What is a Human Being?
There are three main viewpoints in argument on what a human being is. Those viewpoints are empirical, rational and metaphorical. Empiricists base their views on observation and experimentation. Rationalists rely on reason as the best guide for belief and action. A metaphorical person tests the validity of his views in terms of the universality of his insight or awareness. This can be expressed by poetry, novels, plays, paintings and sculptures. Each viewpoint has conflicting ideas on the origin of man. Personally, I believe in the metaphorical viewpoint because I believe that God created man and that He is a supreme power and master of the universe. The empirical viewpoint is based on scientific testing. The empiricists test their view of reality and validity through experimentation and observations. By making observations they are able to draw conclusions and theories by the scientific method. To them validity is determined through sensory experience. Most empiricists do not believe in God because religion is based on blind faith. Thus, they turn to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. He gathered facts that supported the idea of evolution and proposed that evolution occurred through a
The rationalistic viewpoint through which human beings can be analyzed is directly associated with mathematics and logic. Logical consistency is what a rationalist will use to test validity. Rationalism in the philosophy of religion is the claim that the fundamental principles of religion are innate or self-evident and that revelation is not necessary. They believe that reason separates human beings from animals. Rationalists may or may not believe in God. Like math is based on theories, rationalism is based on theories. Rationalists maintained that we could deduce truths with absolute certainty from our innate ideas, much the way theorems in geometry are deduced from axioms. Mathematical demonstration was seen as the perfect type of demonstrating truth and, accordingly, mathematical proof became the model for all other kinds of demonstration. Many rationalist believe that reason was a gift from God to human beings. They believe that we are not related to animals because humans only hold the gift of reason. Dr. Clark and Dr. Bales, two rationalist thinkers observed that "reason led Darwin to God, so Darwin killed reason. He trusted his mind when reasoning about evolution, but not God..." Darwin used reason, which rationalists believe is a gift from God, to produce his theory of evolution. Rene Descartes stated that "in our search for the direct road to truth, we should busy ourselves with no object about which we cannot attain a certitude equal to that of the demonstration of arithmetic and geometry." Descartes was a French philosopher during the 16th century. His views were rationalistic. Through his methods of reasoning he sought to prove the idea of the existence of God. He found the idea of God among his ideas. This in itself proved to him that the idea had been placed in him by God. Descartes' conception of God is highly confusing. He made God independent of nature, thus raising the problem of how God could impress himself upon nature so that man can know anything about God. Further, how can God as pure spirit, give motion to matter? It was the problem of harmonizing the mechanical theory of the new science of the times with the theology of Christianity. Deism is a rationalist religious philosophy that flourished in the 17th and 18th centuries. Generally, Deists held that a certain kind of religious knowledge that is either inherent in each person or accessible through the exercise of reason, but they denied the validity of religious claims based on revelation or on the specific teachings of any church. They are religious in a sense but do not go to church and believe in its teachings. Rationalists leaned more toward reason than faith, unlike metaphorical thinkers who deem faith in God as their ultimate salvation. process called natural selectio
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Approximate Word count = 1881
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)
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