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Students Zone / Questions / Chapter 12: Religion

1. Is it rational to believe in events that appear to contravene the laws of nature?

2. Some people argue that mystical experience gives us knowledge of an objective reality not detectable by ordinary experience. How reasonable is this claim?

3. Could God make a cup of coffee too large for Him to drink?

4. Could there have been nothing?

5. Does it make sense to believe that anything can exist which is not in space and time?

6. ‘The concept of God is the concept of the most perfect being. But the concept of the most perfect being must include existence; otherwise it would not be the most perfect being, just as something could not be a triangle without having three angles. Therefore as we have the concept of God as the most perfect being, God must exist.’ Critically examine this argument.

7. If all motion and change ceased, would time continue to pass?

8. Does religious experience provide adequate grounds for a belief in God?

9. Have Kant and Russell successfully disposed of the ontological argument?

10. What problems do we face in trying to prove that a given event was miraculous?

11. Examine the argument that since every event has a cause, no event could be the first cause, so the universe must always have existed.