Ever since the time of Pascal men have feared that the ‘God’ worshipped by believers and the ‘God’ contemplated by philosophers were somehow different. The former was personal, historically active, slow to anger and plentiful in mercy: the latter was dubiously able to be described in personal terms at all, and infinite in such a way as to baffle the imagination. The ‘God’ of the former at least had the advantage of complying with what was alleged to be religious experience: (...) and so it was not surprising that religious men feared that the ‘God’ of philosophy threatened that experience itself; whereas at times philosophers have fed such suspicions by denying to God various properties not on logical grounds but because close involvement with man seemed to them not to comport with the divine dignity. (shrink)

The N.A., as Peirce somewhat affectionately called it, consists of a “nest of three arguments for the Reality of God.” The first arises from “Musement” and is perhaps best described in terms of the psychology of discovery. Yet musement “inevitably” leads to “the hypothesis of God’s Reality.” Thus this, the “Humble Argument,” then gives way to the N.A. proper, which is in part reminiscent of the traditional argument from design. Also every human heart “will be ravished by the beauty and (...) adorability of the Idea” of God’s reality, by the notion of an Ens necessarium. Indeed, “a latent tendency toward belief in God is a fundamental ingredient of the soul.”. (shrink)

In several great religions God is thought of as an agent or active individual exalted in principle above other agents, the supreme creative and controlling power. But, however exalted, the deity is still, in spite of what Tillich and others say, an individual being, somehow analogous to a human person. Indeed, man is said to be created in the divine image. Without this analogy religion loses an essential trait. Not only in faiths derived from Judaism, but also in Zoroastrianism, and (...) even in much Hinduism and some Buddhism, the analogy plays a central role. (shrink)