Kierkegaard's Conception Of Belief In God

Belief in God exists in every culture and has throughout history (www.iep.utm.edu/relig-ep/). If we can conceive one of the greatest possible beings, then it must exist. Pragmatic arguments have often been active in the support of theistic belief. Theistic pragmatic arguments are not arguments for the suggestion that God exists; they are arguments that believing God exists is rational. Pragmatic arguments are relevant to belief-formation, since teaching a belief is an action. Pragmatic arguments are applied in orientation, justifying actions that are thought to enable the achievement of our goals, or the satisfaction of our desires (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pragmatic-belief-god/). Heisenberg discovered the Uncertainty Principle. The …show more content…
Kierkegaard has been known as the “Christian Socrates” because of the way he challenged traditional beliefs like Socrates did. Kierkegaard’s faith is one of an unusual re-choosing of faith in the impossible. He believed that what many people called “faith” was “hope” because with hope there is a probability for something to be true, whereas true faith is believing in something even one knows it is impossible and there is no reason for one to believe in it. Hope does not have any significance in the existence of impossibility, only faith does. Kierkegaard maintained that faith was higher than reason, meaning that reason has its limit and faith begins where those limits of reason are found. For Kierkegaard, faith was different from the traditional Christian view of faith. One must re-choose faith in the impossible and that reduces one to a private existence within the domain of faith …show more content…
This is the condition for faith, and must be given by God. The idea of sin cannot evolve from pure human origins. Rather, it must have been introduced into the world from a transcendent source. Once we understand that we are in sin, we can understand that there is some being against which we are always in the wrong. On this basis we can have faith that, by virtue of the bizarre, we can be redressed with this being. The ridiculousness of amends requires faith that we believe that for God even the impossible is possible, including the forgiveness of the unforgivable. If we can accept God’s forgiveness sincerely, inwardly, contritely, with gratitude and hope, then we open ourselves to the joyous prospect of beginning again. The only obstacle to this joy is our refusal or resistance to accepting God’s forgiveness properly. Although God can forgive the unforgiveable, he cannot force anyone to accept it. Therefore, for Kierkegaard, “there is only one guilt that God cannot forgive, that of not willing to believe in his greatness”