God and Philosophy
(MCCC)
Tonight I gave the final exam in the Logic class I teach at MCCC. Yesterday I gave my final series of oral exams in my Philosophy of Religion class. It feels like a long semester, but I’m thankful for the opportunity to teach at MCCC.
My bachelor’s and doctoral degrees were both in philosophy. I was heading for an undergraduate degree in Music Theory when I became a follower of Jesus. That’s when I switched to philosophy. Because, as someone who was coming into belief in God, I wanted to discuss this stuff, and philosophy was the area that dealt with the big questions.
Philosophers talk about God and think about God in a variety of ways. These ways are:
- Theism - the belief in one God. Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are theistic religions.
- Atheism - the belief that God does not exist.
- Agnosticism - the claim that we cannot know whether or not God exists. NOTE: I sometimes meet someone whos ays they are an agnostic, by which they mean that they don’t know whether or not God exists. That’s a weak form of agnosticism. Philosophical agnosticism makes the very strong claim that one CANNOT know whether or not God exists.
- Polytheism - the belief that there are many gods. Hinduism is, arguably, polytheistic.
- Pantheism - the belief that everything that is, is God. Again, Hinduism seems pantheistic.
- Deism - the belief in one God, but that God has nothing to do with us or the world. Many of America’s founding father were deists, such as Thomas Jefferson.
I have found that students love discussing about these things, and are looking for persons to dialogue with without being lectured at. Like a number of MCCC professors I am sure, I have students who contact me years after teaching them to correspond and continue the God-dialogue.
December 19th, 2007 at 9:24 am
Rev. Dr. John- Thanks for the definition of “agnostic.” I have a friend who says he’s “antaganostic”! I like your treatment of the picture, too!