According to the Standard Model account of religion, religious concepts tend to conform to “minimally counterintuitive” schemas. Laypeople may, to varying degrees, verbally endorse the abstract doctrines taught by professional theologians. But, outside the Sunday school exam room, the implicit representations that tend to guide people’s everyday thinking, feeling, and behavior are about minimally counterintuitive entities. According to the Standard Model, these implicit representations are the essential thing to be explained by the cognitive science of religion. It is argued here (...) that this theoretical orientation of mainstream CSR misses a whole dimension of religiosity—the acceptance of certain religious authorities, that is, the acceptance of other people’s superior expertise. Average believers tend to accept the authority of religious experts who espouse highly counterintuitive ideas that they understand in a distorted form, if at all.... (shrink)

In this paper I present a formalization of the theory of ideal concepts applied to the concept of God. It is done within a version of the Simplest Quantified Modal Logic (SQML) and attempts to solve three meta-problems related to the concept of God: the unicity of extension problem, the homogeneity/heterogeneity problem and the problem of conceptual unity.

Up to now, a very large majority of work in the religious philosophy of life’s meaning has presumed a conception of God that is Abrahamic. In contrast, in this essay I critically discuss some of the desirable and undesirable facets of Traditional African Religion’s salient conceptions of God as they bear on meaning in life. Given an interest in a maximally meaningful life, and supposing meaning would come from fulfiling God’s purpose for us, would it be reasonable to prefer (...) God as characteristically conceived by African philosophers of religion to exist instead of the Abrahamic conception of God? At this stage of enquiry, I answer that, in respect of the range of people to whom God’s purpose would apply, a more African view of God would plausibly offer a greater meaning, but that, concerning what the content of God’s purpose would be, the Abrahamic view appears to offer a greater one. I conclude by reflecting on this mixed verdict and by suggesting respects in which non-purposive facets of the African and Abrahamic conceptions of God could also have implications for life’s meaning. (shrink)

In this chapter, Ricardo Silvestre and Alan Herbert offer a reconstruction of the Gītā’s concept of God with a focus on the relationship between God and the world. They try to explain the claim that the Gītā is panentheistic. This is done with the help of some key notions of contemporary metaphysics (such as ontological dependence and fundamentality) along with the Indic notion of prakṛti, considered as a metaphysical primitive denoting the intimate relationship that exists between matter and conscious living (...) beings on the one hand, and God on the other. (shrink)

There is no single Jewish philosophical conception of God, and the array of competing conceptions does not lend itself to easy systemization. Nonetheless, it is the aim of this chapter to provide an overview of this unruly theological terrain. It does this by setting out ‘maps’ of the range of positions which Jewish philosophers have taken regarding key aspects of the God-idea. These conceptual maps will cover: (i) how Jewish philosophers have thought of the role and status of conceiving (...) of God in the first place; (ii) what Jewish philosophers have understood to be definitive of God or Divinity; (iii) Jewish philosophical conceptions of God’s oneness; (iv) Jewish philosophical conceptions of God’s transcendence or immanence; (v) Jewish philosophical conceptions of God’s personhood or lack thereof; (vi) Jewish philosophical understandings of why God created (or caused) a world; and (vii) Jewish philosophical understandings of God’s relationship to the Jewish people. Jointly, these seven conceptual maps outline the broad range of vying conceptions of God that have been held by Jewish philosophers over the centuries, while also enabling the reader a bird’s-eye-view of how these multiple conceptions relate to one another. The chapter concludes by touching on what Jewish philosophers have made of this immense diversity of theological conceptions included within the tradition. (shrink)

God refers to a supernatural or divine being who is the universe's creator and ruler and is often seen as the ultimate source of moral and spiritual authority. Different cultures and religions have different beliefs and ideas about God. Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, described various names and attributes of God, symbolized as "ੴ” (Ik Onkar) in his compositions. This article attempts to describe the concept of God as outlined in Guru Nanak’s hymns. It is pointed out that Guru (...) Nanak's hymns emphasize God's transcendental nature, which is described as formless, eternal, omnipresent and beyond human comprehension. However, he focuses on a personal and accessible relationship with the Divine, where individuals can connect with God through devotion, meditation, and leading a virtuous life. An important spiritual aspect of Guru Nanak’s concept of God is his description of the realization of God, often referred to as "union with the Divine" or "spiritual realization." By promoting the principles of equality, compassion, and service to humanity through his concept of an all-loving, compassionate God, Guru Nanak asserts that by following these values, individuals can experience a closer connection with God and ultimately achieve spiritual enlightenment. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Augustine's conception of God as substance (substantia) has misleadingly been evoked by Martin Heidegger's deconstruction of onto-theological and substantialist variants of metaphysics as they mistook entities (Seienden, entia, beings) f r their very Being (Sein, ens, esse) which cannot be conceptualized or objectified by human thinking, but makes both their thought and reality possible. Even though Augustine sought somehow to reconcile a Neoplatonic, essentialist cosmology with a Judeo-Christian worldview of historical redemption, Heidegger not only (...) failed to properly recognize his indebtedness to Augustinian existential anthropology, but also the latter's contention that the actuality of beings and contingent history ultimately determines ontological concepts in their basic difference from their ontical counterparts, compromising thus Heidegger's intuitive criticisms against the confusion between God and Being (Sein). (shrink)

