The philosophy of religion checklist
Key resources – your notes plus the materials at
Richmond Philosophy Pages – The Idea of God
Michael Lacewing – Resources for AS
Topic
The concept of
God
God is allpowerful
(omnipotence)
God is allknowing
(omniscience)
God is perfectly good
Key issues
The God of classical theism (GCT) has been conceived in terms of perfection – completeness God has been described as possessing omnipotence, omniscience and supreme goodness. His existence has no beginning or end, being either eternal (outside of time) or everlasting (within time). Questions arise concerning the coherence of the GCT. Challenges focus on the coherence of individual great-making attributes or the incompatibility between different ones.
Strength of the claim that X is omnipotent
1.
2.
3.
X can do anything, including the logical impossible.
X can do anything that is logically possible.
X can do anything logically possible in accordance with its nature.
The paradox of the stone (Mavrodes; Savage)
The idea of complete knowledge -Necessary and contingent truths. Divine propositional knowledge
Challenges and worries -
Knowledge and change (Kretzmann; Castaneda; Boethius).
The threat to free will (Kenny; Boethius)
Relationship of omniscience to our understanding of God as being without beginning or end (eternal or everlasting?)
Is God unable to do wrong? If so, does that undermine divine omnipotence? Responses e.g. Aquinas – there is no distinct power to commit evil, which is a shortfall or negation. Not in divine nature to fail to act in accordance with attributes, which, of course, include perfect goodness.
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Arguments for the existence of
God
The design argument
The Euthyphro dilemma – Can God make right be wrong, or good bad? Is morality whatever God wills it to be or is morality something independent of God? Response - God’s will is shaped or guided by God’s love. It is not analytic that divine will and goodness are identical, but they are (c.f. Water and H2O).
Three classical arguments have been developed to explain the rational basis for belief in divine existence.
The cosmological argument
The ontological argument
The argument from purpose – e.g. Paley
The argument from regularity and structure – e.g. Swinburne
Challenges – e.g. limitations on the persuasiveness of analogies employed; alternative explanations; fails to establish need for GCT.
Causal arguments – there needs to be an initiating cause – Aquinas (Ways I and II); Kalam; Descartes – Trademark Argument.
Arguments from contingency – the fact there are contingent things means there must be a necessary being - Aquinas (Third Way).
Challenges – e.g. the arguments rely on a worry about understanding the nature of the infinite and the impossibility of having an infinity of events or causes. We might reject these worries. Descartes relies on the causal adequacy principle for his formulation and there principle is problematic. We are employing concepts of cause and effects which reflect our experience of a limited part of the universe
(c.f. Hume) or which we must use to make sense of our experience, but which have no application to talk of w hat is ‘beyond’ or ‘before’ space-time (c.f. Kant). Even if there is a need for a first cause, it need not be the GCT.
The significance and structure of the argument. A priori argument for the necessary existence of God. We know God exists necessarily as a result of the proper analysis of the concept GOD.
Anselm – Proslogion II-IV. God is the greatest conceivable being (GCB) and GCB will exist in reality as wellas the mind (II). The GCB will exist in the best possible way – necessary existence (III). I may think that denial of divine necessary existence is not a contradiction (as e.g. it certainly does not appear to be in the same league of saying a bachelor could be married), but it is. Think harder about the concept!
Descartes – God is the sum of all perfections, which includes existence. So, God exists necessarily.
Leibniz – Descartes. To compete the argument need to show that the concept of God is coherent. It is as perfections cannot clash or contradict.
Malcolm – Anselm (III) is the right approach, Necessary existence is a genuine property.
Plantinga – it is possible that a maximally great being exists and so exists in every possible world.
Worries – Gaunilo’s island; Hume and Kant on existence (plus Frege); Malcolm runs together temporal and logical necessity;
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The problem of evil
Religious language
Plantinga does not demonstrate that a maximally great being is possible
The logical problem – the following is an inconsistent set of propositions. One must give up one of the claims. (1) God is omnipotnent;
(2) God is omnisicient; (3) God is perfectly good; (4) evil exists.
The evidential problem – these are not inconsistent, but the extent, nature and distribution of (4) in both its moral and natural forms make probable the falsity of the existence of the GCT.
Responses – Theodicy – an explanation of why God (actually) allows evil. Defence – an explanation of why it possible for God and the existence to be logically consistent.
(1) Evil is necessary our moral and spiritual development – Hick and the vale of soul making theodicy. But, worries about the evidential problem remain and the entailments of the developmental thesis commitment to a particular view of the afterlife and salvation for all.
(2) The existence of the GCT and evil can be consistent because evil can arise from the exercise of our freewill – Plantinga and the free will defence. It is possible that God creates world with significantly free creatures as this is better than any other world. In a world of significantly free creatures some moral evil is inevitable (N.B.the possibility of transworld depravity). Natural evil – possible that it be the work of other free agents (e.g. fallen angels) or the result of our exercising our free will in ways that neglect the opportunities to minimise the level of natural evils.
But – nature and value of freewill; logical consistency of divine existence and evil leaves the evidential problem.
Should we regard religious language – the most basic statement of which is ‘God exists’ as cognitive (capable of being or aiming to be knowledge stating or factive) or non-cognitive?
Ayer – religious language is nonsense – analysis through the lens of logical positivism and the verification principle. But – problems with the VP and the possibility of a weakened VP allowing back into consideration some religious claims.
Flew – appeal to falsification. Religious claims typically fail to be meaningful – death by a thousand qualifications.
Hare – religious claims framed by or emerge out of a worldview (blik).
Mitchell – theists recognise that there is evidence which can count against their claims. However, it is the nature of religious claims that they centrally involve not just a claim about how things are, but an attitude of commitment and trust in virtue of which they maintain their claims.
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