? The utilitarian answer: A terminally ill person suffering with no prospect of recovery experiences ongoing, intense pain. If they wish to die, ending their suffering produces a clear increase in net wellbeing. Utilitarianism supports voluntary euthanasia — but struggles with cases where the patient can't express a preference, where family members disagree, or where permitting euthanasia might create subtle pressure on elderly people to "stop being a burden." The Kantian answer: Does euthanasia treat the person as an end or as a means? Kant himself was against suicide — killing yourself treats your rational nature as a mere instrument for pain relief. But contemporary Kantians often argue the opposite: respecting a person's autonomous, rational decision to end their suffering is treating them as an end. Denying them the choice treats them as less than fully rational. The framework supports both conclusions, depending on which formulation you prioritise. The virtue ethics answer: What would the compassionate, courageous, practically wise person do in this specific situation? Virtue ethics gives no universal rule — it says attend to the particular case with all the wisdom you can bring. This respects the uniqueness of each situation but provides no generalisable guidance for legislation. The IDM answer: The symmetry principle: if a person's choice to refuse further treatment is respected (which it is, legally and ethically), then a person's choice to actively end their suffering should be treated the same way — the content (an autonomous choice about one's own death) is the same regardless of context (passive withdrawal vs. active termination). A symmetry violation here lacks structural justification. The continuity principle: the process of dying should be as continuous as possible — not prolonged artificially (a continuity violation in one direction) and not ended so abruptly that the relational process of farewell is severed (a continuity violation in the other). The win-win is often found in palliative care approaches that neither prolong suffering nor eliminate the time needed for relational completion — but in cases where palliative care is insufficient, the symmetry principle supports the person's right to choose.
The IDM doesn't claim these analyses are complete. It claims they're more structurally rigorous than "maximise happiness" or "apply the categorical imperative" — and more responsive to the specific relational reality of each situation. The framework gives you a method: identify the symmetry and continuity dimensions, integrate thinking and feeling, and navigate toward the win-win choice. It doesn't make the decision for you. But it makes the decision- making process disciplined rather than ad hoc.
Discussion Questions
1. Choose an ethical dilemma you genuinely face — not a trolley problem but a real decision in your life. Apply the four frameworks: utilitarian, Kantian, virtue ethics, IDM. Which gives you the most useful guidance? Why? 2. The worked example on AI and essay-writing distinguishes between using
AI to enhance learning and using it to replace learning. Where is the line? How do you know when you've crossed it? Does the IDM's need/want/desire framework help clarify? 3. The chapter argues that individual environmental action matters primarily through cultural change, not through direct carbon reduction. Do you agree? Is this empowering (your choices shape culture) or disempowering (your individual impact is still negligible)? 4. The ethical gap between technological capability and wisdom is widening. What specific practices — personal, communal, institutional — could help close it? How do the three practices from Chapter 23 (inner work, genuine relationship, advocacy) apply to technology ethics?
God and Religion
Chapter Thirteen
Arguments for God's Existence
Does God exist? This is probably the most debated question in the history of Western philosophy. For over two thousand years, philosophers have constructed arguments for and against the existence of a divine being. This chapter presents the major arguments for ; Chapter 14 examines the most powerful argument against (the problem of evil); and Chapter 15 reframes the entire debate using the IDM. Regardless of your personal beliefs, understanding these arguments is essential. They're not just about theology — they engage deep questions about causation, necessity, design, and the foundations of morality that are relevant far beyond the God debate.
The Ontological Argument
Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109) proposed the most audacious argument in the history of philosophy: a proof of God's existence from the concept of God alone, requiring no empirical evidence whatsoever. The argument: God is defined as "that than which nothing greater can be conceived" — the greatest possible being. Now, a being that exists in reality is greater than a being that exists only in the mind (just as a real hundred pounds is greater than an imaginary hundred pounds). Therefore, if God existed only in the mind, we could conceive of something greater — namely, the same being but actually existing. But then God wouldn't be "that than which nothing greater can be conceived," which contradicts the definition. Therefore, God must exist in reality. Gaunilo's objection: The same logic could prove the existence of a perfect island. Define the greatest conceivable island. A real island is greater than an imaginary one. Therefore the greatest conceivable island must exist. But that's absurd — you can't define things into existence. If the argument works for God, it works for anything "greatest conceivable," and that can't be right.
