ABSTRACT

God, in the Western tradition, is usually regarded as an omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good being, who created the universe, and governs it. He is also supposed to have other attributes such as eternity, aseity, simplicity, unity and, on some views, 'absoluteness'. According to logical positivists, if there was no way of settling the question whether or not there was a god by finding evidence for or against God's existence, the question must be a meaningless one. The word 'God' can be defined in terms of words which can be correlated with reality. But the correlation is always with something temporal, whereas God is supposed to be eternal. If God is eternal, too, he can possess personal attributes only analogically, but the doctrine of analogy is of doubtful validity, and one wants God to possess certain characteristics, like goodness, literally.