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Entries Tagged as 'Divine Command Theory'

Mark Murphy Reviews Walter Sinnott-Armstrong.

April 30th, 2012 3 Comments

Those who have followed my recent discussions of Walter Sinnott-Armstrong’s writings on God and Morality. Might be interested in this review of Armstrong’s book “Morality without God”  by Mark Murphy in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. Mark  is a lecturer in moral philosophy at Georgetown University. He is is one of the leading critics of divine command ethics [...]

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Is Ethical Naturalism More Plausible than Supernaturalism? A Reply to Walter Sinnott-Armstrong: Part II

April 26th, 2012 7 Comments

This is the second part of the paper I presented to the Naturalisms in Ethics Conference at Auckland University last year. In my previous post, I noted that Robert Adams has argued that if God exists, then divine commands “best fill the role assigned to wrongness by the concept”.[1] He argues that if moral obligations are [...]

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Jerry Coyne on God and Morality Revisited

February 23rd, 2012 40 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 [...]

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Is Ethical Naturalism more Plausible than Supernaturalism? A Reply to Walter Sinnott-Armstrong Part I

February 7th, 2012 9 Comments

This is  first half of the paper I presented to the Naturalisms in Ethics Conference at Auckland University last year. In many of his addresses and debates William Lane Craig has defended a Divine Command Theory of moral obligation (“DCT”). In a recent article Walter Sinnott-Armstrong has criticized this contention.[1] Armstrong contends that even if [...]

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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 [...]

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Contra Mundum: When Scientists Make Bad Ethicists

October 10th, 2011 390 Comments

One thing I find particularly frustrating is reading commentary on theology and philosophy written by scientists. To be fair, some scientists I have read are informed and do offer astute and insightful comments; commonly, however, one finds a person who is undoubtedly brilliant in their own field, writing with confident gusto, articles that fail to [...]

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Skepticule Extra – A Podcast on the Euthyphro Dilemma Feat. Matthew Flannagan

September 16th, 2011 31 Comments

Recently Matt did a podcast on Divine Command Theory and the Euthyphro Dilemma for Skepticule Extra,  aka the “Pauls to the Power of Three Podcast” hosted by Paul Baird, Paul Thompson (“Sinbad”)  and Paul S. Jenkins. You can listen to that podcast here. Visit Skepticule for more listening options.

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Divine Commands Post 9/11

September 12th, 2011 43 Comments

The night of September 11, 2001, was a night we did not get much sleep in. By 4am September 12 (New Zealand time) our two-week old son and 14 month old daughter had woken us twice already. Frustratingly, I awoke again sometime after 4am to a different noise coming from the lounge; it turned out [...]

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Response to William Lane Craig’s Question 225: “The ‘Slaughter’ of the Canaanites Re-visited” Part I

August 11th, 2011 6 Comments

Every week William Lane Craig answers a question on his website; this week’s question of the week is entitled “The “Slaughter” of the Canaanites Re-visited”. The questioner asked what Craig thinks of the Canaanite Conquest account. I got a mention in Craig’s reply: “The topic of God’s command to destroy the Canaanites was the subject [...]

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Ethics: What Does God have to do with it? @ Auckland University

July 11th, 2011 3 Comments

World class Ethicists John Hare (Yale Divinity) and Mark Murphy (Georgetown Philosophy) are in town for the Naturalisms in Ethics Conference and the Meeting of the Australasian Philosophy of Religion Association at the University of Auckland where they will be speaking along with New Zealand’s top Ethicists. We leaped on the opportunity to organise the following [...]

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