Friday, November 9, 2012
God -- Or Some Lesser Designer
In Chapter V, Philo devises several arguments that accept that the
universe has a designer, but deny that that designer is God. Given our
traditional definition that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and
omnibenevolent, is Philo correct? Or is there a response to his
arguments? Does it matter if the designer is the traditional God?
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In chapter V, Philo argues four main points that clarify our traditional idea of a god. Firstly, Philo argues that we cannot assume that the creator is omnipotent and omniscient just because he created our universe. Instead, this creator could have tried and failed multiple times before creating our coherent universe. For all we know, the creator could have made many imperfect universes and only after learning from its mistakes, did he conjure the universe we know today. This questions the omnipotence and omniscience of our preconceived god because this means that our god could have flaws, and might not know everything there is to know. Additionally, Philo argues that we cannot assume that god is just one being. The creation of our universe could have been the group effort of multiple powerful beings. This point brings to light that perhaps our singular notion of god is wrong, and that instead there is more than one creator. I would argue that Philo is correct in all of his reasoning, and that the idea that our god is necessarily the creator of our universe is wrong. Philo is correct in his reasoning because the creation of the universe does not necessarily lead to the qualities we attribute to human’s traditional creator, god. We can be sure that the entity or entities that created the universe had the power at some point to create a coherent universe, but that is it. We cannot add that the creator is just one singular being, because the universe could have very well been the effort of a council of powerful beings. We cannot assume that the designer is omnipotent and omniscient because the designer could have failed countless times before mustering the power and knowledge necessary to create the universe. Philo is correct in his arguments, and proves that our designer does not need to have omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence.
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