This paper introduces the special issue on the Concept of God of the Journal of Applied Logics (College Publications). The issue contains the following articles: Logic and the Concept of God, by Stanisław Krajewski and Ricardo Silvestre; Mathematical Models in Theology. A Buber-inspired Model of God and its Application to “Shema Israel”, by Stanisław Krajewski; Gödel’s God-like Essence, by Talia Leven; A Logical Solution to the Paradox of the Stone, by Héctor Hernández Ortiz and Victor Cantero; No New Solutions to (...) the Logical Problem of the Trinity, by Beau Branson; What Means ‘Tri-’ in ‘Trinity’ ? An Eastern Patristic Approach to the ‘Quasi-Ordinals’, by Basil Lourié; The Éminence Grise of Christology: Porphyry’s Logical Teaching as a Cornerstone of Argumentation in Christological Debates of the Fifth and Sixth Centruies, by Anna Zhyrkova; The Problem of Universals in Late Patristic Theology, by Dirk Krasmüller; Intuitionist Reasoning in the Tri-unitrian Theology of Nicolas of Cues, by Antonino Drago. (shrink)

This book analyses the concepts of God in Vaisnavism, which is commonly referred to as one of the great Hindu monotheistic traditions. Addressing the question of what attributes God possesses according to particular textual sources and traditions in Vaisnavism, the book analyses Vaisnava traditions and texts in order to locate them within a global philosophical framework. The book is divided into two sections. The first one, God in Vaisnava Texts, deals with concepts of God found in the canonical Vaisnava texts: (...) the Bhavagad Gita, the Bhagavata Purana, the Pancaratras, and the Mahabharata. The second section, God in Vaisnava Traditions, addresses concepts of God found in several Vaisnava traditions and their respective key theologians. As well as the Alvars, five traditional Vaisnava schools- the Sri Vaisnava tradition, the Madhva tradition, the Nimbarka tradition, the Pustimarga tradition, and the Caitanya Vaisnava tradition- and two contemporary ones Ramakrishna's and Swami Bhaktivedanta's are considered. The book combines normative, critical and descriptive elements. Some chapters are philosophical in nature, others are more descriptive, unpacking a specific Vaiṣṇava concept of God for future philosophical analysis and critique. Written by experts who break new ground in presenting and representing a diversity of Vaiṣṇava texts and tradition, the book presents approaches that reflect the amount of philosophical and historical deliberation on the specific issues and divine attributes considered. This book will be of interest to researchers in the fields of philosophy of religion and Indian philosophy, cross-cultural and comparative philosophy, analytic philosophy of religion, Hindu studies, theology and religious studies. (shrink)

This paper makes two main arguments. First, that to understand analogy in St. Thomas Aquinas, one must distinguish two logically distinct concepts he inherited from Aristotle: one a kind of likeness between things, the other a kind of relation between linguistic functions. Second, that analogy (in both of these senses) plays a relatively small role in Aquinas's treatment of divine naming, compared to the realist semantic framework in which questions about divine naming are formulated and resolved, and on which the (...) coherence of the doctrine of divine simplicity—which is what gives rise to the questions of divine naming in the first place—depends. (shrink)

Aquinas claims that ‘He Who Is’ is the most proper of the names we have for God. But this attempt to ‘describe’ God with a philosophical concept like ‘being’ can seem dangerously close to creating a false conception based on our limited understanding – an idol. A dominant criticism of Aquinas’ use of this term is that any attempt to use ‘being’ to describe God will inevitably make him merely some object in our ontology alongside other beings, unacceptably mitigating God's (...) radical transcendence and otherness. I will argue that Aquinas has a very creative response to this charge: ‘being’ stands in a unique relationship as the only concept that can ensure we do not draw God under some particular creaturely limit and thus use divine names to create an ‘idol’. In other words, ‘being’ is a special paradigm concept/term which ensures that we preserve humility in our attempts to name God. -/- . (shrink)

John Schellenberg’s version of the divine hiddenness argument is based on a concept of God as an omnipotent, morally perfect, and ontologically perfect being. I show that Schellenberg develops his argument in a way that is inconsistent with each of these aspects, from which it follows that the argument in question proves to be unsustainable.

