(Originally written March 15, 2007 in Book 13)
Class Notes
Ultimately the Thomistic cosmological argument comes down to a Transcendental Question: What are the conditions for there to be actualized potential?
(answer) Unless there is a source of actuality that actualizes potential without being actualized by it, there cannot be actualized potential.
Existential Cosmological Argument
1. Something Exists
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9. Only one God exists
10. The God of Theism exists
The Moral Argument for God's existence:
The is a moral law.
The must be a moral lawgiver.
Objections to Moral Argument
1. You can understand goodness apart from belief in God.
2. There is no moral law. Morality is relative to the individual or the culture.
3. Evil is allowed for greater good. If you try to alleviate suffering you go against God allowing for the greater good.
4. If morality is simple whatever God's will is then there is no objective moral standard, only what God said. So morality must be independent of God.
5. If the moral law is independent of God then he is not the ultimate reason.
6. No way to tell empirically what the moral law is or even that it exists.
7. Just because something is the best explanation doesn't make it logically necessary.
8. Atheists can be moral people.
9. If God is a moral God, why is there suffering?
10. No evidence of moral law breakers being punished, so why a law giver?
11. The argument, even if it works, presupposes the cosmological argument.
The Moral Argument for God's Existence
Jeremy Miller
Basic Arg.
1. A universal moral law exists
2. The universal moral law must exist in a supreme mind apart from humanity.
3. It must exist in the mind of God.
4. Therefore, God exists.
There must be a universal law because if not
- moral disagreements would make no sense
- all moral criticism are meaningless
- Promise and treaty keeping are unnecessary
- We would not make excuses for breaking the moral law
C.S. Lewis
- contradiction would result
- there would not be agreement on the meaning of it
- no ethical question could even be discussed
Elton Trueblood
- People are conscious of the moral law
- people acknowledge its claim on them even if they do not follow it
- people admit to its validity prior to following it
- no finite mind fully grasps it
- all finite minds together have not reached conformity on its meaning (Sorley)
-Morality is a rational enterprise
- Morality would not be a rational enterprise if moral skepticism were true
- There is much too much unresolved moral disagreement for us to suppose that moral skepticism can be avoided if we rely solely on human devices
-Therefore, there must be some extra-human source of morality
(Zagzebski)
Why must the moral law exist in a mind outside of the human mind?
Morality cannot come from herd instinct because a) the mob is not always right, b) we would only act on the strongest instinct, but we some times act upon the weaker instinct.
Morality cannot be a social convention because a) not all learned things are social convention b) judgment about the moral progress about a society only makes sense outside of human society and C) variations in value judgments are factual, not moral.
The Moral law cannot be a law of nature because A) the moral law is not descriptive, it is prescriptive B) factually equal situations may not be the same morally C) something may be factually convenient to the whole race, but not to me. Only a universal moral law explains why I should do it.
The moral law cannot be mere fantasy because A) we did not create it, B) We cannot get rid of it, C) value judgments would otherwise be meaningless
The moral law must be from a mind because it does not come from matter. Morality is an idea and ideas come from minds.
God must be the mind from which the universal law flows from.
Possible objections
1. Problem of Evil
Responses
- Evil could be for the greater good.
- Evil could be human's fault
- God could not create without creating evil (Evil is a privation)
- It could be necessary for human freedom
- God is infinitely wise; we are not
2. Everything is meaningless. We may be living in an absurd reality.
3. Attack the law of Causation
response- Just try and believe the law causation
4. There could be a Universal Moral Law without God
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