What is God like

1
What is God like?

• How do we answer this question?
• Survey religions (identify overlap)
• What does experience tell us?
• Investigate the idea/concept of God

2
What is God like?

• Adopt the third way, but guided by the first.
• 1. We can ask/answer questions without having
  to rely on a theory about religious experience.
• 2. The concept of God involves ideas that have
  been of central importance in Philosophy (e.g.
  Necessity and Possibility)
• 3. Reflection on the concept of God, in many
  ways, gets at what is compelling about religion
  -- we are forced to consider the boundaries of
  ordinary thinking. (e.g God is infinte, eternal,
  etc)

3
What is God like?

• Traditional Theism (as opposed to Pantheism or
  Process Theism)
• God is Good, Holy, Infinite, Just, Loving,
  Merciful, Omnipresent, Omniscient, Sovereign,
  True and Wise (Messianic Judaism)God is Simple,
  Infinite, Immutable, Unified, True, Good,
  Beautiful, Omnipotent, Omnipresent, Pure
  Intellect and Pure Will. (New Advent
  Catholicism)God is Merciful, Compassionate,
  One, Everlasting, Not Begotten/Nor has he
  begotten, Without Equal, Suffices for everything
  else to exist, and Selff-Sufficient (Quran Chpts
  112, 3962-63, 1116)

4
What is God like?

• We will focus on these features
• God is Worthy of Worship
• God is Necessary
• God is Omnipotent
• God is Omniscient
• God is Eternal

5
God is Worthy of Worship

• A basic fact about God (in just about every
  religious system).
• We take God to warrant our worship.
• What is it to be worthy of worship?
• Worth our total devotion

6
God is Worthy of Worship

• What would a being have to be like if such total
  devotion were to be appropriate?
• God would have to be the greatest being.
• Why?

7
God is Worthy of Worship

• Imagine there were a greater being. Then that
  being would warrant our total devotion (unless
  there was a greater still)
• Two senses of the greatest
• In fact
• In conception

8
God is Worthy of Worship

• God must be the greatest being possible/conceivabl
  e.
• Otherwise, total devotion would be impossible.
  (We would leave our options open) -- Consider
  Kierkegaardian objections to leaving your options
  open.
• Leads to Perfect Being Theology (Anselmian
  Theology)
• The perfect being is the basic notion from which
  our understanding of Gods attributes is based.
• What are the perfections in virtue of which we
  should worship God?

9
God is Necessary

• What do we mean by Necessary?
• Logical necessity A proposition, p, is
  logically necessary iff the denial of p is
  contradictory.
• Examples A square has four sides. The
  internal angles of a triangle equal 180deg.

10
God is Necessary

• Logical Necessity and Analytic Necessity
• Analytic necessity P is analytic iff the
  predicate is contained in the subject.
• An analytically necessary proposition (some
  think) is guaranteed to be logically necessary
  (or IS logically necessary).

11
God is Necessary

• A bachelor is unmarried.
• A square has four sides.
• Predicate is contained in the subject, so it MUST
  be true.
• At this point logical necessity means
  analytic necessity

12
God is Necessary

• Findlays argument (pg. 133-34)
• Perfect being theology holds that God is
  perfect (the greatest being) and on these
  grounds that God must be necessary in the sense
  that by logical/analytic necessity God must have
  existence.
• But, the notion of logically necessary
  existence is inadmissable. Why?

13
God is Necessary

• (See pg. 133-34)
• Is a exists of the same logical form as
• A bachelor is unmarried or The table is red?
• If not, then they cannot all be logically
  necessary (at least not in the same way).

14
God is Necessary

• Our guide to logical form grammatical form.
• a exists can be put
• There exists an a. OR
• a is an existing thing.
• Notice, we can say
• a is in existence. But, its very odd.
  (Compare a is red/unmarried/etc.)

15
God is Necessary

• Existence functions, logically and
  grammatically, in a way different from
  predicates.
• So, existence is of a different logical type
  than predicates.
• When we ask for the attributes of things, we are
  asking for their predicates.
• So, when we ask for the attributes of God, we are
  asking for Gods predicates.
• Existence is of a different logical type than
  predicates.
• So, necessary existence cannot be an attribute of
  God (b/c it cannot be an attribute of anything.)

