The Book of Job probes the question of the problem of evil in the world. This book is one of the more philosophical books in the old testament. It has spiritual value, but it also has a universal philosophical value that touches on the problem of evil. The main character is Job who is an upstanding gentile man of his town. He has a family, a farm, and status in his town. One-day God and Satan are talking and Satan says Job only loves God because he is blessed with a good life. So as a challenge…
Universal determinism is the thesis that every event is fully determined by an event or several events that proceeded it. It was Pierre Laplace who pointed out that the present state of the universe is the effect of its preceded state (Litch 121). It is the past that creates the present and it is the present that determines the future. Everything is what is now because it was determined by something in the past. According to Mary Litch, “Events in the past are determined and fixed: we may regret…
work by Aristotle, De Anima, Aristotle alludes to the theory of spontaneous generation for the origin of organisms. In De Anima, Aristotle discusses the seemingly spontaneous generation of testacea, or mollusks. In this section of De Anima, Aristotle states that the generation of the testacea is not sexual reproduction, but spontaneous generation (Lennox 224). To many, this account sounds very familiar to Empedocles, implying that chance randomly assorts different parts of organisms together…
Looking at number 2, would one consider it to be true? That God would not allow any type of evil to exist? God has given humans free will, and thus humans are highly likely to engage in acts of evil. If God completely prevented evil from this universe, then humans would have some part of their free will stripped away. This would be unacceptable to that God and thus would be the reason on why God allows evil to exist. Now comes the question, what is considered evil…
Swinburne offers a free will theodicy. Before explaining his theodicy it is important to note the two types of evil. Natural evil, which is caused by disease, unforeseeable accidents, and natural disasters. Then there is moral evil, caused by humans intentionally doing actions they should not be, or evil caused out of negligence. God offers free will, humans have the power of make significant choices between good and evil. Free will needs to be there in order for deeper goods…
meaningless. The two possibilities are: (i) human character determines free action; or (ii) human character does not determine free action. So, either (i) our character determines what we are going to do—in which case our actions express our character and it is a reflection of who we are—or (ii) our character does not determine what we are going to do, and our actions are random. Theists argue that since (i) human character determines free action, freedom is meaningful. Freedom allows human…
In the free will vs. determinism debate, hard determinism seems to be a dominant belief. Hard determinism is the belief that free will and determinism are incompatible ideas, and that it is not possible to truly believe in both without being logically inconsistent. Under hard determinism, there is a view called hard incompatibilism which Smilansky subscribes to. Hard incompatibilism is the belief that determinism is incompatible with both human freedom and moral responsibility. Saul Smilansky…
Augustine of Hippo and Pico della Mirandola hold opposing positions on what they believe the human potential is. Augustine believes a human beings potential is predestined, at God's will, because of original sin. Whereas Pico believes the human potential is unlimited, because God created us to be “Sovereign craftsman” because he the “Greatest craftsman” had nothing new he could give to us (pp. 117). Augustine and Pico although they do not agree on the issue of a person's potential, do…
A man’s life is a journey that has been pre-destined by the gods. There is always a human will towards a desire, but in the end destiny plays its own course, and makes sure that the will leads the way to the fate. No matter how much the man wants to assert his own will, in the end a man is powerless against his fate. As per the ancient Greek theatre, Sophocles play’s normally have emphasis on individual characters, the role of chorus has always been reduced, there are complex characters who are…
13) His hopes are in vain and serve only to increase the irony of mortal Tamburlaine’s death in Part Two. Another example of natural order being challenged is when Cosroe, Mycetes’s brother plots to dethrone of his brother: “Well, since I see the state of Persia droop And languish…