It is more appropriate to say that we feel religious emotions towards the universe because we think the universe is divine, rather than that the universe is divine because we feel religious emotions towards it.
Causal direction / causality(as used in logic and philosophy)
The question of what causes what—whether our emotions cause us to believe something is divine, or whether believing something is divine causes us to feel religious emotions toward it.
Epistemology (implied by the argument's structure)(as used in philosophy of religion)
The study of how we know things and what makes something true or justified—in this case, whether our feelings or our thoughts should be the basis for truth.
Religious emotions(as used in philosophy of religion)
Feelings of awe, reverence, wonder, or spiritual connection that people experience, often in response to something they consider sacred or meaningful.
divine(Cross 2009: 453)
Having the properties of being necessary, necessarily omniscient, omnipotent, eternal, immutable, impassible, and impeccable
Most straightforwardly it has been maintained that the One is holy because we feel a particular set of religious emotions towards it (Levine 1994, ch.2.2). For Rudolf Otto (1917), whatever is holy or ‘numinous’ is so characterised on the basis of our non-rational, non-sensory experience of it rather than its own objective features and, taking its departure from Otto’s work, one approach has been to argue that the feelings of awe which people feel towards God can be, and often are, applied to the
Extraction notes
Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks