Would you please be able to outline the steps from the statement
"The problem is, as William of Okham and others discovered, logic does not deal with the existence of God very well, so all we can say is what revelation tells us. An idea that has its own problems."
to
" Thus we have no evidence God exists, and it seems to be an impossible task to develop evidence. Or even a truly good definition of God."
Romans 11
33 O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!
34 For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counsellor?
From Paul onwards, the problems of God have always ended up with having to admit God is inscrutable. And theologians have tied themselves into knots trying to explain God. Augustine time and time again had to admit that God was inscrutable and not open to logic. Luther and others have been forced to concede that point. Duns Scotus and others such as William of Okham simply admitted the obvious, God was incomprehensible to our minds as theological puzzles multiplied. Aquina and Anselm struggled with trying to logically prove God's existence, but since Kant and Hume, the idea that natural religion could prove God's existence has been dealt heavy blows by philosophy and theology. Today, one can fill libraries with writings trying to prove God's existence and other issues and the consensus among serious philosophers of religion is that we have no more evidence now than when Plato in his book "The Laws" essentially invented natural religion. Even Luther and Calvin had to resort to God's incomprehensibility when backed into logical corners.
Unfortunately, many key writings of people like Okham or Duns Scotus or al Ghazali are not available on the net for study on these issues.
What this all is about is what is called natural religion. Again, it starts with Plato who tries to demonstrate God's existence to atheists. "The Laws", Book X.
By the way, Wikipedia's 'definition' of natural theology is pure crap.
Theologians and philosophers today still expend considerable amounts of ink just trying to formulae definitions of such concepts as omnipotence, omniscioence et al in attempts to come up with definitions that avoid the problems such propositions leave in their trail, with little success.
Today we have the term skeptical theism, that we cannot understand what God thinks and why he does what he does.
We have puzzles from concepts of God's simplicity and aseity, his impassivity and other problems little known to the general public that have created problems for centuries. God's grace and his predestination of all things and his eternal providence and free will have created insolvable problems for theologians. Some of this comes about when people like the British Monk Pelagius claims we have free will, causing Augustine to oppose him, an argument that is still stirring up trouble. Logic simply fails us and this is not new.
People like Samuel Clarke and William Paley are well known English thinkers who tried to set natural religion on firm ground. Kant was well known for admitting all of this was a failure and that we needed to abandon attempts to prop up failed proofs and develop better. At this time, man theologian simply are trying to create ways to prevent the concept of God from being judged a failure, and creating gaps where we might posit God exists.
