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    Belief in God is a rational postulate required by practic... — Carmelics
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    Belief in God is a rational postulate required by practical reason

    Divine AttributesNatural Theology
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    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

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    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.A rational, moral being must necessarily will 'the highest good' — a world in which people are both morally good and happy, and in which moral virtue is the condition for happiness
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    • 2.A person cannot rationally will an end without believing that moral actions can successfully achieve that end
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    • 3.Achieving the highest good requires that the causal structure of nature is conducive to moral means
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    Reasons Against

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    Reason against 1 of 2
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    • 1.Rational agents can coherently will ends they believe may be unrealizable, treating moral action as unconditionally obligatory regardless of cosmic outcome.
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    • 2.Kant's own categorical imperative grounds moral duty in rational consistency alone, not in any empirical or metaphysical guarantee of success.
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    • 3.Therefore the postulate of God smuggles a consequentialist condition into a deontological framework, undermining the autonomy of morality Kant himself defends.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.The disjunction between moral virtue and happiness in the world is an empirical fact that a finite rational agent has no power to overcome through belief alone.
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    • 2.Postulating God's existence to bridge this gap commits the wishful-thinking fallacy: deriving metaphysical conclusions from practical desiderata rather than evidence.
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    • 3.Schopenhauer and later Freud argued that such postulates reveal the psychological need for consolation, not any genuine rational necessity grounding theistic belief.
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    Topics

    Divine AttributesNatural Theology

    Connections

    1 linked claim · 5 topics

    Truth & Knowledge1 linkedCausation1 linkedFree Will & Foreknowledge1 linkedVirtue Ethics1 linkedMoral Responsibility1 linked
    Belief in God is rationally required as a postulate of practical reason

    Related

    A person cannot rationally will an end without believing that moral actions can ...A rational, moral being must necessarily will 'the highest good' — a world in wh...Achieving the highest good requires that the causal structure of nature is condu...Belief in God is rationally required as a postulate of practical reason
    +7 moreShow less
    Belief that the causal structure of nature is conducive to moral means is equiva...Kant's own categorical imperative grounds moral duty in rational consistency alo...

    Similar

    Belief in God is rationally required as a postulate of practical reaso...97%Belief in God is required as a postulate of practical reason to make r...89%Pascal's Wager apparently requires renouncing reason (theoretical rati...82%These three postulates of practical reason are required to make ration...81%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: moral-arguments-god
    View source passageHide passage
    Probably the most influential versions of the moral argument for belief in God can be traced to Kant (1788 [1956]), who famously argued that the theoretical arguments for God’s existence were unsuccessful, but presented a rational argument for belief in God as a “postulate of practical reason.” Kant held that a rational, moral being must necessarily will “the highest good,” which consists of a world in which people are both morally good and happy, and in which moral virtue is the condition for h
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Postulating God's existence to bridge this gap commits the wishful-thinking fall...
    Rational agents can coherently will ends they believe may be unrealizable, treat...
    Schopenhauer and later Freud argued that such postulates reveal the psychologica...
    The disjunction between moral virtue and happiness in the world is an empirical ...
    Therefore the postulate of God smuggles a consequentialist condition into a deon...
    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit