The thesis that experience is only sensory can be challenged. Testimony to have experienced God is only testimony that one thinks one has experienced God; it is only testimony of a conviction, not evidence. The literature on religious experience testifies to the existence of experience of some Divine being on the basis of which the subject comes to think the experience is of God.
If read charitably, the testimony is not testimony to a conviction, but to experiences that form the grounds for the conviction. See Bagger for a vigorous articulation of this objection, and note the reply by Kai-man Kwam Because religious experience is unique, how could one ever determine whether it is reliable?
We simply lack the ability to examine the object of religious experience in order to test whether the reported experiences are indeed reliable. As we learned from Descartes, all our experiences of external objects face a problem of uniqueness. It is possible in principle that all our senses are mistaken and we do not have the public, embodied life we think we lead. We cannot step out of our own subjectivity to vindicate our ordinary perceptual beliefs any more than in the religious case.
See the debate between William Alston and Evan Fales Reports of religious experience differ radically and the testimony of one religious party neutralizes the testimony of others. The testimony of Hindus cancels out the testimony of Christians. Several replies might be offered here. Testimony to experience the absence of God might be better understood as testimony not to experience God. Failing to experience God might be justification for believing that there is no God only to the extent that we have reason to believe that if God exists God would be experienced by all.
Theists might even appeal to the claim by many atheists that it can be virtuous to live ethically with atheist beliefs. Perhaps if there is a God, God does not think this is altogether bad, and actually desires religious belief to be fashioned under conditions of trust and faith rather than knowledge. The diversity of religious experiences has caused some defenders of the argument from religious experience to mute their conclusion.
Thus, Gutting contends that the argument is not strong enough to fully vindicate a specific religious tradition, but that it is strong enough to overturn an anti-religious naturalism. Other defenders use their specific tradition to deal with ostensibly competing claims based on different sorts of religious experiences. Theists have proposed that more impersonal experiences of the Divine represent only one aspect of God.
God is a person or is person-like, but God can also be experienced, for example, as sheer luminous unity. Hindus have claimed the experience of God as personal is only one stage in the overall journey of the soul to truth, the highest truth being that Brahman transcends personhood. For a discussion of these objections and replies and references, see Taliaferro How one settles the argument will depend on one's overall convictions in many areas of philosophy.
The holistic, interwoven nature of both theistic and atheistic arguments can be readily illustrated. If you diminish the implications of religious experience and have a high standard regarding the burden of proof for any sort of religious outlook, then it is highly likely that the classical arguments for God's existence will not be persuasive. Moreover, if one thinks that theism can be shown to be intellectually confused from the start, then theistic arguments from religious experience will carry little weight.
Testimony to have experienced God will have no more weight than testimony to have experienced a round square, and non-religious explanations of religious experience—like those of Freud a result of wish-fulfillment , Marx a reflection of the economic base or Durkheim a product of social forces —will increase their appeal. If, on the other hand, you think the theistic picture is coherent and that the testimony of religious experience provides some evidence for theism, then your assessment of the classical theistic arguments might be more favorable, for they would serve to corroborate and further support what you already have some reason to believe.
From such a vantage point, appeal to wish-fulfillment, economics, and social forces might have a role, but the role is to explain why some parties do not have experiences of God and to counter the charge that failure to have such experiences provides evidence that there is no religious reality.
For an excellent collection of recent work on explaining the emergence and continuation of religious experience, see Schloss and Murray eds. There is not space to cover the many other arguments for and against the existence of God, but several additional arguments are briefly noted. The argument from miracles starts from specific extraordinary events, arguing that they provide reasons for believing there to be a supernatural agent or, more modestly, reasons for skepticism about the sufficiency of a naturalistic world view.
The argument has attracted much philosophical attention, especially since David Hume's rejection of miracles. The debate has turned mainly on how one defines a miracle, understands the laws of nature, and specifies the principles of evidence that govern the explanation of highly unusual historical occurrences. There are various arguments that are advanced to motivate religious belief. One of the most interesting and popular is a wager argument often associated with Pascal — It is designed to offer practical reasons to cultivate a belief in God.
