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God

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God is the name used in many religious traditions for a supreme being, often described as the creator of everything else. Saying exactly what God is turns out to be one of the hardest problems in religious thought, and the great traditions have often stressed how little can be said with confidence.[1][2]

Whether God exists, and whether that can be shown by reason, is a separate question, covered in Existence of God. This article looks at how God has been described and understood.

The difficulty of defining God

Philosophers of religion often begin by admitting that defining God is hard.[1] The medieval Jewish thinker Maimonides argued that positive descriptions of God do not show any real grasp of God at all. On his view the only fitting knowledge of God is negative: we learn what God is not. This is sometimes called "knowing by not knowing", and it echoes a much older Socratic and Platonic tradition of thought.[1]

This approach, often called the negative way, links talk of God with agnostic ideas about the limits of human knowledge.[3]

God in the Abrahamic traditions

In Jewish tradition God identifies himself to Moses in the book of Exodus (3:14–15).[1] Christian thought describes God as wholly transcendent, beyond the world, and yet also immanent, present within it, and as a Trinity.[1] The theologian Thomas Aquinas held that God's proper name is pure, ever-present existence, the "I AM WHO AM" of Exodus. For Aquinas our knowledge of God is partly negative, partly positive and partly by analogy.[1][3] In Islam, Allah is likewise understood as both transcendent and immanent.[1]

The philosophers' God

Modern philosophers often work with a tidy list of divine attributes. One widely used definition, associated with Richard Swinburne, describes God as a necessary, eternal and free being who is all-powerful, all-knowing, perfectly good and the creator of everything else.[2] This is the God of what is called classical theism, and it is roughly the God of Christianity, Judaism and Islam as philosophers discuss them.[4]

Not everyone accepts that this is the best picture. The philosopher Tim Mulgan has suggested an "ananthropocentric" theism, in which a morally perfect creator exists but has no special interest in human beings. He argues this keeps some arguments for God while avoiding the problem of evil.[2] Fiona Ellis replies that such a "generic" God distorts the faith of actual Christians, Jews and Muslims, and defends a middle path she calls expansive naturalism, which leaves room for a loving God.[5] Mark C. Murphy goes further and argues that moral perfection, in our sense, may not even be one of God's perfections.[6]

Other ways of thinking about God

Not every view of God fits classical theism:

  • Pantheism identifies God with nature as a whole.[7]
  • Panentheism holds that the world is included in God, but that God is more than the world.[8]
  • Deism sees God as the intelligent creator of an ordered universe who stands apart from it and does not intervene.[9]
  • Paul Draper has explored "panpsychotheism", in which God is a part of nature and the only mind there is. He presents it only as a view that is not obviously false.[10]
  • Belief in many gods is called polytheism.[11]

In the ancient Iranian religion of Zoroastrianism, the supreme being is Ahura Mazda, the "Wise Lord".[12]

Talking about God

Some thinkers question whether talk about God is the kind of talk that can be true or false. The philosopher A. J. Ayer argued that statements about God have no basis in experience and so are literally meaningless, better understood as emotional or metaphorical.[3] The philosopher Anthony Kenny, a former priest who became agnostic, came to see talk of God as closer to poetry than to science.[13]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 "God". Philosophy of Religion A-Z. Palgrave Macmillan. 2016. pp. 83–84.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Draper, Paul, ed. (2019). "Alternatives to Benevolent Theism (Tim Mulgan)". Current Controversies in Philosophy of Religion. Routledge.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 "Agnosticism". Philosophy of Religion A-Z. Palgrave Macmillan. 2016. pp. 5–6.
  4. ↑ Pritchard, Duncan; Harris, Mark (2017). "Are theism and atheism totally opposed? (J. Adam Carter)". Philosophy, Science and Religion for Everyone. Routledge.
  5. ↑ Draper, Paul, ed. (2019). "Chapter 9 (Fiona Ellis)". Current Controversies in Philosophy of Religion. Routledge.
  6. ↑ Draper, Paul, ed. (2019). "Is an Absolutely Perfect Being Morally Perfect? (Mark C. Murphy)". Current Controversies in Philosophy of Religion. Routledge.
  7. ↑ "Pantheism". Philosophy of Religion A-Z. Palgrave Macmillan. 2016. pp. 155–156.
  8. ↑ "Panentheism". Philosophy of Religion A-Z. Palgrave Macmillan. 2016.
  9. ↑ "Deism". Philosophy of Religion A-Z. Palgrave Macmillan. 2016. p. 61.
  10. ↑ Draper, Paul, ed. (2019). "Panpsychotheism (Paul Draper)". Current Controversies in Philosophy of Religion. Routledge.
  11. ↑ "Polytheism". Philosophy of Religion A-Z. Palgrave Macmillan. 2016. p. 168.
  12. ↑ Rose, Jenny (2014). "Zoroastrians Present and Past". Zoroastrianism: An Introduction. I.B. Tauris.
  13. ↑ "Arguments for the Existence of God". Philosophy of Religion A-Z. Palgrave Macmillan. 2016. pp. 14–16.
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