So when we say ’God is good’, we need to know that we are using ’good’ in that sentence. In univocal terms this would be claiming that God is good in some way that humans are, Aquinas rejected this as he believed God to be perfect. Because of this, imperfect humans can’t be good in the same way that God is. In equivocal terms, this would mean that God is good in a totally different way to humans, Aquinas rejected that too. He argued that if people speak equivocally about God, then it cannot profess to know anything about him as it is saying that the language we use to describe humans or the experienced world around us, doesn’t apply to God.
Some philosophers such as Aquinas believe that it is possible to talk meaningfully, truthfully and factually about God whereas others like Ayer believe this to be impossible. Philosophers have suggested that there are four ways that religious language might make truth claims about the reality of God and whether it can succeed in doing this – Via Negativa, Analogy, and Myth. The ‘via negativa’ or negative way is an attempt to prevent people from misrepresenting God. It claims that the only way we can talk about God is by saying what God is not. God is so beyond our ability to understand that the only way of seeing the reality of God is to continue saying what God is not, God is more than anything we can say of him.
But because it’s impossible to conceive a greater being that God he must exist in both reality and our minds. In Anselm’s view only a fool can therefore doubt the existence of God, because the ‘fool’ has the idea of God in their mind to doubt him,
P3: It is possible to have an experience of God. C: Therefore God must exist. This shows the inductive nature of the argument as well as the synthetic experiences it is based on. As Swinburne's proof of god through religious experience shows, there is a logical thought process that can systematically prove the existence of god if these premises are agreed upon. Some philosophers such as Ayer argue that experience cannot provide a stable base for the indication of reality because it is the interpretation of the experience that we are hearing for the experiencer, therefore we can never have concrete evidence that that is how the experience occurred.
However, since Anselm then brought in a second argument to counter this criticism, Gaunilo couldn’t have succeeded in destroying Anselm’s argument without then faulting that one (of which he didn’t). However, I cannot doubt that Gaunilo’s first constrictive criticism of Anselm’s ontological argument wasn’t a valid point. Not everyone’s perfect island can take a form in the real world as it is highly illogical and extremely impossible. Qualities of this perfect island may be scattered out across the Earth, but will never be a collective whole for this individual. As a fellow Christian monk at the time, it was probably the right thing to do as not every Christian views everything the same.
If God did create the difference between right and wrong then that means that for God, initially, there wasn’t a difference between to two. With that being said, it follows that it is not possible to say whether God is good or not. This is due to the fact that if right and wrong were God’s creation, then prior to his conception of the two ideas, they did not exist or apply to him. The writer then determines that it is unreasonable to assume that God has any relation to the creation of right and wrong while also saying that God is good. If God is assumed to be good, then all of his actions are good, and this would include the creation of right and wrong.
Therefore, Wiles comes to the conclusion that God's goodness and the concept of miracles are two incompatible ideas. When discussing God's omnibenevolemce, Wiles introduces the nature of God and its impact on miracles. However, this also anthropomorphises him. As humans, with a limited knowledge of what the word 'good' means, Maimonedes states that it would be disrespectful to attribute this equivocal concept to an unlimited God. We cannot judge God, nor his actions because he is a non cognitive being.
This postulate of God has origin in one’s own reason which would necessarily mean that submitting to will of God is submitting to one’s own reason. The need of God arises because the relationship between moral law and happiness is not guaranteed in this world. So here God comes to the rescue and thus necessitates the compatibility of virtue and realization of highest good. The postulate of immortality is very much interwoven with the postulate of God. Taking into account the sensuous nature of human beings, Kant states that it is very difficult for a man to be righteous without hope.
He believes reason and faith are the two paths to access the truths of God’s existence. Faith is a trusted belief in God through scripture; it does not rest with logic and is beyond reason. But reason is a logical way of making sense of something that is not tangible. St. Thomas realized many people doubt the existence of God because there is no logic to explain God’s existence. For St. Thomas his mission in life was to prove the existence of God through reason.
It is always difficult to understand and comprehend for anything to exist realistically. For anything else to exist there must be a higher existence. A “Fool’s Objection” gives us the impression that there is no clear and distinct idea of anything being greater because it cannot be conceived. A so as result it is stated that “there is no God”. The rational mind states otherwise.