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God and Factual Necessity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Adel Daher
Adel Daher
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Manhattan College, New York
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Extract

Many philosophers and philosophically oriented theologians hold that it is unreasonable to treat the statement ‘There is a God’ as analytic or logically true. As an existential statement, they argue, it is no different from any statement of its kind. Existential statements cannot be analytic, because contra-existential statements cannot be contradictory. (Notice, however, that existential statements can be contradictory, and contra-existential statements can be analytic.) To say, for example, that unicorns do not exist is simply to say that no entity satisfies the description ‘unicorn’. But this cannot be complex in the sense of entailing two contradictory statements. If so, then the existential statement corresponding to it cannot be analytic. In general, since no contra-existential statement can be contradictory, no existential statement can be analytic.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 6 , Issue 1 , March 1970 , pp. 23 - 39
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1970

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References

page 23 note 1 This position is best represented by Plantinga', Alvin ‘Necessary being’;, in Faith and Philosophy, edited by Plantinga, (William B. Erdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, Michigan), 1964, pp. 97–108.Google Scholar

page 23 note 2 ibid., p. 105.

page 24 note 1 Op. cit. p. 105.

page 24 note 2 Franklin, R. L., Sophia, Vol. III, No. 2, (July, 1964), pp. 15–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 24 note 3 ibid., p. 21.

page 24 note 4 Wilson, Martin, ‘The Meaningfulness of Religious Statements’, in Sophia, Vol. II, No. 3, (October, 1968).Google Scholar

page 25 note 1 Op. cit., p. 106.

page 25 note 2 ibid., p. 107.

page 25 note 3 ibid.

page 25 note 4 ibid., p. 108.

page 25 note 5 ibid.

page 26 note 1 Williams, B. and Montfroie, Alan (ed.), British Analytical Philosophy, p. 134.Google Scholar

page 26 note 2 ibid., p. 140.

page 27 note 1 Hick, John, ‘Necessary Being’ in Journal of Philosophy (1960), p. 726.Google Scholar

page 27 note 2 ibid., p. 732.

page 27 note 3 ibid.

page 27 note 4 ibid.

page 27 note 5 ibid., p. 733.

page 31 note 1 See Cohen, L. J., The Diversity of Meaning (1963), pp. 141–52.Google Scholar

page 35 note 1 Flew, A., God and Philosophy (Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1966), p. 33.Google Scholar

page 38 note 1 Hepburn, R. W., Christianity and Paradox (C. A. Watts & Co. Ltd., 1958), p. 160.Google Scholar