NOTE: at the bottom of each page are “Next” & “Previous” buttons which do NOT take you to the next relevant Great Human Questions follow-up blog, but to the next chronological blog; that’s an inherent WordPress thematic ‘perk’ that I am unable to deactivate.
– hyperlinks will become active as individual items are posted –
DOES GOD EXIST?
If there is no God, then God is incalculably the greatest single creation of the human imagination. No other creation of the imagination has been so fertile of ideas, so great an inspiration to philosophy, to literature, to painting, sculpture, architecture, and drama. Set beside the idea of God, the most original inventions of mathematicians and the most unforgettable characters in drama are minor products of the imagination: Hamlet and the square root of minus one pale into insignificance by comparison.
– Anthony Kenny –
The Concept of a Supreme Being
Summary Review of the Characteristics of a Supreme Being
Proofs For The Existence of God
The Appeal To Experience
The Cosmological Argument
The Teleological Argument
The Ontological Argument
WHY DO BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE?
Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able & willing? Whence then is evil?
– Epicurus, 341 270 B.C. –
1. Satan: the devil causes suffering
2. Immortality: people who suffer will be rewarded with eternal life
3. Justice: everybody gets precisely what they deserve
4. Free Will: suffering results from the abuse of free will
5. Virtue: suffering allows positive virtues to develop
6. God on Trial
WHAT IS THE MEANING OF LIFE?
To lose one’s life is a little thing and I shall have the courage to do so if it is necessary; but to see the meaning of this life dissipated, to see our reason for existing disappear, that is what is unbearable. One cannot live without meaning.
– Albert Camus –
What is missing in my life is an understanding of what I must do, not what I must know – except, of course, that a certain amount of knowledge is presupposed in every action. I need to understand the purpose of my life, and this means that I must find a truth which is true for me, that I must discover that Idea for which I can live and die. For what is truth but to live and die for an Idea?
– Soren Kierkegaard, journal entry as a 22 year-old university student –
Overview
Epicureanism, Eastern Religion, Hinduism
Rational Humanism
Religious Faith
The Existential/Humanist Position
