They say that God does not exist in an objective and real sense; they do not think he is a real human entity existing in the world. For the Deist, God is the creator of the universe. God really exists but he does not and cannot intervene within the world. And lastly, for the Atheist, there is no God to bring about any kind of miracle. I myself am an Atheist, and therefore in my opinion believe miracles are impossible as all miracles are by, definition impossible if they claim to be the action of a deity.
It also puts limits on God’s power. According to the definition of a theistic God, God is omnipotent. If God is all powerful then he should be able to command whatever he wants but by saying that morality is independent of God would mean that God is subject to the rules of morality (Fisher, 359). All in all the main issues with the Autonomy Thesis are that it would only be reasonable if one was not considering the existence of a theistic
Calvin’s idea of predestination suggests that some people are God’s ‘elect’ and that, after death, these ‘elect’ will join God in heaven. Believers in predestination claim that our actions, whether ‘elect’ or ‘damned’, are predestined or decided by God; meaning that we have very little, if any at all, free will in our decision making or actions. This theory of predestination often leads people to believe in a God ‘who favours some but not all of his creation’, which would be intrinsically linked to miracles in the sense that, regardless of what we do, God has already decided whether he will interact with the world or perform a miracle. Miracles, in this sense, are seen not as unsystematic breaches of natural law but rather as the eternal intention of God for the world. For this reason, people who agree with Calvin in believing in predestination often find it difficult to understand why miracles aren’t common occurrences.
Omniscience is a word more often than not given to a divine power that means all knowing. Every monist religious faith claims that there is a creator who knows all of His creation, which includes both how it exists and why. The Christian Bible states ‘I know you through and through, even before birth’. There is however two understandings of omniscience, the first understanding is that God has a limited omniscience and only knows what is possible to know and the second and perhaps the most obvious yet complex, is that God know everything there is to know past, present and future. The two definitions of omniscient each raise different problems, the former raises questions about God’s omnipotence, as one needs to assess if the laws of nature can limit an omnipotent God.
One of Aquinas’ ways of proving God’s existence; ‘the uncaused causer’, states that every cause in the universe has an effect, the chain of cause and effect must have a terminus to avoid infinite regress. Aquinas rejects infinite regress because it denotes that there cannot be an answer to the question “what is the explanation?” Therefore there must be a necessary being that started the chain, this for Aquinas is God but this is not a satisfactory answer for everyone. Bertrand Russell, somewhat like Aristotle, states that the universe is a “brute fact”, although unlike Aristotle did not see that there needed to be a Prime Mover or Uncaused Cause. Russell made another criticism when he suggested that one cannot go from saying that every event has a cause thus the whole universe has a cause, it is like moving from saying that every human being has a mother to the claim that the human race as a whole has a mother. One cannot move from individual causes to the totality (whole, everything) has a cause.
And for morality to require God in such a way, there must be a direct link between the two. I believe that morality is defined by God, therefore immoral actions are wrong solely because God forbids them. Similarly, the “rightness” of moral actions is only because God has commanded them. In today's world things are defined as “right” or “wrong” or “moral” and “immoral.” This is because God, is the one that has allowed us to even understand what morality is. I believe that God is the creator and sustainer of all things, and that we would not even be self aware, let alone aware of right and wrong, if God had not created within us his image, and therefore the ability to make moral distinctions.
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.
The issue that arises most commonly comes when all three of God’s characteristics are observed. As an omnibenevolent being, God, in theory, would not allow evil to plague the earth. One might assume God’s omnipotent nature would discount the existence of evil because he is able to stop it. Along with these, God’s omniscient powers would allow him to know of all of the evil. Therefore, believing God to encompass all of these traits would leave anyone in their right mind wondering how anything bad could ever happen in the world.
The universe is like the watch in the sense that it has complex features that work together perfectly; therefore the universe like the watch must have been designed. Teleologist’s like Paley would argue that the only one with such power to crate the universe is God. However this argument does not demonstrate empirical evidence to God’s existence, it only concludes that there is a designer, not that he designer is God. Therefore ‘God exists’ is not an empirical hypothesis as there is no known empirical method of proving God’s existence. Secondly ‘God exists’ is not an empirical hypothesis because the knowledge
However, this would be absurd, seeing as that nothing greater than God can be conceived in anyway. So a being, which nothing greater can be conceived, God, does in fact exist. According to Joel Fienberg’s text, Reason and Responsibility, an Ontological argument is defined as “an argument for the existence of God stating that the very concept or definition of God automatically entails that God exists; because the special nature of the concept, there is no way that God could fail to exist” (pg. 722). This argument is formulated around the idea that God is a being, which no greater being can be conceived.