And there is not an iota of evidence for such a God, so on what ground should we believe it? Hart claims that this is the conception of God that has prevailed throughout most of history, but I seriously doubt that. Aquinas, Luther, Augustine: none of those people saw God in such a way.
My God is just sitting there, watching over us all, but only for his amusement. As Burkeman notes, Hart has removed God from the class of entities that exist and transformed Him into merely an Idea: a philosophical concept that can be subject only to philosophical arguments:. If you think this God-as-the-condition-of-existence argument is rubbish, you need to say why.
But this is all a stupendous confidence game. For the vast majority of modern history, women were viewed as intellectually inferior beings. But that is simply a culturally-conditioned belief that supports no argument for female inferiority. Why on earth does that argument have any force at all? Western monotheists usually believe in a personal and anthropomorphic God—one who has humanlike emotions, cares about us, and wants us to behave in certain ways.
The arguments for evolution are based on evidence, not philosophy, and can be comprehended by the average person: one who, for example, read my book Why Evolution is True.
The argument might proceed that if God didn't need a cause, then maybe the universe didn't need a cause either. If God was already perfect before he created the universe, why did he create it? How did it benefit him? Why would he bother? And if the universe was caused, perhaps something other than God caused it? The existence of evil seems inconsistent with the existence of a God who is wholly good, and can do anything. Most religions say that God is completely good, knows everything, and is all-powerful.
But the world is full of wickedness and bad things keep happening. This can only happen if And so there is no being that is completely good, knows everything, and is all powerful. And so, there is no God. Theologians and philosophers have provided various answers to this argument. They all agree that it gives useful insights into the nature of God, evil, and belief.
For most of human history God was the best explanation for the existence and nature of the physical universe. But during the last few centuries, scientists have developed solutions that are much more logical, more consistent, and better supported by evidence. Atheists say that these explain the world so much better than the existence of God. They also say that far from God being a good explanation for the world, it's God that now requires explaining.
In olden times - and still today in some traditional societies - natural phenomena that people didn't understand, such as the weather, sunrise and sunset, and so on, were seen as the work of gods or spirits. Where we would see the weather as obeying meteorological principles, people in those days saw it as demonstrating God at work.
And it was the same with all the other natural phenomena, they just showed God doing things. The Greek philosopher Thales moved things on by suggesting that the gods were actually an essential part of things, rather than external puppeteers pulling strings to make the world work. But there was more to these ancient explanations than gods doing things in or to the world.
People saw the whole universe in a religiously structured way; they had no other way to see it at that time. For the ancients, God provided the power that made the universe work, and God provided the structure within which the universe worked and human beings lived. Ideas like that survive in modern astrology. Many people believe that their lives are in some way influenced by the movements of heavenly bodies.
And the heavenly bodies concerned have names taken from mythology and religion. And you'll find similar ideas in most popular religious thinking. Many people still believe, or want to believe, in the idea of God as puppeteer.
They believe that God is able to do things in the world: he can divide the waters of the Red Sea to save the Israelites from Pharaoh, he can respond to prayer by healing an illness or getting someone through an exam.
Nowadays it's a branch of astronomy and physics, but in pre-scientific times it was a religious subject, organising the universe in terms of almost military ranks of beings. God was at the top, and human beings came pretty much at the bottom. In some cosmologies there was also an inverted hierarchy of evil beings going down from humanity to the source of wickedness, the devil, at the bottom. These religious cosmologies were rigid; each being had its place worked out for it in the structure that God had provided, and that was where it stayed.
Looking at the universe like this provided great support for the hierarchical power structures of earthly nations and tribes: Everyone in a nation or tribe had their place, and the power came from the top. And if God had decided to organise the universe in such a hierarchy, this provided a strong argument against anyone who wanted to suggest that society could be organised in a fairer and more equal way - God had shown us the perfect way to organise things, and those who were ruling did so by a right given by God.
It was also very good news for whichever religion was followed in a particular nation: since the power all came from God, religion was bound to be given high status. The idea that God steered everything in the universe as he saw fit was demolished by the discovery that there were natural laws obeyed by objects in the universe.
Galileo, for example, discovered that the universe followed laws that could be written down mathematically. This suggested that there was logic and engineering throughout creation. The universe behaved in a consistent manner and was not subject to gods pulling a string here and there, or some unexplained influences from astrological bodies.
This didn't give Galileo any religious problems although it annoyed the church greatly and they eventually made him keep quiet about some of his conclusions because he believed that God had written the scientific rules.
