Attributes Of God Flashcards
Explain the 2 definitions of how God exists in regards to time.
- God exists within time:
- In having no beginning or end, god must exist throughout all of time
- God is thus a temporal being in this view, that is everlasting.
- God exists outside of time:
- If this is the case, God is an atemporal being timeless.
- God is thus considered to be eternal. Indeed the very concepts of beginning and end cannot even apply in this case!
Given Boethius’ understanding of ‘now’, what 4 things can we say about an eternal being?
- Has ‘life’
- Cannot have a beginning or an end, since it is ‘illimitable’- not only limitless, but can’t be limited.
- Is atemporal in possessing its whole life all at once, giving a distinct meaning to ‘now’
- Involves a special kind of duration, as no part of its life is ever absent.
What is it to say that God has life?
- The ‘life’ of an eternal being can’t be physical or biological. What is biological or physical is temporal.
- It exists in time and undergoes change.
- So the life of an eternal being must be a ‘psychological life’.
- Philosophers have thus said that god exists as a mental substance.
What is it to say that god is illimitable?
- This psychological life of an eternal being is not limited.
- If something has a beginning or an end, then it is limited- it doesn’t exist before its beginning or after its end.
- The first two claims are compatible with and existing within time without beginning or end (everlasting), but the third claim rejects this.
Explain what this statement means- ‘Events that constitute the life of an eternal being do not, from its perspective, follow one another in time’.
- It’s whole life is experienced as ‘now’ I.e. ‘present’.
- That ‘present’ isn’t flanked by past or future, it is not a moment in which future becomes past.
- It is a non-temporal present. So we can’t think of a standard timeline where we can pick out a point, for example, where Descartes, Locke and Leibniz all existed simultaneously.
- We can’t show where an eternal being fits in, because it isn’t in time at all. It needs a different dimension for the timeline.
What are the two types of simultaneity presented by Stump and Kretzmann? And how do they use these 2 concepts to create a third?
- Temporal Simultaneity- Two things are simultaneous if they exist or occur in one and the same time.
- Eternal Simultaneity- If they exist or occur in one and the same eternal present.
- ET-Simultaneity- This is saying that God is simultaneous with any (and every) event in time.
What is the formal definition of ET-Simultaneity referring to x as some temporal event and y as an eternal event?
- X and y are ET-Simultaneous if:
- For an eternal being, x and y are both present, x observed as temporally present and y as eternally present and;
- For a temporal being, x and y are both present, x is observed as temporally present and y as eternally present.
What is God’s atemporal duration?
-Atemporal duration- It is the form of existence God has. It is the past, present and future all existing at once as now for God.
What is the formal outline of the paradox of the stone?
-The argument is intended to show the incoherence of an omnipotent being and follows that:
P1. Either god can make a stoke too heavy for god to move/lift or God cannot do this.
P2. If god can do this, then god is not omnipotent (since god would be unable to move the stone).
P3. If god can’t do this then god is not omnipotent (since god cannot do it).
(P4. There is nothing logically impossible about either of these tasks).
C1. Therefore, God is not omnipotent (either way).
What is the weak response to the paradox of the stone and the reply to this weak response?
-‘A stone an omnipotent being can’t lift is not a possible thing; as a self-contradiction, it describes nothing. So, it might be replied, ‘the paper to create a stone an omnipotent being can’t lift’ is not a possible power. If God lacks it, god still doesn’t lack any possible power.
-The problem with this is that it begs the question. It assumes we can coherently talk of an omnipotent being.
-It does so when it speaks of ‘a stone that an omnipotent being can’t lift’; it assumes that there is no problem with the concept of this omnipotent being.
-But there is! The concept of an omnipotent being is self-contradictory. Until we know the concept of an omnipotent being is coherent, we can’t legitimately use said concept!
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What is the stronger response to the paradox of the stone?
- Suppose we allow that god can lift any stone, but cannot create a stone that he cannot lift.
- ‘God cannot create a stone that he cannot lift’ only means that ‘If God can create a stone; then he can lift it’.
- God can create a stone of any size and then lift that stone. So is there a stone that God can’t create? No. There is no limit on gods power of lifting stones, and so there is no limit on gods power of creating stones.
Outline the Euthyphro dilemma
- What is the relationship between god and morality?
- Is morality something independent of god or is morality whatever god wills it to be.
- The answer it seems must be one of the following 2 options:
1) Morality is independent of whatever god wills. To be good, God’s will must conform to something independent of god. God wills what is morally good because it is right.
2) morality is whatever god wills. What is morally right is right because god wills it. - If the first argument is correct, then we place a constraint on God! He can no longer be omnipotent.
- If the second argument is correct; then morality is arbitrary.
Is the fact that God can’t turn good into evil or wrong into right an attack on god’s omnipotence?
- Not necessarily. What is good, is good. What is evil, is evil. It is logically impossible for moral good and right to be other than they are.
- For example, even if God commanded us to murder babies, it still wouldn’t be right to murder babies, because such an action can’t be right!
- However, we have to question why this is true.
- If ‘murdering babies is right’ isn’t logically impossible, then why couldn’t an omnipotent being make it true?
- Assuming moral realism, whatever makes moral wrong and moral right what they are, must be something about the world. Surely an omnipotent being can change how the world is (so long as it remains logically possible).
What are the 2 ways that God’s perfection is linked to reality?
1) What is perfect has been thought to be more real than what is not. Imperfections involve something failing to exist in a better way.
2) Perfection has also been thought to involve complete self-sufficiency -I.e. not to be dependent on anything else, and not to lack anything. This again connects with being the ultimate reality, that which is not the ultimate reality will depend on that which is, and so not be perfect.
What is the simplified challenge to God’s omniscience?
- Either:
- God is omniscient but we don’t have free will.
- We have free will but god isn’t omniscient.
