3.3.1 The concept and nature of 'God' - 12 markers Flashcards
1st response to the ‘paradox of the stone’
In response, we should question what we mean by God being able to do ‘anything’. Theists may argue that by ‘anything’, we mean that God can cause to exist or occur anything that could in principle exist or occur, but if we mean that God can create things like round-squares, or cause 2 and 2 to equal 5, then God cannot. It is not that God lacks the capacity to actualize round squares, rather there is no such thing as the capacity to actualize round squares, as the very idea is self-contradictory.
2nd response to the paradox of the stone
A further response comes from Kenny, who revises and comes up with this definition of omnipotence: God is omnipotent = God possesses all powers that is logically possible for a being with his attributes as God to possess. It’s in Gods nature to be unchanging and if God were to create a stone, he couldn’t lift he would have changed, so this would be logically impossible for the kind of being that is God.
Outline the problem of free will
God is omniscient, this means “all knowing”. In the case of free will a problem arises about whether it is coherent for God (or anything) to be omniscient or “all knowing”.
To put this formally:
P1: If God is omniscient, he knows all future human actions
P2: If God knows anything in advance it will necessarily happen
P3: (assumed premise - free actions only occur where the agent could have chosen otherwise)
P4: If a human action will necessarily happen it is not a free action
C1: Therefore, God is not omniscient, or humans are not free.
1st response to problem of free will
A way to solve this dilemma is by biting the bullet. Swinburn advocates giving up omniscience in the strong sense and simply granting that God, when he created to have human beings, chose to not have knowledge about how we will freely act. This is consistent with the traditional Christian theology; Swinburne illustrates this with the story of the book of Jonah: God told Jonah to preach to the people of Nineveh that their city would be destroyed, believing that he would probably need to destroy it, yet when the people freely repented, God saw no need to carry out this prophecy.
2nd response to the problem of free will
A response comes from Aquinas which states that God cannot have foreknowledge of anything as he does not exist within time - God is eternal. If God is eternal, he does not see events in the past, present or future as God is outside of the passage of time so sees all events from a different plane of existence. God exists in an eternal present.
Outline the euthyphro dilemma
God is omnibenevolent, This is God’s attribute of supreme goodness and can be understood in different ways. God’s supreme goodness can be understood either on the classical theist view as perfect and unchanging, where he is the source of everything that exists and without imperfection, or – the theistic personalist view where God is supremely loving, compassionate and subject to change, as he can be pleased or disappointed in his creation.
The dilemma asks “Is something morally right because God commands it, or does God command it because it is morally right? This gives two possibilities: God is the sole source of moral goodness, or God goes along with an independent standard of moral goodness. Each side is unsatisfactory for different reasons. Firstly, if God is the source of morality, then it follows that God could command anything to be morally right, from random acts such as clapping your hands, to immoral acts such as torturing babies. This would make morality arbitrary, in other words without any good reason/grounds for being this way. It would also make “God wills what is good” a tautology, or analytic statement of the obvious, which does not seem correct as it seems possible that God’s will and goodness are not identical. Alternatively, if God only decrees what is morally right by some independent standard, then God is not the source of morality at all and is in fact not necessary for morality. This later option compromises both his omnipotence and the claim to supreme goodness by setting up something God cannot change and separating him from the source of morality.
1st response to the Euthyphro dilemma
One reply comes from Aquinas who believes that God created the world a certain way in his infinite knowledge and perfection and wouldn’t change what is moral. This accepts the first part of the dilemma – God commands what is good – but rejects the absurd implication (that he could make torturing babies right). Human beings were created by God with a certain nature, and living a fulfilled life means living in line with this nature. So we do not generally flourish if we drink petrol or eat stones and likewise we do not flourish if we commit adultery or inflict needless suffering as they are not in line with our nature. Having created us with this nature, God decided that we shall be fulfilled with the nature and capacities that we have so that a life of love for God and others will lead to fulfilment and a life of drinking petrol and adultery will not. This fits the broader reply that while it might be logically possible that God could change morality, it is not an actual possibility and just because God has the power to create different moral standards this does not mean he will. This therefore preserves God’s omnibenevolence.
