Westphal: Implications, Part b

Quick Part B: Overall Themes

Westphal

Implications for Religion

• Hume: complete rejection of religion on the whole, this means we can just move on with our lives as if nothing happened. Naive, as so much of society and current day is reliant on modern religious events. 
• Hume: unfair approach to be suspicious of the motive, we can be good to be good, Mother Theresa
• Hume: human concept -> he is an anti-theist, similar to Dawkins, religion is therefore an institutionalised lie (Nietzsche, Marx), not the case, support from religious worshippers
• Scholastic: religion is based on faith, revelation, authority and reason, traditional proofs and what they meant for religion -> supports the theistic argument 
• consistency with the bible and obviously still important -> modern discussions and being taught 
• Kant: we must strive for the highest possible good, summum bonum -> moral justice 
• Schleiermacher: then religion is feeling at the core, and therefore the individual worshipper would carry on their individual pathway, no need for dogma and different religions. But devastating as this means it dismisses all the rituals that makes that religion so special. 
• Hegel: idea of universalisability, live by the maxims, not pantheism, but if the spirit is all around and existence in us all then we should also use Christianity as the absolute religion -> allow our community to flourish 
• Nietzsche: futile worship, as übermensch can only be aspired to if we are released from these bonds

Implications for Human Experience

• if Kant is accepted then the notion of an afterlife becomes a genuine reality -> summum bonum would become mainstream 
• Deism: people would talk less about the existence of God and more God as a philosophical idea, not true, as we have modern proofs of God (Plantinga & Malcolm, ontological argument)
• would we care less about spirituality and the idea of a soul? unlikely, life after death -> NDEs
• perhaps if we used deism or Kant, major reduction in rituals, lack of festivals and community cohesion
• is life fulfilling if it is just based on reason and rationality 

Implications for Morality

• Kant: morality is something we all strive for, but if it’s a duty is there a lack of free will -> is this true morality? Nietzsche: muddying the water, 
• Richard Harries: secular society moved away from religion meant more crime and immorality
• Church, mosques and temples become areas or community moral support groups 
• Hegel: more moral, because if the spirit or the eternal existed in us all, (animistic) then we may as well be nice to others, as it would be like doing good to ourselves (golden rule)
• but what about moral role models, people such as Gandhi and M. L. K have done well by following religion that is not based primarily on reason.