It is often alleged that Cantor’s views about how the set theoretic universe as a whole should be considered are fundamentally unclear. In this article we argue that Cantor’s views on this subject, at least up until around 1896, are relatively clear, coherent, and interesting. We then go on to argue that Cantor’s views about the set theoretic universe as a whole have implications for theology that have hitherto not been sufficiently recognised. However, the theological implications in question, at least (...) as articulated here, would not have satisfied Cantor himself. (shrink)

In this paper I try to answer four basic questions: (1) How the concept of God is to be represented? (2) Are there any logical principles governing it? (3) If so, what kind of logic lies behind them? (4) Can there be a logic of the concept of God? I address them by presenting a formal-logical account to the concept of God. I take it as a methodological desideratum that this should be done within the simplest existing logical formalism. I (...) start with first-order logic (FOL) with identity, and then show that its simplest modal extension (SQML, or the simplest quantified modal logic) is enough for us to formalize a minimally satisfactory theory of the concept of God. I focus exclusively on the monotheistic concept of God. (shrink)

Public lecture delivered 14 October 2002: This lecture explores two areas of today’s dominant mentality that is associated with the natural sciences and that is fast becoming global. Two worldviews stand out: the mechanistic worldview and the evolutionary worldview. The lecture explains the main features of each and highlights some of their implications as regards the idea of God.

In this essay, I argue that the Incarnation of the Son of God, understood in a traditionally orthodox way, is incompatible with an atemporalist concept of God. First, I explain what I mean by atemporalism, namely the idea that God exists outside time. I also show the main corollaries of that doctrine, most notably that all of God’s life occurs eternally simultaneously. Second, based on New Testament teaching and widely accepted creeds, I spell out philosophically what I mean by the (...) Incarnation. In short, I take it to be the doctrine that the Second Person of the Trinity at some point in time took on a human body as part of a fully human nature. I then proceed to my central argument, which derives a contradiction from the definitions of the Incarnation and of atemporalism, respectively. In the last section, I shall treat some possible objections to my argument and show that they do not solve the problem satisfactorily. (shrink)

Berkeley was a philosopher who wrote about such diverse topics as natural philosophy, political philosophy, mathematics, economy, and theology. Within this broad range of interests, his concern about the infinite spirit stands out; thus, the aim of this paper is to trace the origins of Berkeley´s conception of God, an issue which is already prefigured in the Philosophical Commentaries. The importance of knowing and analyze the notes that make up the Commentaries lies in that they make it possible to understand (...) not only how the incipient immaterialist philosophy was established, but above all –being purpose of this paper– what features and role God acquired within it. (shrink)

Have you ever thought about how self-consciousness (self-awareness) originated in the universe? Understanding consciousness is one of the toughest "nuts to crack." In recent years, scientists and philosophers have attempted to provide an answer to this mystery. The reason for this is simply because it cannot be confined to solely a materialistic interpretation of the world. Some scientific materialists have suggested that consciousness is merely an illusion in order to insulate their worldviews. Yet, consciousness is the most fundamental thing we (...) know, even more so than the external world since we require it to perceive or think about anything. Without it, reasoning would be impossible. Dr. Scott Ventureyra, in this ground-breaking book, explores the idea of the Christian God and Creation in order to tackle this most difficult question. He demonstrates that theology has something significant to offer in reflection of how consciousness originated in the universe. He also makes a modest claim that the Christian conception of God and Creation provide a plausible account for the origin of self-consciousness. He integrates philosophy, theology, and science in an innovative way to embark on this exploration. (shrink)

Ao mesmo tempo que o malogro da assim chamada teoria clássica dos conceitos - de acordo com a qual definições são a maneira apropriada de caracterizar conceitos - é um consenso, a filosofia metafísica da religião parece ainda lidar com o conceito de Deus de forma predominantemente definicional. Podemos então nos perguntar: Seria esse malogro suficiente para inviabilizar uma caracterização definicional do conceito de Deus? Meu propósito central neste artigo é responder essa pergunta. Adoto uma ênfase representacional. Em outras palavras, (...) desejo analisar até que ponto os problemas mais importantes levantados contra a teoria clássica dos conceitos afetam uma abordagem definicional-representacional do conceito de Deus. Como resultado desse esforço, mostro que as críticas à teoria clássica que ameaçam tal abordagem dependem da pluralidade característica ao contexto inter-religioso, que por si só cria outros problemas. (shrink)