Imagine that you are unsure whether there is or is not a God. You have it within your power to live on either assumption and perhaps, through various practices, to get yourself to believe one or the other. There would be good consequences of believing in God even if your belief were false, and if the belief were true you would receive even greater good. There would also be good consequences of believing that there is no God, but in this case the consequences would not alter if you were correct.
If, however, you believe that there is no God and you are wrong, then you would risk losing the many goods which follow from the belief that God exists and from actual Divine existence. On this basis, it may seem reasonable to believe there is a God. In different forms the argument may be given a rough edge for example, imagine that if you do not believe in God and there is a God, hell is waiting.
It may be put as an appeal to individual self-interest you will be better off or more generally believers whose lives are bound together can realize some of the goods comprising a mature religious life. Objectors worry about whether one ever is able to bring choices down to just such a narrow selection—for example, to choose either theism or naturalism.
Some think the argument is too thoroughly egotistic and thus offensive to religion. Many of these objections have generated some plausible replies Rescher For a thoroughgoing exploration of the relevant arguments, see the collection of essays edited by Jeffrey Jordan Recent work on Pascalian wagering has a bearing on work on the nature of faith is it voluntary or involuntary?
For an excellent overview and promising analysis, see Chappell , Swinburne , and Schellenberg A promising feature of such new work is that it is often accompanied by a rich understanding of revelation that is not limited to a sacred scripture, but sees a revelatory role in scripture plus the history of its interpretation, the use of creeds, icons, and so on see the work of William Abraham.
Two interesting new, rather different developments in debate over the evidence for God's existence need to be observed. Schellenberg then contends that the fact that there are many nonbelievers in this God of love who would not resist God's disclosure whether through religious experience or argument is evidence against the existence of a personal Divine being.
The Divine being or God would have been more evident see Shellenberg ; for a reply, see Taliaferro Eschewing fideism, Moser holds that when one seeks God and willingly allows oneself to be transformed by God's perfect love, one's very life can become evidence of the reality of God see Moser , While this proposal may worry secular philosophers of religion, Moser is not out of keeping with the pre-Christian Platonic tradition that maintained that inquiry into the good, the true, and the beautiful involved inquiry in which the inquirer needed to endeavor to be good, true, and beautiful.
Another burgeoning question in recent years is whether the cognitive science of religion CSR has significance for the truth or rationality of religious commitment. The naturalness of religion thesis has led some, including Alvin Plantinga it seems But others have argued that CSR can intensify the problem of divine hiddenness, since diverse religious concepts are cognitively natural and early humans seem to have lacked anything like a theistic concept Marsh There are many other questions being investigated about CSR, such as whether it provides a debunking challenge to religion Murray and Schloss , whether it poses a cultural challenge for religious outlooks like Schellenberg's Ultimism Marsh forthcoming , and whether it challenges human dignity Audi Needless to say, at the present time, anyhow, there is nothing like a clear consensus on whether CSR should be seen as worrisome, welcome, or neither, by religious believers.
In the midst of the new work on religious traditions, there has been a steady, growing representation of non-monotheistic traditions. An early proponent of this expanded format was Ninian Smart, who, through many publications, scholarly as well as popular, secured philosophies of Hinduism and Buddhism as components in the standard canon of English-speaking philosophy of religion. Smart championed the thesis that there are genuine differences between religious traditions.
He therefore resisted seeing some core experience as capturing the essential identity of being religious. Under Smart's tutelage, there has been considerable growth in cross-cultural philosophy of religion. Wilfred Cantwell Smith also did a great deal to improve the representation of non-Western religions and reflection. The explanation of philosophy of religion has involved fresh translations of philosophical and religious texts from India, China, Southeast Asia, and Africa. Exceptional figures from non-Western traditions have an increased role in cross-cultural philosophy of religion and religious dialogue.
