"Live a good life. If there are Gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are Gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no Gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones." - Marcus Aurelius [purportedly]
Wikipedia says this is misattribution HERE.
Nevertheless, here's a quick response to a meme I saw on facebook.
If there is no God, then in all likelihood there are no objective standard of nobility. See William Lane Craig's video on godless Platonic realism here:
Is Atheistic Moral Platonism More Plausible Than Theism?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGWAVRoLQ3c
Also, your life will not live on in the memories of your loved ones because they too will one day die. Most people don't even know the names of their great, great, grandparents.
If God does exist, and He's PERFECTLY holy and just, then in His justice He must punish us for our sins (no matter how small or seemingly insignificant to us). In His mercy, He's free to grant provision of salvation as found in Christianity where the Cross of Christ is the manifestation and intersection of both God's justice and mercy.
If God or the gods were unjust, then it makes prudential sense, out of enlightened self-interest, to do those things that keep you on his/hers/their good side. Most people already do so with regard to nonsensical governmental laws and regulation just to make their lives smoother. For atheists to claim they'd rather go to hell than serve or obey an ruthless powerful deity is a lie. Most can't even muster the guts to resist the finite power and finite knowledge of human government. Yet, they'd genuinely be willing to resist a being of extreme, maybe even omnipotent & omniscient, power and knowledge? They're lying to themselves. They already bend like a willow to limited governmental tyranny.
If polytheism were true, then the conflicting interests of the gods make morality relative [cf. the Euthyphro Dilemma]. Like how the purposes of the god of war clash with the purposes of the goddess of love in the Roman and Greek pantheon [i.e. Mars/Ares vs. Venus/Aphrodite]. Whereas in a "perfect being" monotheism, Divine Command Essentialism could be true whereby virtues flow from God's good nature, while God's commands flow from His voluntary prescriptions which reflect His good nature. Solving the problems of both divine essentialism and divine voluntarism by combining them.
I've written more on the topic of the last paragraph here:
God in Relation to Law: Ex Lex, Sub Lego or Sibi Ipsi Lex
No comments:
Post a Comment