“It is wrong to believe anything without sufficient evidence.” Discuss
- Introduction
- Definition of atheism
- Alternative to religious explanation: sociological – Durkheim –detail –functionalism –reason / purpose / need fulfilled
- Counter-criticism of Durkheim
- Marx : God as human creation – fulfils certain needs – opium of masses – man outgrown need
- Counter to Marx
- Psychological: Freud – primitive horde – dead chief elevated to God – Oedipus complex / sex – security – desire to recapture oceanic feeling – religion a crutch
- Counter criticisms
- Modern alternative explanations: neurological – brain chemistry / trance state / induce religious experience – religious gene – Russell man who starves himself…
- Evaluation of ‘wrong’
- Need for faith? –different category of experience
- Need for sufficient evidence – nature of evidence – proof / probability – eschatological verification / Hick
- Agnosticism preferable to atheism
- Religious language: synthetic / analytic propositions – verification / falsification – phenomenon versus numenon – realms of experience / is concrete only one?
- Overall logic and experience – we believe in plenty of unprovable things e.g. we exist – the nature of being human etc…