God Has No Goal

I have explained God’s nature and properties, showing that he:

• necessarily exists
• is one
• is and acts solely by the necessity of his own nature
• is the free cause of all things
• how he is so
• that all things are in God, and so depend on him
• that without him they could neither exist nor be conceived

God Has No Goal

All things are predetermined by God, from his infinite power and not from his free will.

Our misconceptions of God arise from us thinking that God acts like men do, with an end in view.

People say that God made all things for man so that we might worship Him.

• This is false.
• This has caused prejudices about good and bad, right and wrong, beauty and ugliness, etc.

Everyone:

• is born ignorant of the causes of things,
• wants what is useful to them, and
• is conscious of such desire.

It follows that:

• people think themselves free because their volitions and desires
• people never even think of why they wish and desire
• people do all things for the useful end that they want

This is why people look for the final causes of events.

• After these are learned, they become content.

If they cannot learn such causes from external sources, they turn to consider themselves.

• They imagine what goal would have induced them personally to cause the given event.
• Thus they, impose their own nature on other natures.

People find that they have many means which assist them in searching for what is useful:

• eyes for seeing
• teeth for chewing
• herbs and animals for food
• the sun for light
• the sea for breeding fish, etc.

This makes them look on nature as a means for obtaining such conveniences.

• They found these conveniences.
• They did not make them.

This makes them think that:

• some other being has made them for their use
• they cannot be self—created.

Effect of Human Ego

Because humans are accustomed to using things:

• They end up believing in some ruler or rulers of the universe endowed with human freedom, who have arranged everything for human use.
• They estimate the nature of such rulers (having no information on the subject) according to their own nature.

They assert that the gods ordained everything for the use of man, in order to:

• bind man to themselves and
• obtain from him the highest honor.

Each person crafted a different way of worshipping God, according his own abilities. This worship would cause God to:

• love him more than his fellows, and
• direct nature to satisfy his blind cupidity and insatiable avarice.

Thus, the prejudice developed into superstition, and took deep root in the human mind.

This is why everyone strove most zealously to understand and explain the final causes of things.

They tried to show that nature does nothing in vain – nothing is useless to man.

• They only demonstrated that nature, the gods, and men are all mad together.

They declared that storms, earthquakes, diseases, etc. happen because the gods are angry.

• But experience showed that good and bad luck fall to the pious and impious alike.

But they would rather keep their ignorance by laying down as an axiom that God’s judgments far transcend human understanding.

• This could have concealed the truth forever.

• But mathematics furnished another standard of verity in considering the essence and properties of shapes without regard to their final causes.

There are other reasons besides math, which might have:

• caused men’s minds to be directed to these general prejudices, and
• have led them to the knowledge of the truth.

There is no need to show that:

• nature has no goal in view, and
• final causes are mere human figments.

This is obvious from Prop. 16, and the Corollary of Prop. 32 – everything in nature comes from necessity, and with the utmost perfection.