The Problem of Evil - Common Sense Atheism

The Idea of God 33
small, lithe, furry quadruped of the genus Felis, I do not pretend that
my definition is an enumeration of all the essential properties of cats;
and if I did, I should obviously be wrong, since, for example, every cat
has essentially the property of having a carbon-based body chemistry,
and my definition says nothing about that.
The second question is this: To what extent is the list at all ‘‘flexible’’?
To what extent can someone who calls himself a theist modify the list (or
modify the definitions and explanations I have given of the items in the
list) and still rightly call himself a theist? I think there is some flexibility
in what I have said, but not much, and that the line between ‘‘having
a different conception of God from the one expressed by the list’’ and
‘‘using the name ‘God’ for a being who is not properly so-called’’ can be
drawn in a principled way. Let me give examples of proposed alterations
to the list of divine attributes—ones that have been actually proposed,
although I name no names so as not to have to take responsibility for
getting a particular author right when my only interest is in finding
cases that illustrate a point—that fall on both sides of the line.
(1) The property of existing necessarily is an impossible property.
Therefore, we should, in Whitehead’s words, be paying God an illjudged
metaphysical compliment if we ascribed it to him. Let us replace
‘exists necessarily’ with ‘exists ase’. A being exists necessarily just in
the case that it exists in all possible worlds—and a necessary being is
therefore impossible, for, as Hume pointed out, we can easily conceive
of there being nothing. The reality of a being whose existence is ase,
however, is consistent with the possibility of there being nothing at all.
(2) If God is omnipotent, the problem of evil is intractable. Let us
therefore understand God’s powers as being severely limited.
In my view, the theist who proposes the first of these alterations
does succeed in saying that God does not, as others have supposed,
exist necessarily. I think he’s wrong—for I don’t think that necessary
existence is impossible—but I don’t think that what he’s saying is
conceptually defective. It is otherwise with the second case. In the words
of J. L. Austin’s inarticulate judge, the man isn’t on the thing at all. I say
that someone who says that God is a being of ‘‘severely limited powers’’
refers to nothing at all—even on the assumption that there is a God.
No being of severely limited powers could be God, could fall under the
concept properly expressed by the word ‘God’; not even if that being
was the greatest being who in fact existed and had created the heavens
and the earth and all things besides himself.