The Problem of Evil - Common Sense Atheism

Notes 157
4. For more on this topic, see my essays ‘‘Ontological Arguments’’ and
‘‘Modal Epistemology’’; see also the Introduction to God, Knowledge, and
Mystery, pp. 11–21.
5. Compare Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 1, q.25, art. 3: ‘‘But if one
were to say that God was omnipotent because he was able to do all things
that were possible for a being with the power that was his, there would be
a vicious circle in explaining the nature of that power. To say that would
be to say only that God can do what he can do.’’
6. I’m helping Descartes out a bit here. The question Descartes actually raises
(letter to Arnauld, 29 July 1648) is whether God ‘‘can make a mountain
without a valley’’. But, of course, if God wishes to make a mountain
without a valley, he need only place the mountain he has made in the midst
of a plain. I take it that the words I used in the text do not misrepresent
what Descartes had in mind. I am not going to enter into the intricate
scholarly dispute about what Descartes meant by saying that God ‘‘creates
the eternal truths’’. My interest lies in the ‘‘strong’’ theory of omnipotence
and its implications, not in the question whether Descartes really did
subscribe to that theory.
7. Here I follow common philosophical usage and speak of ‘‘believing’’
propositions. I feel compelled to apologize for this, if only to myself. I
am uncomfortable with this usage; I much prefer to speak of accepting
or assenting to propositions—or hypotheses, theses, premises, ... (This
preference is entirely a matter of English usage. No philosophical point
is involved.) My scruples—which I have suppressed in the text because
talk of believing propositions has certain stylistic advantages—could be
accommodated by the following wording: A being is omniscient if, for every
proposition, that being accepts either that proposition or its denial, and it
is metaphysically impossible for that being to accept a false proposition.
8. Some philosophers have said that if I believe that, e.g., Imyselfam hungry,
the content of my belief is a first-person proposition that only I can believe
(or accept: see the preceding note). If this is true, then the second definition
of omniscience (and perhaps the first as well; but this is less clear) faces
an obvious difficulty. I will not discuss this (as I see it) purely technical
difficulty—beyond the simple assertion that, in my view, the difficulty is
only apparent and can be seen to be only apparent when it is viewed from
the perspective of a correct understanding of first-person belief sentences.
9. See my essay ‘‘Ontological Arguments’’.
10. But suppose that someone maintains that the greatest possible being
is not—or would not be if it existed—a person. (A Neoplatonist, or
Plato himself, might maintain this, as would, perhaps, Spinoza and the
British Absolute Idealists.) Those who accept the Anselmian account of
the concept of God as the greatest possible being, I think, presuppose
that the greatest possible being must be a person—that of course the