Study Guide

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STUDY GUIDE: Mid Term

Multiple Choice & True/False Questions:

Introduction:

* 3 intellectual skills that philosophy help cultivate

* Examining assumptions and worldviews

* Wisdom

* Plato’s Cave

Ancient Philosophers/the Beginning

* Why philosophy began in Greek culture;

* The nature/characteristics of the Most Real

* Thales: one beyond all

* Heraclitus’ world of change (Becoming)

* Empedocles’ “love” and “hate” principles

* Anaxagoras’ Nous/Mind

* Sophists: secularists, rhetoric, intellectual prostitutes, egoists, relativists, ethical relativists

Socrates

* Socrates’ lesson #1

* “The unexamined life is not worth livi8ng”

* Care for the soul

* Self-knowledge is necessary for the good life

* Knowledge is virtue; ignorance is vice

* How to develop excellence in the soul

* Consistency of Socrates’ thought and his life

Nietzsche

* The importance of “God is Dead”

* Denial of objective truth

* Denial of ethical truth

* Nihilism: the meaning of life

* Consistency of Nietzsche’s thought and his life

The Arguments for God’s Existence

* Theist, atheist, and agnostic

* The two ultimate worldviews

* “Does the universe explain itself?”

* Cosmological argument

* Design argument

* Moral argument; argument from desire

* Argument from religious experience

* Pascal’s Wager

* Do the arguments for God’s existence provide conclusive proof?

* The arguments against God’s existence: the question of which God, the burden of proof, irrationality or non-rationality of faith, wishful thinking, why does God hide?, fate of the unlearned

The Problem of Evil

* The logical problem of evil

* Is God the cause of evil?

* Where does evil come from?

* Why does God allow evil?

* Is this the best God could do?

* Can the problem of evil be answered completely?

* Good God...