The late Bimal Krishna Matilal made salient contributions to enrich Western exposure to Indian philosophy of religion. Among the mid-twentieth-century Asian philosophers, two who stand out for special note are T. Murti and S. Both brought high philosophical standards along with the essential philology to educate Western thinkers. As evidence of non-Western productivity in the Anglophone world, see Arvind Sharma and There are now extensive treatments of pantheism and student-friendly guides to diverse religious conceptions of the cosmos.
The expanded interest in religious pluralism has led to extensive reflection on the compatibility and possible synthesis of religions. John Hick is the preeminent synthesizer of religious traditions. In an important book, Hick advanced a complex picture of the afterlife involving components from diverse traditions. Hick claims that different religions provide us with a glimpse or partial access to the Real. Hick sees these traditions, and others as well, as different meeting points in which a person might be in relation to the same reality or the Real: Hick uses Kant to develop his central thesis.
One advantage of Hick's position is that it undermines a rationale for religious conflict. If successful, this approach would offer a way to accommodate diverse communities and undermine what has been a source of grave conflict in the past. Hick's work since the early 's provided an impetus for not taking what appears to be religious conflict as outright contradictions. He advanced a philosophy of religion that paid careful attention to the historical and social context. By doing so, Hick thought the apparent conflict between seeing the Real as the personal or the impersonal reality could be reconciled see Hick , The response to Hick's proposal has been mixed.
Indeed, articulating the nature of the real is no easy task. None of the concrete descriptions that apply within the realm of human experience can apply literally to the unexperienceable ground of that realm…. It has been argued that Hick has secured not the equal acceptability of diverse religions but rather their unacceptability. In their classical forms, Judaism, Islam, and Christianity diverge. If, say, the Incarnation of God in Christ did not occur, isn't Christianity false? Jesus Christ was so united with God's will that his actions were and are the functional display of God's character.
Perhaps as a result of Hick's challenge, philosophical work on the incarnation and other beliefs and practice specific to religious traditions have received renewed attention see, for example, Taliaferro and Meister Hick has been a leading, widely appreciated force in the expansion of philosophy of religion in the late twentieth century.
In addition to the expansion of philosophy of religion to take into account a wider set of religions, the field has also seen an expansion in terms of methodology. Philosophers of religion have re-discovered medieval philosophy—the new translations and commentaries of medieval Christian, Jewish, and Islamic texts have blossomed. There is now a self-conscious, deliberate effort to combine work on the concepts in religious belief alongside a critical understanding of their social and political roots the work of Foucault has been influential on this point , feminist philosophy of religion has been especially important in re-thinking what may be called the ethics of methodology and, as this is in some respects the most current debate in the field, it is a fitting point to end this entry by highlighting the work of Pamela Sue Anderson and others.
Anderson and seeks to question respects in which gender enters into traditional conceptions of God and in their moral and political repercussions. She also advances a concept of method which delimits justice and human flourishing. A mark of legitimation of philosophy should be the extent to which it contributes to human welfare. In a sense, this is a venerable thesis in some ancient, specifically Platonic philosophy which envisaged the goal and method of philosophy in terms of virtue and the good.
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Another key movement that is developing has come to be called Continental Philosophy of Religion. A major advocate of this new turn is John Caputo. This movement approaches the themes of this entry the concept of God, pluralism, religious experience, metaphysics and epistemology in light of Heidegger, Derrida, and other continental philosophers. For a good representation of this movement, see Caputo I am indebted to John Deck and Cara Stevens for comments and assistance in preparing this entry.
I also wish to thank Thomas Churchill for his work editing the final version. Portions of this entry appeared previously in C. The Field and its Significance 2. The Meaningfulness of Religious Language 3.
