FREE The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Religion, Steven M. Cahn (Editor)

The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Religion, Steven M. Cahn (Editor)

The major theistic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, acknowledge the
existence of a supreme being. This being, God, is generally thought by these
religious traditions to be responsible for the creation and conservation of the
world. More than that, God is supposed to care about his creatures, to know
their innermost thoughts, joys, and sorrows, and to desire their flourishing. God
is thus thought to be personal, inasmuch as he has a mental life consisting of
beliefs, desires, and intentions. At the same time, however, theists insist that
God is a deity, a status they emphasize by claiming that unlike humans, God is
omniscient (all-knowing), omnipotent (all-powerful), and perfectly good. Many
theists claim, further, that although humans live in space and time, God in some
way transcends these dimensions of human existence. These assertions about
God’s nature have undergone extensive philosophical examination.
One undertaking is to define the concept of a thing. Another is to determine
whether anything exists that fits the concept. A Greek mythologist can specify
precisely what a gorgon is without believing for a moment that there are, or ever
were, any gorgons. Even if we were to converge on a uniform conception of God,
it would still be an open question whether God, as so conceived, exists.
Some philosophers have sought to prove God’s existence by showing that,
unlike the case of the gorgons, God’s existence is entailed directly by the concept
of God. For these philosophers no empirical investigation is necessary or
appropriate: reason unaided by facts about the world can demonstrate the necessity
of God’s existence. Arguments that purport to accomplish this feat are called
ontological arguments. The most famous one was the earliest, formulated by
Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109). Anselm claims that anyone who reflects
adequately on the notion of God as “something than which nothing greater can be conceived” should come to realize that God must exist. Anselm’s argument
has fascinated and outraged philosophers since its inception.

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