Welcome

Chapter 1 - Plato and Philosophy of Religion

  1. Explain in less than a side of A4 what is meant by Plato’s theory of Forms.
  2. Do you agree with Plato that Forms exist? Justify your answer with reasons.
  3. Explain the link between Plato’s Forms and the Cave analogy.
  4. Explain the Analogy of the Cave.
  5. Is there any reason to believe that anything exists except what we can observe?
  6. What is meant by ‘beauty’?

  7. All the beliefs listed below are unjust according to many people, yet they are examples of practices that have occurred or are occurring in different parts of the world today.

    Is this behaviour just or unjust?

    Is there a single concept of justice that all these actions break? (In addition, can you identify a culture where this behaviour is seen to be just?)

      • Discriminating against people on the grounds of race;
      • Keeping women at home and not educating them;
      • Discriminating against homosexual people;
      • Stoning to death rebellious sons who refuse to obey their parents;
      • Sterilising people who are mildly mentally disabled.
  8. Compare the Judaeo-Christian account of Creation with Plato’s account. Which account is more persuasive in your opinion? Why?

Chapter 2 - Aristotle and Philosophy of Religion

  1. What is the difference between Plato’s and Aristotle’s uses of the word ‘Form’?
  2. Is the prime mover anything like the God of the Judaeo-Christian tradition?
  3. Whose definition of the soul do you have more sympathy with, Aristotle’s or Plato’s? Give reasons to support your answer.
  4. How does Aristotle’s distinction between potentiality and actuality apply to the following?
    • An acorn
    • An embryo
    • The Prime Minister
    • A computer
    • A pig.
  5. How would you explain each item on the list in terms of Aristotle’s Four Causes?
    • A house
    • A car
    • The sun
    • A flower
    • A human being

Chapter 3 - God the Creator

  1. 1 Some classic problems in philosophy of religion concerning omnipotence are put forward by Brian Davies, C. Wade Savage and others:
    • Can God climb a tree?
    • Can God make a rock too heavy to lift?
    • Can God make square circles?

    What do you think the answers are? More importantly, what point do you think the questions are getting at?

  2. Imagine that a mother starts a campaign against handguns. Her son was killed in a gangland shooting. As part of her work, she campaigns against the manufacturer and seller of the gun used to shoot her son.

    The mother considers a range of arguments she could use:

    • You are to blame for my son’s death as you made the gun that killed him.
    • It is your fault my son died. You sold the gun that killed him.
    • Gun shops like yours should be banned. Selling guns just helps criminals to kill people.
    • Making a gun is just as bad as using it to kill someone.
    • Why make a gun if you think killing is wrong?
    • Selling guns helps people to be violent. That is wrong.

    Which of these arguments are strong and which are weak? Why?

  3. Can God know the future if it has not already happened?
  4. If God knows the future do we really have a choice about decisions we make?
  5. Explain, with reference to biblical imagery, what is meant by ‘God the Creator’.
  6. What can be learnt about the Judaeo-Christian belief in God as Creator from Genesis 1–3, Job 38, Psalm 8 and Isaiah 40? Summarise your conclusions in a table or bullet-point list.
  7. What does it mean to describe God as a ‘craftsman’? Why can this term also leave God open to criticism?
  8. If God is the architect of the world, what feedback would you give the architect about the project? Write a report to give your views, supported by reasons.
  9. The scientist Stephen Hawking once remarked that:

    ‘It would be completely consistent with all we know to say that there was a being who is responsible for the laws of physics.’ (Hawking, A Brief History of Time)

    Does this comment relate to belief in God as Creator? If so, why does it relate to God being Creator? If not, why not?

Chapter 4 - The Goodness of God

  1. Which of the following things would you be prepared to sacrifice to help or save someone:

    (i) If the person was your friend or partner?

    (ii) If the person was your enemy?

    • Your clothes
    • Your food
    • Your car
    • Your house
    • Your savings
    • Your life.
  2. Explain a biblical view about God’s goodness.
  3. Is the goodness of God in any way similar to Plato’s Form of the Good?
  4. Why might people reject belief in a good God?
  5. How would you solve the Euthyphro dilemma?
  6. Two views on the sacrifice of Isaac story

    ‘This story is a masterpiece, presenting God as the Lord whose demands are absolute, whose will is inscrutable, and whose final word is grace. … Such a Western judgement [as Kant’s below] reduces the climactic encounter between God and Abraham to an extrinsic moral debate.’ (R.J. Clifford, New Jerome Biblical Commentary)

    ‘There are certain cases in which man can be convinced that it cannot be God whose voice he thinks he hears; when the voice commands him to do what is opposed to moral law, though the phenomenon seems to him ever so majestic and surpassing the whole of nature, he must count it a deception.’ (C. Westermann citing Kant in his book Genesis 12–36)

    (i) What do you think the two authors are saying?

