Elisha ponders...

I am seeking to understand C.S. Lewis’ view on, and definition of, faith and evidence. I am asking in particular in relation to this piece: Still, there persists a definition of “faith” as inherently anti-evidential, inherently irrational. In reply, I always point back to C. S. Lewis’s famous qu...

I have written a "most comprehensive" proof of God. Taking data from history, poetic epistemology, greatest revolution and mathematical physics. Although, I can't quote every testimony I have which will make book 100 pages long but I have taken enough to basically "establish" what I want to say. ...

I am specifically looking for philosophers who have argued against the Christian doctrines of self-sacrifice, turn the other cheek and 'love your neighbour as thyself' and other such teachings of Christ. I am aware of Nietzsche and also Stirner. However, Stirner doesn't seem to specifically addre...

I asked on Christianity Meta where a question like this should go, so if it needs to be migrated, I am OK with that. I asked on Philosophy SE due to looking for answers from skeptics, but please let me know if there is a better place. In Matthew 24 of the New Testament, Jesus speaks of his retur...

In a famous article, Anscombe castigates "Modern Moral Philosophy" (including but not limited to consequentialism) as "quite incompatible with the Hebrew-Christian ethic. For it has been characteristic of that ethic to teach that there are certain things forbidden whatever consequences threaten, ...

Plato does not focus on the substance (being) of a thing, i.e. not on its intrinsic coherence, but only (on the one hand) on the (applicable) becoming, or (on the other hand) on a being that is phantasised somewhere into divine spheres. Hence Plato’s point of view is essentially the point of view...

There are quite many LGBT+ folks that consider themselves Christians, there are even LGBT+ churches. In the context of religious identity and personal authenticity, how might we philosophically evaluate the decision of LGBT individuals to remain within a Christian tradition that has historically ...

I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask, but is there a correct religion? I have sometimes described myself to others as both a theist and an atheist. Is there a better term for someone like this? I have heard of agnosticism, but I'm wondering if there are other terms as well, and I wouldn...

First source: https://dornsife.usc.edu/news/stories/what-is-a-miracle/ More than medicine The word is used widely in nonreligious ways. However, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which sums up the church’s teachings, defines it as “a sign or wonder such as a healing, or control of nature, wh...

According to my understanding of Saint Augustine's theodicy , The causality for evil is a paradox tautology caused in itself. We desire evil for to be evil. We do evil, to be evil. Evil is not caused by reason, but caused by itself to fulfill the desire of evil to be evil. The inherent flawed nat...

Tl;dr is in bold. Full quote: "Woman was the second mistake of God.—“Woman, at bottom, is a serpent, Heva”—every priest knows that; “from woman comes every evil in the world”—every priest knows that, too. Ergo, she is also to blame for science.... It was through woman that man learned to taste of...

For me, the biggest reason to doubt God's existence is that he is so non-obvious/hidden in comparison to his power and performance of highly obvious and visible acts in scriptures (always "a long long time ago..."). I asked a philosophically-minded Catholic friend about this, wondering why if God...

NOTE: Originally this was a sub-question asked within Did Thomas Bayes truly develop Bayes' theorem in an effort to rebut David Hume's arguments against miracles?, but some commenters correctly pointed out that I should split them into two separate questions. So the motivating context is this ar...

Perhaps this is a question better suited for Skeptics.SE, but it has a significant overlap with philosophy nonetheless. The context is this article: Bayes’ theorem began as a defense of Christianity Jordana Cepelewicz, Nautilus, December 20, 2016, on the Christian roots of Bayesian statistics: P...

Greetings I have recently been reading the lyrical meanings of a song, and other people's interpretations. With a small background in Philosophy, I took notice of a simple statement in someone's rather long criticism: "Anything that can be felt, is real." ( Feeling is referring to different human...

Consider a very powerful agent (call him Bob), who can do everything possible, except for turning on my TV. For Bob (maybe due to his nature) it is impossible to turn on my TV. Nobody would call Bob omnipotent, due to his lack of ability to turn on my TV. Now consider God. According to what I've ...

A 21st century study has proven this: by orders of magnitude larger than a Higgs boson particle under a cheese wheel, a woman of child bearing age may come to experience all kinds of new emotions. While this is normal, there is often a sacred ritual that follows. Involved in the creation of these...

Gentleness is a fruit of the Holy Spirit in Christian doctrine and I have an intuition for noticing when one is gentle but I can't pick it out. It's an intuition I have, and I have no idea why I, or anyone can pick up on the fact that someone is embodying the spirit gentleness. What concrete char...

Religious people say we have free will in that god has the knowledge of whatever will happen but he doesn't cause our actions, we have a choice. I did an act of sin out of my own choice; god was only aware of the choice I will make. I think that totally makes god not really the ultimate creator. ...

Religious people say we have free will in that god has knowledge of whatever will happen but he doesn't make us do sin. I did an act of sin out of my own choice; god was just already aware of the choice I will make. I think that totally makes god not really omnipotent. Here's why. When I make the...

In 1998, Dr William Lane Craig debated Professor Keith M. Parsons at Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, TX. The topic of the debate was "Why I Am/Am Not a Christian." After the debate there was a lengthy exchange between the debaters led by the moderator. The debate concluded with a question an...

Was Pontius Pilate justified in his sentencing of Jesus to the cross? Some, like the Ethiopian church view him as a saint, while others believe that he is in hell. Pontius Pilate was given the sudden burden choice in deciding the fate of a popular religious leader. He was forced to choose, betwee...

I am open to book suggestions, YouTube pages or anything with a community for Bible-believing academics. thank you in advance

So Thomists believe that there is no real distinction between perfections in God as God is pure act. Im not getting how real distinctions between perfections can lead to act and potency composition.

