THE MORAL ARGUMENTS
for the existence of God
• This Powerpoint
presentation is
prepared by Dr. Peter
Vardy, Vice-Principal
of Heythrop College,
University of London
for
Heythrop College,
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University of London, is the
specialist theology and
Philosophy College of the
University. It offers
undergraduate and
postgraduate courses in
Theology, Philosophy,
Philosophy of Religion and
Ethics. www.heythrop.ac.uk
Immanuel Kant
• Kant did NOT put forward a moral
argument!
• Kant rejected all attempts to argue
from the world to God, he regarded
such an exercise as impossible.
• However he thought that God was a
POSTULATE of practical reason. If
you share Kant’s assumptions, then
it becomes necessary to assume that
there is a God…..
PHENOMENA and NOUMENA
• Kant distinguished between the Phenomenal and
Noumenal world. The Phenomenal world is the
world as we experience it, the Noumenal world is
the real world, as it really is independent of our
experience.
• Kant considered that all experience is mediated
through TIME and SPACE. The world as we see
it is spatio/temporal – what the world is really
like, independent of our experience, is
unknowable.
• Since God belongs to the noumenal world, there
is no way of arguing from the phenomenal world
to God so arguments for God’s existence are
impossible.
Kant’s reasoning….
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1) The universe is fair
2) All human beings desire and seek happiness
3) All human beings ought to be moral and do their duty
4) The Summum Bonum (highest good) represents the
combination of virtue and happiness
5) Everyone seeks the summum bonum
6) What is sought must be achievable because the
universe is fair (see (1))
7) The Summum Bonum is not achievable in this life
8) So it is necessary to POSTULATE a life after death
in which the Summum Bonum can be achieved
9) AND it is necessary to POSTULATE a God to
guarantee fairness.
Kant’s key postulates
• Kant puts forward key assumptions.
• The fairness of the Universe and the claim that
the Summum Bonum is achievable are
assumptions. Kant did not think that either of
these could be proved. Kant has a deep trust in
the fairness of the Universe, but this is
effectively a faith claim.
• What he is claiming is that IF you hold the
universe is fair and IF the Summum Bonnum is
achievable then life after death and God become
necessary postulates.
• If the assumptions are rejected then so are the
postulates.
Argument from absolute moral values
• Rashdall put forward this argument but it was
developed by Sorley:
• There is an absolute moral law. Reasons include:
– People are conscious of such an absolute law
– People acknowledge the demands that this law makes on them
even if they break it
– No finite mind grasps the whole of what this represents
• Ideas exist only in minds
• Therefore there must be a supreme mind, beyond all
finite minds, in which this absolute moral law exists.
– Sorley claims that unlike Natural Law which is descriptive of
human nature, the Moral Law is prescriptive. It describes not
what IS but what SHOULD BE.
C.S.
LEWIS
• 1) THERE MUST BE AN ABSOLUTE MORAL
LAW (otherwise disagreements would not be
possible; promise and treaty keeping would be
unnecessary; we would not make excuses for
breaking the moral law)
• 2) THIS MORAL LAW CANNOT BE HERD
INSTINCT (otherwise the strongest moral idea
would always win [and it does not]; we would act
from instinct and we don’t [sometimes our instinct is
to help someone in trouble even though this goes
against our interests]; some instincts would always
be right [and patriotism and the love of money may
be wrong])
• 3) THE MORAL LAW CANNOT BE MERE
CONVENTION (not everything is a social
convention – e.g. maths; judgements about the
moral values of a society only make sense if the basis
of the judgement is independent of society)
• 4) THE MORAL LAW CANNOT BE A LAW OF
C.S. NATURE (as the moral law is not a descriptive ‘is’ but
Lewis is an ‘ought’, situations which are factually convenient
may be wrong [e.g. betrayal of a friend]. To argue that
Contd. what is moral is what is good for the whole race, does
not explain why I may do something that is against my
own interests)
• 5) THE MORAL LAW CANNOT BE MERE
IMAGINATION (as we cannot get rid of it even if we
want to, we did not make it, it is impressed on us from
outside)
• 6) THE MORAL LAW MUST RESIDE IN A MIND (as
it is an ‘ought’ not an ‘is’; moral laws come from minds
not from matter, just as an architect is not part of the
building, so the source of the moral law cannot be part
of the Universe)
• 7) THEREFORE THERE MUST BE A MIND WHICH
IS THE SOURCE OF MORAL LAW. (This must be
absolute good, since the source of good must be good)
THE PROBLEM
• The trouble with both Sorley’s and Lewis’
argument is that they present as an obviously
true assumption something that is highly
debatable – namely the existence of an absolute
moral law.
