Is There a God?
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Last annotated on August 30, 2016
1 GODRead more at location 79
Note: Definizione di Dio Dio essere personale: dotato di intenzioni, scopi e credenze Dio come essere dai poteri infiniti: onnipotente eterno senza corpo onnipresente creatore di tutto perfettamente buono onnisciente incondizionato (perfettamente libero). Tuttavia n agisce in modo insensato (contro logica) e nn x' nn possa ma x' sarebe insensato. Allo strsso modo n può conoscere ciò che nn si può conoscere, x es. cosa farà un uomo libero dio ha tutte qs caratteristiche. notare che sono tutte essenziali. ma possiede anche la divinita? xchè postularlo quando si può inferire? morale: alcuni principi sono x tutti ma alcune accessibili solo ai fedeli. servono a realizzarsi e a coordinarsi Edit
Theism claims that God is a personal being—that is, in some sense a person. By a person I mean an individual with basic powers (to act intentionally), purposes, and beliefs.Read more at location 89
God is not limited by the laws of nature; he makes them and he can change or suspend them—if he chooses. To use the technical term, God is omnipotent: he can do anything.Read more at location 121
God is supposed to be omniscient—that is, he knows everything. In other words, whatever is true, God knows that it is true.Read more at location 123
Human persons are influenced in forming their purposes by their desires, their in-built inclinationsRead more at location 127
We are, it seems to us (I believe, correctly), free to some extent to fight against our desires and do some action other than one which we are naturally inclined to do, but it requires effort. Human beings have limited free will. But God is supposed to be not thus limited. He is perfectly free,Read more at location 130
An omnipotent being can do anything. But does that mean that he can make the universe exist and not exist at the same time, make 2 + 2 to equal 5, make a shape square and round at the same time, or change the past? The majority religious tradition has claimed that God cannot do these things; not because God is weak, but because the words—for example, ‘make a shape square and round at the same time’—do not describe anything which makes sense.Read more at location 135
God cannot do what is logically impossible (what involves a self-contradiction).Read more at location 139
God cannot be required to do what is logically impossible to do, so God cannot be required to know what is logically impossible to know. It seems to me that it is logically impossible to know (without the possibility of mistake) what someone will do freely tomorrow.Read more at location 143
So no one (not even God) can know today (without the possibility of mistake) what I will choose to do tomorrow. So I suggest that we understand God being omniscient as God knowing at any time all that is logically possible to know at that time.Read more at location 147
My view is, however, implied, I believe, by certain biblical passages;Read more at location 152
In advocating this refinement of our understanding of omniscience, I am simply carrying further the process of internal clarification of the basic Christian understanding of God which other Christian philosophers such as Aquinas pursued in earlier days.Read more at location 155
God—the omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly free person—is, according to theism, eternal. But there are two different ways of understanding ‘eternal’. We can understand it, as clearly the biblical writers did, as everlasting:Read more at location 161
Alternatively, we can understand ‘eternal’ as ‘timeless’: God is eternal in the sense that he exists outside time. This latter is how all the great philosophical theologians from the fourth to the fourteenth century AD (Augustine, Boethius, and St Thomas Aquinas, for example) understood God’s eternity.Read more at location 164
For myself I cannot make much sense of this suggestion—for many reasons. For example, I cannot see that anything can be meant by saying that God knows (as they happen) the events of AD 1995 unless it means that he exists in 1995 and knows in 1995 what is happening then.Read more at location 169
Hence I prefer the understanding of God being eternal as his being everlasting rather than as his being timeless. He exists at each moment of unending time.Read more at location 171
he does not depend on matter to affect and learn about the world.Read more at location 177
It follows too from his omnipotence that God is omnipresent (i.e. present everywhere), in the sense that he can make a difference to things everywhereRead more at location 178
But, although he is everywhere present, he is not spatially extended; he does not take up a volume of space—for he has no body.Read more at location 180
God being omnipotent could have prevented the universe from existing, if he had so chosen. So it exists only because he allows it to exist.Read more at location 182
In this sense, therefore, he is the creator of the universe, and, being—by the same argument—equally responsible for its continued existence, he is the sustainer of the universe.Read more at location 184
That may be a finite time—the universe may have begun to exist a certain number of years ago; current scientific evidence suggests that the universe began to exist with the ‘Big Bang’ some 15,000 million years ago. Or the universe may have existed forever. The theist as such is not committed to one or other of these positions.Read more at location 186