    (ii) Which author do you most agree with?

Chapter 5 - The Ontological Argument

  1. Why are human beings said to be ‘contingent’ by philosophers?
  2. A newspaper story reports that ‘Elvis was seen in London yesterday’. What problem with Anselm’s argument might this highlight?
  3. Think of the characteristics of your dream car. Could your dream car be described as the ‘perfect’ car? What would Descartes say?
  4. Briefly explain Gaunilo’s criticism of the ontological argument.
  5. What are the two most serious weaknesses of the ontological argument in your opinion? Justify your choice.
  6. Summarise Anselm’s and Descartes’ version of the ontological argument.
  7. What is the difference between an analytic and a synthetic statement? Explain with reference to an example.
  8. Explain what Kant means when he says existence is not a predicate.
  9. Descartes says that existence is a perfection of God. What does this mean?

Chapter 6 - The Cosmological Argument

  1. If you are waiting at a bus stop and you want the bus to stop, you put your hand out and the bus should come to a stop (providing the driver does not ignore you or fail to see you).

    What causes the bus to stop?

    If you had never before seen a bus or a person requesting a bus to stop, why would it be wrong to conclude that the person putting out their hand caused the bus to stop?

  2. In Aquinas’ Third Way God necessarily exists. You could say that God is a necessary being.

    3. Which other arguments for God’s existence is this similar to? What are the similarities?

  3. Do you think that the idea of infinite regression is a serious weakness in Aquinas’ argument or just philosophical speculation? Justify your answer with reasons.
  4. Outline the main steps of Ways 1 to 3.
  5. Do Hume and Mackie’s criticisms fatally wound the cosmological argument?
  6. The philosopher Anthony Kenny once used the phrase ‘the God of the Philosophers’ to refer to the way God is spoken of in arguments such as the Five Ways. What do you think he meant?
  7. Is Aquinas’ God of the Five Ways the same as the Christian God? Justify your answer with reasons.

Chapter 7 - The Teleological Argument

  1. Can you recall the Four Causes of Aristotle and what they are? Try to explain them without looking at your notes, and then check your answers.
  2. If you found a rock, an orange and a mobile telephone on the ground, which one would you say was suited to a particular purpose or activity? Why would you make this choice?

    If you had never seen any of these objects before, would there be any way of deciding whether the objects occurred ‘just like that’ or whether they were ‘designed’?

  3. Give a reason why the natural world is not like a machine.
  4. When was David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion first published? Why does the date matter?
  5. Richard Dawkins entitled a book The Blind Watchmaker. What point do you think he was making?
  6. Outline Paley’s analogy of the watch.

    In what way is Aquinas’ teleological argument different from Paley’s?

  7. Can you explain the difference between a teleological argument based on order and a teleological argument based on regularity?
  8. Read the sections on Paley and Hume again. Which argument is stronger?
  9. Charles Darwin once wrote: ‘The old argument from design in Nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered.’ Explain why Darwin believed ‘the old argument from design’ now fails (Charles Darwin and T.H. Huxley: Autobiographies, ed. G. de Beer).

Chapter 8 - The Moral Argument

  1. Crime does not pay – is this really true?

    Consider whether this is true. Try to come up with reasons and examples to support your view.

  2. Where do our moral ideas come from?

    Look at a common code of ethical values that many people claim are universal, such as the Ten Commandments or the European Convention on Human Rights.

    • Do you agree with these moral principles?
    • Do you believe that they are objective principles (i.e. not just limited to a particular society or group of people)? Justify your views.
    • Where do you believe your own moral values come from?
    • Which sources of moral values have most influenced you?
  3. Outline in no more than 300 words Kant’s moral argument.
  4. Explain three weaknesses of the moral argument by Kant.
  5. Do you agree with Freud about the source of human moral values? Explain your answer with reasons.
  6. The philosopher Richard Swinburne wrote in his book The Existence of God that ‘man’s moral knowledge does not wear its source on its face’. What do you think Swinburne meant?

Chapter 9 - The Problem of Evil

  1. Are the terms natural evil and moral evil easy to apply?

    Study the list below and decide which ones are natural evils and which ones are moral evils. Make a bullet point list of the causes of each event referred to.

