3.3.1 The concept and nature of 'God' - 5 markers Flashcards
Explain the paradox of the stone
God is omnipotent means ‘all powerful’. In this case of the paradox of the stone, a contradiction arises about whether it is coherent for God (or anything) to be omnipotent or ‘all powerful’.
To put this formally:
P1: If God exists, then God is omnipotent
P2: God either can or cannot create a stone so heavy that even God cannot lift it
P3: If God can create the stone, then he cannot lift it, so there is at least one thing God cannot do
P4: If God cannot create the stone, there is at least one thing God cannot do.
P5: If there is at least one thing God cannot do, God is not omnipotent.
C1: God is not omnipotent
Explain 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.
Explain 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.
