Abstract
By ‘the world’ I mean the physical universe in its entirety and by ‘God’, the God of theism in general. Physicists differ in their theories about the nature of the universe and theists, in their beliefs about God; but the former all take the universe to consist of everything that is spatio-temporally identifiable and the latter all conceive of God as a being to whom some personal predicates can be ascribed. By ‘could’ I intend a logical ‘could’. So, what I am asking is whether the universe as physicists describe it can, without self-stultification, be conceived to embody the God in whom theists believe.1 Summarily, as my restricted space requires, I shall touch on three aspects of this question, namely: what it presupposes; why it is apposite; and where the adoption of the belief in question would leave theism.
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Notes
I argued that it can in A Philosophical Approach to Religion (London: Macmillan, 1974), pp. 165–76. Recent discussions are Grace M. Jantzen, God’s World, God’s Body, (London: Darston, Longman & Todd, 1984) and
T. F. Tracy, God, Action and Embodiment (Michigan: W. B. Eerdman, 1984).
Cf. J. N. Findlay, ‘Can God’s Existence by Disproved?’, in A. Flew and A. McIntyre (eds) New Essays in Philosophical Theology (trs) (London: S. C. M. Press, 1955).
Cf. D. Hume, Dialogue Concerning Natural Religion, second edition by N. Kemp Smith, (London: Macmillan, 1947), p. 189.
Cf. P. F. Strawson, Individuals (London: Methuen, 1959), pp. 105–5. Whatever may be thought about the concept of person, it is indisputable that these two kinds of predicate are used of human beings.
On (a) cf. A. Kenny, The God of the Philosophers (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), p. 126; and on (b),
P. Edwards, ‘Some Notes on Anthropomorphic Theology’ in S. Hook (ed.), Religious Experience and Truth, (London: 1962), pp. 242–3.
P. T. Geach, Reference and Generality (New York: Cornell University Press, 1962), p. 39.
See M. Durrant, The Logical Status of ‘God’, (London: Hutchinson, 1973).
Cf. G. Ryle, The Concept of Mind, (London: Hutchinson, 1949), chapter V.
Cf. G. J. Warnock, ‘Actions and Events’, in D. F. Pears (ed.), Freedom and the Will, (London: Macmillan, 1963).
Cf. A.C. Danto, ‘Basic Actions’, American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 2 (1965), pp. 141–8.
K. R. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (London: Hutchinson, 1959), p. 280.
Cf. S.W. Hawking, A Brief History of Time (London: Bantam, 1988), p. 174.
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© 1991 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Hudson, W.D. (1991). Could the World Embody God?. In: Mahalingam, I., Carr, B. (eds) Logical Foundations. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21232-3_18
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