Descartes' version: God is a supremely perfect being. Existence is a perfection (a property that it's better to have than to lack). Therefore, a supremely perfect being must have existence — God must exist. This version shifts the argument from "greatest conceivable" to "supremely perfect" but faces essentially the same objections. Kant's objection: "Existence is not a predicate." Saying "God exists" doesn't add a property to God the way "God is powerful" does. Existence is not a characteristic that makes something greater — it's a precondition for having any characteristics at all. The concept of a hundred real pounds contains exactly the same properties as the concept of a hundred imaginary pounds; the real ones just happen to exist. So Anselm's move — "a God that exists is greater than one that doesn't" — treats existence as a property when it isn't.
The modal ontological argument
(Alvin Plantinga): If it is possible that a maximally great being exists, then a maximally great being exists in some possible world. A maximally great being, by definition, exists in all possible worlds. Therefore, a maximally great being exists in the actual world. This version avoids Kant's objection (it uses modal logic rather than treating existence as a predicate) but is controversial: the key premise — that a maximally great being is possible — is doing all the work, and it's not clear why we should grant it. An atheist can run the argument in reverse: if it's possible that no maximally great being exists, then a maximally great being doesn't exist in some possible world, and therefore doesn't exist in any possible world (since a maximally great being must exist in all possible worlds or none). The ontological argument has been debated for nearly a thousand years, and most philosophers believe some version of Kant's objection is fatal. But the argument matters even if it fails, because it raises deep questions about the relationship between concepts and reality, between logic and existence. Can pure reason tell us what exists? Are there truths about the world that can be discovered without looking at the world? These are the questions of Chapter 6 (rationalism vs. empiricism), and the ontological argument is their most extreme test case.
The Cosmological Argument
While the ontological argument works purely through concepts, the cosmological argument starts from an observation about the world: things exist. Why? Aquinas' First Way (the argument from motion):
Everything in motion was set in motion by something else. But this chain of movers can't go back infinitely — there must be a first mover that is itself unmoved. This is God.
Aquinas' Second Way (the argument from causation):
Everything that exists has a cause. But the chain of causes can't be infinite — there must be a first cause that is itself uncaused. This is God. Aquinas' Third Way (the argument from contingency):
Everything in the world is contingent — it exists but could have not existed. If everything were contingent, there would have been a time when nothing existed, and then nothing could have come into being (since nothing comes from nothing). So there must be at least one necessary being — one that couldn't not exist. This is God. Leibniz's Principle of Sufficient Reason:
Everything that exists must have a sufficient reason for its existence. The universe exists. Its existence requires a reason. That reason cannot be found within the universe itself (since every element within the universe is contingent). Therefore, the reason must lie outside the universe — in a necessary being whose existence is self-explanatory. This version doesn't rely on an infinite regress argument but on the logical principle that unexplained existence is irrational. The Kalam cosmological argument:
Everything that begins to exist has a cause. The universe began to exist (supported by Big Bang cosmology). Therefore the universe has a cause. This cause must be outside the universe — timeless, spaceless, immaterial, and enormously powerful. This is God. Standard objections: Why can't the chain of causes be infinite? (Mathematicians have no problem with infinite series.) Why must the first cause be God rather than just some physical fact? (Maybe the universe itself is the necessary being.) And the classic: if everything needs a cause, what caused God? If God doesn't need a cause, why does the universe? The Kalam version faces specific challenges: even if the universe had a beginning, the cause needn't be personal, intelligent, or benevolent — it could be an impersonal quantum fluctuation or some other physical process we don't yet understand.
The Teleological Argument (Design)
The cosmological argument reasons from the existence of the world; the teleological argument reasons from its order . The world exhibits extraordinary complexity, regularity, and apparent purpose. Complex structures like the human eye, the bacterial flagellum, or the laws of physics themselves seem designed to work. Where there is design, there must be a designer.
