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4 ideas
| 20696 | We can approach knowledge of God by negative attributes [Maimonides] |
| Full Idea: You will come nearer to the knowledge and comprehension of God by the negative attributes. | |
| From: Moses Maimonides (The Guide of the Perplexed [1190], p.86), quoted by Brian Davies - Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion 2 'Negation' | |
| A reaction: Illustrated by grasping what a ship is by eliminating other categories it might belong to. The assumption is that you have a known and finite list - something like Aristotle's categories. Maimonides fears we know too little for positive attributes. |
| 6250 | We say God is good if we think everything he does aims at the happiness of his creatures [Hutcheson] |
| Full Idea: We call the Deity morally good, when we apprehend that his whole providence tends to the universal happiness of his creatures. | |
| From: Francis Hutcheson (Treatise 2: Virtue or Moral Good [1725], §VII.V) | |
| A reaction: From the point of view of eternity, we might accept that God aims at some even greater good than the happiness of a bunch of miserable little creatures whose bad behaviour merits little reward. The greater good needs to be impressive, though. |
| 6249 | If goodness is constituted by God's will, it is a tautology to say God's will is good [Hutcheson] |
| Full Idea: To call the laws of the supreme Deity good or holy or just, if these be constituted by laws, or the will of a superior, must be an insignificant tautology, amounting to no more than 'God wills what he wills' or 'His will is conformable to his will'. | |
| From: Francis Hutcheson (Treatise 2: Virtue or Moral Good [1725], §VII.V) | |
| A reaction: This argues not only against God as the source of morality, but also against any rules, such as those of the Categorical Imperative. Why should I follow the Categorical Imperative? What has value must dictate the rules. Is obedience the highest value? |
| 19085 | Thinking of God as resembling humans results from a bad translation of Genesis 1:26 [Maimonides] |
| Full Idea: Mistranslation of 'image' has been the cause of a crass anthropomorphism because of the verse 'Let us make man in Our image after Our likeness' (Gen.1:26). They think God has the shape and outline of man, ..with face and hands like themselves. | |
| From: Moses Maimonides (The Guide of the Perplexed [1190], I.1) | |
| A reaction: It's interesting that Michelangelo still visualises God as an old man. The idea won't go away, presumably because God is understood as a 'person', in Locke's sense, though of a very special kind. |