Does morality depend on God? The aim of this essay is to discuss the ethical issue of whether God commands what is good or if something if good because God commands it. First, I will clarify the difference between these two statements and then go on further to explore whether one or neither statement is true. The first statement, what God commands is good, implies that there is a source of goodness independent of God and that he simply abides by what is good and is the greatest example of good but not the ultimate source of moral goodness. If we are talking about a Christian view of God as omnibenevolant then He always does what is good but this does not detract from the fact that the source of good is independent of Him.
The universe exists, therefore; the universe has a cause of its existence. If the universe has a cause of its existence, then that cause is God. Therefore; God exists. Moreover, the world has too much design and the movement and cause of it is unnatural to be created from nothing, so something must have created it, God! Furthermore, Christians believe in God because of the 3 things; ‘Opeth’, message from God to his people, ‘Mopeth’ when God acts on behalf of his people and ‘Pele’ God’s sovereignty.
The heart of Leibniz’s argument was that there must be a cause for the whole which explains the whole. Frederick Copleston would have disagreed with this statement because he believed that there has to be a necessary being which explains the contingent beings and this necessary being should contain within itself the reason for its own existence. Copleston would go on to say that this necessary being is God and God is therefore the explanation of the universe and how it came into existence. Hume would have agreed with this statement because he questioned the idea that everything has a cause. He claimed that
What is the nature of ultimate reality? The principle of this question is whether or not God exists? The Christian worldview believes in a God that is absolute and eternal. To believe God exists is to believe that there is something more to this life than just the here and now. “And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him” (Hebrews 11:6).
The Euthyphro dilemma poses criticisms to which I will clarify from a gods command perspective that acts are only good because a perfect and all-knowing god commands it. Also the criticism that the consequences for moral acts can motivate people to fulfil self-interests taking away the focus that gods commands are upholding the moralities definition of good, regardless of self-interests. The Divine Command Theory (DCT) inserts the premise that moral actions are moral through god’s command and because they are commanded by god it is objectively moral regardless of our own interpretations of morality. The interpretations of morality is commonly defined as what is ‘good’ and what is ‘bad’ or ‘what a person ought to do’ and it is easy to see that to achieve good or bad or comply with actions that a person ought to do, a god of any sort would make no difference to how an individual’s actions will arrive to this moral definition (Ethics, Massey University, 2013). However, DCT defines morality and a god’s command is needed when distinguishing the value of the moral actions because the value of good can be taken in any form and not all uses of the term ‘good’ would lead to a moral action.
In this sense he believed that God is the beginning and the end. God draws us to Himself as the one from whom we all come from. According to Brian Davies, Aquinas believed that the existence of God could be proven by rational argument. However, he believed that belief in God's existence could not be defended. Aquinas denied that God's existence is evident in the sense that logically self evident propositions are.
17/09/14 - homework Explain the view that the conscience is the voice of God. In order to fully explain the view that the conscience is the voice of God one must first define what is meant by ‘voice of God’. It has been defined as the ‘heavenly or divine voice which proclaims God’s will or judgement’, however, in my opinion the ‘voice of God’ definition should also include divine guidance as the original definition leaves out the idea of God as a guide without his actual voice telling a person the idea. The argument of ‘is the conscience the voice of God?’ often runs into difficulties; this is due to the fact that if the conscience is not the voice of God then what is it? This may also be a problem for Christian thinkers as, if the conscience is not the voice of God it gives moral authority to something outside of God.
• Jung states that we can never know whether or not God exists. We can never know if a religious experience is real or whether it is created by the mind. However, Jung accepts science which bases conclusions on empirical evidence without worrying about whether the data is a figment of a person’s imagination. If there is empirical evidence for a religious experience, why can’t we accept that it is true? • The Theory of Archetypes - Geza Roheim argues that the theory of archetypes is unnecessary.
God created mankind above the animals but a little lower than the angels. Mankind is to respect the animals and the earth that God created but not to worship them. However, above all mankind has been created in the image of God. The Purpose of the Biblical-Christian world view is that mankind is to know God. In the aspect of Christianity it is based upon a relationship with God and not simply following the areas of religion.
Evolution challenges all special things Christians believe in such as the belief in having a soul because God breathed the breathe of life into us and not animals. A fundamentalist view believe the creation story should be taken literally as it’s the word of God so therefore we should trust it to be the full truth rather than the word of science so therefore the theory of evolution should be rejected as incompatible with the word of God. Science has replaced religion as the main way to explain the world as science has evidence to prove evolution whereas religion has no proof but the bible which can’t be scientifically tested how can you trust something with no evidence? Evolution doesn’t need a God to explain anything. Although it’s not necessary to take the creation account literally it could be symbolic as it called creation story it could also be a summary of how God created the world.