I argue against a prevailing view that the essence of Godis identical with the attributes. I show that given what Spinoza says in 2d2 – Spinoza'spurported definition of the essence of a thing – the attributes cannot be identical withthe essence of God (whether the essence of God is understood as the distinct attributesor as a totality of indistinct attributes). I argue that while the attributes do notsatisfy the stipulations of 2d2 relative to God, absolutely infinite and eternal power does (...) satisfythose stipulations. Hence, I conclude that absolutely infinite and eternal power is God'sessence and that the attributes are expressions of that power. (shrink)

This paper presents Cusanus’ dialogue of 1462, named after and centred on the concept of non-aliud, and exploits its speculative resources for conceiving the relationship between God and the realm of finite entities. Furthermore, it points to the elements of self-constitution of the absolute and of the latter’s grounding relation towards the contingent. Finally, it is argued that Cusanus’ concept of non-aliud offers a valuable contribution to the present debate about an adequate concept of God.

Whitehead’s position regarding God’s power is rather unique in the philosophical and theological landscape. Whitehead rejects divine omnipotence (unlike Aquinas), yet he claims (unlike Hans Jonas) that God’s persuasive power is required for everything to exist and occur. This intriguing position is the subject of this article. The article starts with an exploration of Aquinas’s reasoning toward God’s omnipotence. This will be followed by a close examination of Whitehead's own position, starting with an introduction to his philosophy of organism and (...) its two-sided concept of God. Thereupon, an analysis of Whitehead’s idiosyncratic view on God’s agency will show that, according to this conception, God and the world depend upon each other, and that God’s agency is a noncoercive but persuasive power. The difference between coercion and persuasion will be explained as well as the reason why God, according to Whitehead’s conception, cannot possibly coerce. Finally, a discussion of the issue of divine almightiness will allow for a reinterpretation of divine almightiness from a Whiteheadian perspective, which will show how, despite Whitehead’s rejection of God’s omnipotence, his concept retains essential elements of God as pantokrator (and thus markedly differs from Hans Jonas's concept). (shrink)

In this paper, I introduce a problem to the philosophy of religion – the problem of divine moral standing – and explain how this problem is distinct from (albeit related to) the more familiar problem of evil (with which it is often conflated). In short, the problem is this: in virtue of how God would be (or, on some given conception, is) “involved in” our actions, how is it that God has the moral standing to blame us for performing those (...) very actions? In light of the recent literature on “moral standing”, I consider God’s moral standing to blame on two models of “divine providence”: open theism, and theological determinism. I contend that God may have standing on open theism, and – perhaps surprisingly – may also have standing, even on theological determinism, given the truth of compatibilism. Thus, if you think that God could not justly both determine and blame, then you will have to abandon compatibilism. The topic of this paper thus sheds considerable light on the traditional philosophical debate about the conditions of moral responsibility. (shrink)

Nietzsche’s name has become almost synonymous with militant atheism. Born into a pious Christian family, this son of a Lutheran pastor declared himself the Antichrist. But could this have been yet another of his masks of hardness? Nietzsche rarely revealed his innermost self in the published writings, and this can be gleaned mainly from his private letters and the accounts of friends. These sources bring to light the philosopher’s inner struggle with his own, deeply religious nature.Losing his father at a (...) young age was a calamity from which Nietzsche never recovered, and I argue that his famous thought-image “God is dead” was a transfiguration of the painful memory of this loss. In this essay, I trace Nietzsche’s tortuous path from an ardent devotee of God to a vociferous critic of Christianity, a path that was punctuated with veiled longings for a loving deity. Deep in his heart, he remained faithful to Christian ideals. Rather like Cordelia, the only truly loving daughter of King Lear, Nietzsche refused to utter words of intense affection and reverence, as these had been blatantly devalued and corrupted. Instead, he adopted a mask of a wrongdoer and a blasphemer who took not the punishment but the guilt.Nietzsche’s attitude to religion is discussed from the perspective of his life, his personality, and his mental condition. The discussion draws on psychoanalytical concepts of Freud, Erikson, Winnicott and Kohut. This is not an exclusive reading, but complementary to other studies in this field. (shrink)

The title seems to suggest that God is neutral or indifferent to the universe that it permeates. Its neutrality being necessary for its immanence is acceptable but not its indifference. Following Spinoza’s monistic thinking we explore here the question as to how the ultimate reality, can or cannot be indifferent to its own self. Permeating the universe, God becomes a universal form or concept into which the human can imagine any version of thought-extension in accordance with the nature of his/her (...) need. Indeed, Spinoza finds God formal it is the supreme substance which can and does inspire man’s polytheistic practices, as sustained by panentheistic faith. Moreover, for Spinoza relation between God and the universe is one of rational causality - God permeates the manifest universe, and the universe through its intelligibility illustrates God. The phrase in the title is not a denial of God’s desirability for man. Rather, it is a reaffirmation of God’s openness to the whole universe, by virtue of which it is one with Nature and vice versa. Each becomes explicable in terms of the other as both seep in rationality validating Spinoza’s ‘deus sive natura’. (shrink)

