Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-07T19:26:22.702Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
This chapter is part of a book that is no longer available to purchase from Cambridge Core

Introduction

Jay W. Wood
Affiliation:
Wheaton College, Illinois
Get access

Summary

Suppose there is a personal being perfect in wisdom, power and goodness, who created the world and sustains it in existence from moment to moment, and that your highest flourishing in this life and the next depends on your being rightly related to this being. In short, suppose that God exists. This, in a nutshell, is what theists profess the world over: a belief that unites the great monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. If theism is true, it is a matter of incalculable weightiness, which partially explains why theism has been of perennial interest to philosophers. Two questions dominate philosophical writings about God. First, do we have good reasons to think that theism is true? In other words, do we have good reasons to think that anything answers to the description “omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent creator and sustainer of the universe”? Second, if such a being exists, what is he like and how shall we understand his relation to the world? Few questions have so engaged philosophical attention, with new books appearing each year to defend opposing answers to these questions. The first question claims some priority, for if we conclude that no good reasons can be found to think that God exists, it scarcely seems that the second question merits much attention. But the two questions are not so easily separated. For one of the chief reasons cited by some philosophers for thinking that God does not exist is that he cannot exist! Some philosophers argue that the concept of an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent God is incoherent, so nothing could answer to this description.

Type
Chapter
Information
God , pp. 1 - 12
Publisher: Acumen Publishing
Print publication year: 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Introduction
  • Jay W. Wood, Wheaton College, Illinois
  • Book: God
  • Online publication: 05 February 2013
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/UPO9781844654796.001
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Introduction
  • Jay W. Wood, Wheaton College, Illinois
  • Book: God
  • Online publication: 05 February 2013
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/UPO9781844654796.001
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Introduction
  • Jay W. Wood, Wheaton College, Illinois
  • Book: God
  • Online publication: 05 February 2013
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/UPO9781844654796.001
Available formats
×