Religious Forms of Life and Practices 4. The Concept of God 4. The Field and its Significance The philosophical exploration of religious beliefs and practices is evident in the earliest recorded philosophy, east and west. The Meaningfulness of Religious Language A significant amount of work on the meaningfulness of religious language was carried out in the medieval period, with major contributions made by Maimonides — , Thomas Aquinas — , Duns Scotus — , and William of Ockham — But no matter how one might reasonably delimit the class of sentences qualified to introduce empirically significant terms, this new approach [by the positivists] seems to me to lead to the realization that cognitive significance cannot well be construed as a characteristic of individual sentences, but only of more or less comprehensive systems of sentences corresponding roughly to scientific theories.
A closer study of this point suggests strongly that… the idea of cognitive significance, with its suggestion of a sharp distinction between significant and non-significant sentences or systems of such, has lost its promise and fertility… and that it had better be replaced by certain concepts which admit of differences in degree, such as the formal simplicity of a system; its explanatory and predictive power; and its degree of conformation relative to the available evidence.
The analysis and theoretical reconstruction of these concepts seems to offer the most promising way of advancing further the clarification of the issues implicit in the idea of cognitive significance. Hempel , If Hempel is right, the project initiated by Ayer had to be qualified, taking into account larger theoretical frameworks. Religious Forms of Life and Practices Wittgenstein launched an attack on what has been called the picture theory of meaning , according to which statements may be judged true or false depending upon whether reality matches the picture represented by the belief.
To ask whether God exists is not to ask a theoretical question. If it is to mean anything at all, it is to wonder about praising and praying; it is to wonder whether there is anything in all that. Phillips' own train of thought seemed to land him solidly in Feuerbachian atheism and thus Phillips concluded his work as a solid realist: Table 1 lists some key theistic arguments, along with some of the leading advocates.
Rowe partial advocate Design D. Swinburne Values—Moral Experience P. Wynn Argument from Consciousness R. Swinburne Religious Experience W. Taylor Wager Arguments J. Theistic Arguments To sketch some of the main lines of argument in this literature, consider the ontological, cosmological, and teleological arguments, arguments from the problem of evil, and the argument over the cognitive status of religious experience.
Religious Pluralism In the midst of the new work on religious traditions, there has been a steady, growing representation of non-monotheistic traditions. Seen in [an] historical context these movements of faith—the Judaic-Christian, the Buddhist, the Hindu, the Muslim—are not essentially rivals.
They began at different times and in different places, and each expanded outwards into the surrounding world of primitive natural religion until most of the world was drawn up into one or the other of the great revealed faiths. And once this global pattern had become established it has ever since remained fairly stable Then in Persia the great prophet Zoroaster appeared; China produced Lao-tzu and then the Buddha lived, the Mahavira, the founder of the Jain religion and, probably about the end of this period, the writing of the Bhagavad Gita; and Greece produced Pythagoras and then, ending this golden age, Socrates and Plato.
Then after the gap of some three hundred years came Jesus of Nazareth and the emergence of Christianity; and after another gap the prophet Mohammed and the rise of Islam. The suggestion that we must consider is that these were all movements of the divine revelation. Kant distinguishes between noumenon and phenomenon, or between a Ding an sich [the thing itself] and the thing as it appears to human consciousness….
In this strand of Kant's thought—not the only strand, but the one which I am seeking to press into service in the epistemology of religion—the noumenal world exists independently of our perception of it and the phenomenal world is that same world as it appears to our human consciousness…. I want to say that the noumenal Real is experienced and thought by different human mentalities, forming and formed by different religious traditions, as the range of gods and absolutes which the phenomenology of religion reports.
Canon and Criterion in Christian Theology , Oxford: Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God , Ithaca: The Virtue of Faith , Oxford: Perceiving God , Ithaca: Re-visioning Gender in Philosophy of Religion: A Feminist Philosophy of Religion: Augustine, The City of God , translated by H. The Central Questions of Philosophy , London: Religious Experience, Justification, and History , Cambridge: Why Would Anyone Believe in God?
University of Notre Dame Press. Southwest Philosophy Review , 6: The Edge of Evolution: Continental Philosophy and Modern Theology , Oxford: Blackwell Readings in Continental Philosophy , Oxford: The Philosophy of Religion , Oxford: Religions, Reasons and Gods: Spirituality, Philosophy, and Gender , Oxford: Divine Impassibility , Cambridge: History of Indian Philosophy , Motilal Banarsidass. An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion , Oxford: Religious as a Natural Phenomenon.
