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The benefit of believing in a God of love
The third in a series examining why Christian beliefs are beneficial. We don’t argue whether Christian beliefs are true or not, but rather why believing them is better than not. A central belief of the theistic faiths including Christianity is that the creator of the universe is an ultimate deity defined as “good” and “love.”
Proposition 2: It is better to believe in a God of goodness and love, than an evil God or one who is neither good nor evil.
The first proposition, that the universe is created, is at least partially supported by evidence from science. The only part of this proposition that is supported by evidence is the presence of evil. Either G. K. Chesterton or Reinhold Niebuhr, or both, said evil is the only doctrine proven by empirical evidence. Still, some dispute there is such a thing as evil, and the atheist-physicalist belief system requires a denial of evil if it is to be consistent. The next post will deal with the belief in moral realism, but here we will focus only on the value of believing in a good God despite the presence of evil.
Plato and the Good
Is the universe we inhabit good? Plato, for one, considered the Idea or Form of the Good to be foundational to our experience. He likened this entity or concept to the sun in that the sun is not sight but it is the…
