Blackwell Reference Online

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Moral arguments for God's existence are for lay people among the most popular reasons for belief in God, though they have often been neglected by philosophers. The germ of this kind of argument is simple enough to be grasped by a child; it lies in the conviction that God is in some way the basis of morality, or, as Ivan put it in The Brothers Karamazov, “without God everything is permitted.” However, this core intuition can be developed in multiple ways, with greater or lesser degrees of sophistication. Thus, there are probably even more different kinds of moral arguments for theism than there are different forms of the cosmological and teleological arguments (see Article 42, cosmological arguments; and Article 43, teleological and design arguments).Before looking at moral arguments one must first think about the functions of arguments for God's existence in general. Few philosophers today would view a single argument for God's reality as a proof. This is partly because of a recognition that even good philosophical arguments rarely amount to a proof, and partly because of a recognition of the complexity of belief in God. “Theism” does not refer to a single proposition but a complex web of assertions about God's reality, character, and relations with the universe. It is unreasonable to think that a single argument could establish such a complicated theoretical network. Rather, particular ... log in or subscribe to read full text