Exam 4: Plato the Beginning of Everything

Cleanthes asserts, "Therefore, the words necessary existence have no ________; or, which is the same thing, none that is consistent."

Kierkegaard says, "Thus I always reason from certainty, not toward uncertainty, whether I move in the sphere of palpable sensible fact or in the realm of thought."

Explain what James means when he says, "Our belief in truth itself, for instance, that there is a truth, and that our minds and it are made for each other-what is it but a passionate affirmation of desire."

A question in the reading, "Was the heaven or the world always in existence and without beginning, or created, and had it a beginning?" is answered as follows:

James says, "Our belief in truth itself, for instance, that there is a truth, and that our minds and it are made for each other-what is it but a belief based on scientific evidence."

Leibniz claims that there are two kinds of truths; the second, truths of ________, are contingent and their opposite is possible.

For Parsons, "a morally sufficient reason obtains in a situation where permitting an evil is necessary to prevent a greater evil, or else necessary to achieve a good great enough to make evil worthwhile."

Philo says, "But can you think, Cleanthes, that your usual philosophy has been preserved in so wide a step as you have taken, when you compared to the universe, houses, ships, furniture, machines, and, from their similarity in some circumstances, inferred a similarity in their ________?"

Do you agree with Kierkegaard when he says, "For if God does not exist it would of course be impossible to prove it"?

For Nietzsche, we need to get rid of the religious idea of absolute values and ...

Mackie says that a theologian "can admit that no rational proof of God's existence is possible. And he can still retain all that is essential to his position, by holding that God's existence is known in some other non-rational way."

Explain what Parsons means when he says, "Since God created nature and human beings, it must follow that God, at least indirectly, is the creator of both natural and moral evil.

Berkeley claims that the ideas of Sense are less dependent on the spirit, or thinking substance which perceives them, "yet still they are ideas, and certainly no idea, whether faint or strong, can exist otherwise than in ..."

According to Demea, "We must, therefore, have recourse to a transcendently fertile Being, who carries the reason of his existence in himself, and who cannot be supposed not to exist, without an express contradiction. There is, consequently, such a Being; that is, there is a Deity."

Why does Nietzsche claim that most humans think it is impossible to accept that a moral system can be acceptable without a religious base? Do you agree with Nietzsche?

According to the reading, "the father and maker of all this universe is ..."

Parsons says, "Scientists of the 19th century therefore distinguished between ______________, God's direct actions, and _______________, the physical processes whereby God's aims were achieved in the natural world."

Masham asserts that "An irrational religion can never rationally be conceived to come from God."

Lammenranta claims that "Descartes attempts to validate reason in terms of ..."

At the beginning of the reading, what happened to the ship?