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Single Idea 22730

[filed under theme 28. God / A. Divine Nature / 2. Divine Nature ]

Full Idea

All men have one common preconception about God, according to which he is a blessed creature and imperishable and perfect in happiness and receptive of nothing evil.

Gist of Idea

All men agree that God is blessed, imperishable, happy and good

Source

Sextus Empiricus (Against the Physicists (two books) [c.180], I.033)

Book Ref

Sextus Empiricus: 'Against the Physicists/Against the Ethicists', ed/tr. Bury,R.G. [Harvard Loeb 1997], p.19


A Reaction

He observes this after he has pointed the enormous variety of religious beliefs. He offers this unanimity as a reason to believe that it is true.

Related Idea

Idea 22732 The perfections of God were extrapolations from mankind [Sext.Empiricus]


The 20 ideas from 'Against the Physicists (two books)'

Gods were invented as watchers of people's secret actions [Sext.Empiricus]
All men agree that God is blessed, imperishable, happy and good [Sext.Empiricus]
It is mad to think that what is useful to us, like lakes and rivers, are gods [Sext.Empiricus]
The perfections of God were extrapolations from mankind [Sext.Empiricus]
God is defended by agreement, order, absurdity of denying God, and refutations [Sext.Empiricus]
The original substance lacked motion or shape, and was given these by a cause [Sext.Empiricus]
God's sensations imply change, and hence perishing, which is absurd, so there is no such God [Sext.Empiricus]
An incorporeal God could do nothing, and a bodily god would perish, so there is no God [Sext.Empiricus]
The Divine must lack the virtues of continence and fortitude, because they are not needed [Sext.Empiricus]
God must suffer to understand suffering [Sext.Empiricus]
God without virtue is absurd, but God's virtues will be better than God [Sext.Empiricus]
The incorporeal is not in the nature of body, and so could not emerge from it [Sext.Empiricus]
Socrates either dies when he exists (before his death) or when he doesn't (after his death) [Sext.Empiricus]
Parts are not parts if their whole is nothing more than the parts [Sext.Empiricus]
If we try to conceive of a line with no breadth, it ceases to exist, and so has no length [Sext.Empiricus]
A man walking backwards on a forwards-moving ship is moving in a fixed place [Sext.Empiricus]
Some say motion is perceived by sense, but others say it is by intellect [Sext.Empiricus]
Time doesn't end with the Universe, because tensed statements about destruction remain true [Sext.Empiricus]
Time is divisible, into past, present and future [Sext.Empiricus]
If the present is just the limit of the past or the future, it can't exist because they don't exist [Sext.Empiricus]