Augustine’s soul deciding theodicy was the demonstration that God is not responsible for the existence of evil. A theodicy is a Greek term which means to justify God and that is what Augustine tried to do. Augustine stated that there is no such thing or substance as Evil but the idea of evil stems from the absence of goodness and our human free will which is central to being truly good. God created all things ex nihilo, from nothing, so it is impossible for evil to exist as a substance. Augustine said that “Evil stemmed from the free fallible choices of beings…in the pre-history of time,” referring to the free will of Adam and Eve and the Fallen Angels.
Were we to arrange them in a hierarchy, eternal would be at the top, then natural, then human. Divine law is not in conflict with natural law, but it reaches human beings by a different route, revelation. Question 91 starts off in Article one with eternal law. It is not a human law but is created by God himself. Eternal law cannot be understood, it is everlasting, and unchangeable.
These arguments never get to any particular God. They have all established that the existence can be described by itself; none of this even implies a deity, or a universal consciousness. When you start by rejecting the presumption of a God, all the arguments fall flat on their face. What these three arguments are, are thesis trying to defend the indefensible. Although, these three arguments all agree in the way that they use unfound assumptions to prove what has yet to be proven; they do disagree on the studies of how to prove what really is God.
On one hand you have the philosophers who believe you can speak and write about God, because God is reality. On the other hand, are the Logical Positivists who claim that statements about God have no meaning because they don’t relate to anything that is real. There are a number of philosophers who claimed to have proven conclusively that religious language is meaningful, for example Aquinas’ theory of analogy. An analogy is an attempt to explain the meaning of something which is difficult to understand and forming relations through attributes or relations that are similar. Aquinas rejected univocal and equivocal language when talking about God.
We are able to know that the square root of 9 is 3, but a square root is not a physical thing, we cannot hold it, this however does not stop us from knowing what a square root is. As knowledge is not physical God, who is also non-physical being, can have knowledge without interfering in the timeline. Aquinas also suggested that God has self-knowledge; as God is the creator God knows everything that He has created therefore God knows about His creation, this knowledge according to Aquinas was not gained by using a body. This argument is put forward by Aquinas is slightly coherent as it puts forward and more logical explanation as to how God can be omniscient, whilst leaving humanity free to make their own decisions. However some philosophers such as Richard Dawkins have challenged such arguments.
To what extent is the omnipotence of God a logically coherent concept? (35) The concept of omnipotence and God is not easily understood; the term refers to the notion that God is all-powerful and supreme. For some this concept of God being omnipotent is logically coherent, but for others it is not. For instance, saying God is all-powerful suggests that God can do anything. But one scenario raised by Michael Dummett is can God change the past?
The repetition of the words ‘And God said’, ‘And it was so’, ‘And God saw it was good’ show that God is a craftsman who was very much aware of what he was creating; it is said that this God is omnipotent. These quotes also show that God takes pride in his work as he says ‘It was good’. This is extremely different to the concept of the Prime Mover as he did not create the world he simply started the chain of causes that caused its existence which means the Prime Mover cannot be called a craftsman as he simply caused the cause and effect chain. The Prime Mover is again different to God as a Craftsman as he s transcendent and does not interact with the universe unlike the craftsman which is described as all loving and interacts with his creation. There is evidence of this within the Bible when God causes miracles however there is also evidence of this in the natural world as when God causes natural disasters, he is interacting with his creation.
Since nothing can move of its own accord, and nothing can change itself, there had to be something else which has no cause and had the ability to initiate the Universe. Aquinas said that this entity without a cause and the power to create a Universe had to be an ‘Unmoved Mover/ Prime Mover’. He surmised that this Prime Mover had to be God. This argument has some positive points, in the fact that the natural occurrence of movement plus change have been brought into it, which makes the argument seem valid and plausible. However,
All human beings seek to be rational in what they do. Yes, science does provide a method of justifying rationality but God is the other part of the spectrum that science cannot explain. God is also another figure that provides rationality to someone who does not understand science the only path to salvation and to rationality is through religion. If this form of God takes 1000 different shapes across many religions, it does not make God untrue, it is just a manifestation. The biggest contradictory idea against the motion would be that of whether God can be proven empirically.
Anselm (1033–1109) had opposed an Ontological Argument that one understands God as a being and cannot conceive anything greater because God cannot be understood not to exist. On the other hand, another philosopher named Gaunilo objected Anselm’s Ontological Argument by suggesting that the same style of argument can be used to prove the existence of other entities, such as the idea of a greatest possible island. Although this may be the case, Anselm never got the opportunity to plead his case against Gaunilo’s objection. However, there are numerous biblical evidence to help support Anselm’s argument. Anselm’s Ontological Argument states that one understands that God, as a being, cannot be conceived a greater.