Can Philosophy of Religion Find God? | Episode 1206 | Closer To Truth

Does God exist? What are God's attributes and traits? How should we examine such questions about God? What is theology? Can philosophy provide insights about God? Featuring interviews with Alvin Plantinga, Eleonore Stump, David Shatz, and Michael Tooley.

Season 12, Episode 6 - #CloserToTruth

Closer To Truth host Robert Lawrence Kuhn takes viewers on an intriguing global journey into cutting-edge labs, magnificent libraries, hidden gardens, and revered sanctuaries in order to discover state-of-the-art ideas and make them real and relevant.

Closer to Truth presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.

#God #Theology Your source for the study of philosophy and college philosophy class materials.

[walternullifidian]

The word "God" must first be defined before asking if it exists.

[johnbrzykcy]

"I'm confused. But I now appreciate the power of Philosophy of Religion." I feel the same way Robert. Hopefully the power of philosophical knowledge will lead us to the Creator, with no more need for arguments or proofs.

[bazstrutt]

You presuppose god...
Then come up with the most complex arguments you can to support what you already believe....
It’s a ridiculous formula

[Scribe]

It'll take alot of park benches to figure that out

[anikettripathi]

At least religion and philosophy knows what is ment for knowing and what is for just accepting and realizing.

[josephorlando]

Robert, thank you for you're perennial Socratic Manner. Dialectic as dialogue.

[ianchamblee]

I always see the mind of God as the problems he or she deals with. The knowledge of good and evil is always a human game. God's problem is what is in between total control and freewill. Discipline is gained through self control. But, we also need to be out of control to create anything new and or to simply adjust the details of what's already given. Mediators always create new guide lines, but always become like God in turn. Is it just we utilize all the aspects of life and allow the learning curb to adjust itself and just lead our selves to what we are designed to do.

[GuidetteExpert]

I really liked the philosophy guy that argues belief of humans in the higher power and our ability to be aware that they are existing and awake as if we feel someone put us here. Even having to ask the questions if there is a higher power or the need of asking such questions without anyone influencing me about religion existing leads me somehow to the truth that here is a higher power... Sometimes walking outside with no distractions and looking around yourself, nature & the sky and the awareness you are here because of something bigger gives me the simple answer.

[dennistucker]

I so want all of CTT on DVD. On Eleonore Stump's statement "...anything with a mind and a will is a person" seems to discount all animal life. As far I as know, animals have a mind and will.

[bubbercakes]

His arguments for god are quite silly. Most of the world once believed the sun revolved around the earth but through reason and science we now know that was unequivocally wrong. We have this belief in god because of course we started out as primitive men who thought that there had to be a creator of us just as we all have mothers and fathers. We are no longer primitive., at least most of us aren’t.

[valkonrad]

You shouldn’t have have an inappropriate emotional reaction to the idea of emotions as a route to knowledge. Interest, curiosity and understanding are emotions that are fairly fundamental to the pursuit of any knowledge. So are wonder and uncertainty.We can make progress in understanding these, though I guess more in a narrative rather than technocratic framework.I think that’s what religious traditions attempt to do.

[claudiozanella]

The almighty God is normally supposed to BOTH A) being able to make decisions and B) to know the future.
Here you should make a distinction between "optional futures" - God could maybe interact and modify them - and "THE ONE FUTURE", because ONLY ONE DETERMINED future will eventually come true. (The one that will become our ONLY ONE PAST). Well, God is supposed to be able to get the best performance: to know that ONE future. But then God MUST JUST LET IT UNFOLD EXACTLY like it is, He is NOT ALLOWED to change anything in it, because God makes no errors in his knowledge of the future! God cannot decide ANYTHING more: ALL God's decisions are already included in that future.
What above means that EITHER God is free to decide, but this implies He does NOT know the ONE future, OR He knows the ONE future, but this prevents Him from making ANY further decision. Even worse than that, GOD WOULD BE OBLIGED to HIMSELF slavishly follow that one determined future. This all means the two abilities A) and B) are MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE ("either", "or", but never "BOTH" at the same time). Since obviously God was able to make his decisions and we are also confident that He knows the future, the path followed must be from A) to B). When that transition occurred ? Certainly not during the man's history, of course that must have happened BEFORE the birth of the universe.
However, God only arrived at step B) BUT WITHOUT ENTERING that step, we saw earlier that God is absolutely NOT INTERESTED IN TAKING PART to that future: He would be obliged to "SLAVISHLY" follow it. The God's actions in that one future (for example words) will AUTOMATICALLY come true instead. In other words that one future will become true WITHOUT GOD. NOBODY will be there to take the God's actions: that NOBODY is the SPIRIT OF GOD. God was thus FREE from any other duty. But where has the almighty God gone ? Of course He is now the Son of God. The almighty God dropped his then USELESS power to become like a normal man: Jesus. Thus, the almighty God is only IN THE PAST, "no one ever saw God" ""The world has not known you".

[johnlawrence]

The only possible reaction to accepting the existence of God is to abandon the accepted, normal way of life and go through the wicker gate that leads to the pilgrim’s life path.
Anything else is simple failure to accept the reality of God’s omnipotent existence. You may think you believe - like priests and lay church people do - but you are deceiving yourself; you have not the courage of your convictions.
You can become an expert on Buddhist practice, but if you are still there with your job and your family, it’s all just pie in the sky

The world you see around you is not God’s world. Anyone can see from a simple reading of the Old Testament that the material world around you is today’s product of generation after generation failing to follow God and leading lives of delusion as described above

[kazilziya]

My question is, does God actually have a "chosen favorite people". If that's the case, how con anyone others created by God hope to be treated equally. Just a thought.

[oskarngo]

So if there is intelligent life outside earth that is non-humanoid;

Whose image of god is correct??
...or does it invalidate the god hypothesis?

We are not programmed to believe in god!...

...in the past, our scientific knowledge was more limited; so it was more common to assign god to explain that which we don’t know the answer to.

...because having answers is needed to run a society...even if the answers are not true.

[deanwilson]

Just because most people in the world believes in god doesn’t mean the thought is not irrational. Ergo hoc propter hoc.

[Kath-owem]

Human Consciousness has evolved ---- Bible is a story of this evolution.

[khafreahmose]

I suspect that in the interest of time that no attention was given to the philosophers actually attempting to define god FIRST before exploring the question of whether he/she/it exists.

[bimaldeybimaldey]

Every thing of universe is alive, we come from universe, universe is alive, so we alive, our God is universe, so fire as god, air as god, water as god, soil as god, man is mortal, soul is immortal,

[StoryGordon]

Yes... and then again, No... depending on one's characterization of God.