    1. A hurricane flooding a town leading to hundreds of people drowning.
    2. An earthquake destroying a city.
    3. A man robbing a bank.
    4. A paranoid schizophrenic stabbing a woman.
    5. Becoming infected with HIV after receiving a tainted blood transfusion.
    6. Killing a person when they step out in front of your car. It was impossible to foresee the accident happening.
    7. A person dying of hunger because they had no money and no one gave them food or help.
    8. Suffering from hepatitis caught from injecting yourself with heroin using a dirty needle.
  2. Is evil a ‘privation’ or ‘lack’ in something? What do you think?
  3. Describing someone as inhuman, or his or her behaviour as inhuman, comes from the idea of evil being a privation. Consider what the link is.
  4. If you lived in a town where everyone had the same perfect house, would you change your house in any way to make it different from the others?

    How does this question relate to Augustine’s problem of evil?

  5. ‘[U]nless God had freely given salvation, we would not now possess it securely. And unless man had been joined to God, he could never have become a partaker of incorruptibility. For it was incumbent upon the Mediator between God and men, by his relationship to both, to bring both to friendship and accord, and present man to God, while he revealed God to man.’ (Irenaeus, ‘The Ante-Nicene Christian Library’)

    (i) What do you think Irenaeus means by the word ‘mediator’?

    (ii) Does salvation only come from God? What did Irenaeus think? What do you think?

  6. List the positive and negative features of Augustine’s and Irenaeus’ theodicies. Do you think either theodicy is adequate? Justify your answer with reasons.
  7. Aristotle famously stated that ‘we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts’ (Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics). How could this support the ideas of Christian theodicies?
  8. Would you say that ‘the existence of evil’ is a mystery? If it is a mystery, can ‘the existence of evil’ be used as an argument against the existence of God?
  9. Desmond Tutu wrote in 1977 about South Africa under the apartheid system of discrimination against black people:

    ‘[T]he burning question is not ‘Why is there suffering and evil in the universe of a good God?’ but the more immediately pressing one of “Why do we suffer so?” “Why does suffering seem to single out us blacks to be the victims of a racism gone mad?” (Tutu, African Theology en Route: Papers from the Pan-African Conference of Third World Theologians; emphasis added)

    (i) Do you agree with Desmond Tutu about what the key question is (italic above)?

    (ii) Do the ideas of the Irenaean and Augustinian theodicies answer Desmond Tutu’s question?

Chapter 10 - Science and Religion

  1. Explain in your own words what the passage below is saying

    Why do you think that Alister McGrath describes Dawkins’ type of approach as ‘misleading’?

    Does the fact that science cannot prove or disprove God’s existence make a Christian Cosmologies more less credible?

    ‘Now Dawkins knows perfectly well that “science has no way to disprove the existence of a supreme being” (Dawkins, R, The Devil’s Chaplain). This, he argues, cannot be allowed to lead to the conclusion that “belief (or disbelief) in a supreme being is a matter of pure individual inclination.” But who said anything about “pure individual inclination”? Where does this idea come from? Dawkins seems to imply that, where the scientific method cannot be properly applied, there is only epistemological anarchy. Without the scientific method, we are reduced to the pure subjectivity of individual opinion.’ (McGrath, A., Dawkin’s God: Genes, Memes and the Meaning of Life)

  2. Consider the following statements, all based on statements in the Bible:
    • God is my rock
    • God is my salvation
    • God became man and dwelt amongst us
    • God is a warrior.

    What does each of these phrases mean?

  3. Should Creationism be taught in school?

    If so, in which subject?

    A controversy that has raged since the early twentieth century, as evidenced by the number of legal cases concerning it in the USA, is whether it should be permitted to teach Creationism in state-funded schools. How would you resolve the dilemma?

  4. Sum up the key differences between the arguments of Richard Dawkins and those of a religious believer in no more than 200 words.
  5. Is either modern cosmology or evolution theory a more serious challenge to religious belief? Justify your answer with reasons.
  6. Read the quotation below. What do you think Simon Conway Morris is suggesting? Which choice do you support? Why?

    ‘the complexity and beauty of “Life’s Solution” can never cease to astound. None of it presupposes, let alone proves, the existence of God, but all is congruent. For some it will remain as the pointless activity of the Blind Watchmaker, but others may prefer to remove their dark glasses. The choice, of course is yours.’ (Simon Conway Morris, Life’s Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe)

  7. Is it true that belief in modern scientific theories is incompatible with free choice?
  8. Why do you think that William Dembski, a key advocate and developer of intelligent design theory thinks that Richard Dawkins is a gift to intelligent design supporters?

