1. The idea of God
What is the idea of God? Does it make sense?
Can we prove the existence of God just from the idea
of God?
What is the origin of the idea of God? Is it God? If so,
how did we get it from God - is it innate or
discovered in experience? Or did we invent it? Why?
2. What is the idea of God?
Augustine: to think of God is to ‘attempt to
conceive something than which nothing more
excellent or sublime exists’ or could exist
God as personal: intellect and will
Perfect intellect: omniscience
Perfect will: omnipotence, perfect goodness
Transcendence: beyond creation, self-sufficient,
non-spatial, without beginning or end
Everlasting - throughout time
Eternal - outside time
Immanence: closely related to creation, e.g.
omnipresent
3. Puzzles about omnipotence
Omnipotence: ‘all-powerful’: Is logic
a limitation on God’s power?
God can’t change logic, not because
of a lack of power, but because any
description of a logically impossible
state of affairs or power is not a
description at all
‘The power to do whatever it is
possible for a perfect being (or the
greatest possible being) to do’
4. The stone paradox
Can God create a stone so heavy that he
can’t lift it?
If yes, he can’t lift it; if no, he can’t create
it
‘The power to create a stone an
omnipotent being can’t lift’ is logically
incoherent, so it’s not a possible power.
Or: the stone is, by definition,
impossible to lift. If God lacks the power
to lift a stone it is logically impossible to
lift, there is still no power God lacks.
5. Other puzzles
Can God know the future?
Can God do evil?
In what sense is God ‘good’? Is everything that God
wills good by definition? Or is there an independent
standard of good that God adheres to?
Can God be transcendent and personal?
6. Anselm’s argument
By definition, God is
a being greater than
which cannot be
conceived.
I can conceive of
such a being.
It is greater to exist
than not to exist.
Therefore, God must
exist.
7. Anselm on islands and God
Gaunilo: I can conceive of the the perfect island,
greater than which cannot be conceived. And so
such an island must exist, because it would be
less great if it didn’t.
Anselm: An island wouldn’t cease to be what it
is – an island – if it wasn’t perfect. Islands aren’t
perfect by definition or ‘essentially’.
God wouldn’t be God if there was some being
even greater than God. Being the greatest
conceivable being is an essential property of
God.
God’s existence is therefore necessary, while
even a perfect island exists only contingently.
8. Kant’s objection
Kant: existence is not a
‘perfection’, because it is
not a predicate at all.
To say ‘x exists’ is not to
describe x at all or
explain what x is.
Existence is not part of
the concept of anything.
To say ‘x exists’ is to say
that some real object
corresponds to the
concept of x.
9. The origin of ‘God’
Descartes: Innate and God-given
The idea of God, infinite perfection, can’t be
derived from experience
Hume: it can be, negatively - not-finite, not-
imperfect
Experience
Religious experience
Experience more generally
‘Human construction and projection’
Legitimate: Inference to the best explanation
Illegitimate: Origin in emotional or social need
10. Invention as explanation
Many concepts are invented in order to explain
experience, even concepts of things we cannot
directly experience e.g. electron, ecosystem
If we invented the concepts because explanations
using them are true, the concepts refer to
something that exists
Are explanations invoking God true? What did we
use the first explanations invoking God for?
‘God of the gaps’: the concept of God filled gaps in
our understanding of the world
But what about cosmological argument, religious
experience, miracles?
11. Invention and psychology: Freud
The origins of religion in human
history: a response to our
vulnerability in the face of forces of
nature
The origins of religion in the
individual mind: a development
from our childhood vulnerability
and our relationship with our
father, whom we both fear and love
“Thus [man’s] longing for a father is
a motive identical with his need for
protection against the
consequences of his human
weakness.”
12. Invention and psychology
Religion is an ‘illusion’, i.e. caused by the
fulfilment of a wish (we want it – life, the
universe – to be this way).
This doesn’t show that God doesn’t exist -
only that the origin of the idea of God is
emotional
But this emotional need could realistic: if
we are made by God, our deepest longing
could be relationship with God; Freud
misidentifies the nature of the need
The idea that God will ‘make everything
alright’ is not the childish fantasy Freud
thinks it is
13. Invention and sociology
Durkheim: At the level of society, religious belief
promotes cooperation, mutual respect,
solidarity, a sense of identity, and the basis for a
collective morality and for authority in the
society. these features help the group to survive
and flourish.
Explaining the origins of religious practices and
beliefs is not yet to explain the origins of GOD,
because even if human societies work better
with religious belief, this is not to say that the
concept or belief in God must be part of that
religious belief
Nietzsche: the idea of God is a projection of our
values, an illusory external confirmation
