Humanities Homework Help

Please Read:

1. Cohen, “Theism, Atheism, and the Clergy,” pp. 521-525, and “Mysticism and Cosmic Consciousness,” pp. 578-580.

2. St Anselm, “The Ontological Proof of God’s Existence,” pp. 526-527.

3. St. Thomas Aquinas, “Five Ways of Proving God’s Existence.” pp. 528-530.

4. William James, “The Authority of Mystical Experience,” pp. 581-587.

This assignment and the next assignment have to do with the philosophy of re-ligion. Your big paper for the course will be on this topic, and you need to do these two assignments first. The paper is Assignment 8.

The topic is God’s existence and proof’s for and against God’s existence. There are three positions. First, one could say, yes, we can prove that God exists. Second, one could argue that we can prove that God does not exist. Third, one can argue that we cannot prove whether God exists or not, and it’s all just a matter of choosing whether we want to believe that God exists or not, but there can be no proof either way. This assignment covers arguments for God’s existence. The idea of a proof is that an argument can be given to establish that God exists. If you do not know what an argument is, you may need to take a critical thinking course, or a course in logic. Giving an argument for your view means giving reasons that logically establish the truth of what you are trying to prove. The reasons are supposed to connect logically to the statement (conclusion) that you are trying to show is true. See the diagram of Anselm’s argument that comes with this assignment. That is an argument diagram. I tried to diagram the argument that Anselm has given. The statement at the bottom is what Anselm is ultimately trying to prove. There are steps to his argument — smaller arguments within the bigger one. When we give arguments for our views, we are using what philosophers’ call our “reason” (a faculty of our minds) to give a rational justification for what we believe. You should always try to give arguments for your views. Philosophers have attempted to establish, using rational arguments, that God exists.

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Question 1: Whether you believe that God exists or not, we have to get clear about what we are talking about. We are talking about the traditional Judeo-Christian concept of God. Please attempt to list all of the main characteristics of God. For example, the tradition says that God is all-good. What other charac-teristics of God can you list? Number them and list them.

Answer 1:

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Question 2: Using your own sentences, explain as completely as you can St. An-selm’s argument for God’s existence. (To see a diagram of Anselm’s argument, see the picture of my reconstruction of Anselm’s argument provided with this assignment. The arrows in the diagram represent steps of reasoning between the reasons and the final conclusion. I don’t expect you to understand every-thing in this diagram. That would take a small course in logic.)

Answer 2:

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Question 3: What do you think of St. Anselm’s argument? Do you think it works or not? Consider that Anselm is trying to prove that the traditional God exists. Has he succeeded or not. If so, explain why you think the argument works. If not, explain where the argument goes wrong.

Answer 3:

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Question 4: Using separate paragraphs, explain St. Thomas Aquinas’ five proofs for God’s existence. Notice that Aquinas starts each argument with something that he sees around us in the world — the a posteriori method — from sense experience. In contrast, Anselm tries to prove God’s existence from ideas or def-initions alone — the a priori method — without sense experience.

Answer 4:

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Question 5: Using a separate paragraph for each proof, explain here what do you think of each of Aquinas’ five proofs. Does the proof work or fail to prove God’s existence?

Answer 5:

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Question 6: Considering critically Aquinas’ proof from possibility and necessity, what do you think of the idea — against Aquinas — that the universe has al-ways existed, that it is eternal? Why wouldn’t that be a good explanation for why the world exists? Do you think that we still need the idea that God must be the creator of the universe, a God who must be eternal?

Answer 6:

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Question 7: Consider this argument, which we will call “The Argument From Religious Experience.” It goes like this:

Many people throughout history and across many cultures have said that they have had direct, explicit, experience of God (an example would be when Moses talked with God in the burning bush) and have directly communicated with God. Therefore, God exists.

Do you think this argument proves that God exists? If not, why not? If so, ex-plain why you think it works.

Answer 7:

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Question 8: In the reading by William James, James discusses the nature of reli-gious mystical experience. Explain what James says about religious experiences. Plus, does he think they are real or not? Explain his views.

Answer 8:

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Question 9: What do think about James’ views and religious experiences? Do you agree? Why or why not? Do you think that they are real? Why or why not? Do you think that people have had direct communication with God? How could we know? Explain.

Answer 9: