One of the natures of philosophy as I have discovered in the course is that one can not look at a topic or an idea from a monopolistic point of view.
In philosophy, there is always more than one way of viewing an idea or a concept and to every idea there is always a counter idea that either disposes or challenges the previous idea or that makes a modification of it. Therefore, philosophical discussions are open discussions with several differing views about the same idea. Hence, there is no room for dogmatism or dominance of idea.At the beginning of the course, I must admit that I had a rather monopolistic view.
I have always believed that there are some arguments that are not worth it. I was of the opinion that any sane being should believe some things and that these things are not questionable. I believed that there are some ideas that should not be challenged as there is nothing to challenge about them. For me, we all know that these ideas are either true or false and that settles it. I was soon to discover how wrong I was with my theory.
As the semester went on, we had classes where I was stunned at the views of some of my colleagues. I thought to myself “How could someone reason like this? ” To my utmost surprise, the ideas that I thought no sane human being will challenged were being challenged by my view own mates. It was a new world of experience that changed my perspective to a lot of things and makes me appreciate philosophy more. One of such discussions we had in the course that changed my view was the idea of freewill.I had always thought that the fact that God is a perfect being that is infinitely good and can not be blamed for anything is not debatable. It was therefore a surprise to me when issues like the fairness of God was raised and his actions were criticized.
I initially thought that it was a ridiculous idea to raise but as the discussions continued, I began to see some sense in what was being said.I learnt to understand what these ideas were saying while asking myself; “is there sense in what is being said? The course and the discussions we had made me see the issue of freewill from another perspective and instead of out rightly refuting the argument, I learnt to understand what the argument was saying and then look if it was plausible. For instance, there was the argument that if the nature of God is that He is an all-powerful and an all-knowing God who is present everywhere, even inside his head, his every thought or action is known to that same God, then man can not do anything without his knowledge.If this is so, then his love for man should be question as he punishes man for doing wrong.
The question asked then is “why shouldn’t He stop man from doing evil? ” I had to sit and think of this. I said to myself, I think they have a point there but that was what made me think further that although God is all-knowing and all-powerful, but He chooses to test the love and devotion of men towards Him. He guides man by His laws and He is always ready to forgive him of his sin. He know the frailty of man.
