The following argument is presented and defended: We ought to aspire to become as good as we can be, and this requires that we do good deeds with not just any emotional attitude, but with joy (a lively, hopeful feeling), even in difficult circumstances. Theism (of the right sort) offers us the best prospects for achieving a fully joyful moral life. And so it is morally good for those of us who are not theists to undertake theism-to commit ourselves to (...) the religious project of coming to believe that God exists. (shrink)

The platonist who argues that the moral life has no religious implications is mistaken. If one ought to aspire to become as good as one can become, then, since the identity of this goal depends in part on whether or not it is possible to enter into a conscious, loving relation with God, one ought to try to figure out whether or not God exists. But then one needs to get a clearer understanding of what it is to be God. (...) So one ought to turn one's attention to what it is to be God. (shrink)

God, a being who is good in the best possible combination of ways, loves us. But does he feel sorrow on our behalf? Thomas Aquinas argues that: every passion is specified by its object. That passion, therefore, whose subject is absolutely unbefitting to God is removed from God even according to the nature of its proper species. Such a passion, however, is sorrow or pain, for its subject is the already present evil, just as the object of joy is the (...) good present and possessed. Sorrow and pain, therefore, of their very nature cannot be found in God. (shrink)