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The God Insight: Vengeance or Destiny?

  • John Bacon
Chapter
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Abstract

My God is neither a Creator, much less an avenger, but rather the ultimate final cause (telos)—the end for the sake of which the cosmos works and our lives are lived out (partly in striving, as well as in pain and disappointment). This God is what Sartre denied—the meaning of life and of natural phenomena. To Aristotle’s problem of the uniqueness of the Prime Mover: if two Gods were per impossibile to exist, one would have to embrace the other’s telos. So God’s existence is to be taken for granted, but not as proven or empirically necessitated. Such a God is essential to us, but He is not detritus of the Big Bang, nor incarnate of the Virgin Mary, not omnipotent, nor comforting, nor prayer-accessible. Although such a God is undeniably a kind of let-down, He still explains the fundamental importance and value of the religious impulse in us.

Keywords

Good Explanation Meaningful Life Intentional Object Childbed Fever Conversation Partner 
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© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Department of PhilosophyUniversity of SydneySydneyAustralia

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