The divine purpose theory —according to which that human life is meaningful to the extent that it fulfills some purpose or plan to which God has directed us—encounters well-known Euthyphro problems. Some theists attempt to avoid these problems by appealing to God’s essential goodness, à la the modified divine command theory of Adams and Alston. However, recent criticisms of the modified DCT show its conception of God’s goodness to be incoherent; and these criticisms can be shown to present an analogous (...) set of problems for the DPT. Further, the argument can be extended to any account of meaningfulness according to which the value of what humans do can only be conferred by God. Thus, it would seem that there is no tenable version of the view that meaningfulness is conferred on human life by some act or attitude of God’s. (shrink)

Applying the concepts of Kolmogorov-Chaitin complexity and Turing’s uncomputability from the computability and algorithmic information theories to the irreducible and incomputable randomness of quantum mechanics, a novel argument for the existence of God is presented. Concepts of ‘transintelligence’ and ‘transcausality’ are introduced, and from them, it is posited that our universe must be epistemologically and ontologically an open universe. The proposed idea also proffers a new perspective on the nonlocal nature and the infamous wave-function-collapse problem of quantum mechanics.

In this paper I discuss critically Richard Swinburne’s concept of God, which I find to be incoherent, and his understanding of Christianity, which I find to be based on a precritical use of the New Testament.

The term “God of the philosophers” refers to the concept of God as understood and discussed in philosophical discourse. It is a philosophical concept of God that is often considered distinct from the concept of God found in religious traditions. Throughout history, various philosophers and theologians have used the term to refer to God whose existence and attributes have been the subject of philosophical reasoning and reflection. In this study, I explore Ibn Sīnā’s way of reconciling two concepts of God. (...) I argue that Ibn Sînâ, a philosopher with an Aristotelian and Neoplatonic heritage, sees no contradiction between the God of the philosophers and the God of the scriptures. Ibn Sina’s way is interesting because it is an attempt to bridge the gap between two concepts of God without compromising the classical theistic understanding of divine attributes. First, I will briefly present the Aristotelian and Neoplatonic contexts of Ibn Sīnā’s philosophy to show his way of reconciliation. Second, I will give an account of Ibn Sīnā’s concept of God as it is revealed in his understanding of the divine attribute of immutability. Finally, I will examine his views in which he most explicitly offers the concept of a God who is responsive, who is present, and who is engaged with human beings. His ideas about God’s agency, petitionary prayer, and divine providence provide ample evidence that the God of Ibn Sīnā is the God of the religious traditions known to and worshipped by human beings. (shrink)

In this paper we will give a critical account of Plantinga’s well-known argument to the effect that the existence of an omnipotent and morally perfect God is consistent with the actual presence of evil. After presenting Plantinga’s view, we critically discuss both the idea of divine knowledge of conditionals of freedom and the concept of transworld depravity. Then, we will sketch our own version of the Free-Will Defence, which maintains that moral evil depends on the misuse of human freedom. However, (...) our argument does not hinge on problematic metaphysical assumptions, but depends only on a certain definition of a free act and a particular interpretation of divine omniscience. (shrink)

Problem of the existence of God and His relation to the world and human being is seen as one of quite old and main problems of philosophy. Though the existence of God and His essence as a knowledge subject is related to a transcendent being over this universe, human being can find rules made by Him in physical world in which stands. The concept of God constitutes one of the most involved points of Descartes’ philosophy. In fact, for Descartes, who (...) built his philosophy on physical bases or mechanical world, to place God as condition to his metaphysics originates from the conception that if God does not exist a being does not. In this paper, we will try to explain the relation of God and human and the world in Descartes’ philosophy. (shrink)

