ICOGE 🤢

Question 1

What is the first thread?

Answer 1

God is Onipotent
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Paradox of the stone
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God could make the imovable stone, but as long as he doesn’t God is omnipotent
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A being that could stop being omnipotent is not God

Question 2

What is the second thread?

Answer 2

God is omniscient
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Free will vs Omniscience
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God is everlasting
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God can’t be everlasting

Question 3

What is the third thread?

Answer 3

God is omnibenevolent
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Euythyphro dilema

Question 4

What is the paradox of the stone?

T1R1

Answer 4

• Either God can make a stone so heavy he can’t lift it, or he can’t.
• In both cases there is something he can’t do (lift the stone, or make one he can’t lift)
• If there is something he can’t do God cannot be omnipotent

Question 5

What is: God could make the imovable stone, but as long as he doesn’t God is omnipotent

T1R2

Answer 5

• Swinburne says God can create a stone that he can’t lift.
• If he did create it it would stop him from being omnipotent.
• Until then there isn’t anything that exists that God cannot move so he is still omnipotent.

Question 6

What is: A being that could stop being omnipotent is not God

T1R3

Answer 6

• However, God must be necessarily omnipotent.
• This means God needs to be all powerful at all times, God cannot just stop being all powerful.
• Swinburne’s view would mean that God is only contingently omnipotent.
• If God must always be omnipotent then God cannot create a stone he cannot lift. This brings the paradox back.

Question 7

Free will vs Omniscience

T2R1

Answer 7

• If God is omniscient, this means he knows all true propositions.
• If this is the case then God will always know what I will do
• This means that I am unable to do anything else, meaning I am not free (as God already has seen I will do something, so I cannot do anything else other than what God has already seen)
• Therefore if God is omniscient then I am not free.

Question 8

God is everlasting

Answer 8

• This means that God exists within time, and therefore experiences time sequentially, past, present, and future.
• Because he experiences it in such a way even God doesn’t know what will happen in the future yet as it hasn’t happened yet.
• So we are still free to make decisions as God isn’t constricting us to a choice he has already seen will and has to happen.
• Instead God is omniscient in the sense that he knows all true propositions as they happen, not that he knows all true propositions that will ever happen

Question 9

God Can’t be everlasting

Answer 9

• If he is everlasting this means he doesn’t know future propositions
• When the future proposition comes into being God has now gained knowledge
• gaining knowledge means that God is changing, from not knowing to knowing
• But God is said to be immutible, and perfect.
• If something changes for better or for worse, it means it wasn’t perfect, or is no longer perfect
• So the open theist solution creates a new probem, it conflicts with God’s immutability.

Question 10

Euythyphro dilema

Answer 10

There are two ways of understanding God omnibenevolence:
- Actions are good because God commands them
- Actions are good independently of God’s commands
- In the first case God cannot then give a moral justification for that action being good or not, as this requires a standard beyond him, making morality arbitrary as there is no reason God would pick something to be good over another
- In the second case this means that God is not the source of morality and therefore is not the supremely good being in the world.
- Therefore God cannot be omnibenevolent.