• Many philosophers and others today maintain
that morality is something developed by human
beings to help them to live together and there
are no absolutes – morality is relative to
culture.
• The second problem is that even if it is granted
that there are absolute morals, one could take a
Platonist position and hold that these are
absolute because they participate in the Forms.
PLATONIC FORMS
• If we see instances of beauty, justice, goodness Plato
assumes that these all participate in or resemble the
perfect Forms of Beauty, Justice, Goodness.
• The Forms are non-creative and were not created. They exist
timelessly and spacelessly
• Plato’s God, The Demiurge, used the Forms as a model
to fashion chaotic matter to form the Universe. The
Universe is ‘the moving image of eternity’.
– The Demiurge is good because he can be judged to be so
against the Forms.
• The world in which we live is a ‘shadow’ of the ultimate
reality represented by the Forms.
– Iris Murdoch and Stewart Sutherland are modern Platonists
Effect of Plato’s Forms on the moral
argument
• Sorley and Lewis ask people to accept that there
are absolute moral values and that these have to
be grounded in the command of God.
• However even if the existence of absolute moral
values is accepted (and this is highly debatable)
their source could be Plato’s Forms rather than
the mind of God.
• Plato thus provided a way of making sense of an
absolute moral demand without claiming that
there is a God who is the author of these moral
laws.
Two sources of absolute morals
• If there are absolute moral values, these could
have two sources:
– The will of God, or
– Plato’s Forms.
• Socrates put forward what came to be called the
Euthyphro dilemma to show the difficulty of
choosing between these two options….
THE EUTHYPHRO DILEMMA
• Socrates put forward the Euthyphro dilemma in a
dialogue with the young man Euthyphro. The question is
whether:
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– 1) The gods want what is good because these things are good
according to some independent standard (this was Plato and
Socrates’ position as they held that the Forms provided an
absolute standard of morality) or
– 2) Whether whatever the gods want is good just because they
want it (in which case the gods are the sole deciders of what is
good).
Either alternative has problems:
The first implies that there is a standard of goodness independent
of God (which means God is not supreme)
The second seems to make it arbitrary as whatever God wants is
good just because God commands it.
This can be summarised as follows….
THE EUYTHPHRO DILEMMA
'GOD IS GOOD'
DIVINE COMMAND
THEORY
PLATO'S FORMS
God is an autocrat
No way of separating
good and evil
No reason to worship God
The source of morality is
not created by God
God is not supreme
BUT God can be a moral agent
BERTRAND RUSSELL’s disproof of God
• Russell uses the Euthyphro to try to disprove God’s
existence:
• 1) If there is a moral law it either stems from God or it
does not
• 2) If the moral law comes from God it is arbitrary (because
whatever God commands becomes our standard of goodness and
it is based on no more than the whim of God)
• 3) If it does not come from God then God is subject to it (this is
the other horn of the Euthyphro dilemma)
• 4) So either God is not essentially good (because he is arbitrary
about what is right or wrong) OR God is subject to an
independent moral standard.
• 5) Neither an arbitrary God nor a less than ultimate God is
worthy of worship.
• 6) Therefore there is no God.
RUSSELL’s MISUNDERSTANDING
• Russell assumes that when one says ‘God is good’ this is
a moral statement equivalent to making a statement
such as ‘Isabelle is good’.
• However mainstream Christianity rejects this - God is
not a moral agent, God is not a being who changes and is
subject to some moral law.
• Instead, St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas and the
mainstream Catholic tradition hold that to be ‘good’ is
to fully actualise one’s nature - thus a good human being
is everything that it is to be a perfect human being.
• On this basis, to say ‘God is good’ is to say that God is
fully whatever it is to be God’ – God fully actualises
God’s nature. In this case, the Euthyphro dilemma is
irrelevant.
CAMUS’ ARGUMENT AGAINST GOD
• Camus also has a moral argument that tries to disprove God’s
existence.
• He claims that theism is opposed to humanism. In his novel ‘The
Plague’, Camus deals with the reaction by a Jesuit priest and a
doctor to the plague in Oran….
Camus claims:
1) Either one must join the doctor and fight the plague or join the
priest and not fight the plague (as the priest says the plague is sent
by God and to fight it means fighting the will of the God who sent
the plague).
2) Not to join the doctor and fight the plague would be antihumanitarian
3) But to fight the plague is to fight against the God who sent it and
to reject God’s sovereignty.