Chapter 11 - Life after Death

  1. In Phaedo, Plato suggests that philosophy is a preparation for death. Why do you think Plato says this?
  2. Plato suggests that the soul consists of various aspects: spirit, reason and desire. How could the following crimes be explained in terms of disharmony between the aspects of the soul?
    • Vandalism
    • Perjury (lying in court)
    • Fraud
    • Drink-driving
    • Rape
    • Murder.
  3. If you are a materialist you cannot be a dualist or believe in rebirth, but you could believe in bodily resurrection.

    Can you explain why?

  4. Many students in examination answers make the mistake of calling Hick a dualist. Why is this incorrect?
  5. Do you think any ethical theory can justify … ?
    • Pogroms
    • Witch-hunts
    • Persecuting heretics.
  6. Look back over the chapter and check that you can answer the following questions:
    • Which are more coherent: arguments in favour of resurrection or rebirth?
    • What is the appeal of materialism?
    • Is replica theory more persuasive than belief in a soul?
    • Which argument against life after death is the strongest in your opinion? Justify your answer.
    • Outline Russell's reasons for rejecting belief in life after death. Is his argument persuasive?

Chapter 12 - Revelation and Holy Scripture

  1. What do religious believers mean by the word ‘revelation’? Write a list of characteristics of a ‘revelation’.

    Do any of the following events qualify as a ‘revelation’? 

    • A vision
    • A miraculous healing
    • Recovering from having cancer
    • Having a baby
    • Feeling God is with you
    • Admiring the beauty of nature
    • Having a near-death experience
    • Winning the lottery
    • Passing your examinations
    • Understanding mathematics
    • Becoming fluent in a foreign language
    • Reading the Bible
    • Having an out-of-this-world experience
    • Going to church
    • Praying.
  2. The famous biblical interpreter Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) said that if you take a liberal approach to the Bible all you do is read your own meaning into a biblical story. What do you think Schweitzer meant by the following comment? What problem regarding biblical revelation is he hinting at?

    ‘Each successive epoch found its own thoughts in Jesus, which was, indeed, the only way in which it could make him live.’ (Albert Schweitzer quoted in J. Pelikan, The Illustrated Jesus through the Centuries)

  3. Is the non-propositional revelation of Jesus clear?
    • Which picture best represents Jesus as revealed in the Gospels?
    • Which picture appeals most to you?
    • Discuss your answers.
    • Can you identify a problem related to the non-propositional view of the Bible? Think about how you could use these pictures as examples in your answer.
  4. How can Christians demonstrate their belief that the Bible is divinely inspired?
  5. Does the Bible have any authority for a person living in the twenty-first century?
  6. If the Bible is a propositional revelation from God, should all its laws be obeyed? If not, why not?
  7. What is the major weakness of non-propositional revelation in your opinion? Explain your answer.

Chapter 13 - Religious Experience

  1. Think of an event that was very important to you. Try to describe the feelings evoked by this event. Was this experience religious? If so, what made it religious?
  2. Can you think of events or incidents in daily life, or in your life, which are ineffable?
  3. In which of Swinburne’s categories would you put the following:
    • Awe at the beauty and intricacies of God’s creation, such as DNA.
    • A young girl called Bernadette seeing a vision of Mary, the mother of Jesus.
    • John Wesley feeling that his heart had been ‘strangely warmed’ and his sins ‘removed’ by Jesus.
    • The Qur’an being revealed to Muhammad (pbuh) by Allah.
    • Moses receiving the Ten Commandments from God.
    • Siddhartha Gautama achieving enlightenment.
    • The story of Pope John Paul II’s life.
  4. If a friend tells you that he hears voices which tell him things about the future, how would you react? How would you respond to your friend? Would you be concerned that your friend was mentally ill? Would you think that your friend had received a message from God?
  5. Strange experiences
    • Have you ever had an experience or feeling of some power outside of yourself and your normal way of observing the world?
    • If a trusted friend told you any of the following, how would you respond?
    • What would you think? Explain your answers:
      • I experienced God last night.
      • I felt God’s presence with me last night.
      • I saw an alien spacecraft fly past last night.
      • I saw a Martian in the field.
      • I saw a Yeti on the mountain.
      • I learnt that human beings are genetically related to earthworms.
      • I was abducted by an alien last night.
      • The dream I had three months ago came true yesterday.
  6. Outline William James’ understanding of religious experience.
  7. Why would a follower of Freud or Marx reject religious experience as evidence of God’s existence?
  8. If a friend told you they had seen God, how would you react to and assess what they told you?
  9. Do you think religious experiences are veridical? Explain your answer with reasons.