If Plato openly spoke of the Noble Lie proposal, in what he took to be quite an imperfect society whose change he hoped and perhaps even worked towards, would he have himself really thought that the proposal would be apropos in his perfect city? Or would he just assume that the lower classes woul...

The "Skeptic's Prayer" is introduced on page 411 of Handbook of Catholic Apologetics: Reasoned Answers to Questions of Faith, by Peter Kreeft & Fr. Ronald Tacelli Link. The Skeptic's Prayer This claim---that all seekers find---is testable by experience, by experiment. If you are an honest scient...

Since Christian doctrine of Trinity defines: one God existing in three coequal, coeternal, consubstantial divine persons:God the Father, God the Son (Jesus Christ) and God the Holy Spirit, three distinct persons (hypostases) sharing one essence/substance/nature (homoousion). https://en.wikipedia....

In a debate between John Lennox and Peter Atkins on the topic "Can science explain everything?", at minute 44:47 John Lennox claims: Lennox: "And the major reason why I believe Christianity is true is because--and here comes science again as a base--because Christianity is testable." Atkins: "Oh...

The claim that science is an offspring of Christian thought is often made in Christian-atheist debates. Theists argue that Christianity provided the necessary foundation for science to develop, such as the belief in a rational and orderly universe created by a benevolent God. Atheists, on the oth...

Dr. Eugene Scott said, "God's knowledge is a function of his power. He can know whatever he wants to know." Is this coherent? I thought this was a noncontroversial statement, but I was told it implies that God doesn't know some things because he doesn't want to and therefore is not omniscient. Wh...

I've been entertaining the idea that the Christian God might be utilitarian, after noticing many correlations between things that the Christian God commands or desires and things that promote happiness and well-being. The idea is that if God commands what He commands because those commands, if ob...

Shortly after the beginning, Cain kills Abel. (Genesis 4:8) In light of this, God sees it fit to create a new moral rule for all of humanity. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." (Luke 6:31) Many thousands of years later, a Prussian philosopher by the name of Immanuel Kant reali...

Lord's prayer says: And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. In this sentence it seems assumed that we are capable to forgive "our debtors". I do not understand how we can choose to do such a thing and then just do it? Is it enough to wish it or must we do more that? For me...

I'm an atheist who believes in much (not all) of the philosophy of Jesus. Are there other Atheist/philosophers who dicuss the teachings of Jesus from an atheistic perspective?

Summa Theologica II-II q. 154 a. 2: Nor does it matter if a man having knowledge of a woman by fornication, make sufficient provision for the upbringing of the child: because a matter that comes under the determination of the law is judged according to what happens in general, and not according ...

For this topic and question, I've tried finding and learning from other sources online (for reasons of unintentional duplication here but more-so the intentional avoidance of posting something presumably controversial) to avoid asking this but have failed getting a useable answer. I'll outline th...

According to Thomism, God's essence must be identical with his attributes, lest God has real attributes he is dependent upon for his being and "compose" his essence, compromising God's aseity and his oneness. This would mean that God has no real attributes. God's attributes would be merely mind-d...

From a classical theistic perspective, God both transcends time and space, yet is also present everywhere. But how can God be both outside time and space and yet be present everywhere?

Consider the following premise. Every existing thing has an explanation of its existence (either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause). God is sometimes viewed as existing by His own necessity. However, the Christian God who has properties such as goodness and love is obviou...

What bothers me is the possibility that egoism could be an intrinsic trait of existence in general. So we have gravity whereby masses pull each other towards themselves. An objection could be that this is just a neutral physical law, a structural feature of life evolving on this planet, devoid of...

To my mind the concepts of the finite and the infinite are equally mysterious. But recently I was surprised to encounter the view that infinity may be something different from what I have instinctively thought it to be. So in view of Plato's pythagorean background, is it true that he viewed infin...

If Actus Purus is true, does this mean that God is his attributes (his essence is identical to his attributes) or that God has no real attributes (simply virtually predications of the one essence). If so, why?

I was seeing a documentary on Christianity, in it many times the word "Holy spirit" was mentioned with subtext that it was something written in the bible. I had previously heard Hegel came up with a related sounding idea of the >>Heilig Geist<<. Do these two ideas have any relation to each other?...

I am afraid I do not have the expertise to form this question correctly, but I will give it a try: I want to understand how each of the different Christian theologies that exist (Evangelical Christians, Catholics, Orthodox, etc) impacts the psyche of its followers. Not the differences in rituals,...

Is non reciprocal kindness nihilistic? I'm not asking about Nietzsche's genealogy, explicitly, but reflecting on authenticity or life. When I find myself being kind, compassionate I guess, to people I have no special responsibility toward and whom do not seem to reciprocate that patient honesty, ...

How does existence preceding essence not preclude the possibility of bad faith? In what sense is it possible to act inauthentically if there is no authenticity other than what we make for ourselves? I mean, it's absolutely possible to deny that existence precedes essence. A lot of people aren't e...

If there can be three divine persons within the Godhead who share one divine substance, why can't there be multiple human persons who share one human substance?

I want to know what Plotinus' gradualism is exactly about. I've heard in a lecture about Augustine being inspired by that theory, but can't seem to find anything about this. Is this gradualism just another name for Plotinus' theory of emanation (aka emanationism)? Any help or clarification will b...

Though apparent, the framework of the Triune Godhead appears logically incoherent in juxtaposition to the Absolute Divine Simplicity model. Looking through the works of Thomas Aquinas, who is the most crucial figure in the development of this model, has led to me to presuppose this conception. A ...

(i have something to ask on meta stackexchange or maths meta stackexchange, but I want to ask a philosophy thing first. In fact, I may not even need to ask on meta stackexchange after this.) I could swear there was something about Kant or one of those opposites of utilitarianism that might be re...