I'm pretty sure that when it comes to matters of doctrine they will say "Yeah, it seems stupid and nonsensical, but I believe in God and I believe that this is what God told me, so I have to have faith that it makes sense." But I guess I should ask about that, just to make sure. Thanks!
As for your specific question, I'm sure their answer will be pretty straightforward: Humans are irrational, themselves included.
'm pretty sure that when it comes to matters of doctrine they will say "Yeah, it seems stupid and nonsensical, but I believe in God and I believe that this is what God told me, so I have to have faith that it makes sense." But I guess I should ask about that, just to make sure. Thanks!
I mean, a bunch of my friends are theology grad students/friars and none of them would answer this way. For most of the religious folks I know who have spent time researching their faith (some of whom are converts), doctrine is likely to have persuaded them of t...
I am about to graduate from one of the only universities in the world that has a high concentration of high-caliber analytic philosophers who are theists. (Specifically, the University of Notre Dame, IN) So as not to miss this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, I have sent out emails asking many of them if they would like to meet and discuss their theism with me. Several of them have responded already in the affirmative; fingers crossed for the rest. I'm really looking forward to this because these people are really smart, and have spent a lot of time thinking about this, so I expect them to have interesting and insightful things to say.
Do you have suggestions for questions I could ask them? My main question will of course be "Why do you believe in God?" and variants thereof, but it would be nice if I could say e.g. "How do you avoid the problem of X which is a major argument against theism?"
Questions I've already thought of:
1-Why do you believe in God?
2-What are the main arguments in favor of theism, in your opinion?
3-What about the problem of evil? What about objective morality: how do you make sense of it, and if you don't, then how do you justify God?
4-What about divine hiddenness? Why doesn't God make himself more easily known to us? For example, he could regularly send angels to deliver philosophical proofs on stone tablets to doubters.
5-How do you explain God's necessary existence? What about the "problem of many Gods," i.e. why can't people say the same thing about a slightly different version of God?
6-In what sense is God the fundamental entity, the uncaused cause, etc.? How do you square this with God's seeming complexity? (he is intelligent, after all) If minds are in fact simple, then how is that supposed to work?
I welcome more articulate reformulations of the above, as well as completely new ideas.