Chapter 14 - Miracles

  1. Hume and the laws of nature

    Look at the example statements below:

    • A statue of the Virgin Mary crying in a man’s garden
    • A statue of Nandi drinking milk in a Hindu temple
    • An infirm, wheelchair-bound woman going to Lourdes, getting better and starting to walk again
    • A man living in South Africa who was dying of Aids getting better
    • A Templar Knight cutting open an oak tree and finding an image of the Virgin Mary inside
    • A car breaking down and coming to a stop just inches away from hitting some children playing in the road.

    Question

    Which of these events would Hume say violate the laws of nature? Why?

  2. The philosopher Keith Ward stated in an interview (Science and Wonders, 1996):

    ‘I do think miracles happen, but I hate the phrase ‘violations of the laws of nature’. It was invented by David Hume, who was a wonderful philosopher, but a notorious atheist. And he invented the phrase to make miracles sound ridiculous.’

    • Does the phrase ‘violation of the laws of nature’ make miracles sound ridiculous? If so, why?
    • What do you think is the point that Keith Ward is suggesting?
  3. Consider the following questions:
    • What do you mean if you say someone is ‘an honest or truthful person’?
    • Would you describe yourself as honest and truthful?
    • Have you ever told a lie?
    • Have you told more than one lie?
    • How many lies do you have to have told to be called a ‘liar’, ‘dishonest’ or ‘untruthful’?
    • How do these questions relate to discussions about miracles?
  4. ‘I desire anyone to lay his hand upon his heart, and after a serious consideration declare whether he thinks the falsehood of such a book [the Bible], supported by such a testimony, would be more extraordinary and miraculous than all the miracles it relates.’ (David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding)
    • What point is Hume making about the Bible?
    • Do you agree with Hume?
  5. Think about the following events. If these events have happened, why do they raise questions about God’s ability to act in the world? What questions arise about the nature of God?
    • God helping Joshua to destroy Jericho and thousands of people dying in a mudslide and earthquake that occurred in Guatemala in October 2005.
    • Jeanne Fretel being healed at Lourdes and over 20,000 people dying in genocidal attacks in Rwanda during the 1990s.
  6. A friend asks you what you mean by a ‘miracle’. How would you answer?
  7. Is life a miracle? What do you think?
  8. Why did David Hume reject belief in miracles? Try to present his argument in less than one side of A4 paper.
  9. A scientist suggests that miracles never happen. Would you agree with him or her? Would you have any scientific reasons to support your answer?
  10. Outline Maurice Wiles’ reasons for rejecting traditional views of God acting in the world.
  11. Which definition of a miracle most appeals to you? Why?

Chapter 15 - Religious Language

  1. Which of the following statements are verifiable in a weak sense? If they are verifiable in a weak sense, how are the statements verifiable?
    • Near-death experiences indicate that there is life after death.
    • The Yeti walks the Himalayas.
    • Unicorns are white.
    • God exists.
    • Real Madrid is the best football team in Europe.
    • Martians live inside the planet Mars.
  2. Ayer suggested that statements such as ‘God does not exist’ are meaningless. Can you think of the reason why?
  3. Consider each of the following statements. Which ones are ‘scientific’ according to falsification theory? Which statements are not ‘scientific’? Explain your answers.
    • Unicorns are white.
    • Harry Potter is a wizard.
    • You exist.
    • Water consists of atoms of hydrogen and oxygen.
    • Tony Blair is a former prime minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
    • Chlorine is a halogen.
    • Spiders are arachnids.
  4. Death by qualification
    • What is the most obvious meaning of these attributes and statements about God?
      • God is all-knowing.
      • God is all-powerful.
      • God answers the prayers of his faithful.
      • God loves us.
      • God’s creation is good.
    • What is the most obvious meaning of these statements? How do the following statements challenge the way you define the attributes of God in Question 1?
      • Human beings have free will.
      • God did not prevent Hurricane Katrina from happening.
      • People pray for healing and it does not happen.
      • Many evil people seem to have good lives, while good people suffer.
      • Nature is piteously indifferent to human beings’ existence.
  5. ‘God does not reveal himself in the world … it is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists.’ (Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921))

    What do you think this statement means?