William Paley (1743–1805) proposed the famous watchmaker analogy: if you found a watch on a heath, you would infer a designer — the complexity and purpose of the mechanism could not have arisen by chance. The natural world exhibits far greater complexity and apparent purpose than any watch. Therefore, the natural world must have a designer. This designer is God. The Darwinian response:
Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection provides a mechanism by which complex, apparently designed structures can arise without a designer. Random variation plus natural selection, operating over billions of years, is sufficient to produce the eye, the wing, and the brain. The appearance of design is real; the inference to a designer is not required. Crucially,
Darwin doesn't disprove
God — he removes the necessity of inferring God from biological complexity. There could still be a God who works through evolution. But the argument from biological design no longer compels belief. The modern fine-tuning version:
The fundamental physical constants of the universe (gravitational constant, speed of light, strength of nuclear forces) are calibrated within extraordinarily narrow ranges. If any were slightly different, complex matter — and therefore life — would be impossible. The probability of this happening by chance is astronomically small. Therefore, the constants were set deliberately by an intelligent designer. This version of the argument is stronger than Paley's because Darwin can't address it — evolution explains biological complexity, but it can't explain why the laws of physics are such that biological complexity is possible in the first place. The anthropic principle and multiverse:
The anthropic principle observes that we can only exist in a universe whose constants permit our existence — so of course we observe fine-tuning. And the multiverse hypothesis suggests that if there are enormously many universes with different constants, at least one will be life-permitting by probability alone. But the multiverse is itself unverifiable — it postulates countless unobservable universes to explain the features of this one. Is it really more parsimonious than postulating a designer? The debate reaches a stalemate where the choice between explanations may rest on philosophical commitments rather than evidence.
The Moral Argument
A different kind of argument, reasoning not from the world's existence or order but from human moral experience.
The basic form: objective moral truths exist (some things are really right and others really wrong, regardless of what anyone thinks). Objective moral truths require a foundation — something that makes them true. The best explanation for objective moral truths is God — a divine moral lawgiver who grounds morality in divine nature or divine commands. C.S. Lewis gave this a popular formulation in
Mere Christianity
: our persistent sense that some things are genuinely unfair — not just personally unpleasant but objectively wrong — points to a moral law above and beyond human convention. When you say "that's not fair," you're appealing to a standard that both you and the person you're arguing with recognise, even if you disagree about its application. That standard can't come from human nature (which is the thing being judged) or from social convention (which varies and can itself be judged as unjust). It must come from beyond the human world — from a moral lawgiver who is the source of the moral law. That lawgiver is God.
The Euthyphro dilemma
(from Plato's dialogue of the same name): Is something good because God commands it, or does God command it because it's good? If the first (the divine command theory), morality is arbitrary — God could have made torture good simply by commanding it, and "good" just means "whatever God says." This empties the concept of goodness. If the second, the moral standard is independent of God — goodness exists whether God commands it or not, and God himself is subject to it rather than the source of it. Either way, the moral argument fails to establish that God is the foundation of morality. Further objections: Do objective moral truths even exist? The moral relativist says no — morality varies across cultures and is a human construction. Even if they exist, must they be grounded in God? Perhaps they're fundamental features of reality, like mathematical truths — real and objective but not dependent on any personal being. And even if morality requires a transcendent ground, the argument doesn't specify which God — the conclusion is too weak to support any particular religion.
"Can I be a moral person without believing in God? Does life have meaning if there's no higher power?" The moral argument is often used to suggest that atheism leads to nihilism — without God, "everything is permitted." Chapter 11 argues otherwise: ethics is grounded not in divine command but in the structure of interaction itself. Symmetry and continuity hold regardless of whether God exists, just as mathematical truths hold regardless of who does the maths. You don't need a cosmic lawgiver to have objective ethics — you need a coherent account of what effective choice looks like.
The Argument from Religious Experience
Millions of people across every culture and historical period report experiences they describe as encounters with the divine — moments of overwhelming presence, of unity with something greater, of direct perception of a sacred reality.
William James catalogued these in
The Varieties of Religious Experience
(1902): mystical experiences with qualities of ineffability (they can't be fully described in words), noetic quality (they seem to reveal genuine knowledge), transiency (they don't last long), and passivity (they feel received rather than produced). The argument: the best explanation for the consistency and intensity of religious experience across cultures is that the experiences are genuine — that there is something real they're in contact with. Just as the best explanation for visual experience is that there are real objects being perceived, the best explanation for religious experience is that there is a real divine reality being encountered. Standard objections:
Religious experiences could be produced by neurological processes (temporal lobe activity, oxygen deprivation, psychoactive substances), psychological states (grief, isolation, intense meditation), or cultural conditioning (people experience what their tradition teaches them to expect). The consistency across cultures is debatable — a Christian mystic reports encountering Christ, a Hindu mystic reports encountering Brahman, a Buddhist meditator reports encountering emptiness. If they're all perceiving the same divine reality, why do they describe it so differently? And the mere fact that an experience is powerful and convincing doesn't make it veridical — hallucinations can be powerful and convincing too.
