Philosophy in the modern world a new history of western philosophy, volume 4 (new history of western philosophy) ( PDFDrive ) (1) 329

GOD

only determine what conduct it is fitted to produce, and that conduct is for
us its sole significance. If we apply this principle to God’s metaphysical
attributes, we have to confess them destitute of all intelligible significance.
Take God’s aseity for example; or his necessariness; his immateriality; his ‘simplicity’
or superiority to the kind of inner variety and succession which we find in finite
beings, his indivisibility, and lack of the inner distinctions of being and activity,
substance and accident, potentiality and actuality, and the rest; his repudiation of
inclusion in a genus; his actualized infinity; his ‘personality’, apart from the moral
qualities which it may comport; his relations to evil being permissive and not
positive; his self-sufficiency, self-love, and absolute felicity in himself:—candidly
speaking, how do such qualities as these make any definite connection with our
life? And if they severally call for no distinctive adaptations of our conduct, what
vital difference can it possibly make to a man’s religion whether they be true or false?
(VRE 428)

So much for God’s metaphysical attributes. But what of his moral attributes, such as holiness, justice, and mercy? Surely these are, from the point
of view of pragmatism, on a different footing: they positively determine
fear and hope and expectations, and are foundations for the saintly life.
Well, perhaps these predicates are meaningful; but dogmatic theology has
never produced any convincing arguments that they do in fact belong to
God. And modern idealism, James believed, has said goodbye to dogmatic
theology for ever.
It is not reason, he maintained in conclusion, that is the source of
religion, but feeling. Philosophical and theological formulas are secondary.
All that philosophy can do is to assist in the articulation of religious
experience, compare different expressions of it, eliminate local and accidental elements from these expressions, mediate between different believers,
and help to bring about consensus of opinion. The theologians’ enumeration of divine epithets is not worthless, but its value is aesthetic rather
than scientific. ‘Epithets lend an atmosphere and overtones to our devotion.
They are like a hymn of praise and service of glory, and may sound the more

sublime for being incomprehensible’ (VRE 437–9).
In a world governed by science and its laws, is there any room for prayer?
James distinguishes between petitionary prayer, and prayer in a wider sense.
Among petitionary prayers, he makes a further distinction between prayers
for better weather, and prayers for the recovery of sick people. The first are
futile, but not necessarily the second. ‘If any medical fact can be considered
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