Theism

God and gods

The concept god is central to many aspects of theism, concerning both its definition and the arguments for and against it. A god is typically understood as a sacred being that possesses and exercises special powers over the natural world. Examples include Shiva in Hinduism, Ra in the ancient Egyptian religion, Zeus in the ancient Greek religion, Eledumare in the Yoruba religion, Yahweh in Judaism, the Christian God, and Allah in Islam. Gods are normally regarded as personal and conscious beings, in contrast to impersonal divine principles or forces, such as the law of karma in Buddhism. They are often seen as supernatural entities capable of influencing the natural world without being bound by its laws. The precise characterization of the nature and attributes of gods varies across traditions.

Theorists sometimes distinguish the specific concept God, spelled with an uppercase letter, from the more general concept of gods. According to this view, God is the singular highest being, either as the only existing god or as the supreme reality that includes all gods. An influential characterization, associated with perfect being theology, considers God as a supreme being with the highest degree of perfection, typically expressed in three divine attributes: omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence. Omnipotence means that God is all-powerful: they have maximal power and can do whatever is possible, without any external restraints limiting what they are capable of. Omniscience means that God is all-knowing: they have maximal knowledge and are aware of every truth without error or uncertainty, encompassing everything that was, is, and will be. Omnibenevolence means that God is maximally good: they possess ultimate kindness and generosity, and treat every being with perfect moral goodness.

Another common characterization describes God as self-existent and independent, while worldly entities are regarded as dependent on God, for example, because God created the world from nothing and actively governs it. This contrast is sometimes expressed by asserting that God exists necessarily and could not have failed to exist, while worldly entities exist contingently and could have failed to exist. Other suggested attributes include that God is eternal (without beginning and end), immutable (unchanging), omnipresent (present everywhere in the physical universe), transcendent (existing beyond the limits of the physical universe), incorporeal (without a body), and hidden (not directly perceivable).

Another topic concerns religious language used to describe the divine and whether it is possible, at least in principle, to give an accurate description of God or gods. Cataphatic theology argues that positive descriptions are possible: one can state what a god is like and what features they have. Apophatic theology rejects this view, proposing instead that only negative descriptions are possible: statements about what a god is not. A related discussion concerns the meaning and accuracy of religious language. The theory of univocity holds that terms used in theological descriptions, such as good and wise, have the same meaning when applied to humans and deities. Analogical theories, by contrast, hold that their meanings differ, for example, that the goodness of a deity resembles that of a human being although the two expressions do not convey the same idea.

Belief

Belief, another central term, is a mental state or subjective attitude about what is true. It contrasts with disbelief, which regards a proposition as false, and with suspension of judgment, which remains neutral and neither affirms nor rejects. Belief can vary in degree of confidence and does not require absolute certainty. Accordingly, some theists may have unquestioning confidence, whereas others may hold a tentative belief while acknowledging uncertainty. One approach analyzes belief in terms of probability: to believe a proposition is to hold that it is more likely to be true than false. Belief may be based on rational justification, such as philosophical arguments, but a person may also hold a belief without being able to justify it.

Belief is closely related to faith, but the two are not always treated as synonyms. While both belief and faith typically involve regarding something as true, faith is often understood as including additional components. For example, faith in a deity may imply trust in and personal commitment to this deity beyond the assertion that it exists. Faith is also more closely associated with practical consequences as something that guides a person's life and motivates worship and rituals, rather than remaining a purely intellectual judgment.

Belief differs from desire and hope, which are subjective attitudes about what a person wants rather than what they take to be true. Accordingly, a person who desires or hopes that God exists is not necessarily a theist if they judge God's existence unlikely.

Contrasting views

Theism contrasts with atheism, which involves an absence or rejection of belief in God or gods. Atheism is sometimes divided into negative and positive forms. Negative atheism, sometimes called non-theism, denotes a mere absence of belief. In this sense, anyone who is not a theist is an atheist, including those who have no opinion or have never considered the issue. Positive atheism, by contrast, involves an active rejection of the existence of deities, implying a disbelief rather than a suspension of judgment. Defined more abstractly, it is the philosophical thesis that there is no god.

