This is a talk I gave to the Philosophy Club at Glendale Community College in Phoenix, Arizona, this weekend. The talk was followed by a long discussion with some faculty, students at the college, and others who zoomed in. In this talk, I introduced and defended a divine command theory of ethics. I divided the talk into […]
Entries Tagged as 'Philosophers'
Divine Command Theory and the Euthyphro Dilemma: Part III
May 16th, 2021 Comments Off on Divine Command Theory and the Euthyphro Dilemma: Part III
Tags: Divine Command Theory · Euthyphro Dilemma · God and Morality · Graham Oppy · Russ Shafer Landau · Stephen Sullivan
Divine Command Theory and the Euthyphro Dilemma: Part II
May 12th, 2021 Comments Off on Divine Command Theory and the Euthyphro Dilemma: Part II
This is a talk I gave to the Philosophy Club at Glendale Community College in Phoenix, Arizona, this weekend. The talk was followed by a long discussion with some faculty, students at the college, and others who zoomed in. In this talk, I introduced and defended a divine command theory of ethics. The talk was divided into […]
Tags: Divine Command Theory · Euthyphro Dilemma · Nathan L King · Plato
What is the Question?: Henry Sidgwick’s Dualism of Practical Reason
March 26th, 2021 Comments Off on What is the Question?: Henry Sidgwick’s Dualism of Practical Reason
In a previous post, I criticised Richard Dawkins’s discussion of the question: if there is no God, why be good? One criticism I raised was that Dawkins seemed to misunderstand the challenge this rhetorical question presents. This raises the question as to how we should understand this rhetorical question. What exactly is the problem being […]
Tags: Divine Command Theory · Dualism of Practical Reason · God and Morality · Henry Sidgwick · Utilitarianism · Why be Moral?
The Psychopath Objection to Divine Command Theory: Presentation
December 15th, 2020 Comments Off on The Psychopath Objection to Divine Command Theory: Presentation
Last year, I presented a talk entitled “The Psychopath Objection to Divine Command Theory: Another Reply to Erik Wielenberg” to the New Zealand Association of Philosophers conference in Auckland. This was a follow up to interaction I have had with the work of Erik Wielenberg. In 2017 I wrote a critical response to Wielenberg’s book Robust […]
Tags: Divine Command Theory · Erik Wielenberg · Psychopath Objection · Wes Morriston · William Lane Craig
The Psychopath Objection to Divine Command Theory: Another Response to Erik Wielenberg (part one)
September 3rd, 2019 Comments Off on The Psychopath Objection to Divine Command Theory: Another Response to Erik Wielenberg (part one)
Recently, Erik Wielenberg has developed a novel objection to divine command meta-ethics (DCM). DCM “has the implausible implication that psychopaths have no moral obligations and hence their evil acts, no matter how evil, are morally permissible” (Wielenberg (2008), 1). Wielenberg develops this argument in response to some criticisms of his earlier work. One of the […]
Tags: C Stephen Evans · Divine Command Theory · Erik Wielenberg · God and Morality · Psychopathy · Robert Adams · William Lane Craig
The Naturalness of Belief: New Essays in Theism’s Rationality.
February 10th, 2019 Comments Off on The Naturalness of Belief: New Essays in Theism’s Rationality.
The book The Naturalness of Belief: New Essays on Theism’s Rationality recently arrived from the publishers and is available on Amazon. Matt contributed a chapter to this book entitled “Divine Commands and the Euthyphro Dilemma: Some Naturalistic Misperceptions” The Naturalness of Belief is edited by Paul Copan (Palm Beach Atlantic) and Charles Taliaferro (St Olaf […]
Tags: Books · Divine Command Theory · Euthyphro Dilemma · Naturalism · Publications · The Naturalness of Belief

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.





IS A FETUS A HUMAN BEING? Part one: Viability
June 7th, 2019 1 Comment
This is one of a series of posts based on a class I teach for level 3 NCEA Religious Studies. In the last few posts we saw that most of the Christian religious tradition sketched the following argument against feticide; Premise [1] Killing a human being without justification violates the law of God. Premise [2] […]
Tags: Abortion · David Oderberg · Feticide · Michael Tooley · Peter Singer · Susan Sherwin · Viability