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
Recommended Citation
Ochabski, David, "Toward an Analysis of the Abductive Moral Argument for God’s Existence: Assessing the Evidential Quality of Moral Phenomena and the Evidential Virtuosity of Christian Theological Models" (2023). Doctoral Dissertations and Projects. 5059.
https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/doctoral/5059
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.
