He became the Vicar of St Mary’s in 1828 in the
Trinity college’s church.
It is therefore no surprise that he wrote that a
belief in God and an acceptance of a specific religion is a rational activity,
defying the idea that it is always wrong to agree with a proposition without
adequate evidence. Unlike Locke, who
stated that there ought to be no proposition without justification, Newman
argued that there are plenty of solid beliefs that we have no real stance for
believing in. For example, we believe that Britain is an island because a
select number of people have told us so, but not everyone has collected
evidence to support the idea. However, if we refused to accept ideas such as
these because we want individual proof, the world would stop, and science would
be halted massively. Although, I must add that there IS recorded proof for
Britain being an island which everyone can access, God on the other hand is an
entire different story. He also states that you can prove the true nature of Christianity
by looking at the history of Judaism. However, he does recognize that in order
to believe you must be willing to accept, ie) through revelation. Your
conscious should be a trigger for why you believe in an existence of a higher
deity. Newman here is suggesting that the idea of God is innate and inbuilt
within our conscious.
No comments:
Post a Comment