The Conception of God

The question for the philosophical student always is: How does the truth appear to me now, with the best reflection that I can at present give? Past expression is therefore no substitute for present effort in philosophy... The Conception of God, this is our immediate topic. And I begin its consideration by saying that, to my mind, a really fruitful philosophical study of the conception of God is inseparable from an attempt to estimate what evidence there is for the existence of God. When one conceives of God, one does so because one is interested, not in the bare definition of a purely logical or mathematical notion, but in the attempt to make out what sort of real world this is in which you and I live. If it is worth while even to speak of God before the forum of the philosophical reason, it is so because one hopes to be able, in a measure, to translate into articulate terms the central mystery of our existence, and to get some notion about what is at the heart of the world.... This book deals with the following questions : Does a Supreme Being, or Ultimate Reality, no matter how assuredly proved, deserve the name of God, simply by virtue of its Reality and Supremacy? Is simple Supremacy divine, even if made out in idealistic terms, in terms, say, of Omniscience? Can the attribute of Omniscience amount to a criterion of Deity until we determine the nature of the objects contained in the total sphere of its cognition, and find there real persons as the supreme and all-determining objects of its view?...