|
|
|
|
|
[논문] THE ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD IN CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS (영문) (38)
|
|
|
PAUL
|
2024-02-11 21:25:23, 조회 : 99 |
|
|
✝✝✝ A DEMONSTRATION OF GOD AND THE ARGUMENTS
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF CHRISTIAN GOD IN CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS (38)
by Dr. Paul B. Jang (Ph.D. Christian Apologetics) (영문) ✝✝✝
CHAPTER II
REVIEW OF THE LITERATURES:
PHILOSOPHICAL AND THEOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK OF THE CONCEPTS AND EXISTENCE OF GOD
THE ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF God.
Rational Arguments:
The Moral Argument (3)
Sorley s Expanded Moral Argument
Sorley speaks of a supreme Mind from which this moral concept is derived, being different from all infinite minds. He insists that there is a moral law superior to all minds, and it is supreme Mind which is superior to, prior to, and objective.
In fact, moral argument is based on the objectivity, a premise that has not recognized by universal knowledge. Therefore, this moral argument has often been understood by many.
In order to defense this defect, Sorley does offer an expanded argument on the moral argument for God s existence.
He states as this: (1) There is an objective moral law independent of humans consciousness of it and despite their lake of conformity to it, as evidenced by the fact that (a) Persons are conscious of such a law, (b) Persons acknowledge its claim on them even while not yielding to it, (c) Persons admit its validity is prior to the recognition of it, (d) No finite mind completely grasps its fullness, (e) All finite minds together have not reached complete agreement on its meaning nor conformity to its ideal. (2) But ideas exist only in minds. (3) Therefore, there must be a supreme Mind in which this objective moral law exists.
For the purpose of arguing his expanded moral argument for the existence of God, Sorley distinguishes the moral law argument from the natural law argument.
Natural law argument cannot perfectly explain the existence of God because it can explain only the part of observational universe (by the scientific consideration) but does not explain the law of human beings.
Because the moral argument of the existence of God belongs to the spiritual sphere, the natural law cannot perfectly prove the existence of God as well as the moral law. Nevertheless, Sorley tried to prove the existence of God through the moral law, but not natural law.
Lewis s More Expanded Moral Argument
C.S.Lewis has much effected on the expansion of moral argument for the existence of God. Recently, moral argument has gained a wider advocators through his developed moral argument of God s existence. He developed more of other expanded moral arguments, for examples that of Sorley and Rashdal.
His developed argument is as this: (There must be a universal law, or anything else. (2) This moral law cannot be heard instinct, or anything else. (3) This moral law cannot be mere convention. (4) The moral law cannot be identified with a law of nature. (5) The moral law cannot be mere fancy. (6) The person is the key to understand this moral law. (7) Therefore, there is an absolutely perfect power outside of humankind which is more like mind than anything we know (Lewis, 1953, 1-5).
This further expanded moral argument for the existence of God may have the tendency to a creative evolution because it would account for the moral law as a kind of immanent Life-Force with in nature, even though it opposes to a Blind Force of Fatalism.
Furthermore, it is very dangerous for Lewis to say that it has the comfort of believing in God without the cost of believing in God. He continues to say that it is the greatest achievement of wishful thinking in the world. Furthermore, if the Life-Force can strive and purpose, then it is really a Mind, after all, which is precisely what the moral argument contends (Geisler and Corduan, 1988, 114).
Russell s Moral Disproof of God
Bertrand Russell is not so much as a theologian as a philosopher, and rather non-Christian. Here he offered a kind of moral disproof of God as this: (1) If there is a moral law, either it results from God s command or it does not. (2) If it results from God s command, it is arbitrary. (3) If it does not result from God s command, God is also subject to it. (4) Either God is not essentially good or else God is not ultimate. (5) But neither an arbitrary God nor a less than ultimate God is worthy of an ultimate commitment. (6) There is no God (Russell, 1957, 590).
This argument, in fact, uses the method of dilemma against which he destroys the theistic root of the proof of God s existence. Most of the theistic advocators of the existence of God have recognized that the moral law comes from either the will of God or the nature of God. Therefore, any of the two alternatives could invalidate Russell s disproof of God.
But, according to Russell, the fact of evil and injustice in the world is not used as a categorical disproof for an absolutely perfect God. And, to qualify as a disproof of the theistic God, an argument need not demonstrate that no God exists but merely that no absolutely perfect God could exist. Thus any argument that could prove a God finite in love or justice would be a disproof of traditional theism. Thus he seems to think that an absolutely perfect God can be ruled out on the moral grounds. This disproof is, in fact, antitheistic.
Camus s Humanitarianistic Disproof of God
This disproof against the existence of God is a literary expression based on the Albert Camus s La Peste. Camus had wrote his work, La Peste in 1947 after the World War II, in which he gave expression of a richly symbolical account of the fight against an epidemic of bubonic plague by which he brought rats into the city of Oran before the World War II.
In this point of time, he already had moved from his first main concept of the absurd (nihilism) to his other major idea of moral and metaphysical rebellion. Of course, at his last days, he was the standpoint of a liberal humanism that rejected the dogmatic aspects of both Christianity and Marxism.
Camus insists that: (1) Either one must join the doctor and fight the plague or join the priest and not fight the plague. (2) Not to join the doctor and fight the plague would be antihumanitarian. (3) To fight the plague is to fight against God who sent it. (4) Therefore, if humanitarianism is right, theism is wrong (Camus, 1948, 115-123, 201-7).
In this syllogistic proof, Camus arrived to the atheistic conclusion using the humanitarian approach. Therefore, he could not help reaching to the conclusion, that there cannot be an all-loving God. Eventually, for him, God is evil, because He is the cause of the plague in this case.
But God is Love (including all kinds of love), namely the ground of loves, but not the cause of the evil (plague). Therefore, Camus s humanitarian attitude to the Existence of God is wrong. His moral approach to the existence of God has been completely deviated far away. ❤❤❤
- to be continued -
. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
선교운동소개
동역자실 