Rethinking the Ontological Argument , Cambridge: The Argument Against Miracles , Oxford: The Historical Christ and the Jesus of Faith: The Incarnational Narrative as History , Oxford: The Non-Existence of God , London: God, Freedom and Immortality , Buffalo: There Is A God: God without the Supernatural: A Defense of Scientific Theism , Ithaca: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Contemporary Perspectives on Religious Epistemology , Oxford: Mystical Experience of God: A Philosophical Inquiry , London: Naturalism , Grand Rapids: Conceivability and Possibility , Oxford: On Being Buddha , Albany: State University of New York Press. Notre Dame University Press. The Moral Gap , Oxford: God, Time, and Knowledge , Ithaca: The Emergent Self , Ithaca: Eternal God , Oxford: Faith and Reason , Oxford: Rational Theistic Belief without Proof , London: God and the Universe of Faiths , London: Evil and the God of Love , New York: An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent , New Haven: An Exploration of the Spiritual Realm , Oxford: The New Frontier of Religion and Science: Divinity and Maximal Greatness , London: The Evidential Argument from Evil , Bloomington: Divine Hiddenness , Cambridge: The Nature of God , London: The God of the Philosophers , Oxford: Theology after Wittgenstin , Oxford: Time and Eternity , Ithaca: Immortality Defended , Oxford: Being and Goodness , Ithaca: The Miracle of Theism , Oxford: The Intelligible Universe , New York: Finding Darwin's God , New York: The Justification of Religious Belief , London: Faith and Criticism , Oxford: The Logic of God Incarnate , Ithaca: Anselmian Explorations , Notre Dame: The Concept of God , Oxford: Reorienting Religious Epistemology , Cambridge: The Evidence for God: Religious Knowledge Reexamined , Cambridge: Oxford University Press, — Central Philosophy of Buddhism , London: George Allen and Unwin.
Naturalism Without Foundations , Buffalo: Theism and Ultimate Explanation: The Necessary Shape of Contingency , Oxford: Arguing About Gods , Cambridge: God and Skepticism , New York: Faith , New York: Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion , Oxford: Selected Readings , Oxford: Concept of Prayer , New York: Religion Without Explanation , Oxford: Live Options in Theodicy , Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press. God and Timelessness , Wipf and Stock Publishers. God and Other Minds , Ithaca: The Nature of Necessity , Oxford: Does God Have a Nature?
Warrant and Proper Function , Oxford: Warranted Christian Belief , Oxford: Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism , New York: God and Self , Lewisburgh: Religious Experience , Berkeley: University of California Press. Philosophical Papers , Volume 3, Cambridge: Evil and a Good God , New York: Pascal's Wager , Notre Dame: Without Answers , New York: Anselm on Freedom , Oxford: Philosophy of Religion , Belmont: The Cosmological Argument , Princeton: Can God Be Free? Prolegomena to Philosophy of Religion , Ithaca: The Wisdom to Doubt , Ithaca: The Will To Imagine: A Justification of Skeptical Religion , Ithaca: Religion and Scientific Method , Dordrecht: The Concept of Faith: A Philosophical Investigation , Ithaca: Philosophy of Religion and Advaita Vedanta: The Pennsylvania State University Press.
Atheism and Theism , Oxford: New York University Press. Logic and Theism , Cambridge: Thought Experiments , Oxford: The Philosophy of Religious Language , Oxford: The Coherence of Theism , Oxford: The Existence of God , Oxford: The Evolution of the Soul , Oxford: The Christian God , Oxford: Is There a God?