Based on a question posed by global philosophy of religion project regarding the absence of literal attribution of omnibenevolence to God in the Qur’ān, this paper aims to examine how to understand perfect goodness in Islam. I will first discuss the concept of perfect goodness and suggest that perfect goodness is not an independent attribute on its own and it is predicated on other moral attributes of God without which the concept of perfect goodness could hardly be understood. I will (...) examine perfect goodness by a specific emphasis on the attribute of justice as one of the conditions to be satisfied by a perfectly morally good being. In so doing, I will appeal to the distinctions made among great-making properties by Daniel Hill, and Al-Ghazālī’s definition of justice by applying them to God’s moral attributes. I will argue that justice has a crucial role in maximality-optimality balance between great-making properties and it seems quite difficult, if not impossible, to conceive of goodness without justice. Having said that, I will claim that the conceptual frame I suggest sheds light on why omnibenevolence is not literally attributed to God in the Qur’ān. Then, I will briefly show how the divine attributes mentioned in the Qur’ān and the discussions about divine names and attributes in the Islamic tradition supports the understanding of perfect goodness I defend. Consequently, I will try to show that far from indicating that the Islamic concept of God doesn’t involve perfect goodness, the Qur’ān establishes the proper meaning of perfect goodness by focusing on its constitutive attributes, and thus provides us with a sound conception of it. (shrink)

Many moral philosophers have assumed that ordinary folk embrace moral objectivism. But, if so, why do folk embrace objectivism? One possibility is the pervasive connection between religion and morality in ordinary life. Some theorists contend that God is viewed as a divine guarantor of right and wrong, rendering morality universal and absolute. But is belief in God per se sufficient for moral objectivism? In this paper, we present original research exploring the connections between metaethics and particular conceptions of God (...) among religious participants. Study 1 shows that, when controlling for religiosity, age, and belief in God’s loving characteristics, it is belief in God’s punishing characteristics (specifically, the existence of Hell) that uniquely predicts rejection of moral relativism. Study 2 shows that followers of Abrahamic faiths are more likely to endorse moral objectivism when thinking of the Divine, regardless of loving or punishing characteristics. And Study 3 shows that priming for moral objectivism makes theists more likely to endorse God’s punishing characteristics. A general picture is suggested by these data. For Abrahamic theists, God’s particular characteristics are not germane to the question of whether his moral commandments are real and objective. And while theists strongly endorse God’s loving characteristics, focusing on the objective nature of morality can highlight God’s punishing nature, reminding theists that objective morality requires a divine guarantor of justice to enforce it. (shrink)

Theism and its cousins, atheism and agnosticism, are seldom taken to task for logical-epistemological incoherence. This paper provides a condensed proof that not only theism, but atheism and agnosticism as well, are all of them conceptually self-undermining, and for the same reason: All attempt to make use of the concept of “transcendent reality,” which here is shown not only to lack meaning, but to preclude the very possibility of meaning. In doing this, the incoherence of theism, atheism, and agnosticism is (...) secondary to the more general incoherence of any attempts to refer to so-called “transcendent realities.” A recognition of the conceptually fundamental incoherence of theism, atheism, and agnosticism compels our rational assent to a position the author names “paratheism.”. (shrink)

This paper proposes a novel reading of Kant’s account of the dependence of possibility on God in the pre-Critical Beweisgrund. I argue that Kant has a theistic-potentialist conception of the way God grounds possibility, according to which God grounds possibility by his understanding and will. The reason is that Kant accepts what I call the Principle of Possible Existence: If something is possible, then it is possible that it exists. Furthermore, I explore the connection between causal powers and possibility, the (...) influence of Crusius on Kant, and the significance of the distinction between internal and external possibility. (shrink)

According to Augustine, abstract objects are ideas in the Mind of God. Because numbers are a type of abstract object, it would follow that numbers are ideas in the Mind of God. Let us call such a view the Augustinian View of Numbers (AVN). In this paper, I present a formal theory for AVN. The theory stems from the symmetry conception of God as it appears in Studtmann (2021). I show that Robinson’s Arithmetic is a conservative extension of the axioms (...) in Studtmann’s original paper. The extension is made possible by identifying the set of natural numbers with God, 0 with Being, and the successor function with the essence function. The resulting theory can then be augmented to include Peano Arithmetic by adding a set-theoretic version of induction and a comprehension schema restricted to arithmetically definable properties. In addition to these formal matters, the paper provides a characterization of the mind of God. According to the characterization, the Being essences that constitute God’s mind act as both numbers and representations – each (except for Being itself) has all the properties of some number and encodes all the properties of that number’s predecessor. The conception of God that emerges by the end of the discussion is a conception of an infinite, ineffable, axiologically and metaphysically ultimate entity that contains objects that not only serve as numbers but also encode information about each other. (shrink)

In The Divine Fractal, Studtmann (2021) introduced a novel conception of God, what he calls the symmetry conception, and showed that such a conception not only can be formalized within extensional non-well-founded set theory but also entails the Thomistic view that God is identical to her essence. In this paper, I show that Studtmann’s symmetry conception of God can be integrated into a recent approach to quantum gravity, namely causal set theory. The theory that results has two significant consequences. First, (...) God is the necessarily existing set of spacetime events. Second, the square root of the probability that a spacetime event randomly chosen from N spacetime events is uncaused is given by the following formula: ((Harmonic [N])/N)^(1/2). I conclude the paper by briefly discussing a connection between this formula and the cosmological constant. (shrink)

This short e-book is (in the author's words) "an attempt to open up new and better ways of thinking about God." The author draws together insights from philosophy of religion, philosophy of mind, and ontology to construct a conception of God that avoids both supernaturalism and simplistic forms of pantheism.

