Moral Argument For The Existence Of God

Therefore, the only reason one has to behave ‘morally’ is because god, the bible or Jesus says you should. Moreover, the consequences of behaving in contradiction to Christian values or behaving ‘immorally’ involve punishment by god whether it be in this life or the after-life. This philosophy sheds some light on why atheism is feared, despised and misunderstood as well as why atheists are persecuted in America. If there is no god to answer to or no consequences for ‘bad behavior’, why then, would anyone behave in a good moral fashion? What is to prevent deviant behavior, if there is no god? These questions are the main basis for the Christian argument which maintains that atheists are untrustworthy, immoral or amoral, social deviants and therefore lesser human beings. Some have gone as far to say that atheists are unpatriotic, un-American and do not even have the right to be acknowledged as citizens of the United States.

1. Examine the strengths and weaknesses of the argument for the existence of God based on religious experience. (18) 2. ‘The argument merely indicates the probability of God and this is of little value to a religious believer.’ Discuss. (12)

Someone who would believe a statement such as this one would most likely be in agreement with the Divine Command Theory---the reason being that the main claim in this theory is, all that is morally right, is right because God commands it so. Therefore in order to believe in the Divine Command Theory, one would need to be a strong believer in God---and would truly believe that if there were no God, morality would be absent. With this in mind, if God is the creator of all that is morally right, and there turns out to be no god at all, then nothing is morally wrong or can be capable of being morally wrong---would be a statement that non-believers of the Divine Command Theory would believe, and believe that morality can exist on its own, with or without a God. In this paper I will focus on the Divine Command Theory in relation to the statement above, and those who would oppose this statement. In doing so, I will attempt to show why I believe that those opposing this statement have a more plausible view.

All moral arguments for the existence of God work on the principle that we all have a shared sense of morality. Despite cultural differences, broadly speaking, humans worldwide have a vague idea of what is right and what is wrong; a moral argument for the existence of God would say that this mutual understanding is proof of God's existence.

of such arguments is that of St. Anselm from Proslogium of St. Anselm, which states that God is

“In saying that things are not good by virtue of any rule of goodness but solely by virtue of the will of God, it seems to me that we unknowingly destroy all of God 's love and all his glory. For why praise him for what he has done if he would be equally praiseworthy in doing the exact contrary?”(1)Therefore there must be some moral standards independent of God that would be right or wrong regardless of his being. This conclusion creates another problem, it could mean that God has no freewill as he can not then act outside of the presupposed good morals and therefore can not make his own decisions. If there are moral standards independent of God and his will then that would limit God 's sovereignty. It binds God to something that makes him not independent. Instead of the good being established by him he is established by what is good and in essence a new “god” is created. This is used as a common argument for atheism, For if morality can exist without God there is no need to answer for the inherent sense of morale that humanity has in some context no matter what culture they are raised in.

According to this theory, there are no moral standards that exist without God's will, and without his commands, nothing would be right or wrong. God is omnipotent, and therefore, morality itself is derived from God's nature. Without God, there is no basis for our moral structure and under this, what is moral is so because God has decreed it as such.

This information must come in the form of empirical support. Since there is inadequate empirical support for moral claims, there is no moral knowledge. A problem arises because there is no determinative empirical evidence that would verify if the previous statements on empirical support were true. This argument proceeds to the comparison of philosophical and moral claims. If we were to explore these claims fully, such as the existence of God and free will, we will run into controversies.

In this essay, I am going to argue that God exists. The three main concepts that I’m going to talk about which which are the problem of evil, the fine tuning argument and the moral argument. According to theism, God is: “that being which no greater is possible, and he is omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent.”. By having a God who only desires good, and us living in a world where evil exists, it is logically impossible and that is what created the problem of evil. There are two sides of the problem of evil which are the logical and evidential argument. The logical side states that:

Whilst divine command theory atheists believe there is no objective morality since God does not exist, Shafer- Landau reinforces this, suggesting that there are objective moral laws, requiring a law maker as objective truth cannot be created by human beings. Therefore, objective moral laws must have a non-human law maker which is God. Another reason to as why we should accept the divine command theory is because Kant argues that we must believe in God, believing that God exists is important as the requirements of morality are too much for us to bear, so by having faith in God will enable us to satisfy the demands of the moral law, allowing us to live moral lives. Furthermore, Kant highlights that whilst being moral does not guarantee happiness, believing in God or a divine being will reward the morally righteous with happiness, therefore contemporary advocates use this idea to support the idea of the divine command

Stephen Law conducted a thought experiment with a purpose of establishing the existence of an evil God, whereby he challenged those who believed in the presence of a kind and good God, doing nothing evil, and argued that the existent God is wicked indeed. The hypothesis developed into the challenge based on the argument that, if an omnibenevolent God is said to exist, yet there is so much evil in the world, then there is as well a possibility that an evil God exists, yet there is so much good. Law aimed to doubt not the fact of the existence of God, but the generally accepted assumption that the existing God is benevolent. Another researcher, Rowe, refutes this approach, arguing that the existence of a Supreme Being, who created people and hence cares for them, cannot be associated with evil. In fact, the presence of evil is a clear sign of the absence of a God. This paper seeks to take a position opposing to Law’s theory and prove that, despite the presence of evil, an omnibenevolent God still exists.

The moral argument, in various forms, argues for the existence of God and refers to the claim that God is needed to provide a foundation for the existence of objective moral values and duties. One form of this argument claims that morality is derived from a higher power, which can be referred to as God. It explains how man has a moral conscience, to whom they feel ashamed or frightened to disobey. Thus, this leads to the logical inference that if man feels guilty then there must be one to whom man feels responsible to. Cardinal Newman explains this argument well when stating how if these feelings of guilt and shame cannot be attributed to being within the realm of the visible world than there must be a supernatural or divine being to whom

In the article Unspeakable Ethics, Unnatural Laws, Arthur A. Leff took an agnostic approach when determining what morality should be comprised of. He suggested that humans struggle with desiring to follow a predetermined and unchallengeable set of moral rules, while at the same time wanting the autonomy to create those rules.

Morality only exists if we believe in God; therefore if God doesn’t exist there is no morality. There have been so many evil acts committed in the name of God that it is difficult to maintain that a belief in God equates to morality. There are situations that happen every day where decisions are made based off of human rights that contradict the word of God. Morality comes from within, it is an understanding of right versus wrong and the ability to choose what is right. Knowing all this a belief in God is not a requirement for a person to be moral. (Mosser, 2011)

Throughout the course of this essay we shall examine two of the major philosophical arguments for the existence of God. The arguments that we are going to focus on shall be the Design argument and the Ontological argument. We shall compare, evaluate and discuss both the Design (or teleological) argument for the existence of God and the Ontological Argument for the existence of God, as well as highlighting philosophical criticisms of both theories too. By doing so, we shall attempt to draw a satisfactory conclusion and aim gain a greater understanding of the respective theories and their criticisms of each theory.