Exam 4: Plato the Beginning of Everything

Leibniz claims that there are two kinds of truths; the first, truths of tradition, are necessary and their opposite is impossible.

Explain what Parsons means when he claims that "whatever is brought about by nature or humans is indirectly created by God."

Joyce says, "The existence of moral evil, however, becomes explicable, when it is admitted that man's life is a ..."

Conway asserts that "indifference of acting, or not acting, can by no means be said to be in God; because this were an imperfection." Why would it be an imperfection?

What does Clifford mean by the phrase "it has been judged wrong to believe on insufficient evidence"?

For Lammenranta, "The problem is not whether knowledge is possible. It is whether we in fact have it."

Should we take Nietzsche's famous line, "God is dead," literally? Why or why not? Do you agree with Nietzsche?

It is asserted in the reading that, "Everything that becomes or is created must of necessity be created by some ..."

Joyce says, "The sufferings of men are directed primarily to the good of the sufferer himself, while they also afford to others an opportunity for the practice of ..."

According to Pascal, for the statement, "God is, or He is not," Reason can determine nothing about it. Why does Pascal claim this about "Reason"?

Masham says, "It is indeed only a metaphysical proof, and desire to approve ourselves to him, that will teach us in all things, uniformly to live as becomes our reasonable nature; to enable us to do which, must be the great business and end of a religion which comes from God."

Masham claims that "Religion being (as I shall take it at present for granted) the only sufficient ground or solid support of virtue."

Kierkegaard says, "What then is the Unknown? It is the limit to which the Reason repeatedly comes."

Pascal says, "But we know neither the existence nor the nature of God, because he has neither ..."

Parsons says, "Most theologians and philosophers have taken 'all-powerful' to mean that God can do anything except make a contradiction true."

Conway says, "let us suppose the duration of this world to be 600,000 years, or any other number of years, as great as can be by any reason conceived. Now, I demand whether it could be that the world was created before this time? If they deny it, they limit the power of God to a certain number of years; if they affirm it, they allow time to be before all time, which is a manifest contradiction." Do you agree with Conway that it would be a contradiction?

For Conway, "Hence it follows by natural consequence, that times from the creation are compound, and without all number, which no created intellect can conceive."

Explain Anselm's distinction when he says that a thing may be conceived in two ways.

Conway says, "In God there is neither deduction nor induction, nor composition, nor division of parts."

Descartes says, "And although the right conception of this truth has cost me much close thinking, nevertheless at present I feel not only as assured of it as of what I deem most certain, but I remark further that the certitude of all other truths is so absolutely dependent on it that without this knowledge it is impossible ever to know anything perfectly." In the italicized phrase, Descartes is referring to the belief in the power of thought.