In Newton’s correspondence with Richard Bentley, Newton rejected the possibility of remote action, even though he accepted it in the Principia. Practically, Newton’s natural philosophy is indissolubly linked to his conception of God. The knowledge of God seems to be essentially immutable, unlike the laws of nature that can be subjected to refining, revision and rejection procedures. As Newton later states in Opticks, the cause of gravity is an active principle in matter, but this active principle is not an essential (...) aspect of matter, but something that must have been added to matter by God, arguing in the same Query of Opticks even the need for divine intervention. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.16732.44162 . (shrink)

Erik Wielenberg [2014] and Mark Murphy [2017], [2018] have defended a series of arguments for the conclusion that creatures are not good intrinsically. In response, I take two steps. First, I introduce a conception of intrinsic value that makes created intrinsic value unproblematic. Second, I respond to their arguments in turn. The first argument is from the sovereignty-aseity intuition and an analysis of intrinsicality that makes derivative good extrinsic. I challenge the analysis. The second comes from a conception of perfection (...) where God exhausts all possibilities for goodness. I challenge this conception. The third comes from the contingency of creation and the internal logic of intrinsic value. I challenge the assumption that connects the two. I then present an argument from reference magnetism that the only conception of God, God's perfections, and religious language that makes it plausible that the sentence "God is intrinsically good and creatures are not" is true involves a strongly univocalist position. A view that is either unstatable or places strong demands on our conception of God, God's perfections and religious language thereby loses plausibility. (shrink)

Among the many ontological questions the philosophy of religion endeavors to address, perhaps the most controversial is the existence of God. Unraveling this complex question has puzzled philosophers for ages and has kept the spark lit in this theological debate to this day. Along with arguments for—and against—God, there are topics which inevitably follow from such a debate, namely the divine attributes of God and divine action. This essay will briefly expand upon arguments for God’s existence evidenced by some of (...) the most notable theories and concepts about His attributes and how He relates to His creations, namely humans. In addition to assertions made by credible philosophers and theologians, the claims in this essay will also be informed by my own understanding of Christian faith and values. (shrink)

A number of recent writers have expressed scepticism about the viability of a specifically moral concept of obligation, and some of the considerations offered have been interesting and persuasive. This is a scepticism that has its roots in Nietzsche, even if he is mentioned only rather rarely in the debate. More proximately, the scepticism in question receives seminal expression in Elizabeth Anscombe's 1958 essay, ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’, a piece that is often paid lip-service to, but—like Nietzsche's work—has only rarely been (...) taken seriously by those wishing to defend the conception of obligation under attack. This is regrettable. Anscombe's essay is powerful and direct, and it makes a forthright case for the claim that, in the absence of a divine law conception of ethics, any specifically moral concept of obligation must be redundant, and that the best that can be hoped for in a secular age is some sort of neo-Aristotelianism. Anscombe is right about this, we think. And, among those who disagree, one of the very few to have taken her on at all explicitly is Christine Korsgaard, whose Kantianism of course commits her to the view that the concept of moral obligation is central, with or without God. Here, we try to show that Korsgaard loses the argument. (shrink)

The present paper depicts Moser’s view on the justification of the belief in God. By debunking the efficiency of mere theoretical reason in proving the existence of God, introducing God as the source of justification, and using a moral perspective, he proposes a kind of voluntary knowledge. He assumes the right path to acquire true knowledge of god to be a direct and purposeful evidence, which is found in accordance to divine attributes. For their own redemption, before the interference of (...) thought and feelings, God wills the voluntary moral revolution of human beings from selfishness to selfless absolute love. In this respect, Moser puts forth a virtue-based evidentialism, on the basis of which people can accept God’s invitation to friendship with absolute love and therefore experience God’s blessing in their motivational core. This experience indicates God’s self-manifestation and offers direct evidence for his existence, which causes the subject, by gaining moral attributes and receiving God’s absolute love and sharing it with others, to become a personified evidence of God himself. Moreover, according to the inference to the best explanation, Moser justifies the belief in God by this empirical and non-propositional evidence. As a result, Moser’s existential and moral account, despite being criticized for its being subjective and relative, and the unreliability of religious experiences, has revived a number of forgotten theological concepts. (shrink)

