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The Ontological Principle and God's Existence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

J. Kellenberger
J. Kellenberger
Affiliation:
San Fernando Valley State College
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Extract

Central to most religions are God and belief in God. But while this is so for nearly all religions, questions regarding the nature and existence of God have long been a welter for believer and nonbeliever alike. This is not purely a historical comment. Long enduring confusions about God's existence and nature persist and, it seems to me, have even deepened recently. Consider the spectrum of things contemporaneously said about God's existence.

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 45 , Issue 174 , October 1970 , pp. 281 - 289
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1970

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References

1 Vide Ebersole, Frank B., ‘Whether Existence is a Predicate’, The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. LX (1963)Google Scholar, reprinted with some revisions in his Things We Know (Eugene, Oregon: University of Oregon Books, 1967).Google Scholar

2 In his criticism of the Cartesian form of the ontological argument in the Critique of Pure Reason. The pertinent passage is reprinted in Hick's, JohnThe Existence of God (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1964), p. 44.Google Scholar

3 In ‘Is Existence a Predicate?’ Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Vol. XV (1936)Google Scholar, reprinted in Moore's Philosophical Papers.

4 Smart, J. J. C., ‘The Existence of God’, New Essays in Philosophical Theology, p. 46.Google Scholar Smart's comments are in reference to Aquinas’ Third Way.

5 Cf. Lewis, H. D., Our Experience of God (London, George Allen & Unwin, 1959), p. 107 and passim.Google Scholar

6 Martin, C. B., Religious Belief (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1959), pp. 156–7.Google Scholar

7 Malcolm, Norman, ‘Anselm's Ontological Arguments’, The Existence of God, John Hick, editor, pp. 48ff.Google Scholar (Also, of course, one might rule out the question of God's existence as meaningless on the basis of a special theory of meaning, such as the positivist. But this raises other questions and is another matter.)

8 Ibid., p. 62.

9 Cf. Smart, , op. cit., p. 41.Google Scholar I have drawn the argument that follows from Smart's article. Also cf. MacIntyre, Alasdair, ‘The Logical Status of Religious Belief’, Metaphysical Beliefs: Three Essays by Toulmin, Stephen E., Hepburn, Ronald W. and MacIntyre, Alasdair (London: S.C.M. Press, 1957), p. 203.Google Scholar

10 Cf. Toulmin, Stephen E., An Examination of the Place of Reason in Ethics (Cambridge: University Press, 1961), pp. 212ff.Google Scholar

11 Cf. Malcolm, Norman, ‘Is it a Religious Belief that “God Exists”?’, Faith and the Philosophers, Hick, John, editor (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1964), pp. 103ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 Cf. Flew, Antony, God and Philosophy (London: Hutchinson, 1966), Sees. 8.33–8.35.Google Scholar

13 Findlay, J. N., ‘Can God's Existence be Disproved?’, New Essays in Philosophical Theology, p. 55.Google Scholar Findlay's argument is discussed by Malcolm in his ‘Anselm's Ontological Arguments’.