Date

12-19-2023

Department

Rawlings School of Divinity

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy in Theology and Apologetics (PhD)

Chair

Ronnie Campbell

Keywords

inference to the best explanation, theoretical virtues, evidential virtues, hierarchy of sciences, emergent properties

Disciplines

Christianity | Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion

Abstract

The moral argument for God’s existence is perhaps the oldest and most salient of the arguments from natural theology. In contemporary literature, there has been a focus on the abductive version of the moral argument. Although the mode of reasoning, abduction, has been articulated, there has not been a robust articulation of the individual components of the argument. Such an articulation would include the data quality of moral phenomena, the theoretical virtuosity of theological models that explain the moral phenomena, and how both contribute to the likelihood of moral arguments. The goal of this paper is to provide such an articulation. Our method is to catalog the phenomena, sort them by their location on the emergent hierarchy of sciences, then describe how the ecumenical Christian theological model exemplifies evidential virtues in explaining them. Our results show that moral arguments are neither of the highest or lowest quality yet can be assented to on a principled level of investigation, especially given existential considerations.

Share

COinS