For our purposes, theism will be defined as belief in the existence of God, as defined above. Atheism, then, is the “critique and denial of the major claims of all varieties of theism” (Nagel 168). These two views provide metaphysical arguments concerning the nature of man and God. A third commonly held belief about the existence of God is known as agnosticism. Agnosticism is the purely epistemological stance that sufficient evidence does not exist for or against theism therefore the best stance on the argument is no stance at all.
First, he states, “In that case it’s what’s lovable to the gods that’s pious, and what’s not lovable to them that’s impious” (13). Euthyphro makes a claim that piety means to be loved by the gods. Socrates questions how something that is god-loved is pious and something that is god-hated is impious. Afterwards, Socrates comes to a new definition of piety saying, “Is it where the just is that the pious is too, or is it that where the pious is, there too the just is, without there being the pious everywhere the just is-because the pious is part of the just” (21)? Here, the definition of piety changes from being loved by gods to being just Kajol 2 or fair.
“So where does this leave thee philosophers, the scholars and the world’s brilliant debaters? God has made the wisdom of this world look foolish. Since God in his wisdom saw to it that the world would never know him through human wisdom, he has used our foolish preaching to save those who believe.” (1 Corinthians 1:20-21 New living Translation). In the following verses it is stated that God saw in his wisdom that the world would never know him through human wisdom. Human wisdom is limited, because its bases off of prior knowledge and instinct, the wisdom of the world from philosophers, scholars, Greeks, Jews, and Gentiles is foolish to God.
However, Socrates would not teach daimonia if he did not believe in god. There is an inconsistency in Meletus’ indictment. Socrates points it out. He says, “you say that I do not believe in gods, and again that I believe in gods, since in fact I do believe in daimons” (Ap. 27d).
An omnipotent God would be able to prevent evil if he wanted to. A God both omnipotent and omnibenevolent would both want to and be able to prevent evil. P2 states that evil and suffering do exist, making it apparent that an all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good Gods existence would be almost impossible. If a tri-omni god existed, then evil would not be able to exist The biggest weakness of the argument will be P1 that if an all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good God exists, then evil and suffering would not exist. If God is all knowing and all powerful and all good, therefore god would not want us to suffer and not put evil on earth.
From his theories the only way we can know things for sure is through cause and effect. One must experience something in order to come up with a spot-on conclusion. In order to experience one thing there has to be a cause, and from the reading, it is said that God is an uncaused cause; because God is an uncaused caused it is not valid to say he possibly exists. This is Hume’s argument, and if broken down we see in some way he does have a point. Every living thing on this earth must have a cause, God is said to be an uncaused cause (which means nothing caused God, but God caused everything), but many say that God is existing and if this is possibly valid he must have to exist.
To use univocal or universal language for God raises the problem being that if we argue God is ‘all loving,’ we would also be able to describe a loved one as such, thus demining his almighty status as a supreme being, so how can we use words to accurately describe God? And Given that God is unlike anything or anyone that we can actually experience? Hence, if language applied to God is univocal, it has the effect of bringing God down to an anthropomorphic level. In contrast with this, to use equivocal language, the problem raised here is that God is ‘holy,’ it means that when applying to something else, so I can never know what a word means when it is applied to God. Using these different types of language demonstrates a difficulty; assuming that when we speak of God, we are speaking cognitively- assuming that our statement is something that is either true or false and that it is able to describe an extinct being, God.
Second, he asks the following question, if God created evil and goodness, why can he simply make evil disappear? In a conclusion taken from the Euthyphro dilemma, this question demonstrates a limitation in God’s power, which is indicating a mayor flaw in the Divine Command Theory. Because the Divine Command Theory is based on faith, Mortimer, the main proponent of this theory, could find difficult to respond to John Arthur’s arguments. In other words, faith does not have a scientific explanation which makes it hard to be understood by some individuals. But one of Mortimer’s strongest arguments could be that the DCT is the only theory that explains and distinguishes between right and wrong in a simple and clear
Ward believes religion to be existential. However, not everyone shares my opinion. Richard Swinburne used the principle of Occam’s razor to illustrate that Aquinas’ Cosmological Argument has value for religious faith. Occam’s razor says that the simplest answer is the best one, and as God is the simplest answer for the first cause, it is the best one. Denys Turner makes the point that Aquinas is misread, he says that Aquinas is just clarifying the existence of God for people who already believe rather than in an attempt to persuade non-believers.
Plato’s Euthyphro dilemma shows that the Divine Command Theory has several problems. If something is good simply because God commands it, then God arbitrary – He could have given different commands just as easily. According to Leibniz, this would be destroying all of God’s love and glory – “for why praise him for what he has done if he would be equally praiseworthy in doing exactly the contrary?” On the other hand, if God commands something because it is good, then that would mean good is independent of God. Therefore, we should not follow a God who is arbitrary, but rather, think about it separately. James Rachels states that we should be autonomous, and think about what is right and wrong for ourselves.