Mccloskey Summary

1.McCloskey means to seperate the reasons for gender crossing.There are those who use gender cross as a way to express themselves and then there are those who use it to gain the benefits.By stating "My gender crossing was motivated by identity, not to be a balance sheet of utility?” McCloskey means that ze isn't using gendercrossing as a way to gain the benefits of different sexes.

To reply to McCloskey’s claim that there could not be a God due to the amount of evil there is I would first acknowledge this claim. At first I too agreed with this claim that how could someone so great and loving let so much evil and pain into the lives of people who do not deserve it. Simply because I did not understand how God could be so great and let evil into this world. Since then certain truths about theology have been explained to me so I can understand the good of God verses the evil found in this world.

In some ways, it is refreshing to read H.J. McCloskey's article, "On Being an Atheist". Most people assume atheists are simple nihilists who do not subscribe to any sort of convictions or beliefs. The author's text, however, refutes this conventional viewpoint by producing several reasons for embracing atheism, many of which are studied and labored counterarguments to typical claims of theists. The most important part of this essay is found in its opening paragraphs, in which the author makes a very prudent point in explaining the fact that most theists do not require elaborate proofs or empirical evidence to substantiate their beliefs in a divinity. Those who do have not completely subscribed to faith, but to testaments of man's deductive prowess, which should not be confused with faith. However, the author makes a number of points that he believes alludes to fallacies in theism that those well versed in theism can handily refute.

The design argument is also referred to at the Teleological Argument stemmed from the Greek work ‘Telos’ meaning end or purpose. It is an ‘A posterior’ argument (from experience) based on our empirical senses and it is synthetic meaning that it is from observation. The argument is also inductive meaning there a number of possible conclusions. The main basis of the Teleological argument is based on a designer commonly known as ‘the classical God of theism’ (hereafter referred to as God)

Having completed the unit of philosophy of religion, you are now ready to respond to an article written by an actual atheist.  This article, titled “On Being an Atheist,” was written by H. J. McCloskey in 1968 for the journal Question.  McCloskey is an Australian philosopher who wrote a number of atheistic works in the 1960s and 70s including the book God and Evil (Nijhoff, 1974). In this article, McCloskey is both critical of the classical arguments for God’s existence and offers the problem of evil as a reason why one should not believe in God.

He thinks that there are not enough reasons for the existence of God by looking at the universe. Christians know that God created the earth and because the Bible says so. If we look outside our window we know that there had to be a Creator to design this beautiful universe. For an atheist, this is a lot harder to appreciate and assimilate. McCloskey claims that since God created the universe, then something or someone would have had to create God.

The argument discussed is one that has an unending list of contingent beings, all of which need a cause for existence. According to the article, McCloskey assumes that the argument calls for an uncaused cause to start an infinite number of contingent beings. McCloskey believes that each contingent being simply exists with an infinite number of causes that eventually lead back to a case of chance. In “Philosophy of Religion” by Stephen Evans, Evans refers to this way of thinking as a “brute fact.” According to Evans, by claiming this stance would turn the partial argument into a whole argument and concurrently, “this will require the defender of the argument to claim that the contingency of the whole of the universe can validly be inferred from the contingency of all its parts.” Where McCloskey’s ignorance further takes a violent curve against acquiring knowledge about the beginning of the universe connects to his argument is when he said “This means that the first cause must be explained as being a necessarily existing being, one who cannot exist.” What he is alluding to, and is also the focal point of his disapproval of theism, is that humans do not have the right to claim that a being created the universe. If an atheist can claim that there is no such existence of God, then why is it that a theist cannot claim the existence of a God?

Imagine you are a parent. Your child unexpectedly leaves with no explanation. Consider the pain and confusion it would cause. This is what happened when Chris McCandless set out on a journey to find the truth and to find himself. After McCandless had gone on the journey, he realized that happiness was only found when shared with somebody else. Chris McCandless failed to realize that pushing out certain people could cause more harm than good.

The Design Argument, or teleological argument, focuses on Thomas Aquinas’ fifth proof for God’s existence. This proof states that if an event does not occur by coincidence or chance, then the aforementioned events are purposefully orchestrated or of a certain design. The teleological argument essentially implicates God as the ultimate designer and creator of all events and matters on earth; however, there has been much criticism of whether or not God is truly the

Quite simply put, the first objection to the Argument from Design doesn’t account for the possibility that the intelligent designer has a higher understanding of the universe and can also understand why and how things work better than humans can. Also, it doesn’t take into account that the designer could have created the universe and placed processes such as evolution and natural selection in place as part of the universe during its creation. The intelligent designer could have created those natural processes in order to serve a specific function such as changing a species to help it to survive in the world that the intelligent designer changes on a regular basis. It could also be said that the intelligent designer could have created the universe, set these processes in play, and allowed the universe to set its own path using laws of science and natural processes to set its own course and control its own destiny. The Argument from Design says that if something is complex then it must have an intelligent designer.

The Design argument is an attempt to prove the existence of God. It is also known as the Teleological argument. This argument is an A Posteriori argument meaning it is based of an observation of how something is rather than an understanding of how something works. The Classical Design Argument states that the Universe is very complex, ordered and has purpose, and this shows evidence of design. For it to have been designed there must have been a designer and therefore concludes that the designer of the universe is God.

His view is that, because Christians live life by the standards set by God, life is almost uncomfortable in a sense. According to him, people that are atheist only have to live up to their personal moral standards. In an earlier module we were assigned the task of reading an article by William Lane Craig “The Absurdity of Life without God.” In this article Craig argued that the awareness of our morality exists because of God. I could not agree with Craig more. The purpose that we were designed with a moral compass was simply, without a doubt to enable us to stay in line with God’s commandments. The idea that McCloskey gives serves no purpose if God is the creator of everything including what we think is moral. His idea does not explain where we get morality from so consequently I would revert back to

He feels that theists should be sad and dismal just for following their beliefs. He elaborates on this by sharing that someone who is suffering physically or emotional or someone watching a friend or loved one suffer would find more peace in the knowledge that God does not exist. He states that atheists would look for compassion from fellow atheists and friends. McCloskey goes on to state that atheists would not tell someone to look for compassion from a God that allowed the agony to happen in the first place. He also shares that in light of there not being a God that people should do all they can to decrease the issues that would cause someone to need compassion.

McCloskey claims that the cosmological argument “does not entitle us to postulate an all-powerful, all-prefect, uncaused cause.” The argument does not state there is a God, but it makes a claim that something caused everything to come into existence. The view of a theist is that there is a God and this argument gives “key elements of the theistic conception of God” (1982, 59). With the conclusion of this argument, many views of God can be determined. “If someone accepts the conclusion, the proper attitude for him to adopt is surely a desire to learn more about God” (ibid, 59). In the Christian view, we learn about God by reading His word. The word is considered the revelation of God. “Revelation is the act whereby God gives us knowledge about Himself which we could not otherwise know” (Towns 2002, 29). People need to understand that just this view or argument alone does not justify a case for God but with the others, it does.

McCloskey brings up the problem of evil and he makes arguments against the concept of free will. He claims “might not God