Why Believe? The Moral-Ethical Ground of Belief in a Transcendent Being

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTxFrxmY9dg&t=1222s  / Accessed 2020-04-15

(These are my notes [jkk's] on a lecture given by British philosopher of religion John Cottingham. It summarizes important arguments he makes in his book Why Believe [2009].)

The Fundamental Impetus of Belief 

The fundamental impetus or motor of belief in God in the tradition (particularly, in the Scriptures) is not in theoretical arguments or proofs about an omnipotent Being (although that is how it is usually discussed in the discipline called the philosophy of religion). The question of belief in the tradition is actually grounded first and foremost in morality,  in the question of 'how to live?'.

We can say then that the belief or faith is rooted in the moral and the experiential dimensions. The way we experience moral requirements and the way we experience, for example, the wonders of the natural world draw us to something beyond ourselves, to values that suggest the existence of something greater than ourselves. This can be a reason for why someone would choose to believe in a "Greater Something" commonly known as "God". 

Moral Values Make a Demand on Us

We can say that moral values make a "demand" on us: they require us to act in certain ways. For example, the goodness of compassion or the wrongness of cruelty makes a demand on us to be compassionate or to avoid  cruelty. That demand--we can say--suggests that certain things are inherently or even objectively good or evil, independently of our personal likes or dislikes. The demand that moral values make on us takes the general form 'do good and avoid evil'. 

What is the Ground of Morality Then?

One often hears these following questions that deal with the ground of morality. 

One is: Is morality a mere opinion or a "value judgment" of certain people? Is it just a question of certain people's opinion of how we should act in certain ways but without any objective ground for them? That kind of subjectivism was popular in the past. Now (according to John Cottingham) there is a preponderance among philosophers of a certain kind of objectivism which holds that there is a certain objective ground for why human beings should act in certain ways.

John Cottingham (JC) believes that this objectivism would be most "at home" in a belief in God, In other words, the best grounding of this objectivism would be the existence of a Transcencent Being, a kind of divine law-giver that has established objective moral principles. 

Are there other alternative sources for objectivity and morality? Human nature perhaps? This position would say that human nature itself is the source for why certain things are considered ethically right or wrong. That is certainly possible. But JC points out that human nature is not only good; it can be very imperfect or even downright evil. As the philosopher David Hume pointed out, "a particle of the dove is kneaded into our frame alongside elements of the wolf and serpent." JC therefore thinks that it can't be human nature alone that gives authority to certain moral principles. Traditional theism is a better option for giving us that objective authority. 

Some others may say moral values are just like mathematical values: they are simply true. JC finds the thought uninspiring that the basis for morality is like floating in an objective theoretical limbo. Again, he thinks that morality is better grounded in something such as traditional theism. 

And then there is an aesthetic component to this discussion. According to Immanuel Kant there are two things that inspire awe in us: the authority of the moral law and the starry heavens (the beauty of nature). That kind of "aesthetic" dimension (that elicits powerful human emotions) puts us in touch with a goodness that seems to be not merely a product of human nature but is grounded in a "Greater Something", a transcencent dimension that is the source of both the glory of the moral law and the wonders of nature.

So Why Believe Then?

So, why believe in a transcendent being? Why believe in God? We have seen that if we try to trace the possible source of why we humans are compelled to act and live in certain ways (i.e., avoiding evil and doing good - this is the moral-ethical dimension of life), we can glimpse that there might be a transcendent Being that is itself the objective source of all morality and ethics. Moreover, maintaining this moral order is itself a beautiful and glorious thing. This Transcendent Source of morality beckons us to trusting belief in it.

Of course, this does not prove God such as a mathematical proof would demonstrate some scientific principle. But John Cottingham thinks that it does support a belief in God/a Transcendent Being. 

**this summarizes John Cottingham's talk up 15:30***

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