Philosophy of religion and fundamental theology
Philosophy of religion and fundamental theology
This domain tests arguments for God's existence, the problem of evil, religious language, faith and reason, religious experience and miracles.
Arguments and evil
- Cosmological: Aquinas' first three ways; Kalam argument.
- Teleological: Paley's watch, fine-tuning.
- Ontological: Anselm; modal versions (Plantinga, Gödel). Objection: Kant - existence is not a predicate.
- Moral argument: Newman, Kant, Lewis.
- Logical problem of evil (Mackie) answered by Plantinga's free will defence; evidential problem (Rowe); Irenaean soul-making (Hick).
Language, faith and experience
- Ayer's verification principle; Flew's falsification challenge and Hick's eschatological verification.
- Analogy (Aquinas) against univocal and equivocal speech about God.
- Religious experience: James's four marks, Otto's numinous, Swinburne's principle of credulity.
- Fideism is rejected: faith and reason are complementary (Fides et Ratio; Vatican I on reason's capacity).
- Hume on miracles: define miracle as a violation of natural law and weigh testimony.
Worked example
Does suffering disprove God? Reasoning: the logical problem fails if a possible world exists in which free creatures and their consequences coexist with God; Plantinga's defence shows no formal contradiction. The evidential problem - apparently gratuitous suffering - remains harder. Catholic theology adds the cross and co-redemptive suffering.
Traps that cost marks
- Confusing free will defence with theodicy.
- Treating the five ways as one argument.
- Claiming the Church defines faith as contrary to reason.
- Using Hume's miracle argument without defining miracle.