Providence and the Problem of Evil , Oxford: Contemporary Philosophy of Religion , Oxford: Spoilers - Do not include spoilers in the title of your post. Posts containing spoilers should be marked as such using the option in the links below your post. Low-effort content such as , memes, image-macros, shitposts, and other such BS posts are only allowed during weekends. Ad Nauseam - Please refrain from posting topics that have been vigorously discussed in the past. Do not repost content that has already been posted within 7 days. Submissions of this nature will be removed. Self-promotion should follow Reddit's Guidelines.
I mean you could also blindfold yourself and play for the ultimate ultimate challenge I think gmgow is hard enough lol. There is a guy who went through it on level A God who is responsible for the laws of nature and the initial conditions that shape the evolutionary process could certainly ensure that the process achieved certain ends. The Theistic Implications of our Ethical Commitments Ritchie presses a kind of dilemma on non-theistic accounts of morality.
Subjectivist theories such as expressivism can certainly make sense of the fact that we make the ethical judgments we do, but they empty morality of its objective authority. Objectivist theories that take morality seriously, however, have difficulty explaining our capacity to make true moral judgments, unless the process by which humans came to hold these capacities is one that is controlled by a being such as God. The moral argument from knowledge will not be convincing to anyone who is committed to any form of expressivism or other non-objective metaethical theory, and clearly many philosophers find such views attractive.
And there will surely be many philosophers who will judge that if moral objectivism implies theism or requires theism to be plausible, this is a reductio of objectivist views. Furthermore, non-theistic moral philosophers, whether naturalists or non-naturalists, have stories to tell about how moral knowledge might be possible.
Moral Arguments for the Existence of God
Nevertheless, there are real questions about the plausibility of these stories, and thus, some of those convinced that moral realism is true may judge that moral knowledge provides some support for theistic belief. Like subjectivists, constructivists want to see morality as a human creation. However, like moral realists constructivists want to see moral questions as having objective answers.
Constructivism is an attempt to develop an objective morality that is free of the metaphysical commitments of moral realism. It is, however, controversial whether Kant himself was a constructivist in this sense. One reason to question whether this is the right way to read Kant follows from the fact that Kant himself did not see morality as free from metaphysical commitments. For example, Kant thought that it would be impossible for someone who believed that mechanistic determinism was the literal truth about himself to believe that he was a moral agent, since morality requires an autonomy that is incompatible with determinism.
When we do science we see ourselves as determined, but science tells us only how the world appears, not how it really is. Humans can only have this kind of value if they are a particular kind of creature. Whether Kant himself was a moral realist or not, there are certainly elements in his philosophy that push in a realist direction.
If the claim that human persons have a kind of intrinsic dignity or worth is a true objective principle and if it provides a key foundational principle of morality, it is well worth asking what kinds of metaphysical implications the claim might have. This is the question that Mark Linville , — pursues in the second moral argument he develops. Clearly, some metaphysical positions do include a denial of the existence of human persons, such as forms of Absolute Monism which hold that only one Absolute Reality exists.
Daniel Dennett, for example, holds that persons will not be part of the ultimately true scientific account of things. A naturalist may want to challenge premise 2 by finding some other strategy to explain human dignity. Michael Martin , for example, has tried to suggest that moral judgments can be analyzed as the feelings of approval or disapproval of a perfectly impartial and informed observer.
Linville objects that it is not clear how the feelings of such an observer could constitute the intrinsic worth of a person, since one would think that intrinsic properties would be non-relational and mind-independent. Another strategy that is pursued by constructivists such as Korsgaard is to link the value ascribed to humans to the capacity for rational reflection.
The idea is that insofar as I am committed to rational reflection, I must value myself as having this capacity, and consistently value others who have it as well.
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It is far from clear that human rationality provides an adequate ground for moral rights, however. Many people believe that young infants and people suffering from dementia still have this intrinsic dignity, but in both cases there is no capacity for rational reflection. Wolterstorff in this work defends the claim that there are natural human rights, and that violating such rights is one way of acting unjustly towards a person. Why do humans have such rights? Wolterstorff says these rights are grounded in the basic worth or dignity that humans possess.
