Does This Bring Us Back to God?

The book returns to the question of God within the world of the yes. The reader is given tools to continue the investigation, but no final conclusion is reached on the question of God. David Griffin’s process thought is naturalistic and panentheistic. This view of God shares attributes of traditional theism. But in process thought, God does not create ex nihilo, does not coerce, and remains within the causal structure of nature. Griffin argues that God is a necessary feature of process thought and its endorsement of enduring meaning. Donald Sherburne offers a different view, called “Whitehead Without God.” The book concludes that process thought without God can still renew public life. It remains for us in the future to investigate the mystery of holiness in the universe.

Omniscience and the Future

In this chapter, the author discusses what A.N. Prior called “The Formalities of Omniscience”, and shows how the proponent of the view that future contingents are all false can maintain a simple, plausible conception of omniscience—one according to which p is logically equivalent to God believes p. The author introduces and motivates this intuitive equivalence, which he relies on at various points in the chapters to come. If we combine the current view with traditional theism, the result is a version of what has recently been called “open theism”. The author further argues that other open future views cannot maintain this simple view, and that this constitutes at least some reason to prefer his own view. In particular, other open future views must either (a) deny the intuitive equivalence in question, or (b) maintain that God’s mind is sometimes indeterminate.

Created goodness and the goodness of God: divine ideas and the possibility of creaturely value

Traditional theism says that the goodness of everything comes from God. Moreover, the goodness of something intrinsically valuable can only come from what has it. Many conclude from these two claims that no creatures have intrinsic value if traditional theism is true. I argue that the exemplarist theory of the divine ideas gives the theist a way out. According to exemplarism, God creates everything according to ideas that are about himself, and so everything resembles God. Since God is wholly good in every way, and since ethical supervenience is true, it follows that creatures have intrinsic value.

A new epistemological case for theism

Relying on inference to the best explanation (IBE) requires one to hold the intuition that the world is ‘intelligible’, that is, such that states of affairs at least generally have explanations for their obtaining. I argue that metaphysical naturalists are rationally required to withhold this intuition, unless they cease to be naturalists. This is because all plausible naturalistic aetiologies of the intuition entail that the intuition and the state of affairs which it represents are not causally connected in an epistemically appropriate way. Given that one ought to rely on IBE, naturalists are forced to pick the latter and change their world-view. Traditional theists, in contrast, do not face this predicament. This, I argue, is strong grounds for preferring traditional theism to naturalism.

Reconciling the God of Traditional Theism with the World’s Evils

Replying to James Sterba’s argument for the incompatibility of the world’s evils with the existence of the God of traditional theism, I argue for their compatibility, using the proposition that God has reasons for permitting these evils. Developing this case involves appeal to an enlarged version of both the Free Will Defence and Hick’s Vale of Soul-Making Defence, in the context of God’s decision to generate the kind of natural regularities conducive to the evolution of a range of creatures, including free and rational ones. Sterba writes as if God would be required to authorise frequent infringements of these regularities. Sterba’s arguments from ethics and from the inadequacy of post-mortem compensation are problematised. Predicates used of God must bear a sense appropriate to the level of creator, and not of a very powerful cosmic observer. The ethics that applies within creation should not be confused with the ethics of creating.

Evilism and the a priori

In this article, I respond to Stephen Law's evil god challenge (EGC) to traditional theism. I argue that while there are credible a priori grounds for believing that the first cause is all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good, there are no credible a priori grounds for believing that the first cause is all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-evil. Because of this, theists have a reason for explaining away the a posteriori evidence against theism. The hypothetical evilist, on the other hand, does not. Thus, while the problem of the good makes it absurd to believe in evilism, the problem of evil does not make it absurd to believe in theism.

Deism

Deism believes in a God who created the world in the beginning but does not intervene in it thereafter. It represents an unstable compromise between traditional theism and scientific determinism.

Panentheism or Pansyntheism?

My suggestion is to replace Charles Hartshorne's term "panentheism" with that of "pansyntheism" as a more fruitful way of characterizing the dynamic relation between God and the world. He introduced the term panentheism in order to split the difference between traditional theism and pantheism, to define God as highly interactive with the cosmos without being totally in control of it. The world is thought of as being in God without being identified with God.

Hartshorne, Charles (1897–2000)

Despite the fact that Hartshorne often criticized the metaphysics of substance found in medieval philosophy, he was like medieval thinkers in developing a philosophy that was theocentric. From the 1920s until the beginning of the twenty-first century he defended the rationality of theism. For much of this period he was almost alone in doing so among English-speaking philosophers. He was largely responsible for the rediscovery of St Anselm’s ontological argument. But his greatest contribution to philosophical theism was not regarding arguments for the existence of God, but rather a theory regarding the actuality of God – i.e., how God exists. In his process-based conception God was seen as supreme becoming in which there was a factor of supreme being, in contrast to the view of traditional theism, wherein God was the supreme, unchanging being. Hartshorne’s neoclassical view has influenced the way many philosophers understand the concept of God. A small, but not insignificant, number of scholars think of him as the greatest metaphysician of the second half of the twentieth century.

Omnipotence

Traditional theism understands God to be the greatest being possible. According to the traditional conception, God possesses certain great-making properties or perfections, including necessary existence, omniscience, perfect goodness, and omnipotence. Philosophical reflection upon the notion of omnipotence raises many puzzles and apparent paradoxes. Could an omnipotent agent create a stone so massive that that agent could not move it? It might seem that however this question is answered, it turns out that, paradoxically, an omnipotent agent is not truly all-powerful. Could such an agent have the power to create or overturn necessary truths of logic and mathematics? Could an agent of this kind bring about or alter the past? Is the notion of an omnipotent agent other than God an intelligible one? Could two omnipotent agents exist at the same time? If there are states of affairs which an omnipotent agent is powerless to bring about, then how is the notion of omnipotence to be intelligibly defined? Yet if the notion of omnipotence is unintelligible, then traditional theism must be false. Another obstacle to traditional theism arises if it is impossible for God to be both perfectly good, and omnipotent. If an omnipotent God is powerless to do evil, then how can God be omnipotent?