Exam 4: Plato the Beginning of Everything

Joyce asserts that "The earthquake and the volcano serve a _________ which more than compensates for the physical evil which they cause."

What is Cleanthes's argument by analogy for his conclusion that "we prove at once the existence of a deity"?

Explain in detail Pascal's "wager." Do you agree that we have to wager?

Berkeley says, "That food nourishes, sleep refreshes, and fire warms us; all this we know, not by discovering any necessary connection between our ideas, but only by the observation of the settled laws of concordance."

Philo asserts that "That all inferences concerning fact are founded on reason."

Clifford says, "It is the sense of power attached to a sense of knowledge that makes men desirous of believing, and ..."

For Masham, "Faith being here understood as that faculty in us which discovers, by the intervention of intermediate ideas, what connection those in the proposition have one with another whether certain, probable, or none at all, according to which we ought to regulate our assent."

Pascal asserts that "Let us then examine this point, and say, 'God is, or He is not.' But to which side shall we incline? ______ can determine nothing about it."

Explain Mackie's criticism of the following position: "Evil is due to human free will."

According to Mackie, it is sometimes suggested that "Evil is necessary as a means to good." But Mackie criticizes this position when he says, "so that if God has to introduce evil as a means to good, he must be subject to at least some causal laws. This certainly conflicts with what a theist normally means by ..."

What reasons does the speaker give to support the claim that the world was created?

Descartes says, "I can demonstrate diverse properties of the triangle, all of which are assuredly true since I clearly conceive them: and they are therefore something; and I have already fully shown the truth of the principle, that whatever is ..."

Mackie says, "I think, however, that a more telling criticism can be made by way of the traditional problem of evil. Here it can be shown, not that religious beliefs lack rational support, but that they are positively irrational."

For James, a confirmed hypothesis is one which appeals as a real possibility to him to whom it is proposed.

Anselm says, "For, it is one thing for an object to be in the understanding, and another to understand that the object ..."

To the question in the reading, "Was the heaven or the world always in existence and without beginning, or created, and had it a beginning?" the answer given is "created."

Pascal asserts that "Let us then examine this point, and say, 'God is, or He is not.' But to which side shall we incline? Reason can determine nothing about it."

Explain in detail what James means by a "dead hypothesis."

Descartes says, "when I think of it more attentively, it appears that the extent can no more be separated from the perfection of God, than the idea of a mountain from that of a valley, or the equality of its three angles to two right angles."

Mackie says, "I think, however, that a more telling criticism can be made by way of the traditional problem of evil. Here it can be shown, not that religious beliefs lack rational support, but that they are positively ..."