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When I seek to torture or kill an innocent human I am failing to respect this worth. If one asks why we should think humans possess such worth, Wolterstorff argues that the belief that humans have this quality was not only historically produced by Jewish and Christian conceptions of the human person, but even now cannot be defended apart from such a conception. In particular, he argues that attempts to argue that our worth stems from some excellence we possess such as reason will not explain the worth of infants or those with severe brain injuries or dementia.
Does a theistic worldview fare better in explaining the special value of human dignity? In a theistic universe God is himself seen as the supreme good. Indeed, theistic Platonists usually identify God with the Good. If God is himself a person, then this seems to be a commitment to the idea that personhood itself is something that must be intrinsically good.
Philosophy of Religion
This argument will of course be found unconvincing to many. Some will deny premise 1 , either because they reject moral realism as a metaethical stance, or because they reject the normative claim that humans have any kind of special value or dignity. Others will find premise 2 suspect. They may be inclined to agree that human persons have a special dignity, but hold that the source of that dignity can be found in such human qualities as rationality. With respect to the status of infants and those suffering from dementia, the critic might bite the bullet and just accept the fact that human dignity does not extend to them, or else argue that the fact that infants and those suffering mental breakdown are part of a species whose members typically possess rationality merits them a special respect, even if they lack this quality as individuals.
Others will find premise 2 doubtful because they find the theistic explanation of dignity unclear. Another alternative is to seek a Constructivist account of dignity, perhaps regarding the special status of humans as something we humans decide to extend to each other.
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Perhaps the strongest non-theistic alternative would be some form of ethical non-naturalism, in which one simply affirms that the claim that persons have a special dignity is an a priori truth requiring no explanation. In effect this is a decision for a non-theistic form of Platonism. The proponent of the argument may well agree that claims about the special status of humans are true a priori, and thus also opt for some form of Platonism.
However, the proponent of the argument will point out that some necessary truths can be explained by other necessary truths. The theist believes that these truths about the special status of humans tell us something about the kind of universe humans find themselves in. To say that humans are created by God is to say that personhood is not an ephemeral or accidental feature of the universe, because at bottom reality itself is personal Mavrodes As already noted, the most famous and perhaps most influential version of a moral argument for belief in God is found in Immanuel Kant Kant himself insisted that his argument was not a theoretical argument, but an argument grounded in practical reason.
Morality is grounded in pure practical reason, and the moral agent must act on the basis of maxims that can be rationally endorsed as universal principles. Moral actions are thus not determined by results or consequences but by the maxims on which they are based. However, all actions, including moral actions, necessarily aim at ends.
However, I must seek the highest good only by acting in accordance with morality; no shortcuts to happiness are permissible. This seems to require that I believe that acting in accordance with morality will be causally efficacious in achieving the highest good. However, it is reasonable to believe that moral actions will be causally efficacious in this way only if the laws of causality are set up in such a way that these laws are conducive to the efficacy of moral action. Certainly both parts of the highest good seem difficult to achieve.
We humans have weaknesses in our character that appear difficult if not impossible to overcome by our own efforts. Furthermore, as creatures we have subjective needs that must be satisfied if we are happy, but we have little empirical reason to think that these needs will be satisfied by moral actions even if we succeeded in becoming virtuous. If a person believes that the natural world is simply a non-moral machine with no moral purposiveness then that person would have no reason to believe that moral action could succeed because there is no a priori reason to think moral action will achieve the highest good and little empirical reason to believe this either.
Even if the Kantian highest good seems reasonable as an ideal, some will object that we have no obligation to achieve such a state, but merely to work towards realizing the closest approximation to such a state that is possible See Adams , Without divine assistance, perhaps perfect virtue is unachievable, but in that case we cannot be obliged to realize such a state if there is no God.
Perhaps we cannot hope that happiness will be properly proportioned to virtue in the actual world if God does not exist, but then our obligation can only be to realize as much happiness as can be attained through moral means. Kant would doubtless reject this criticism, since on his view the ends of morality are given directly to pure practical reason a priori, and we are not at liberty to adjust those ends on the basis of empirical beliefs. Morality requires me to sacrifice my personal happiness if that is necessary to do what is right. Yet it is a psychological fact that humans necessarily desire their own happiness.
