I felt that both Rowe and Hick both had valid arguments and both supported their logic with soundness but I felt that Hick was more open to the logic behind a possible counter argument than Rowe was. Hick, throughout his paper, mentioned and argued for both points–God’s existence and His non-existence. Hick, in my opinion, made it a point to show his readers both perspectives which I think made the excerpt better to understand and yet, he still manages to get his point across. He argues the existence of God very logically. He basically mentions all the examples that typically are used to argue God’s existence then he continues to use logically charged arguments to state his view points. I think that Hick’s use of the various view points and how he uses it to prove his real argument give him more validity than Rowe’s did. Rowe just stated many hypothetical examples with not many counterarguments. I think because of that, it just showed one perspective that a counterargument would be easy to use. Hick, on the other hand, I felt used many more common viewpoints and a logical argument to back up his ideas. He also, at the same time, never says that God flat out exists, he just offers arguments and validity that suggest that God most likely does exist. In my opinion, I think that Hick had better logical reasoning and enforcement of his ideas.
I agree with your viewpoint, Julia. I would just like to add a few things pertaining to how the two authors structured their papers differently as a whole. Like one of our classmates mentioned yesterday, Rowe tended to utilize many symbols to represent his arguments. Since his argument was complex already, I felt his use of symbols only added to the confusion in understanding his viewpoint. Hick, on the other hand, was very clear in his writing and was straight to the point with his argument. However, I will acknowledge that I found it easier to physically identify Rowe’s argument within the paper, since he laid his viewpoint out by numbering his premises and drawing a line to indicate his conclusion from the preceding premises. It did take me longer to identify Hick’s argument since he did not explicitly number his premises and conclusion, but nonetheless provided an argument that I felt was much easier to understand than Rowe’s.
I enjoyed the fluidity and ease in which Hick’s argument was organized, so I definitely think his argument made for a better understanding of his viewpoint for theism. I do, however, think that Rowe’s argument contained more logic than Hick’s did. A lot of his symbols and abbreviations confused me at first and I had to read through them carefully to fully grasp the premises for his argument. But overall I agree that Hick’s argument was better for including possible counter arguments and more informative for the argument against athiesm.
Julia I agree with your statement that “Rowe just stated many hypothetical examples with not many counterarguments.” And even in the examples/arguments he stated I found some holes within them when I read them carefully. I often found him making assumptions with the most common being that because there is no example that we know of that justifies premises 1 and 2, therefore god doesn’t exist. I also was a bit confused with the example about the fawn. The scenario is centered around an act of nature (lightning) and so in order to argue that god does not exist, Rowe should have offered some sort of explanation on when god should intervene with act’s of nature.
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