REASONING ABOUT THE COSMOS
The mystery revealed! It's a joke, but it illustrates the problem of partial knowledge. Stonehenge and the Easter Island statues seem unconnected, but maybe there's something going on we don't know about?
|
We have biased perceptions and view reality from a limited perspective. Humans evolved to use tools and perhaps we are genetically programmed to "see" cause and effect in the world, whether it's really there or not.
|
And that's just our galaxy! There may be 500 billion galaxies out there - one for every star in our galaxy. So you see,we might be biologically unable to understand the universe properly - we're too small..
|
the universe is religiously ambiguous. It evokes and sustains non-religious as well as religious responses - John Hick
A leap of faith - Søren Kierkegaard
YES
If all we ever know are phenomenon, then God is always going to be a mystery: believers and non-believers in design can never be 100% sure they're right. They can try and persuade each other of their own interpretation, but they also have to tolerate and respect each other when interpretations differ.
If religion is a leap of (or to) faith, then you don't arrive at faith because of the Cosmological Argument. It's the other way round. Once you've made the leap of faith, then the Cosmological Argument becomes persuasive and true. Faith is a choice, not something you're forced to have because of evidence or argument. John Hick argues this gives us "spiritual freedom" to use our freewill.
|
NO
If we can never get past the phenomenon to figure out the Noumenon, then religion is never anything better than a guess or an opinion. Even science can't provide a true picture of reality: it's just another interpretation. Some people feel this is giving up on the search for truth, which is what philosophy is all about.
There may be clues to noumenal reality. John Hick thinks religious experience is a way of getting closer to the Noumenon. We can never completely understand what God is like, but we can get a partial idea. Hick is a believer in religious pluralism - he thinks there's underlying truth in all serious religions, even ones that seem to contradict each other.
|