A different classification distinguishes between global and local atheism. Global atheism is a general denial of the existence of gods, applying to all deities regardless of their exact attributes or tradition-specific characterizations. It contrasts with local atheism, which rejects a particular conception of a god, such as the conception of an all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-benevolent god. Accordingly, a person can be a theist with respect to one god conception and a local atheist with respect to another, such as a Christian believer who is a local atheist regarding Zeus.

Another common contrast is between theism and agnosticism. Agnosticism can be defined in a psychological or a philosophical sense. Understood psychologically, it is a personal suspension of judgment as a type of negative atheism. Understood philosophically, it is the thesis that the existence of God or gods is unknowable. This view goes beyond a personal suspension of judgment: it is the more general claim that no one, neither oneself nor others, can know, for example, because the evidence for and against balances out or because there is no evidence either way. In this sense, agnosticism is sometimes regarded as a rejection of both theism and positive atheism by challenging the assumption that knowledge is possible. However, there is also a sense in which agnosticism and theism can be combined: an agnostic theist is someone who believes in a god while denying that knowledge can be achieved.

When theism is defined in a narrow sense as the belief in a single supreme being that differs from and actively governs the world, it contrasts with other beliefs about gods. For example, it contrasts with polytheism, which believes in more than one god; with deism, which holds that God does not intervene in the world after creating it; and with pantheism, which holds that God is identical to the world.

Besides views that oppose theism, there are also positions about gods that concern aspects other than existence, such as values and attitudes. Pro-theism and anti-theism discuss whether God would contribute to the value of the world. Pro-theists hold that it would be good if God existed, for example, because God has intrinsic value and makes the lives of people better. Anti-theists reject this idea: they contend that the world would be better off without God, for instance, because God's existence would undermine the sense of identity and meaning people get by deciding for themselves rather than following God's command; or because God's existence would threaten freedom, independence, and privacy. This view is related to misotheism, which is hatred of God. Apatheism, by contrast, is indifference to whether God exists. Ignosticism, or igtheism, holds that the word God is meaningless, challenging the coherence of discussions about God's existence.

Classical theism

Classical theism is the form of theism that describes God as the Absolute Being. Central insights of classical theistic theology includes emanationism and divine simplicity.

Monotheism

Monotheism (from Greek μόνος) is the belief in theology that only one deity exists. Major monotheistic religions include Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.

Polytheism

Polytheism is the belief in multiple deities, which are usually assembled into a pantheon, along with their own religious sects and rituals. It is well-documented throughout history: from prehistory and the earliest records of ancient Egyptian religion and ancient Mesopotamian religion to the religions prevalent during Classical antiquity, such as ancient Greek religion and ancient Roman religion, and in ethnic religions such as Germanic, Slavic, Baltic paganism and Native American religions.

Notable polytheistic religions practiced today include Taoism, Chinese folk religion, Japanese Shinto, Santería, most traditional African religions, and various neopagan faiths such as Wicca, Druidry, Romuva, and Hellenism.

A major division in modern polytheistic practices is between so-called soft polytheism and hard polytheism. "Soft" polytheism is the belief that different gods may be psychological archetypes, personifications of natural forces, or fundamentally one deity in different cultural contexts (e.g., Odin, Zeus, and Indra all being the same god as interpreted by Germanic, Greek, and Indic peoples, respectively)—known as omnitheism. In this way, gods may be interchangeable for one another across cultures. "Hard" polytheism is the belief that gods are distinct, separate, real divine beings rather than psychological archetypes or personifications of natural forces. Hard polytheists reject the idea that "all gods are one essential god" and may also reject the existence of gods outside their own pantheon altogether.

Polytheism is further divided according to how the individual deities are regarded:

Henotheism

Henotheism is the belief that there may be more than one deity but only one of them is to be worshiped. Zoroastrianism is sometimes considered an example.

Kathenotheism

Kathenotheism is the belief that there is more than one deity, but only one deity is worshiped at a time (or ever) and another may be worthy of worship in another time or place. If they are worshiped one at a time, then each is supreme in turn.