And around this time scientists began to come up with new ways of assessing whether certain things were true. Things were expected to happen in a repeatable, testable way, that could be written down in equations. Although scientific discovery began to explain more and more, it didn't cause large numbers of people to become less religious. Even many - probably most - scientists still had a place for God in the universe. At the very least, he had started the whole thing going, and he had created the rules that his universe was shown to obey.
This half-way house between religion and science still had problems for the faithful, since it didn't seem to leave much room for God to intervene in the universe - and certainly it didn't need God to keep things ticking over.
But the half-way house also provided some support for the faithful. They could look at the universe and see how beautifuly made it was, and be reassured that God had demonstrated his existence by creating such a wonderful place.
And since science, until the late 18th, and 19th centuries, hadn't produced any good explanation of how things began, religion still had an important place in explaining how the world was the way it was.
A second way to challenge the presumption of atheism is to question an implicit assumption made by those who defend such a presumption, which is that belief in God is epistemologically more risky than unbelief. The assumption might be defended in the following way: One might think that theists and atheists share a belief in many entities: atoms, middle-sized physical objects, animals, and stars, for example.
Someone, however, who believes in leprechauns or sea monsters in addition to these commonly accepted objects thereby incurs a burden of proof. One might think that belief in God is relevantly like belief in a leprechaun or sea monster, and thus that the theist also bears an additional burden of proof.
Without good evidence in favor of belief in God the safe option is to refrain from belief. However, the theist may hold that this account does not accurately represent the situation. In fact, God is not to be understood as an entity in the world at all; any such entity would by definition not be God.
The debate is rather a debate about the character of the universe. The theist believes that every object in the natural world exists because God creates and conserves that object; every finite thing has the character of being dependent on God.
The debate is not about the existence of one object, but the character of the universe as a whole. Both parties are making claims about the character of everything in the natural world, and both claims seem risky. This point is especially important in dealing with moral arguments for theism, since one of the questions raised by such arguments is the adequacy of a naturalistic worldview in explaining morality.
Evidentialists may properly ask about the evidence for theism, but it also seems proper to ask about the evidence for atheism if the atheist is committed to a rival metaphysic such as naturalism. Presumably he means that some things that are good are better than other good things; perhaps some noble people are nobler than others who are noble. Obviously, this argument draws deeply on Platonic and Aristotelian assumptions that are no longer widely held by philosophers.
For the argument to be plausible today, such assumptions would have to be defended, or else the argument reformulated in a way that frees it from its original metaphysical home. The latter condition implies that this end must be sought solely by moral action. However, Kant held that a person cannot rationally will such an end without believing that moral actions can successfully achieve such an end, and this requires a belief that the causal structure of nature is conducive to the achievement of this end by moral means.
This is equivalent to belief in God, a moral being who is ultimately responsible for the character of the natural world. Kant-inspired arguments were prominent in the nineteenth century, and continued to be important right up to the middle of the twentieth century.
Such arguments can be found, for example, in W. Sorley , Hastings Rashdall , and A. In the nineteenth century John Henry Newman also made good use of a moral argument in his case for belief in God, developing what could be called an argument from conscience.
In recent philosophy there has been a revival of divine command metaethical theories, which has in turn led to new versions of the moral argument found in such thinkers as Robert Adams , John Hare , and C. Stephen Evans Walls This book examines a comprehensive form of moral argument and extensively explores underlying issues. It goes without saying that these renewed arguments have engendered new criticisms as well. As we shall see, there are a variety of features of morality that can be appealed to in the first steps of the arguments, as well as a variety of ways in which God might be thought to provide an explanation of those features in the second steps.
Both types of premises are obviously open to challenge. The second premise can be challenged on the basis of rival explanations of the features of morality, explanations that do not require God. Arguments about the second premise then may require comparison between theistic explanations of morality and these rival views.
It is easy to see then that the proponent of a moral argument has a complex task: She must defend the reality and objectivity of the feature of morality appealed to, but also defend the claim that this feature can be best explained by God. The second part of the task may require not only demonstrating the strengths of a theistic explanation, but pointing out weaknesses in rival secular explanations as well.
Both parts of the task are essential, but it is worth noting that the two components cannot be accomplished simultaneously. The theist must defend the reality of morality against subjectivist and nihilistic critics.
Assuming that this task has been carried out, the theist must then try to show that morality thus understood requires a theistic explanation. It is interesting to observe, however, that with respect to both parts of the task, the theist may enlist non-theists as allies.
One easily understandable version of a theistic moral argument relies on an analogy between human laws promulgated by nation-states and moral laws. Sovereign states enact laws that make certain acts forbidden or required.
I am also forbidden, because of the laws that hold in the United States, to discriminate in hiring on the basis of age or race. Many people believe that there are moral laws that bind individuals in the same way that political laws do. I am obligated by a moral principle not to lie to others, and I am similarly obligated to keep promises that I have made.
