is the concept of God logically coherent?

• third A

  the first horn of the Euthyphro dilemma:

  1. God's commands are good simply because they come from God

  • God is assumed to be the source and standard of all moral goodness - this is God's omnibenevolence.
  • Therefore whatever God commands will be good, by definition
  • But God could (and in the Bible appears to) command people to do horrific things, such as commit genocide
  • Therefore these horrific things must be good because they are commanded by God
  • Therefore we cannot make sense of saying God is omnibenevolent
• third A (2)

  the second horn of the Euthyphro dilemma

  2. God's commands are good because they conform to an external moral source

  • God is assumed to always adhere to an external moral code - this is God's omnibenevolence
  • Therefore whatever God commands will be good because it always conforms to the external moral source
  • But this means God's benevolence is dependent 

  therefore the concept of omnibenevolence cannot coherently be ascribed to God
• third C

  aquinas

  • Aquinas has an alternative account of moral goodness which avoids the two horns of the Euthyphro dilemma
  • for Aquinas, God's nature is omnibenevolent, meaning that God can only will what is Good, this avoids the first horn but limits God's omnipotence
  • He leans towards the second horn but argues for a 'natural law' of morality which actually stems from God - making God the standard for moral values after all
• first A

  paradox of the stone

  • god is omnipotent so can God create a stone so heavy that God cannot move it?
  • if God can create such a stone then there is something God cannot do (lift the stone) which means that God is not omnipotent
  • if God cannot create such a stone then there is something God cannot do (create the stone) which means that God is not omnipotent
  • therefore the concept of omnipotence cannot coherently be ascribed to God
• first C

  Mavrodes

  • he argues that this paradox, when analysed, reveals the incoherence of the task set rather than the incoherence of 'omnipotence'
  • Mavrodes takes this approach:

  1. assume God is not omnipotent. in which case, it is trivially true that God cannot do certain things (such as lift or create certain stones)
  2. assume God is omnipotent. In which case the question should be properly phrased as 'Can a being whose power is sufficient to lift anything create a stone which cannot be lifted by that being?
• first C (2)

  • because this is a self-contradictory task, the paradox disappears. Mavrodes agrees that God cannot do self-contradictory things
  • it is the task that is incoherent, not God's omnipotence
  • He argues that the paradox is incoherent because it assumes that the impossible is actually possible
• response to Mavrodes

  Wade Savage:

  • he raises the following objection to Mavrodes' argument
  • Mavrodes uses the concept of an omnipotent being to argue that 'a stone that an omnipotent being cannot lift' is a self-contradiction
  • but the paradox is trying to show that the concept of an omnipotent being is self-contradictory
• first E

  • I don't think the paradox succeeds
  • I think that is plausible for God to be only able to do the logically possibly, also I think that humans may currently lack the ability to be able to understand how God is able to do the logically impossible
  • things we have believed to be impossible in the past have been proven to be possible so for me there is no reason why this should be any different
• second A

  
  

  • if God is omniscient than this raises issues as to whether humans have free will
  • P1 - humans have free will and some of their actions are genuinely free
  • P2 - God is omnisicient and so knows beforehand everything that will happen
  • P3 - therefore God knows beforehand in all cases what humans will do
  • P4 - if God knows what humans will do then their actions are not free
  • C - therefore human free will and God's omniscient are incompatible
• second C

  Stump and Kretzmann

  • they argue that God can see every temporal event simultaneously but this does not imply that God can see what we will do 'beforehand' because for God there is no 'beforehand'
  • although God can see everything that we have done and will do, we will still freely choose our actions
  • therefore human free will and God's omniscient are compatible