Assignment:
Instructions per the instructor:
Link Task: Complete the following quiz relating to God:
https://www.philosophyexperiments.com/god/Default.aspx
Are you surprised at the results your experiment generated for you? Did you commit any contradictions?
Text Task - Answer the following question: Does it make any rational sense to believe in God in the 21st century, given the advances of our understanding of physical reality and the radical, multiple, and diverse critiques of religion by David Hume (Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion); Sigmund Freud (Future of an Illusion); Karl Marx (Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right); Friedrich Nietzsche (several of his books) as well as more recent attacks by Sam Harris (The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason); Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion); Daniel Dennett (Breaking the Spell); and Christopher Hitchens (Why God is not Great). The last four critiques mention not only that religions have got it wrong, but that religion has harmed many people, that religion is bad.
Reference helpful elements of our Rachels text, to support your claim.
Suffering in a Divinely Created Reality
Task - Answer the following question. Open a news source and practically every day, we read accounts and view video footage and photographs unspeakable natural and human-made calamities. Where is God and why does God not avert at least some of the calamities? Note that our text differentiates between natural evils, such as tornadoes, earthquakes, typhoons, etc., from moral evils, which derive from human actions, such as terrorist acts, murders, rapes, torture, car accidents, etc. In this question, we are concerned with natural evils.
Use any TWO of the following links to support or to contrast with your own view:
Book of Job
C.S. Lewis - Via Anthony Hopkins
Summary of Thomas Aquinas' Five Ways to Prove the Existence of God
William Lane Craig and Sam Harris Debate Existence of God and Merits of Christianity
Christopher Hitchens - The Indifference of Heaven
Richard Dawkins - Argument against Religion