Paul Copan on God, Materialism and Value

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"If God doesn't exist, human dignity, worth, and moral duty must have emerged from valueless processes.  In fact, and in contrast, from valuelessness, valuelessness comes.  On the other hand, God's existence offers a ready explanation for the existence of value in the world.  If goodness somehow existed as part of the furniture of the universe (reflecting Plato's theory of forms), then it would be an astonishing cosmic coincidence that creatures would evolve over billions of years and somehow be duty-bound to moral values just waiting 'out there' ...as though these values were somehow anticipating the emergence of humans!  Again, God's existence connects preexisting goodness (God's character) with these valuable creatures (in God's image)." [1]
Courage and Godspeed,
Chad

 Footnote:
1. Paul Copan, True for You, But Not for Me, p. 99.

Comments

Andrew Ryan said…
I don't get the coincidence. We discovered other platonic shapes such as squares and circles. You could say the value of pi was just waiting to be discovered by any intelligent species. The Golden Rule might similarly have just been waiting to be understood by a social species that has empathy for its own kind or indeed other animals.
May 18, 2014 at 8:42 AM
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