Flashcards
The Nature of God: revision questions
Flashcards do conjunto (24)
- 1What does sempiternal mean?God is without beginning or end, but within time
- 2What is the problem with a sempiternal God?God is in time that there are segments of his life which together constitute a part of God's life that are presently inaccessible to him except by memory.
- 3Why is the idea of God's omnibenevolence controversial for some thinkers?If God is omnibenevolent and omnipotent, he would not want there to be evil in the world and he would have the power to eliminate it. But there is evil in the world, so, at best, God cannot be both omnibenevolent and omnipotent.
- 4What is process theology?A philosophical approach that has accepted limitations on God’s power in favour of his omnibenevolence
- 5Who is David Griffin, and what was his book called?God, Power and Evil: A Process Theodicy. Griffin rejects notions of God’s self-limitation. He believes evil exists because God’s power is limited in a real sense
- 6What is the "Euthyphro Dilemma"?“Is something good because God commands it, or does God command that thing because it is good?” Benevolence after all means doing good actions.
- 7When was Boethius born? When did he die?480- 524 CE
- 8What is Boethius' book called?The Consolation of Philosophy
- 9What chapter of Boethius' book are we looking at in the OCR exam?Book 5
- 10Lady Philosophy tells Boethius that there are "two types of necessity": what are they?Necessary fact and conditional necessity
- 11How did Boethius believe God viewed time?It all occurs simultaneously to God. God sees things 'as if' they were going on now.
- 12Why does Anthony Kenny think that Boethius' eternalism is incoherent?The most basic thing we know about time is that if one event is earlier than another, they cannot be said to occur at the same time. Boethius is effectively saying all historical events occur at the same time from God's viewpoint
- 13How does Anselm modify Boethius' eternalism?All times and places are equal in God (Boethius- God sees all times and places). God's knowledge and eternity viewed differently to us. Four-dimensionalist view. God is eternity rather than eternity being time
- 14What is Richard Swinburne's solution to the free will problem/ God's foreknowledge problem?The future does not exist. This doesn’t
imply any limitation on God, because He would only be limited if there were things that he could know but doesn’t. This only works if there is an element of genuine indeterminacy built into the world. - 15What is Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle?Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, discovered in 1927, states that the more precisely the position of some particle is determined, the less precisely its momentum can be known, and vice versa.
- 16What does Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle mean?One possible consequence of this is that the future cannot be predicted, even in
principle. If so, there is genuine freedom in the universe. God may not know the future, not because He is limited but because it is unavailable as an object of knowledge. - 17What did Pierre-Simon Laplace believe?That the universe was made up of cause and effect and so God would have the power to know what would be the next effect (the future)
- 18What does God's supposed eternal nature create problems for the idea that He knows everything?If God is eternal, he is outside space and time and in order to know what is going on in the world of change he must be within it. If God’s knowledge is limited, surely this would make him limited.
- 19What is counterfactual knowledge?Counterfactual knowledge is knowledge of what could have occurred but didn’t.
- 20Name a philosopher who believes in "possible worlds"Alvin Plantinga
- 21Why does it matter in religion that humans should have free will?If humans do not have free will they are not in charge of their fate. If God has created them, then he has created their fate and so would be responsible for great evil. If he is ominibenevolent then he would not create evil.
- 22How does God's supposed omniscience undermine humanity's free will?If God knows everything, he must know what I’m going to do tomorrow. If God knows what I’m going to do tomorrow, it must be fixed. If what I’m going to do tomorrow is fixed, I cannot be free.
- 23Give one example of a problem raised in The Puzzle of God (1990) by Peter VardyIf God can do anything, can He commit suicide?
- 24What is the difference between Pantheism and Panentheism?Pantheism: the belief that God and the universe are one and the same being, making God much more limited).
Panentheism: the belief that God interpenetrates every part of nature and extends infinitely beyond it