16
God is Necessary

• For if God is to satisfy religious claims and
  needs, he must be a being in every way
  inescapable, one whose existence and whose
  possession of certain excellencies we cannot
  possibly conceive away. And modern views make it
  self-evidently absurd (if they dont make it
  ungrammatical) to speak of such a being and
  attribute necessary existence to him. (pg. 134)

17
God is Necessary

• Logical necessity Analytic necessity
• God is Necessary It is logically necessary
  (i.e. analytic) that God exists.
• Finlays argument
• P1 If 1 2, then Gods existence can be
  disproved.
• P2 1 2
• C Gods existence can be disproved.

18
God is Necessary

• Hicks Response?

19
God is Necessary

• Findlay holds
• 1. No existential proposition can be an analytic
  truth.
• 2. For God to be worthy of worship God must be
  such that it is logically (analytically)
  necessary that God exists.

20
God is Necessary

• Deny 2. Why?
• B/c its a misuse of language.
• How should we think of the claim God is
  necessary?

21
God is Necessary

• Their (the biblical writers) pages resound and
  vibrate with the sense of Gods presence, as a
  building might resound and vibrate from the tread
  of some great being walking through it.
• The notion of logical necessity is not put to
  use by biblical writers.

22
God is Necessary

• Why bring up the biblical writers?
• Isnt logical necessity part of the way we
  think of God?

23
God is Necessary

• Logical necessity is not required in order for a
  being to be worthy of our total commitment (i.e.
  worthy of worship).
• The testimony of the biblical writers shows us
  this.
• So, in what sense is God necessary?

24
God is Necessary

• St. Anselms conception
• God is the being greater than which none can be
  conceived.
• Further, its possible to conceive of such a
  being.

25
God is Necessary

• The being greater than which none can be
  conceived is to be understood to say
• God is a sheer, ultimate, unconditioned reality
  without origin or end.
• God is necessary and self-existent.

26
God is Necessary

• Self-existent Consider plants/animals. We
  depend on food, water, other beings/circumstances.
  
• God is not like this, God exists on his own. Does
  not owe his origin or sustenance to anything
  else.
• So, God is necessary in the sense of
  self-existent.

27
God is Necessary

• God must not have a beginning or an end.
• Why not?

28
God is Necessary

• That would make him dependent.
• the mark of contingency is transiency or
  temporal finitude and by contrast the mark of
  noncontingency,or of the necessary being of God,
  is existence without beginning or end -- in other
  words, eternal being
• But, is this right? Would having a beginning or
  end make God contingent, in the sense of
  dependent?

29
God is Necessary

• Though God could have brought himself into
  existence and ended his own existence, it would
  entail that something did not depend on God.
• Would it also entail that God was dependent?

30
God is Necessary

• Hick claims that it would.
• If God had a beginning or end, then this would
  raise the question of what caused God. But, God
  is not caused by anything.
• So, God must have always existed (had no
  beginning) and always exist.
• Total ontic independence entails eternity,
  indestructibility and incorruptibility.

31
God is Necessary

• So, does Hick avoid the problem raised by Findlay?

32
God is Omnipotent

• God can do anything.
• Can God create a square circle?
• Make 12 26?
• Can God forget something?
• Can God break a promise?

33
God is Omnipotent

• Two standard answers
• Better to say that it cannot be done, than that
  God cannot do it.
• God cannot perform actions contrary to his nature
  (and his nature is perfect).

34
God is Omnipotent

• The paradox of the stone
• If he can, then there is something he cannot do.
  
• If he cannot, then there is something he cannot
  do.
• Can we say that x making a stone too heavy for x
  to lift is self-contradictory in the same way
  that drawing a square circle is
  self-contradictory?
• Mavrodes answer?

35
God is Omnipotent

• The proposed task is self-contradictory.
• Why?
• See pg. 147

36
God is Omnipotent

• When considering a task, consider who is to
  perform the task.
• In this case, the being capable of lifting a
  stone of any size is supposed to be performing
  the task.
• So, the proposed task makes no sense The task is
  to create a stone so big that a being capable of
  lifting any stone cannot lift it. But, that is
  self-contradictory.

37
God is Omniscient

• If God is Omniscient, then God knows everything
  (past, present, and future).
• But, that means that God knows that you will do x
  tomorrow.
• If God knows x, then x is true.
• If it is true right now that tomorrow you will do
  x, then you cannot do otherwise.
• Free-will requires the real option that you can
  do otherwise.
• So, if God knows now that you will do x tomorrow,
  then you have no free-will with regard to x.
• Note To argue that one could refrain from doing
  x requires one to say one of three things (see
  premise 6 of Pike).

38
God is Omniscient

• This view is known as fatalism (there are other
  forms of fatalism).
• Replies to the argument?
• Does Boethius reply work?