Monolatrism

Monolatrism is the belief that there may be more than one deity but only one is worthy of being worshiped. Most of the modern monotheistic religions may have begun as monolatrous ones, but this is disputed.^{[citation needed]}

Pantheism

Pantheism is the belief that reality, the universe and the cosmos are identical to divinity and a creator deity or entity. Pointing to the universe as being an immanent creator deity in and of itself, the deity is understood as still expanding, creating, and eternal, or that all things compose an all-encompassing, immanent god or goddess that is manifested as the universe. As such, even astronomical objects are viewed as part of the sole deity. The worship of all gods of every religion has been conceived as a form of pantheism, but such a system is more akin to Omnism. Pantheist belief does not recognize a distinct personal god, anthropomorphic or otherwise, but instead characterizes a broad range of doctrines differing in forms of relationships between reality and divinity. Pantheistic concepts date back thousands of years, and pantheistic elements have been identified in various religious traditions. The term pantheism was coined by mathematician Joseph Raphson in 1697, and since then has been used to describe the beliefs of a variety of individuals and organizations. Pantheism was popularized in Western culture as a theology and philosophy based on the work of the 17th-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza—in particular, his book Ethics. A pantheistic stance was also expressed by the 16th-century by philosopher and cosmologist Giordano Bruno.

Deism

Classical Deism

Classical deism is the belief that one God exists and created the world, but that the Creator does not alter the original plan for the universe. Instead, the deity presides over it in the form of Providence; some classical deists, however, did believe in divine intervention.

Deism typically rejects supernatural events (such as prophecies, miracles, and divine revelations) prominent in organized religion. Instead, deism holds that religious beliefs must be founded on human reason and observed features of the natural world, and that these sources reveal the existence of a supreme being as creator.

Pandeism

Pandeism is the belief that God preceded the universe and created it but is now equivalent with it.

Egotheism

Egotheism is the belief that divinity exists within oneself and that individuals can achieve a godlike state. It is found in various philosophical and religious traditions emphasizing personal divinity or spiritual progression.

In Advaita Vedanta, a Hindu philosophical school, the phrase aham Brahmāsmi ("I am Brahman") expresses the unity of the individual self (atman) with the ultimate reality (Brahman).

In Mormonism, the doctrine of exaltation suggests that faithful individuals can attain godhood in the afterlife.

Egotheistic ideas also appear in Gnosticism, which emphasizes self-knowledge (gnosis) as the path to recognizing one’s divine nature, and in Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of the Übermensch, which advocates transcending human limitations to create one’s own values.

Value-judgment Theisms

Eutheism

Eutheism is the belief that a deity is wholly benevolent.

Dystheism

Dystheism is the belief that a deity is not wholly good, and is possibly evil.

Maltheism

Maltheism is the belief that a deity exists but is wholly malicious.

Misotheism

Misotheism is active hatred toward and for God, gods, and/or other divine beings.

Alterity theism

Alterity theism is a belief that the supreme being is radically transcendent to the point that it cannot be recognized as having any genuine being at all.

For

Ontological arguments are a family of a priori inferences regarding the existence of God. They usually start from a definition of God or a discussion of God's essential attributes, together with general claims about existence and what is possible or conceivable. The traditional version of the ontological argument was proposed by Anselm of Canterbury. It begins with the definition that God is the greatest conceivable being. Relying on the assumption that a being with existence is greater than a being without existence, it concludes that God must exist, because otherwise, God would not be the greatest conceivable being.

Many other arguments for theism, such as cosmological and teleological arguments, are a posteriori arguments. Cosmological arguments infer the existence of God from the existence of the world. They seek to justify the idea that some kind of first cause or necessary being is required to explain that there is a world. One approach relies on an infinite regress argument: it asserts that each worldly event has a cause and that if that cause is itself a worldly event, it would lead to an infinite chain of causes and effects. Based on the assumption that this is impossible, it holds that there must be a first cause, namely God. A different version uses the principle of sufficient reason. Rather than challenging the possibility of an infinite chain of causes and effects, it argues that there must be a reason for this chain of contingent events: a necessary entity serving as its ground of being. Once a cosmological argument has concluded that there is a first cause or necessary being, it typically proceeds by arguing that this entity has the essential features associated with God.

Teleological arguments are similar to cosmological arguments by treating the world as evidence for God. A key difference is that cosmological arguments focus on the existence of the world in general, whereas teleological arguments consider specific aspects of it. Teleological arguments often take the form of design arguments, which assert that certain features of the world are best explained by assuming they were created by an intelligent designer. Different versions of teleological arguments focus on distinct features, such as the observations that the universe is orderly and follows natural laws; that it is beautiful, interconnected, and purposeful; or that it is suitable for intelligent life. Some design arguments proceed by analogy with human creations. For example, William Paley held that someone who finds a watch on the ground is justified in assuming that it was made by an intelligent watchmaker and did not arise by chance because its internal mechanism is complex and purposeful. Paley argued that the same applies to living organisms in general, whose existence he explained by an intelligent designer god. Instead of relying on analogy, teleological arguments can also use an inference to the best explanation: they may hold that the existence of a god is the best explanation for certain features of the world.

