duotheism

Deism

Polytheism

Misotheism

Animism

Dystheism

Atheism

The Problem of Evil

Logical Problem of Evil

God wishes to take away evil and cannot,

therefore hie is feeble.

God is able to but doesnt, then he is

malevolent

Neither able nor willing, then he is both

malevolent and feeble and not God at all.

Wishes and is able, why doesnt he?

Theodicy

Reconciliation of evil/suffering in the world

of a benevolent God.

Accepts that God is good and able to

remove, to explain why he does not.

Empirical Problem of Evil

If people did not have prior

commitment to belive the contrary,
then their experience of the world
leads them to Atheism.

The conclusion that a God who is good

and all-powerful cannot exist due to
suffering.