The Attributes of God | Classical Theism 

Another great video, Let's Get Logical! I agree with your point about the term "agnostic." In fact, I would add a similar point about the term "atheist." Some people nowadays claim that "atheist" means "lacks a belief that God exists." But this is a revisionist way of understanding the term. (I also think it's funny that, given this revised definition, babies are atheists!) Language can change, of course. But for many years no one ever used the term "atheist" to describe someone who merely lacks the belief that God exists. The term "atheist" was almost always used in the affirmative sense (meaning a person who *believes* that God does *not* exist). And I have some historical evidence for this! Antony Flew wrote an influential paper in 1972 called "The Presumption of Atheism." In it, he *stipulates* that he will use the term 'atheist' to mean someone who lacks the belief that God exists. But he explicitly acknowledges that his usage goes against established common usage of the term. I think that, following Flew, we can be clear by using the following modifiers: "Positive atheist" = someone who *believes* that God does not exist. "Negative atheist" = someone who lacks the belief that God exists. But if we casually use the term "atheist" without a modifier, we should use it in the more standard way--someone who believes God does not exist.

@@ThinkingAboutStuff Interesting point about babies. Makes me think it's also weird to think of babies as _agnostics._ So I'd want to say an agnostic _suspends belief_ , not merely that an agnostic doesn't believe and also doesn't deny. Here's a consideration against the "negative atheist" language: Not just babies, but also animals and tables and chairs all _lack_ belief in God. So are they negative atheists? (Maybe this last point is too goofy.)

An agnostic on principle. 🙂

Correct. Omniscience implies knowledge of all truths. (Or perhaps only knowledge of all truths that are _knowable_ .) If future contingents do not have a truth-value, then there is no truth-value for God to know. However, this solution comes with some serious baggage: it violates classical logic, according to which every proposition is either true or false. There's a huge (fun) literature on this difficult topic, starting all the way back with Aristotle's discussion of a sea battle that will (or will not) take place tomorrow.

@LetsGetLogical Yes I've heard an argument that the future must be settled because if it was not then all future contingents would be false, which is a contradiction because something has to happen. I don't find it compelling, but that could be because I'm obstinate. Language from the Bible seems to indicate that contingents about the future exist and God knows about them, by they may still change, for example God says Nineveh will be destroyed but it doesn't happen, and God says He will destroy Israel in Numbers 14 (and Exodus) but doesn't. Perhaps that's also a contradiction, but I'm pretty firm on the idea that the future isn't determined one way or the other. Determined to believe it, you might say.

@reasonablemind6830 That's interesting. So on your view God is _personal_ but not a person? What does it mean for a being to be personal but not a person? I supposed you've already gestured at an answer: having intellect and will. But why not call a being with intellect and will a person? Indeed, the standard terminology in Christian tradition, at least, is that God is one substance in three _persons_ . In any case, speaking of God as a person is pretty standard in analytic philosophical theology (e.g. Swinburne). But if you can point me to sources that address reasons for thinking God is not a person, I'd welcome that. Thanks for viewing.

@@LetsGetLogical Thanks for your response. As you per your request for resources, I start by quoting Christian philosophers Brian Davies and Edward Feser: “The formula “God is a person” is ... a relatively recent one. I believe that its first occurrence in English comes in the report of a trial of someone called John Biddle (b. 1615), who in 1644 was brought before the magistrates of Gloucester, England, on a charge of heresy. His “heresy” was claiming that God is a person. Biddle was explicitly defending Unitarian beliefs about God, already in evidence among Socinians outside England.” - Brian Davies in _The Reality of God and the Problem of Evil_ (Continuum, 2006), 59 “As I have said many times, the problem with the thesis that “God is a person” is not the word “person,” but rather the word “a.” And as Davies (and I) have argued many times, there are two key problems with it, a philosophical problem, and a distinctively Christian theological problem.” - Edward Feser (To be continued in my next comment)

(continuation: 2nd of 3) I quote the philosopher Edward Feser’s longer passage here with a link to his full article at the end: “As I have said many times, the problem with the thesis that “God is a person” is not the word “person,” but rather the word “a.” And as Davies (and I) have argued many times, there are two key problems with it, a philosophical problem, and a distinctively Christian theological problem. “The philosophical problem is that this language implies that God is a particular instance of the general kind “person,” and anything that is an instance of any kind is composite rather than simple, and thus requires a cause. Thus, nothing that is an instance of a kind could be God, who is of course essentially uncaused. (Obviously these claims need spelling out and defense, but of course I and other Thomists have spelled them out and defended them in detail many times.) The distinctively Christian theological problem is that God is Trinitarian -- three divine Persons in one substance -- and thus cannot be characterized as “a person” on pain of heresy. (As Davies has pointed out, it seems that the first time the English language formula “God is a person” appears in the history of Christian theology is in the 1644 heresy trial, in Gloucester, England, of someone named John Biddle -- where the formula was condemned as implying Unitarianism.) “So, the reason Davies labels the rejection of classical theism “theistic personalism” is not that he thinks God is impersonal. The reason is rather that he takes theistic personalists to start with the idea that God is a particular instance of the general kind “person” and to go from there. And this, he thinks, is what leads them to draw conclusions incompatible with classical theism, such as that God is (like the persons we’re familiar with in everyday experience) changeable, temporal, made up of parts, etc. To reject theistic personalism, then, is not a matter of regarding God as impersonal, but rather a matter of rejecting the idea that God is a particular instance of the kind “person,” or of any other kind for that matter. (For example, though classical theists certainly regard God as the uncaused cause of the world, they do not think that this is correctly to be understood as the claim that God is a particular instance of the general kind “cause.”)” edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2016/04/craig-on-divine-simplicity-and-theistic.html?m=1 I have one more comment next.

(continuation: Last of 3) In this last comment of this series of three comments, I quote the abstract of this published paper and give its link at the end: AGAINST THEISTIC PERSONALISM: WHAT MODERN EPISTEMOLOGY DOES TO CLASSICAL THEISM Roger Pouivet Université de Lorraine Abstract: Is God a person, like you and me eventually, but only much better and without our human deficiencies? When you read some of the philosophers of religion, including Richard Swinburne, Alvin Plantinga, or Open Theists, God appears as such a person, in a sense closer to Superman than to the Creator of Heaven and Earth. It is also a theory that a Christian pastoral theology today tends to impose, insisting that God is close to us and attentive to all of us. But this modern account of God could be a deep and even tragic mistake. One God in three persons, the formula of the Trinity, does not mean that God is a person. On this matters we need an effort in the epistemology of theology to examine more precisely what we can pretend to know about God, and especially how we could pretend to know that God is person. www.philosophy-of-religion.eu/index.php/ejpr/article/view/1871/2038

Interesting! Thanks for that. I'm familiar with both Davies and Feser (in fact, Feser went through the same philosophy program I did). I'll check it out further. However, it sounds like Feser is pretty much on board. He says the problem is not _person_ but "a" person. I take it he's referencing the same point I made above: God is one substance, three persons. But I would take that to mean God is _at least_ a person. (How could God be _three_ persons without being _a_ person?) Still, I concede there are interesting questions here. Hope you'll continue with your next comment. 👊🏼

I don't want to dismiss your objection. You're right to ask, "What counts as a perfection?" But I don't think theists will be too terribly set back by your examples.

@@LetsGetLogicalAgree.

For example?