Last year I had an article Is Ethical Naturalism more plausible than Supernaturalism: A reply to Walter Sinnott Armstrong published in the journal Philo. In the comments section a reader asked me to comment on a response to that article published by classical historian Richard Carrier. This post will be the first of several where I do so. In, Is […]
Entries Tagged as 'Ethical Theory'
Ethical Supernaturalism is still more Plausible than Naturalism: Carrier’s Preliminary Objections
August 20th, 2014 5 Comments
Tags: Divine Command Theory · God and Morality · Publications · Richard Carrier
Divine Commands and Psychopathic Tendencies
February 2nd, 2013 214 Comments
There has been some interesting debate in the blogosphere over Sam Harris’ contention that a divine command theory of ethics manifests “a psychopathic and psychotic moral attitude.” Randal Rauser responded to Harris’ contention noting that “if you read through the twenty traits on the Psychopath Checklist you’ll find qualities like callousness, shallow effect, grandiose sense of […]
Tags: Christopher Hallquist · Divine Command Theory · Randal Rauser · Sam Harris
Jerry Coyne on God and Morality Revisited
February 23rd, 2012 44 Comments
Late last year I, wrote a criticism of Jerry Coyne’s piece in USA today. Entitled, As atheists know, you can be good without God. My critique attracted some attention. Getting commentary from Mary Ann Spikes, Jason Thibodeau, Jeffery Lay Lowder, and Brian Zamulinski. Since the USA today article Coyne has written a follow up article where […]
Tags: Divine Command Theory · Jerry Coyne · New Atheists · Robert Adams · William Lane Craig
Back from San Francisco: A Belated Report
February 3rd, 2012 2 Comments
MandM has been quite of late, this is because Madeleine and I have been very busy. With moving house in the midst of Christmas and New Years and Madeleine working part-time in a law firm and so on, we’ve had little time to blog. We are now set up, to some extent, and so this […]
Tags: Biblioblog · David Baggett · Evangelical Philosophical Society · Jerry Walls · Paul Copan · Publication; San Francisco · Society of Biblical Literature · Walter Sinnott-Armstrong · William Lane Craig
Randal Rauser’s Mistake: A Defense of Calvin’s Doctrine of Election
November 12th, 2011 77 Comments
Thanks go to Matthew Flannagan for pointing me in the direction of this response to the problem. A while back Professor Randal Rauser issued a blog entitled “Calvinism and the Arbitrary Camp Director” in which he criticised the Calvinist understanding of election. For those of you who are unaware of the Calvinistic understanding of election, […]
Tags: Arminianism · Calvinism · Circular Reasoning · Election · Ethics · Evangelical Christianity · Philosophical Theology · Randal Rauser · Salvation · Soteriology · Supererogation · Systematic theology · Theology
Debate Review: Sam Harris and William Lane Craig on Ethical Naturalism Part II
April 18th, 2011 41 Comments
In Part I of my review of the debate between Sam Harris and William Lane Craig on the moot “Is the Foundation of Morality Natural or Supernatural? I discussed Craig’s defence of the contention that: 1. If God exists then we have a plausible account of (a) the nature of moral goodness and (b) the nature of […]
Tags: Debates · Ethical Naturalism · God and Morality · Is the Foundation of Morality Natural or Supernatural? · Notre Dame · Robert Adams · Sam Harris · Wes Morriston · William Lane Craig
A common objection to belief in the God of the Bible is that a good, kind, and loving deity would never command the wholesale slaughter of nations. In the tradition of his popular Is God a Moral Monster?, Paul Copan teams up with Matthew Flannagan to tackle some of the most confusing and uncomfortable passages of Scripture. Together they help the Christian and nonbeliever alike understand the biblical, theological, philosophical, and ethical implications of Old Testament warfare passages.