Can Hegel, a philosopher who claims that philosophy lsquo;has no other object but God and so is essentially rational theologyrsquo;, ever be taken as anything emother than/em a religious philosopher with little to say to any philosophical project that identifies itself as emsecular/em?nbsp; If the valuable substantive insights found in the detail of Hegelrsquo;s philosophy are to be rescued for a secular philosophy, then, it is commonly presupposed, some type of global reinterpretation of the enframing idealistic framework is required. In (...) this essay, this assumption is challenged. br /br /Kantrsquo;s interpretation of space and time as a response to Newtonrsquo;s theologically based spatio-temporal emrealism/em is taken as a model of what it is to be a Kantian emidealist/em about God and the self. In turn, Hegelrsquo;s philosophy is taken as a development of this approach that overcomes the limitations of Kantrsquo;s formal approach. Hegelrsquo;s major contribution to Kantrsquo;s revolutionary transformation of the task of philosophy is, it is argued, his recognitive conception of lsquo;spiritrsquo;. While this has been widely appreciated with regard to the relations between lsquo;subjectiversquo; and lsquo;objectiversquo; spirit, it is suggested that a fuller understanding of the nature of Hegelrsquo;s emabsolute/em idealism requires a proper understanding of how this approach also applies to the domain of lsquo;absolute spiritrsquo;. br /br /. (shrink)

This paper examines the concept of manifestation process in Kashmir Shaivism from Shiva tattva to Prithvi tattva and their transcendental and immanent predicates (Prakrti and Purusa).This paper also shows that the ultimate reality, Paramshiva, manifests itself into various forms which likely represent the theory of causation. This research paper also provides answer to two questions; First, how ultimate reality with its thirty-six principles or elements manifest in various forms and what types of forms ‘Descent’ attains from the ‘universal self’? Second, (...) how manifestation process takes place from the ‘cosmic self’ (universal consciousness) to a ‘limited self’ (Jiva)? Since, this paper is based on philosophical exploration of manifestation process and contains interpretation and argumentation of Pratyabhijna philosophy only; it excludes manifestation due to Yogas (Upayas) and Karmas. Moreover, it explains the Trika form of reality (Shiva/God, Shakti/World, and Nara/Man) and also the identity between ‘ascent’ and ‘descent’. Manifestation further investigates the union of Shiva and Shakti with Maya and displays its character (Prakashvimarshmaya). This work further tries to describe the contribution of Abhinavagupta in the concept of manifestation. (shrink)

The present paper depicts Moser’s view on the justification of the belief in God. By debunking the efficiency of mere theoretical reason in proving the existence of God, introducing God as the source of justification, and using a moral perspective, he proposes a kind of voluntary knowledge. He assumes the right path to acquire true knowledge of god to be a direct and purposeful evidence, which is found in accordance to divine attributes. For their own redemption, before the interference of (...) thought and feelings, God wills the voluntary moral revolution of human beings from selfishness to selfless absolute love. In this respect, Moser puts forth a virtue-based evidentialism, on the basis of which people can accept God’s invitation to friendship with absolute love and therefore experience God’s blessing in their motivational core. This experience indicates God’s self-manifestation and offers direct evidence for his existence, which causes the subject, by gaining moral attributes and receiving God’s absolute love and sharing it with others, to become a personified evidence of God himself. Moreover, according to the inference to the best explanation, Moser justifies the belief in God by this empirical and non-propositional evidence. As a result, Moser’s existential and moral account, despite being criticized for its being subjective and relative, and the unreliability of religious experiences, has revived a number of forgotten theological concepts. (shrink)

We explore a ‘Neo-Cartesian’ account of divine ultimacy that raises the concept of God to its ultimate level of abstraction so that we can do away with even the question of his existence. Our starting point is God’s relation to the logical and metaphysical order of reality and the views of Descartes and Leibniz on this topic. While Descartes held the seemingly bizarre view that the eternal truths are freely created by God, Leibniz stands for the mainstream view that the (...) eternal truths are grounded in God’s nature. We argue that the implausibility of Descartes’ doctrine stems mainly from the assumption that there is a non-epistemic notion of absolute necessity that constitutes the ultimate court of appeal for all modal questions and that this assumption is questionable. We also question the assumption that God’s ultimacy merely requires that all reality be grounded in God in the sense of mere explanation, so that it suffices if the necessary truths are grounded in God’s nature but not in God’s will. This will lead us to a reassessment of Descartes’ position. In the final and main part of the paper, we push Descartes’ doctrine of the creation of the eternal truths to its ‘logical’ conclusion with the aim of getting to a novel conception of ‘God.’. (shrink)