Assignment
Instructions: Please note that the questions below are based on the Unit readings and are intended to be both an outline of the units' material and the basis for your Unit Assessment, so please give your best effort to answering them thoroughly. The task is to respond to all 30 of the questions below. Each question will be worth one point.
The format for submission is to include the questions with the replies. Example:
How does one know what the good life is?
- The good life is...
1. Define Theology. How is Theology different from the Philosophy of Religion?
2. What are some of the questions Philosophy of Religion deals with?
3. What are some of the difficulties and misconceptions associated with asking the question, what is Religion?
4. List some of the common characteristics of religion.
5. What are some of the common traits shared by the Religions of the West, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam?
6. Define Theism, Monotheism, Pantheism, Panentheism, Polytheism, and Agnosticism.
7. What are the three necessary properties associated with God in Western religious thought? Explain what each one means.
8. What are some of the philosophical problem associated with the characteristics given to God in the Western Religious traditions?
9. Briefly describe the Ontological Argument. (75-100 words)
10. Briefly describe the Cosmological argument.(75-100 words)
11. Briefly describe the Teleological Argument.(75-100 words)
12. List and briefly explain the arguments that strive to prove God's existence through experience.
13. What is the philosophical Problem of Evil?
14. What is a Theodicy?
15. What is Natural Evil and how is it distinguished form Moral Evil? Give examples of both.
16. What is Physical and Metaphysical evil? Give examples.
17. What is the argument against God's existence based on Natural Evil? Explain.
18. Briefly describe the Theodicies of Augustine, Iraneus and John Hick.
19. Contrast the claims of J.L. Makie and Alvin Plantinga.
20. What is the meaning behind Alvin Plantinga'sTrans World Depravity?
21. Explain the Free-Will arguments, and the counter arguments as they relate to the problem of moral evil.
22. Briefly summarize the theodicy of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz. Be sure to include his idea of the "best of all possible worlds."(75-100 words)
23. What is Process Theology? What is Open theism? What is Dipolar theism?
24. How does Atheism resolve the problem of Evil?
25. What is a Blik? What is a religious Blik? Give an example of both.
26. What were Wittgenstein observations about the limits of language? How does it relate to foundational beliefs?
27. Explain the Evidentialist Position on Basic Belief Systems.
28. How does Thomas Aquinas explain the relationship between faith and reason? What is the difference between the commensurable, incommensurable, irrational and translational explanations of the relationship of faith and reason?
29. Describe the reasoning involved inPascal's Wager? (75-100 words)
30. What is Fideism? And, what is the Coherentist explanation of the relationship between faith and reason?