Reason both requires humans to seek their own happiness and to sacrifice it. Sidgwick himself noted that only if there is a God can we hope that this dualism will be resolved, so that those who seek to act morally will in the long run also be acting so as to advance their own happiness and well-being. Interestingly, Sidgwick himself does not endorse this argument, but he clearly sees this problem as part of the appeal of theism.
A contemporary argument similar to this one has been developed by C. The critic of this form of the Kantian argument may reply that Kantian morality sees duty as something that must be done regardless of the consequences, and thus a truly moral person cannot make his or her commitment to morality contingent on the achievement of happiness. From a Kantian point of view, this reply seems right; Kant unequivocally affirms that moral actions must be done for the sake of duty and not from any desire for personal reward.
Nevertheless, especially for any philosopher willing to endorse any form of eudaimonism, seeing myself as inevitably sacrificing what I cannot help but desire for the sake of duty does seem problematic. The critic may reply to this by simply accepting the lamentable fact that there is something tragic or even absurd about the human condition. The world may not be the world we wish it was, but that does not give us any reason to believe it is different than it is. If there is a tension between the demands of morality and self-interest, then this may simply be a brute fact that must be faced.
This reply raises an issue that must be faced by all forms of practical or pragmatic arguments for belief. Many philosophers insist that rational belief must be grounded solely in theoretical evidence. The fact that it would be better for me to believe p does not in itself give me any reason to believe p. This criticism is aimed not merely at Kant, but at other practical moral arguments. For example, Robert Adams argues that if humans believe there is no moral order to the universe, then they will become demoralized in their pursuit of morality, which is morally undesirable , The atheist might concede that atheism is somewhat demoralizing, but deny that this provides any reason to believe there is a moral order to the universe.
Similarly, Linda Zagzebski argues that morality will not be a rational enterprise unless good actions increase the amount of good in the world. However, given that moral actions often involve the sacrifice of happiness, there is no reason to believe moral action will increase the good unless there is a power transcendent of human activity working on the side of the good. Here the atheist may claim that moral action does increase the good because such actions always increase good character. However, even if that reply fails the atheist may again simply admit that there may be something tragic or absurd about the human condition, and the fact that we may wish things were different is not a reason to believe that they are.
So the problem must be faced: Are practical arguments merely rationalized wish-fulfillment? The theist might respond to this kind of worry in several ways. The first thing to be said is that the fact that a naturalistic view of the universe implies that the universe must be tragic or absurd, if correct, would itself be an important and interesting conclusion. However, apart from this, it makes a great deal of difference how one construes what we might call the background epistemic situation. If one believes that our theoretical evidence favors atheism, then it seems plausible to hold that one ought to maintain a naturalistic view, even if it is practically undesirable that the world have such a character.
In that case a practical argument for religious belief could be judged a form of wish-fulfillment. However, this does not seem to be the way those who support such a practical argument see the situation. However, as a regulative ideal, the concept of God is one that theoretical reason finds useful: There is a sense in which theoretical reason itself inclines towards affirmation of God, because it must assume that reality is rationally knowable: Thus, if rational grounds for belief in God come from practical reason, theoretical reason will raise no objections.
Human beings are not purely theoretical spectators of the universe, but agents. It is not always rational or even possible to refrain from action, and yet action presupposes beliefs about the way things are For a good interpretation and defense of this view of Kant on the relation between action and belief, see Wood , 17— Thus, in some cases suspension of judgment is not possible.
The critic may object that a person may act as if p were true without believing p. However, it is not clear that this advice to distinguish action on the basis of p and belief that p can always be followed. For one thing, it seems empirically the case that one way of acquiring belief that p is simply to begin to act as if p were true.
Hence, to begin to act as if p were true is at least to embark upon a course of action that makes belief in p more likely.