Both legal and moral laws may be understood as holding prima facie, so that in some situations a person must violate one law in order to obey a more important one. We know how human laws come into existence. They are enacted by legislatures or absolute monarchs in some countries who have the authority to pass such laws.
How then should the existence of moral laws be explained? It seems plausible to many to hold that they must be similarly grounded in some appropriate moral authority, and the only plausible candidate to fulfill this role is God. The fact that one can understand the argument without much in the way of philosophical skill is not necessarily a defect, however.
If one supposes that there is a God, and that God wants humans to know him and relate to him, one would expect God to make his reality known to humans in very obvious ways See Evans After all, critics of theistic belief, such as J.
How can such an awareness be converted into full-fledged belief in God? One way of doing this would be to help the person gain the skills needed to recognize moral laws as what they are, as divine commands or divine laws. If moral laws are experienced, then moral experience could be viewed as a kind of religious experience or at least a proto-religious experience.
Perhaps someone who has experience of God in this way does not need a moral argument or any kind of argument to have a reasonable belief in God. Even if that is the case, however, a moral argument could still play a valuable role. Such an argument might be one way of helping an individual understand that moral obligations are in fact divine commands or laws. Even if it were true that some ordinary people might know that God exists without argument, an argument could be helpful in defending the claim that this is the case.
A person might conceivably need an argument for the second level claim that the person knows God without argument. In any case a divine command metaethical theory provides the material for such an argument. There are of course many types of obligations: legal obligations, financial obligations, obligations of etiquette, and obligations that hold in virtue of belonging to some club or association, to name just a few.
Clearly these obligations are distinct from moral obligations, since in some cases moral obligations can conflict with these other kinds. What is distinctive about obligations in general? They are not reducible simply to normative claims about what a person has a good reason to do.
Mill , — argued that we can explain normative principles without making any reference to God. However, even if Mill is correct about normativity in general, it does not follow that his view is correct for obligations, which have a special character. An obligation has a special kind of force; we should care about complying with it, and violations of obligations appropriately incur blame Adams , If I make a logical mistake, I may feel silly or stupid or embarrassed, but I have no reason to feel guilty, unless the mistake reflects some carelessness on my part that itself constitutes a violation of a moral obligation.
All obligations are then constituted by social requirements, according to Adams. However, not all obligations constituted by social requirements are moral obligations.
What social relation could be the basis of moral obligations? Some such demands have no moral force, and some social systems are downright evil. Since a proper relation to God is arguably more important than any other social relation, we can also understand why moral obligations trump other kinds of obligations. That role includes such facts as these: Moral obligations must be motivating and objective.
They also must provide a basis for critical evaluation of other types of obligations, and they must be such that someone who violates a moral obligation is appropriately subject to blame. Adams argues that it is divine commands that best satisfy these desiderata.
Obviously, those who do not find a DCT convincing will not think this argument from moral obligation has force. However, Adams anticipates and gives a forceful answer to one common criticism of a DCT.
The dilemma for a DCT can be derived from the following question: Assuming that God commands what is right, does he command what is right because it is right?
These objections can be found in the writings of Wes Morriston , Erik Wielenberg , , especially chapter 2 , and Nicholas Wolterstorff , among others. This is essentially the view that moral truths are basic or fundamental in character, not derived from natural facts or any more fundamental metaphysical facts. This view certainly provides a significant alternative to divine command metaethics. Specifically, philosophers such as J. Responses to the objections of Wielenberg, Morriston, and others have also been given see Evans , Baggett and Walls, , Although it is worth noting that no single metaethical theory seems to enjoy widespread support among philosophers, so a DCT is not alone in being a minority view.
The argument from design claims that a complex or ordered structure must be designed. However, a god that is responsible for the creation of a universe would be at least as complicated as the universe that it creates. Therefore, it too must require a designer. And its designer would require a designer also, ad infinitum. The argument for the existence of God is then a logical fallacy with or without the use of special pleading. The Ultimate gambit states that God does not provide an origin of complexity, it simply assumes that complexity always existed.
It also states that design fails to account for complexity, which natural selection can explain. The argument from free will contests the existence of an omniscient god who has free will —or has allotted the same freedom to his creations—by arguing that the two properties are contradictory.
According to the argument, if God already knows the future, then humanity is destined to corroborate with his knowledge of the future and not have true free will to deviate from it. Therefore, our free will contradicts an omniscient god. Another argument attacks the existence of an omniscient god who has free will directly in arguing that the will of God himself would be bound to follow whatever God foreknows himself doing throughout eternity.
This attacks the premise that the universe is the second cause after God, who is claimed to be the first cause.
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