Tuesday, January 17, 2012

What would you do if there were no God?

Quick thoughts on this question. I've read the question many times and I've had some ask me the question: what would you if there were no God\god\gods? Would I rape? Murder? Rob? Pillage and plunder? Would I do all of those things all of the time? To answer quickly (as I mentioned in the beginning of this post): without God, this question is meaningless because there would be no duty-bound, intrinsically valuable humans with moral faculties. As Paul Copan said in response to this very question asked by Michael Shermer: "Shermer wrongly thinks he can rest content in knowing moral truths concerning human rights and obligations (i.e., in the realm of epistemology) and yet ignore the basis for those truths (i.e., the realm of metaphysics)."

If God did not exist, then the world would be a very different place. Questions of this kind only make sense against the backdrop of a theistic worldview. On theism, the divine Creator transfers His image to his human creatures giving them dignity and moral knowledge. The theist acknowledges that people can live by and know objective moral values and duties without believing in God and without having a Bible.My answer to the question is: if there were no God*, then we would not have moral knowledge, i.e., we would not have a sense of moral duty, dignity, and selflessness. All we would have is reciprocal altruism and kin selection at best

* I'm convinced that if there were no God, then I would not be writing this blog post. :) Nor would you be reading it. 

1 comment:

  1. If God did not exist...well, I can stop on asking about anything else after that. The world wouldn't exist if God didn't exist.

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