On the number of gods
A god is a cosmic designer-creator. Atheism says the number of gods is 0. But it is hard to defeat the minimal thesis that some possible universe is actualized by some possible god. Monotheists say the number of gods is 1. Yet no degree of perfection can be coherently assigned to any unique god. Lew...
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| Medienart: | Elektronisch Aufsatz |
| Sprache: | Englisch |
| Verfügbarkeit prüfen: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Lade...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Veröffentlicht: |
Springer Science + Business Media B. V
2012
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| In: |
International journal for philosophy of religion
Jahr: 2012, Band: 72, Heft: 2, Seiten: 75-83 |
| weitere Schlagwörter: | B
Atheism
B Infinity B Polytheism B Monotheism B Gods |
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Volltext (JSTOR) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Parallele Ausgabe: | Elektronisch
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| Zusammenfassung: | A god is a cosmic designer-creator. Atheism says the number of gods is 0. But it is hard to defeat the minimal thesis that some possible universe is actualized by some possible god. Monotheists say the number of gods is 1. Yet no degree of perfection can be coherently assigned to any unique god. Lewis says the number of gods is at least the second beth number. Yet polytheists cannot defend an arbitrary plural number of gods. An alternative is that, for every ordinal, there is a god whose perfection is proportional to it. The n-th god actualizes the best universe(s) in the n-th level of an axiological hierarchy of possible universes. Despite its unorthodoxy, ordinal polytheism has many metaphysically attractive features and merits more serious study. |
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| ISSN: | 1572-8684 |
| Enthält: | Enthalten in: International journal for philosophy of religion
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1007/s11153-011-9325-2 |