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. Plotinus, Moses Maimonides, Pseudo-Dionysius and Meister Eckhart support this view – for these philosophers the real God is beyond whatever we speak of as God. Human language causes confusion when it is used to talk about God, as a result we must speak of God only by saying what God is not. Human language is inadequate in describing God – we cannot talk about God. Recognising this reaffirms that God is more than we can ever imagine – he is ineffable, can never be described so we cannot say what they are not.
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.
An omnipotent God would be able to prevent evil if he wanted to. A God both omnipotent and omnibenevolent would both want to and be able to prevent evil. P2 states that evil and suffering do exist, making it apparent that an all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good Gods existence would be almost impossible. If a tri-omni god existed, then evil would not be able to exist The biggest weakness of the argument will be P1 that if an all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good God exists, then evil and suffering would not exist. If God is all knowing and all powerful and all good, therefore god would not want us to suffer and not put evil on earth.
Additionally, some Christians believe in the ontological argument by St Anselm, which suggests that God cannot not exist and so that it is logical to believe. This means that, Christians believe this, because God, which exists, is definitely greater and better than the one that doesn’t. Anselm writes, “we believe that thou art a being than which nothing greater can be conceived”, meaning that by “God”, we mean an absolutely unsurpassable being, a being that cannot conceivably be improved upon. Moreover, some Christians believe in the cosmological argument, which is; the universe must have been caused by something, which states that, everything that exists has a cause of its existence. The universe exists, therefore; the universe has a cause of its existence.
They treated claims made about God as cognitive, meaning that the assertions made are meant to be taken as facts or universal truth claims rather than non-cognitive meaning on a personal level for believers. They believed that language was only meaningful if it was analytically or synthetically verified. Analytic statements are a priori (based on logic) and synthetic statements are a posteriori (based on empirical evidence). They created a test called verification principle to see if religious language was meaningful; Statements can only be meaningful if it can be demonstrated. One could argue that the logical positivists were unsuccessful in arguing that religious language is meaningless because the verification principle has many weaknesses.
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.
McCloskey is reminding atheists the ways theists argue for their belief in God. He is reminding atheists the reasons they believe that there is no God. He feels atheism is superior to theism; however; I find that his opinions only strengthen my belief that there is a God. Proof, as he states, carries no weight for a theist. He is half correct in his statement as a theist does not believe in the proofs individually, but finds enough evidence in them to form the belief that God does exist; He is the creator of the universe, and He is morally perfect.
The three methods that can be used to understand language are: Wittgenstein’s language games, the concept of analogy and the concept of religious symbols. By utilizing these concepts, God can be understood more easily and can be described in a manner humans can understand. In regards to understanding God partially, the statement is correct in saying this. God is a transcendent and perfect being that simply cannot be comprehended by the human mind, the language we use is ineffective in saying what God is because it is language used to describe humans, God is not a human therefore this is not an effective method. Thomas Aquinas
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.
For our purposes, theism will be defined as belief in the existence of God, as defined above. Atheism, then, is the “critique and denial of the major claims of all varieties of theism” (Nagel 168). These two views provide metaphysical arguments concerning the nature of man and God. A third commonly held belief about the existence of God is known as agnosticism. Agnosticism is the purely epistemological stance that sufficient evidence does not exist for or against theism therefore the best stance on the argument is no stance at all.