4) Therefore, if humanitarianism is right, theism is wrong.
CAMUS’ MISUNDERSTANDING
• Camus seems to assume that plagues and other diseases
are literally sent directly by God. However few
contemporary theologians would accept this.
• Instead they would maintain that the world follows
predictable laws and these are good and human beings
can learn from them. Plagues are part of the working of
a system which is, overall, good.
• For instance, a virus would fulfil its nature if it killed a
human being, but this does not mean that it would not
be right for humans to eliminate the virus.
• Similarly it is part of the nature of a snake to bite, but
this does not mean that God wants snakes to bite human
beings!
“God is Dead!”
• Nietzsche has had a profound influence on philosophy this
century. When he said that ‘God is dead’, he was not simply
announcing the death of the God of the monotheistic religions.
• He was claiming that now that the idea of God is no more, with it
goes all claims to absolute value, truth and goodness. With the
death of God go all claims to absolutes and this opens the door to
some forms of postmodernism.
• The noumenal or real world of Kant has finally been done away
with and all we have is relativity. Human beings are now ‘makers
of meaning’, not ‘discoverers of meaning’
• Humans, therefore, have to dare to become God by creating their
own values. If this is accepted, then any idea of moving from
morality to God disappears….
MORAL RELATIVITY
• If there are no absolute moral values, then Sorley and
Lewis’ version of the moral argument collapses.
• However not everyone would want
to accept that morality is truly
relative (e.g. Nazi death camps and
female circumcision which most
would hold are absolutely wrong.)
• It can still be held that morality is
based on our common human
nature (this is the Catholic tradition
stemming from Aristotle). One could then argue that
this nature stems from God, but not all will accept
this……
CARDINAL NEWMAN
• Newman was once an Anglican and became a
Catholic and a Cardinal
• He converted because he felt called by God to
do so.
• He did not think that, in good conscience, he
could remain as an Anglican (it is worth noting
that he did not think this applied to everyone –
but he, for his part, felt that he could not
remain as an Anglican). He therefore felt
compelled to follow his conscience (as did
Thomas More and Vaclav Havel).
Newman’s argument
• Newman claims that when we do something
wrong we feel ashamed, we feel guilty, we feel
responsible.
• This implies, he holds, that there is ONE before
whom we feel ashamed, guilty and responsible.
• It will not do to say that we are ashamed before
the community – because we feel guilty even
when no-one does or can know of what we have
done.
• Notice that Newman is NOT claiming that God
‘whispers in our ears’ to tell us what to do….
instead…
THE FACULTY OF CONSCIENCE
• Newman’s claim is that humans, unlike
animals, possess a conscience. This conscience is
INFORMED differently in different societies –
so the claim that moral intuitions vary does not
undermine his argument.
• It is, therefore, the duty of each individual to
INFORM their conscience directly… But it is
the existence of the faculty of conscience that
points to God as the Divine author of this
faculty.
Freud
• "The long period of childhood during which the growing
human being lives in dependence on his parents leaves
behind it a precipitate, which forms within his ego a
special agency in which this parental influence is
prolonged. It has received the name of ‘super-ego’. The
parents’ influence naturally includes not only the
personalities of the parents themselves but also the
racial, national and family traditions handed on through
them, as well as the demands of the immediate social
milieu which they represent."
Sigmund Freud. Trans. Strachey ‘An outline of Psychoanalysis. Hogarth Press, 1949 pps. 3-4
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Conscience, then, may be argued to be little more than
the inherited traditions of the community and family in
which one is brought up and which lives in one’s superego for the rest of one’s life.
Bringing the threads together
• Kant did not put forward a moral argument – instead he
maintained that God is a postulate of practical reason. If
the Universe is not fair or the Summum Bonum is not
achievable, then there is no need to postulate God.
• Sorley and Lewis’ arguments depend on whether there is
an absolute morality. Many reject this, but even if there
IS such a morality, it could be explained by reference to
Plato’s Forms rather than God.
• Newman’s argument from conscience depends on a
rejection of Freud and acceptance of the view that
conscience necessarily entails a Divine Other before
whom we feel guilty, are ashamed, etc..
FINALLY
• The Moral argument is not likely to succeed as a proof,
but it may be that some will consider that there IS
something more to morality than simply a system
humans have constructed to enable them to live together.
• If they do feel this, then God is one possible grounding
for morality – but it needs to be noted that there are
other alternatives which do not depend on God..
• Most religious believers will accept that it is possible for
non-believers to be morally good – so the existence of a
moral demand of itself is unlikely to be decisive in
deciding whether or not God exists.