A New Moral Argument for the existence of God

Andrew Ter Ern Loke*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articlepeer-review

Abstract

I offer a new deductive formulation of the Moral Argument for the existence of God which shows how one might argue for the conclusion that, if one affirms moral realism (traditionally understood as a metaethical view which acknowledges the existence of objective moral truths), one should affirm theism. The new formulation shows that these objective moral truths are either brute facts, or they are metaphysically grounded in an impersonal entity, a non-divine personal entity, or a divine personal entity i.e., God. I illustrate how the alternatives to God can in principle be excluded based on the essential characteristics of those alternative hypotheses and of certain objective moral truths. I demonstrate that my deductive formulation is better than other formulations, and that it is helpful for future work on the Moral Argument.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)25–38
Number of pages14
JournalInternational Journal for Philosophy of Religion
Volume93
Issue number1
Early online date23 Aug 2022
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Feb 2023

Scopus Subject Areas

  • Philosophy

User-Defined Keywords

  • Euthyphro dilemma
  • Moral argument
  • Moral obligation
  • Moral ontology
  • Theistic metaethics

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