Historically, the development of God concepts in human cognition has been explained anthropomorphically. In other words, for children especially, God is a big, superhuman who lives in the sky. Recent empirical research on the development of these concepts may suggest an alternative hypothesis. In this paper, we review this research and outline the "preparedness hypothesis," which suggests that ...

of the Christian tradition,1 and is stated in its fullest form in the theological doctrine of God's impeccability.2, God is not only free from sin, He is incapable of moral deviation. God not only does not sin, He cannot sin. This is generally held to be part of what is communicated in the claim that God is perfectly good. On the surface, at least, this doctrine appears to be in conflict with t...

The traditional thesis that God exists necessarily I could as well not exist. Had I fallen from the cliff last year, I would not exist now. Furthermore, had my parents not met, or had God not created a universe, I would never have come into existence. At any rate, there are many ways the world could be without me, or even without anybody like me. It is, in this sense, possible that I do not exi...

T HE idea that God is One, as expressed, for example, in the Shema Yisrael: "Hear 0 Israel, the Lord thy God, the Lord is One," comes in part to this: there is but one God (if there's any at all). But it also comes to this: God is a unity, not a "heap." Insofar, God's oneness doesn't differ from the oneness of, say, legs attached to my right side; there's just one, and it's a unity, not a "heap...

1 The Dilemma of the Theistic Platonist Theists generally hold that God is the creator of all there is distinct from himself. Traditionally, the scope of God's creative activity has extended across two disjoint realms: the physical, whose chief exemplars are ordinary middle-size objects, and the mental or spiritual, encompassing such things as angels and souls. Now, many theists are also platon...

Anselm's ontological argument in Proslogion 2 has been discussed and criticized so much that it is hard for us today to see its basic structure. The philosophical consensus seems to be that the argument is hopeless: it either begs the question against the atheist or it is invalid. The case against it appears to be closed. 1 No doubt one reason many philosophers consider the ontological argument...