Arguments from morality and consciousness focus on specific features of human life. For example, some arguments from morality assume that there are objective moral values or universal moral obligations and assert that they are best explained by a divine lawgiver as the source of moral authority. Another line of argument regards religious experiences as evidence for God. Such experiences often involve non-ordinary states of awareness, such as having a vision or hearing a voice one attributes to God. Some tradition-specific arguments justify belief through the authority of holy scriptures, such as the Vedas in Hinduism or the Bible in Christianity.

Pragmatic arguments focus on beneficial consequences of theistic belief rather than evidence that theism is true. They aim to demonstrate that belief is rational because it is useful or valuable. For example, Pascal's wager recommends belief based on a comparison of possible outcomes. It argues that the cost of adopting a false belief, if there is no god, is minor compared to the potential reward of adopting a true belief, if there is a god who grants believers infinite bliss in the afterlife.

Against

A key critique of theism comes from arguments from evil, which hold that the presence of evil, understood not merely as bad intentions but also as suffering, undermines the claim that God exists. For example, such arguments may claim that an existing god would not allow innocent children to suffer from natural disasters, famine, war, and disease. Arguments from evil are typically divided into logical and evidential versions. Logical versions defend the strongest verdict: they hold that the presence of evil makes the existence of God impossible. One version asserts that an all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-benevolent being would necessarily prevent evil and concludes that such a being cannot exist given the presence of evil. Evidential arguments from evil assert that the presence of evil makes God's existence unlikely. An influential version, proposed by William Rowe, allows that some instances of intense suffering lead to greater goods. However, it holds that this is not true for every single instance: if there was an all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-benevolent being, it would probably have prevented some instances of suffering.

Another atheist argument relies on naturalism and scientific inquiry. It holds that scientific theories are superior to religious ones because they provide better explanations through rigorous methods without assuming the existence of supernatural entities. For example, challenges to various religious creation myths are posed by modern physical cosmology, which traces the development of the universe from the Big Bang to the present, and by the theory of evolution, which explains the emergence of intelligent life through natural selection rather than intelligent design. This naturalistic outlook on the world is sometimes combined with a naturalistic explanation of theistic belief, characterizing it as a psychological phenomenon that responds more to human needs or emotions than objective truth. This type of outlook may regard theistic belief as a projection of idealized human qualities, as a delusional mechanism born of a desire for a powerful father figure, or as a social ideology that uses hope for a happy afterlife to control the masses and sustain class inequalities.

A different criticism challenges the coherence of theism, holding that the concept God involves contradictions. For example, one approach argues that the divine attribute of omnipotence is incoherent because it implies that God both can and cannot create a stone too heavy for God to lift. Other arguments seek to show that statements about God are meaningless. For instance, verificationism holds that the meaning of a statement is given by the procedures through which it could be verified, or the set of experiences that would show it to be true. When combined with the assumption that there is no such procedure for statements about God, it leads to the conclusion that they are meaningless.

Some objections do not present new evidence against theism but draw conclusions from an insufficiency of available evidence. One approach holds that the reasons for and against theism are balanced and favor neither side. Another approach, based on empiricism, maintains that there is no serious evidence for either side since evidence is limited to sensory experience, which cannot detect the presence or absence of supernatural entities. Some agnostics conclude from these considerations that knowledge is impossible and promote suspension of judgment, rejecting theism as a dogmatic stance that jumps to conclusions without a firm evidential basis. A different response argues that the absence of decisive evidence favors atheism rather than agnosticism. It maintains that the burden of proof lies with those who assert that something exists, not with those who deny it. For example, the absence of decisive evidence for the existence of unicorns is typically taken as a reason to deny their existence rather than to only suspend judgment about the issue. The argument from hiddenness also interprets the absence of decisive evidence as a reason for disbelief. It holds that if there was an all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-benevolent being, it would have provided humans with decisive evidence for its existence.

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