God is supposed to be responsible, not merely for the existence of all other objects, but for their having the powers and liabilities they do.Read more at location 190
And God is also responsible for the existence of humans. He could cause us to act of physical necessity. But, given that we have limited free will, God does not cause us to form the purposes we do.Read more at location 201
He occasionally intervenes in the natural world to produce effects directly—for example, curing someone of cancer,Read more at location 210
) God is supposed to be perfectly good. His being perfectly good follows from his being perfectly free and omniscient. A perfectly free person will inevitably do what he believes to be (overall) the best actionRead more at location 212
God is supposed to be perfectly good. His being perfectly good follows from his being perfectlyRead more at location 213
inevitably do what he believes to be (overall) the best actionRead more at location 214
Now, if there are moral truths—truths about what is morally good and bad—an omniscient person will know what they are.Read more at location 224
God, being omniscient, will have true beliefs about what is morally good, and, being perfectly free, he will do what he believes is (overall) the best.Read more at location 233
Some moral truths are clearly moral truths, whether or not there is a God: it is surely wrong to torture children for fun whether or not there is a God.Read more at location 236
God is a generous benefactor. One of the most fundamental human obligations (i.e. duties) is (within limits) to please our major benefactors—to do in return for them some small favour which they request in return for the great things they have given us.Read more at location 239
if God tells us to do certain things, it becomes our duty to do them. Just as (within narrow limits) it becomes our duty to do certain things if our parents (when we are children) tell us to doRead more at location 242
it would not be a duty to worship God especially on Sundays if God did not tell us to do so;Read more at location 244
God is thus a source of moral obligation—his commands create moral obligations. But God clearly cannot make things which are our duty no longer our duty: he cannot make it right to torture children for fun.Read more at location 247
It may surprise some modern readers to suppose that a theist can allow that some moral truths are moral truths quite independent of the will of God. This is, however, an issue on which the Christian philosophical tradition has been split right down the middle; and I side with two of its greatest representatives—St Thomas Aquinas and the fourteenth-century Scottish philosopher Duns Scotus—inRead more at location 250
But, if there are moral truths such as ‘it is wrong to torture children for fun’ which hold independently of the will of God, they will be like ‘no shape can be both round and square at the same time’;Read more at location 254
There are obligations (i.e. duties), and there are good actions beyond obligation—called supererogatory good actions.Read more at location 257
no blame attaches to us if we fail to do some supererogatory good act, but we are praiseworthy if we do it.Read more at location 258
I have no obligation to throw myself on a grenade which is about to explode in order to save the life of a friend who is standing close. But if I do the action, I deserve the highest praise.Read more at location 261
I have no obligation to marry and have children; but, if I do have children, I have an obligation to feed and educate them. This suggests that God before he creates any other persons has no obligations, though it is a supererogatory good act for him to create many other persons including humans.Read more at location 263
So what does God’s perfect goodness amount to? Not that he does all possible good acts—that is not logically possible. Presumably that he fulfils his obligations, does no bad acts, and performs very many good acts.Read more at location 276
So, like ourselves in a situation where we have a choice between actions each of which we have equal reason to do, God must perform a ‘mental toss-up’—decide, that is, on which reason to act in a way which is not determined by his nature or anything else.Read more at location 286
But theism does not claim merely that the person who is God has these properties of being everlastingly omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly free. It claims that God has these properties necessarily—these are essential propertiesRead more at location 291
2Read more at location 312
Note: 2 spighe: 1 inanimata 2 intenzionale. inanimata: poteri e proprietà. intenzionale: credenze scopi intenzioni. il fisico si concentra su 1 il detective su 2. spiegazione prob. spiegazione piena (necessità) spiegazione completa (che implica fondamenti o cause prime). cosa fa preferire una teoria? 1 se concorda coi fatti 2 se è semplica 3 se si armonizza con il background conoscitivo 4 nn ci sono alyernative. la semplicità è il criterio guida tra teorie che spiegano. vedi galileo e copernico. ockham: nn postulare più oggetti di quelli che abbisognano x spiegare. ok ma dipende da come intendi il bisogno. una spiegazione completa ha bisogni differenti da una spiegazione condizionata.. la capacità predittiva testa il criterio 1 osservabilità: così come certi fenomeni necessitano di postulare entità inosservabili (quark pianeti...) così altri fenomeni richiedono l esistenza di persone inosservabili... Edit