    Are Language Games helpful to religious believers when they discuss religious language?

  6. Explain what the following statements mean according to the analogy of attribution:
    • God is just.
    • God is loving.
  7. ‘Statements about aliens are unverifiable and thus meaningless.’ How could this argument relate to claims that religious language is meaningless? Do you agree with the statement?
  8. Which is a more helpful way to talk about God: symbol or analogy? Explain your answer with examples.
  9. Is a symbolic understanding of religious language another way of saying that religious language is unclear and meaningless?
  10. Compare the strengths and weaknesses of verification theory and analogy as ways to talk about God.

Chapter 16 - Nature of God

  1. Odd ones out

    Consider what you know about the philosophy of the following thinkers and look up the key ideas of any of these people that you have not heard of. Which ones are the odd ones out regarding God’s simplicity? Can you deduce why they are the odd ones out?

    Augustine; Anselm; Aquinas; Avicenna; Averroes; Boethius; Hume; Jantzen; Maimonides; Swinburne

  2. What can God do?
    • Write down your own definition of omnipotence.
    • Answer the following questions about God, justifying your answers with reasons:
      • Can God climb a tree?
      • Can God make a stone that is too heavy for God to lift?
      • Can God change the past?
      • Can God sin?
      • Can God love?
    • Answer the following questions about you, justifying your answers with reasons:
      • Can you climb a tree?
      • Can you make a stone that is too heavy for you to lift?
      • Can you change the past?
      • Can you sin?
      • Can you love?
    • Look at your answers to the questions. What issues or problems are raised by God’s omnipotence?
  3. What do you mean if you know something?
    • Complete the following questions:
      • 2 + 2 = ___.
      • Gravity is _________
      • Mars is the _________ rock from the sun.
      • The earth is _________ years old.
      • Handel’s profession was _________ .
    • If you say that you ‘know’ the answer to these questions:
      • What exactly do you know?
      • What is happening in your brain such that you know the answer?
      • Is the piece of knowledge you have something physical? Does it relate to something physical?
      • If you did not know that 7 is the square root of 49, would the knowledge that 7 is the square root of 49 still be true?
    • Having completed the questions, define what is meant by knowledge.
  4. God’s knowledge of future human actions
    • Complete the conclusion to the argument below.
    • Is the argument valid?

    The argument

    Belief 1: God is omniscient.

    Definition: Omniscience concerns knowledge of all that it is logically possible to know.

    Belief 2: God is perfect and therefore cannot be mistaken.

    Belief 3: God made human beings and gave them free will.

    Conclusion: God has/does not have knowledge of future human actions. If God has knowledge of future human actions there is/is not free will.

  5. Explain concisely the difference between describing God as ‘everlasting’ as opposed to ‘eternal’. Which view is stronger? Justify your answer.
  6. Assess whether the concept of God’s simplicity is ‘coherent’.
  7. Read the following passage by Ludwig Wittgenstein. What do you think he is getting at? Is this passage a strong criticism of philosophers’ discussions of the nature of God? And, do you sympathise with Wittgenstein? Justify your answers with reasons.

    ‘What is the use of studying philosophy if all that it does for you is to enable you to talk with some plausibility about some abstruse questions of logic, etc. and if it does not improve your thinking about the important questions of everyday life?’ (A letter from Wittgenstein to Norman Malcolm)

    And, what are ‘the important questions of everyday life’?

  8. Whose views are the most persuasive? Those of Aquinas, Boethius, Swinburne or Kenny?
  9. Is it true that God’s omniscience is incompatible with free choice?

Chapter 17 - Psychology and Sociology of Religion

  1. Anything wrong with … ?
    • Picking your nose
    • Cleaning your ears
    • Not shaving
    • Exposing any part of your body
    • Squeezing a spot
    • Kissing.

    Does it make a difference if these activities are carried out in public?

  2. If an atheist had an experience that others would call religious, how could they describe it if they had not grown up in any religious tradition?
  3. Is society today in a period of transition? Can you think of any evidence to suggest that it is?
  4. Why do you think levels of attendance at religious services always increase during wartime?
  5. Outline in about 250 words either Weber’s findings about the role of religion in society or Durkheim’s findings about the nature of religion in society.
  6. Explain the importance of archetypes in Jung’s thinking and why they have been criticised.
  7. Would you agree with the following view? Justify your answer with reasons.

    ‘The problem is that almost all the evidence that Freud presents has been discredited in one way or another.’ (Palmer, Freud and Jung on Religion)