In this episode of New Ideal Live, Aaron Smith, Mike Mazza and Ziemowit Gowin address questions about God, religion, and faith submitted by the podcast’s audience.
Among the topics covered:
Whether one must assess and refute every purported “proof” of religious beliefs before rejecting it
Why there can be no logical inference from observed reality to the supernatural
The difference between arguments in natural theology and mere storytelling
How to evaluate the concept of “God”
Why knowledge of morality doesn’t depend on God
The refutations of Aquinas’s arguments for God’s existence
Recommended books, including Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
The fact that some theologians, invoking faith, agree with these refutations
The value of examining Aquinas’s arguments and their dependence on the primacy of consciousness
Why a supernatural being cannot serve as an explanation
Whether some Abrahamic religions are better than others
The fact that Ayn Rand did not publicly address this subject
The importance of distinguishing between the religious texts and the values of some adherents
Whether ideologies like Marxism, Nazism, and Hegelianism are religions
Why there can be non-religious types of mysticism
Commitment by faith to the supernatural as an essential feature of religion
The nature of faith
Whether people are attracted to the idea of a God
The importance of taking a global and historical perspective on religion
Explanatory vs. psychological motivations for postulating a god
How to respond to the Buddhist claim that desires and attachments cause suffering
Why this view amounts to a call for “non-self”
How to think about Buddhist religious precepts
Why Ayn Rand called religion a primitive form of philosophy
Mentioned in the discussion are Leonard Peikoff’s Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand and his 1999 radio broadcast on the arguments for God’s existence, Onkar Ghate’s article “Finding Morality and Happiness Without God” and his talk “Can There Be Good Without God?,” and Robert Mayhew’s course on Thomas Aquinas at Ayn Rand University.
This episode was recorded on January 13, 2023. Listen to the discussion below. Listen and subscribe from your mobile device on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or Stitcher. Watch previous episodes here.
