Religion
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important terms
Religion = community united around supernatural beliefs and worship practices or
of respect for the supernatural (prayer, dietary practice, pilgrimage)
Some religions may believe in God (Islam, Christianity) or not (Buddhism)
Dogma = a belief or a fundamental rite, cannot be criticized or questioned
in a religion.
not eating pork in Islam, observing Shabbat among Jews
Fideism = religion is justified by faith and not by reason. This experience is done
So through the heart, the faculty of intuition, direct knowledge, and opposed to reason.
thoughtful...
It is a firm, subjective belief in something, as well as in a religion or in God without
reason
Mystique = someone who claims to have communicated with a supernatural force
course
Durkheim: religion is synonymous with society (unifying character)
Religion is a cohesive system of beliefs and practices related to things.
sacred that unite the same community. Religion is a factor of strengthening
social dulien.
Religion is thus viewed as a social fact: religious beliefs are not
make isolated individuals, but are common to a group that religion connects (etymology
to gather or to collect
Religion answers a collective and individual need:
It guarantees social peace through belief in an all-powerful being who lays down the laws of
individuals.
In the Jewish religion, the 5th commandment of the Old Testament is 'you shall not kill.'
this precept has moral value but also social utility. Prohibiting murder
allows for the establishment of the necessary security for individuals to live together.
The religion dictates somemoral imperatives that allow us to establish our societies and the
to maintain, by preserving a social instability + prayer and worship a good way to gather
individuals and their values.
Religion answers the set of existential questions of men. Why
Am I on earth? Why do I exist? God is the origin of the creation of the world.
Arguments against the belief in God:
Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book Gamma
One cannot trace back infinitely into the past; there must be a first cause, a prime mover.
first which is the act of creation and the existence of the world by God.
The world is too harmonious, too well-made, coherent, to be the result of chance and
requires the existence of an infinite intelligence that created.
Pascal, Thought:
The heart has its thoughts that reason ignores; we feel the existence of God through the
We all feel an existence through the faculty of intuition, which is the heart.
They would be of bad faith and would be tennis at heart all the same.
It is rational to have faith and to bet that God exists because we have nothing to lose. If he
We have access to eternal happiness and paradise, otherwise believers and non-believers
believers will find themselves in the same situation after death: nothingness. Everything to lose, if God
There is: hell or nothingness.
Descartes, Metaphysical Meditation
How could I (myself, being finished), have the idea of infinity if it is not because God gave it to me.
header.
argument ontology; God is by definition perfect, but if He did not exist, He would be imperfect.
therefore it exists. "a perfect being necessarily exists"
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason:
-3 postulates of practical reason (God, free will, immortality of the soul). Impossible
to be sure of it, but we have the right to believe in it and to help ourselves to be good and happy.
Atheist arguments against the existence of God:
Diderot:
An omnipotent being, absolutely good and the creator of the universe cannot have created a
imperfect world an world with evil (pain, war, disease, inequality) or there is
bad everywhere in the world so it is being does not exist.
Marx, Critique of Hegelian Political Power:
"Religion is the opium of the people" = it numbs and drugs him, making him forget his condition.
miserable and prevents him from making a revolution because Paradise awaits him in the afterlife. Life
earthly life is not very important compared to life after death. It would be
like the consolation of the poor, which would allow him to be compensated for the sufferings that
it has lasted, and a soothing explanation for death.
Freud, The Future of an Illusion
Religion is an illusion that originates from childish desires, conscious or
unconscious, of an all-powerful patriarch, a protective father who watches over us. According to
Freud, the adult asks God exactly what he asked in distress from his parents:
love and protection. Religion helps to manage the anxieties related to human finitude.
Religion meets natural and emotional needs.
Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra:
Religion was created by the resentment of weak men who wanted to take revenge.
of efforts by threatening them with misfortune after their death if they did not comply with their will. The
Religion therefore has a political origin, that of the domination of others through fear of the
divine punishment.
Bergson, Two Sources of Morality and Religion:
Static religion really exists in society, allowing one not to be anxious about
death and ensures social cohesion. The dynamic religion linked to love is in contact with
man and God through a mystical experience.
Plotinus, Enneads:
Everything that is earthly, material, and part of human practices does not need to be linked to
God, who is clearly superior. Only the heart can reach Him.
Dostoevsky
If God did not exist, everything would be permitted = importance of God in proper conduct
societies. The rules and prohibitions imposed by a higher power are no longer
respected like a society without an organization that enforces institutions (courts,
central banks). Without a transcendent God, humanity is responsible for all its
choice.
Time can be irrational:
- We are beings of thought, capable of reflection and therefore we must
make use of this magnificent tool which is intelligence. It allows us to properly
to drive in society, to successfully carry out our projects, to realize our dreams. How
Can we justify the attitude of those who say 'creo que absurdum' = I believe because
What is absurd? These people would not be worthy of what nature has given them.
granted as intelligence.
- the atheist argument of the existence of evil: how can there be evil in our
world while God is supposed to be omnipotent, absolutely good, and creator of
the universe? The incompatibility between the manifest existence of evil and the three attributes
divine (love virtue and not vice) and creator of the universe.
- Faith is also irrational because the three major religions oppose science.
reasoned
Having faith is rational:
Mysticism: claiming to be in communication with God, he claims to have a
revelation and having crossed by his grace the ontological void that separates us from him
(apparition, voice) several supernatural phenomena may be behind their
It was. They acquired a subjective certainty of theism through this experience.
extraordinary miraculous
Pascal's wager: rationality is based on a cost-benefit calculation, but it is difficult.
quantifiable we have nothing to lose
It allows us to find meaning in life, to give it rhythm: it asks us to pray,
to praise God, to be charitable... we have a mission on earth, that of obeying the
commandment of God. An atheist must find meaning in their life, which is not
easy.