McCloskey is reminding atheists the ways theists argue for their belief in God. He is reminding atheists the reasons they believe that there is no God. He feels atheism is superior to theism; however; I find that his opinions only strengthen my belief that there is a God. Proof, as he states, carries no weight for a theist. He is half correct in his statement as a theist does not believe in the proofs individually, but finds enough evidence in them to form the belief that God does exist; He is the creator of the universe, and He is morally perfect.
The second horn says that since God is on the side of something therefore it is considered to be right or pious. Now, Socrates and Euthyphro was follower of the first horn of dilemma. They both thought that since something is pious therefore God loves it. It is evident from the statement, “Socrates proposes to amend the definition, and say that 'what all the gods love is pious, and what they all hate is impious.' To this Euthyphro agrees” (Plato, 2008).
So when we say ’God is good’, we need to know that we are using ’good’ in that sentence. In univocal terms this would be claiming that God is good in some way that humans are, Aquinas rejected this as he believed God to be perfect. Because of this, imperfect humans can’t be good in the same way that God is. In equivocal terms, this would mean that God is good in a totally different way to humans, Aquinas rejected that too. He argued that if people speak equivocally about God, then it cannot profess to know anything about him as it is saying that the language we use to describe humans or the experienced world around us, doesn’t apply to God.
This postulate of God has origin in one’s own reason which would necessarily mean that submitting to will of God is submitting to one’s own reason. The need of God arises because the relationship between moral law and happiness is not guaranteed in this world. So here God comes to the rescue and thus necessitates the compatibility of virtue and realization of highest good. The postulate of immortality is very much interwoven with the postulate of God. Taking into account the sensuous nature of human beings, Kant states that it is very difficult for a man to be righteous without hope.
He believes reason and faith are the two paths to access the truths of God’s existence. Faith is a trusted belief in God through scripture; it does not rest with logic and is beyond reason. But reason is a logical way of making sense of something that is not tangible. St. Thomas realized many people doubt the existence of God because there is no logic to explain God’s existence. For St. Thomas his mission in life was to prove the existence of God through reason.
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. I believe that evil and suffering does exist because of the simple fact that we wouldn’t know the difference between good and bad, sad and happiness, love and hate. We wouldn’t know to appreciate god and everything he does for us. God being an all tri-omni god would not put anything on earth that he knew we couldn’t handle. There are two varieties of evil, moral and natural evil.
Plato discussed the question of God being good. To say that God is good, a means of comparing God to something external call good must exist. Plato used this argument in Euthyphro1. A morally perfect being always chooses the good action over the evil one. In order to be morally perfect both good and evil must exist outside of God so that he can choose it.
In Euthyphro, a short dialogue by Plato, the character of Euthryphro suggests that a person or action is pious or morally right if the Gods agree with it and love it. The character of Socrates then raises a critical question: “Do the Gods love what is morally right because it is morally right or is it morally right because the Gods love it?” This question can also be put as, “does God command something because it is already right or is it right only because God commands it?” What makes this question important is that for the Divine Command Theory to be true, one of the two parts to this question must be accepted. But if either options of this question are accepted, then the logical conclusions seem to clash with other views that Divine Command Theorists may have. The first option implies that God loves or commands something because it is morally right. This would mean that God did not create morality but on the other hand recognized that something was already morally good and
If God did create the difference between right and wrong then that means that for God, initially, there wasn’t a difference between to two. With that being said, it follows that it is not possible to say whether God is good or not. This is due to the fact that if right and wrong were God’s creation, then prior to his conception of the two ideas, they did not exist or apply to him. The writer then determines that it is unreasonable to assume that God has any relation to the creation of right and wrong while also saying that God is good. If God is assumed to be good, then all of his actions are good, and this would include the creation of right and wrong.
The Falsification Principle is a similar principle to the verification principle as both states that statements are only meaningful if it can be proven true or false, verified or falsified. The falsification principle however if more focused on the idea of falsifying statements, as the name would suggest, and says that religious statements are meaningless because people(believers) will let nothing count against them no matter what the evidence. For example believers may have the belief that 'God is loving' and no matter how strong or how much evidence I could provide to show the opposite the believers would still have reasons why, in spite of everything, God continues to be loving. This was the point Anthony Flew was trying to make when he applied the falsification principle to religious statements and concluded that they were meaningless as he deemed it they died a 'death by a thousand qualifications'. There will never be anything believers will accept that could challenge what they believe because they will always come up with other ways of qualifying it.