Towards a moral argument for Christian belief

(1) Believing in theism will give one encouragement to believe in the value of philosophy.

(2) Believing in theism is the only encouragement to believe in the value of philosophy.

(3) If one believes in theism and the value of philosophy, one should believe in a Christian interpretation of theism.

(4) It is better to believe in theism and believe in the value of philosophy than to not believe in the value of philosophy.

(5) Therefore, one should believe in a Christian interpretation of theism.

I can only give a sketch of how the argument works.

The inference of (5) from (1) - (4) is an instance of what some critical thinking professors call a "should argument" compounded with a lemma. A basic "should argument" looks like this:

(A) Doing X brings about Y.
(B) Doing X is the best way to bring about Y.
(C) Doing X and bringing about Y is better than not bringing about Y.
(D) Therefore, one should do Y.

Premise (A) indicates that the X is instrumental to Y. (B) asserts that that among such instrumental conditions (if any) X is the best instrument for Y. Finally, (C) asserts that the world is a better place in some sense with X and Y than without Y. If these conditions are satisfied, then we have good reason to do Y and a good reason to not allow Y not to be done.

The complication is in (3) which is introduced to support that case for (4). The argument for (3) is an instance of the form:

(A') One should conscientiously believe that p.
(B') One should conscientiously believe that p implies q
(C') If one should conscientiously believe that p and one should conscientiously believe that p implies q, then one should conscientiously believe that q.
(D') One should conscientiously believe that q.

The argument (A') - (D') formulates the point that "conscientious believing" is closed under implication. Clearly, "conscientious belief" is an attitude that accepts propositions as true and is subject to the conscious choice of the will. It is not belief understood as a natural state of the mind such that consisitancy is not appropriate to expect. The isea that intuitively supports (C') is that conscientious acceptance of propositions should be closed under implication as a corrallary of the norm that persons should seek to believe the truth whenever it's up to them.

The argument also takes for granted that "conscientious believing that p" is a kind of "doing X".

That's enough about the structure of the argument, now to turn to the truth of the premises.

I don't intend to be very precise about what theism means. For example, I am not concerned in this argument about whether some version of deism or pantheism might be true. But the concept of God is available through the classical proofs from Richard of St. Victor to Richard Swinburne.