The Moral Argument for the Existence of God

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The Moral Argument for the Existence of God Kant did NOT put forward a moral argument and anyone who said he does is wrong!!!! Kant rejected all attempts to argue from the world to God, he regarded such an exercise as impossible. However he thought that God was a POSTULATE of practical reason. If you share Kant’s assumptions, then it becomes necessary to assume that there is a God. Kant’s reasoning…. --------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. All human beings desire and seek happiness --------------------------------------------- 2. All human beings ought to be moral and do their duty ------------------------------------------------------- 3. The universe is fair ----------------------- 4. The Summum Bonum (highest good) represents virtue and happiness ------------------------------------------------------------------ 5. Everyone seeks the summum bonum (from (1) and (2)) ----------------------------------------------------- 6. What is sought must be achievable because the universe is fair (see (3)) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 7. The Summum Bonum is not achievable in this life -------------------------------------------------- 8. So it is necessary to POSTULATE a life after death in which the Summum Bonum can be achieved ------------------------------------------------------------------ 9. AND it is necessary to POSTULATE a God to guarantee fairness. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Note the emphasis on life after death and God as POSTULATES. Kant did not think that either o... ... middle of paper ... ... the name of ‘super-ego’. The parents’ influence naturally includes not only the personalities of the parents themselves but also the racial, national and family traditions handed on through them, as well as the demands of the immediate social milieu which they represent."[2] Conscience, then, may be argued to be little more than the inherited traditions of the community and family in which one is brought up and which lives in one’s super-ego for the rest of one’s life. This, naturally, undermines any claim that there is a connection between God and human conscience. --------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] J.H.Newman ‘Difficulties of Anglicans’ Vol. 2, London 1891 pp. 246-7 [2] Sigmund Freud. Trans Strachey ‘An outline of Psychoanalysis’. Hogarth Press: 1949 pps. 3-4

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