Lecture 9: Moral Arguments for God's Existence

Introduction

• Transition from cosmological and teleological arguments to moral arguments.
• Moral arguments focus on the phenomenon of morality to argue for God's existence.
• Discussing different versions of moral arguments.

Types of Moral Arguments

Morally Specific Arguments

• Definition: Arguments based on specific moral commands.
• Example Structure:
  • Premise 1: If there are actions morally wrong for all people, there must be an objective moral standard.
  • Premise 2: Actions like murder, rape, and torture are morally wrong for all people.
  • Premise 3: Objective moral standards can only come from God.
  • Conclusion: Therefore, God exists.
• Critiques:
  • Premise 2: Not universally accepted, as different cultures have different standards.
  • Premise 1: Challenged by Freudians, who attribute moral feelings to guilt without objective standards.
  • Premise 3: Immanuel Kant suggests moral standards can originate from collective human desires.

General Moral Arguments

• Definition: Focuses on a universal sense of moral oughtness.
• Example by Paul Copán:
  • Premise 1: If objective moral values exist, then God exists.
  • Premise 2: Objective moral values do exist.
  • Conclusion: Therefore, God must exist.
• Critiques:
  • Premise 1: Vulnerable to alternative explanations (e.g., Darwinian, Freudian, Kantian).
  • Alternative Approaches:
    • Darwinian: Morality as a product of evolution.
    • Brute facts: Accepting moral values as unexplained facts.

Abductive Moral Arguments

• Definition: Uses inference to the best explanation rather than seeking absolute certainty.
• Example Structure:
  • Premise 1: Objective moral values exist.
  • Premise 2: God is the best explanation for these moral values.
  • Conclusion: In all likelihood, God exists.
• Analysis:
  • Acknowledge other explanations but argue they do not fit the data as well as theistic accounts.

Conclusion

• Review of moral arguments as a family, with focus on deductive and abductive reasoning.
• Moral arguments compared to cosmological and teleological arguments.
• Introduction to upcoming ontological arguments which start from the concept of God.
• Philosophical debates on the persuasiveness of these arguments.

Next Steps

• Upcoming lecture will cover ontological arguments, shifting from empirical observations to conceptual analysis.