None of these arguments has achieved consensus. Each has been debated, refined, attacked, and defended for centuries. What Chapter 15 will argue is that the debate itself rests on a structural confusion — and that seeing the confusion clearly transforms the question.
Discussion Questions
1. Kant says "existence is not a predicate." Is he right? When you say "unicorns don't exist," are you denying a property of unicorns, or are you saying something else entirely? What's the difference? 2. The cosmological argument says everything needs a cause except God. Is this special pleading? Or is the concept of a necessary being genuinely different from the concept of a contingent being? 3. The fine-tuning argument says the universe's constants are too precise to be accidental. The multiverse hypothesis says: with enough universes, one will have our constants by chance. Does the multiverse hypothesis actually explain fine-tuning, or does it just push the question back (who designed the multiverse-generating mechanism)? 4. The moral argument assumes that objective moral truths need God as their foundation. Chapter 11 argued that they're grounded in the structure of interaction (symmetry and continuity). Which grounding seems more plausible to you, and why?
Chapter Fourteen
The Problem of Evil
If God is all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good — why is there suffering? A child dies of leukaemia. An earthquake kills thousands. A genocide unfolds while the world watches. If God knows about this suffering, has the power to prevent it, and loves the sufferers — why doesn't God act?
This is the problem of evil , and it is the most powerful argument against the existence of the God of classical theism. It's also the argument that carries the most emotional weight. The logical arguments of the previous chapter are intellectual puzzles. The problem of evil is a wound.
The Logical Problem
The ancient formulation, attributed to Epicurus: Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then God is not omnipotent. Is God able, but not willing? Then God is not omnibenevolent. Is God both able and willing? Then why does evil exist? Is God neither able nor willing? Then why call this being God? J.L. Mackie formalised this as a strict logical contradiction. Given three premises — (1) God is omnipotent, (2) God is omnibenevolent, (3) evil exists — at least one must be false. You can't have all three. An omnipotent God could prevent all evil. An omnibenevolent God would want to. An omniscient God would know about it.
Yet evil exists. The logical problem of evil claims that the existence of evil is logically incompatible with the existence of the God of classical theism. This is a deductively valid argument. If all three premises are true, the conclusion follows necessarily. The only escape is to deny or qualify one of the premises — to show that omnipotence, omniscience, or omnibenevolence doesn't mean what the argument assumes. Every theodicy is an attempt to do exactly this. And notice: the logical problem doesn't require that all evil is inexplicable — even one instance of preventable suffering is sufficient to generate the contradiction.
"If God exists and is good, why did [specific terrible thing] happen? And if God doesn't exist, does anything matter?" The problem of evil drives more people away from faith than any other philosophical argument. It's also the question that drives many toward nihilism: if there's no God guaranteeing justice, then suffering is meaningless. Chapter 15 will argue that this is a false binary — that the sacred can be real without being a person, and that meaning can be structural without being arbitrary. But first, you need to see clearly what the problem actually is, and why every traditional response falls short.
The Evidential Problem
William Rowe's version is less absolute but perhaps more devastating. He doesn't claim that God's existence is logically impossible given evil. He claims it's evidentially implausible. His most powerful example: a fawn trapped in a forest fire, suffering agonisingly for days before dying. No human witnesses its suffering. No greater good comes from it. No soul-building occurs. No free will is exercised. It is, so far as anyone can tell, utterly pointless suffering — and there have been billions of such instances throughout the history of life on Earth. The sheer quantity and intensity of gratuitous suffering in the world — suffering that serves no discernible purpose — makes God's existence extremely unlikely, even if not strictly impossible. The evidential version is harder to refute than the logical version, because it doesn't require proving a strict contradiction. It just says: look at the evidence. Look at the suffering. And then explain how a being of infinite knowledge, power, and goodness could allow this. The explanations offered — the theodicies — consistently strain credibility. The sceptical theist response (we can't know God's reasons) has some force, but it also undermines the basis for believing God is good in the first place — if we can't assess God's reasons for permitting suffering, how can we assess God's reasons for doing anything?