Start with this argument:
It’s not wrong for me to love my friend as if they were in the image and likeness of God.
If someone is not God and not in the image and likeness of God, then to love them as if they were in the image and likeness of God is excessive.
Excessive love is wrong.
My friend is not God.
So, my friend is in the image and likeness of God.
So, God exists.
I think there may be some other variants on this argument that are worth considering. Replace being in the image and likeness of God, for instance, with (a) being so loved by God that God became incarnate out of love for them, or with (b) having the Spirit of God living in them. Then the conclusion is that God become incarnate or that the Spirit of God lives in our neighbor.
The general point is this. Christianity gives us an admirable aspiration as to how much we should love our neighbor. But that much love of our neighbor is inappropriate unless something like Christianity is true.
I think there is a way in which this argument is far from new. One of the great arguments for Christianity has always been those Christians who loved their neighbor as God called them to do. The immense attractiveness of their lives showed that their love was not wrong, and knoweldge of these lives showed that they were indeed loving their neighbor in the ways the above arguments talk about.
7 comments:
Alex
If there is no God, then why is excessive love wrong? I doubt that excessive love is even possible unless this "excessive love" for one person excludes the love for other persons. But that would be wrong no matter whether there is a God or not.
So, the argument seems to beg the question. If there is no God, then excessive love either doesn't exist or is wrong for other reasons.
The argument only works is the conclusion is already hidden in the first presmise, which seems obvious here. "As if they were in the image of God" already presupposes that the wrongness is dependent on the existence of God.
Excessive love is by definition a bad thing: it's excessive.
When does love become excessive if there is no God?
The naturalist will reject 1. It is wrong to love in such a way that entails a false belief, the belief in this case being that your friend is made in the image of God.
But the naturalist obviously doesn't believe that, so in what way can his love for his neighbour be wrong or excessive?
Love becomes excessive when one values the beloved in excess of the value that the beloved actually has.
The value the beloved actiually has is his/her value as a human being..
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