Graven Imagination

Elementary:

1. It is possible that a maximally great being exists.

2. If it is possible that a maximally great being exists, then a maximally great being exists in some possible world.

3. If a maximally great being exists in some possible world, then it exists in every possible world.

4. If it exists in every possible world, then it exists in the actual world.

5. Therefore, a maximally great being exists.

Good stuff pouring out of Atheism Analyzed. This one takes a metaphor from electrical engineering and, from there, discusses the idea of “grounds” in logic. This is an important topic if we want to discuss important philosophical matters, such as morality: does there exist such a thing as Good or Evil?

Interestingly, Philosophers in general reject the existence of grounding Truths. So where does that leave the truth value of their declarations? Without some sort of inflexible guiding principle, some veridical axiom, some inviolable, incorrigible, external ground, all thoughts become relative, floating in a tide of unknown and unknowable, non-existent truth. The result is an attempt to create a truth out of nothing, ex nihilo, just by thinking really hard about it.

Out of nothing nothing comes. If good and evil are social constructions, relative to time and place, there is nothing that tells giving and loving apart from stealing and killing. If we claim that one is more moral than the other we subscribe — often implicitly, sometimes explicitly — to a standard of some kind. We give in to moral absolutes.

Bill Pratt of the apologetic website Tough Questions Answered deconstructs Richard Dawkins’ case against theistic ethics presented in The God Delusion. Despite the “killing” Professor Dawkins has made with his book(s), his case for a “moral consensus” without God is based on a simple fallacy of modal logic:

On atheism, Professor Dawkins, give us a rational reason to follow the moral consensus without first just assuming that we should be moral (that’s called begging the question).  No such reason was ever offered in The God Delusion.  I wonder if Dawkins forgot that he even asked the question.

Worth your read. Parts two and three.

We are created in the imago Dei–the image of God. This includes, among other attributes, the ability to reason.