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#'''Anthropic argument''': Latter-day Saints hold that there is at least a part of humanity that has existed in eternity past and will exist in eternity future with no chance of being destroyed. God thus didn't create our wills and this resolves the challenge. | #'''Anthropic argument''': Latter-day Saints hold that there is at least a part of humanity that has existed in eternity past and will exist in eternity future with no chance of being destroyed. God thus didn't create our wills and this resolves the challenge. | ||
#'''The Problem of Hell''': Latter-day Saints believe that God is embodied and remains outside of hell. Latter-day Saints do not believe that hell holds many people. In fact, they believe that all people will eventually be saved from hell no matter the decisions that they make. | #'''The Problem of Hell''': Latter-day Saints believe that God is embodied and remains outside of hell. Latter-day Saints do not believe that hell holds many people. In fact, they believe that all people will eventually be saved from hell no matter the decisions that they make. | ||
− | #'''No reason argument''': | + | #'''No reason argument''': Latter-day Saints believe that God is a man made divine. God gave life to human spirits and brought them here to earth so that they could undergo a process to become like him. This gives Latter-day Saints a compelling answer to this argument: there's a reason, there has always been a reason, and there will always be a reason for the continued creation of spirit children, earths for them to inhabit, and so on. |
− | + | #'''Atheist existential argument''': In Latter-day Saint theology, existence does not precede essence. All human beings are created with the purpose of becoming like God being love personified (1 John 4:8) and learning all the operations of the Law of Love. | |
+ | #'''The witness argument''': This argument in general is undermined by those that have claimed to see God or otherwise have communion with him. | ||
+ | #'''The disappointment argument''': Latter-day Saints might respond that if God does not respond to your prayers in these moments, it is because he trusts you to help yourself or others to help you. Latter-day Saints believe that one of God's purposes for this life is to teach us and others the Law of Love. Part of the [[Question: How do Latter-day Saints understand the concept of love?|definition of love]] is to reintroduce or reinforce a sense of comfort, happiness, and/or survival into a person's life in a moment of need. Thus, if we are to learn love, then God cannot respond to us in the moment of need and must leave it to someone else to help you so that they can learn love and become like God: love personified. | ||
===Conclusion=== | ===Conclusion=== |
Some have asked what philosophical advantages there are to believing in the Restored Gospel. This article attempts to list at least a few.
One doctrine that gives the Restored Gospel a lot of philosophical advantages is belief that the world was created out of matter instead of out of nothing. Most other Christian denominations, Jews, and Muslims all believe that God created the universe out of absolute nothing. This doctrine provides the Gospel a lot of immunity from scientific criticism. Most cosmologists believe that the universe has always existed in some sense. Additionally, the first law of thermodynamics states that energy can be neither created nor destroyed. Thus, believing that God created the earth from matter (or "organized" it) makes a lot more sense.
Christian philosophers of religion have traditionally seen the body and the soul as two separate entities—with the soul being the center of intelligence and being something that gives life to the body kind of like a pilot steering an airplane. The soul, for those who are known as substance dualists, is an immaterial entity while the body is a physical entity. This conception of the soul has come under a lot of scrutiny with things like split-brain studies which showed that the brain can actually be working like two minds if split. Latter-day Saints affirm that the body and spirit are both made of matter. This view is known as "substance monism." Latter-day Saints affirm that both body and spirit act in tandem to create meaningful experience (D&C 88:15). This view is more consonant with the view of the soul taken in the Bible.[1]
Theist philosophers of religion have had to deal with what is known as “The Problem of Evil”. The problem of evil basically poses that the existence of a loving-all powerful God is threatened by the existence of evil—both natural and human—in the world.
Latter-day Saints have been able to articulate strong solutions to the Problem of Evil. The following link to podcasts and speeches where Latter-day Saint philosophers have outlined their logic in responding to the Problem of Evil. The first comes from Blake Ostler and the other comes from David Paulsen.
The Problem of Diversity states that the existence of God is threatened by the existence of many religions with conflicting beliefs. If God truly wants us to believe in one truth, why would so many religions with conflicting teachings exist? Why would people feel spiritually motivated to believe in the truthfulness of these religions? We've outlined a very detailed answer in the article below.
Believing that God is embodied allows Latter-day Saints to respond effectively to nearly all the best arguments in favor of atheism. To illustrate, we'll take all the arguments against the existence of God on Wikipedia and offer a Latter-day Saint answer to them. We'll skip those that have already been responded to on this page such as the argument from inadequate revelations and the problem of evil.
Truly, the Restored Gospel offers variegated ways in which to inspire faith in those that may have ruminated over these questions for millenia. With the ushering in of the dispensation of the fullness of times, God brought us pearls of great price.
Notes
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