bd-from-kg

Epitome:

With all respect, your argument just doesn’t make sense.

Basically you’re saying that you would tell our imaginary person that he should believe in God because it’s desirable that most people in a given society believe in God. The problem is that, even if he agrees, this can’t cause him to believe in God unless he’s irrational.

To see the problem, suppose that you believed that it’s desirable for most people to believe that the government is just and good, and that all government officials are incorruptible. In fact, suppose that you were right, and that the evidence was overwhelming that you were right. Nevertheless, you have serious reasons to doubt whether this is really true. (Actually you wouldn’t need “reasons” in the sense of specific evidence; the fact that the government is composed of human beings would be sufficient reason for doubt, to put it mildly.) Under these conditions, would you actually believe that the government is just, good, and incorruptible? Of course not! For a rational person, the knowledge that it would be desirable for most people to believe something is simply not capable of producing belief in it.

Let’s take a more realistic example. America entered World War I largely because of the sinking of the Lusitania, and in particular because of the mistaken belief that this was an unprovoked, unjustified outrage on the part of the Germans. But in fact the Lusitania was illegally carrying a good deal of war materiel, making it a legitimate military target. Now suppose that you happened to have serious reasons to suspect the truth about this incident at the time, but believed that it was highly desirable that America enter the war. This belief might induce you to keep this information to yourself, but would it induce you yourself to believe that the sinking of the Lusitania was really a German atrocity? If so, you are hopelessly irrational. And by encouraging others to think this way you are encouraging them to be irrational as well.

To quote Jamie_L, why should I believe this? I think we can agree that Christianity implies both the existence of God and the desirability of most people believing in God. so if you can give a good reason for believing in Christianity you will be giving a good reason for believing in God. But to use Christian premises to argue that it’s desirable for most people to believe in God is begging the question. If God exists, and there is good reason to believe that He exists, that in itself would seem to be a pretty good reason for believing in Him.

This wouldn’t be much of an argument even if the actual teachings of Jesus were unusually insightful and profound. Unfortunately, they aren’t. Only by ignoring what Jesus actually said (according to the Gospels) and imagining that His teachings consisted entirely of excellent moral precepts, the like of which had never been heard before, is it possible to delude oneself that Jesus’ teachings are in themselves evidence of the truth of Christianity.

Anyway, there seems to be a logical problem with this argument. If humans can recognize that certain moral teachings are valid, why would it be impossible for humans to come up with these precepts in the first place? It seems implausible, to say the least, that we can recognize “thou shalt not steal” as a valid moral rule once someone mentions it, but that it’s inconceivable that any human could be able to imagine this as a possible moral rule. On the contrary, it seems self-evident to me that any moral rule that can be seen by humans to be valid can be formulated by humans. So the fact that so-and-so’s moral teachings are valid cannot be evidence that he’s God, or has a special relationship with God.