In recent posts I have been looking at the rhetorical question: “if there is no God, why be good?” In my last post, I suggested one way to understand this question was in terms of Henry Sidgwick’s famous argument regarding the “dualism of practical reason. As I interpreted Sidgwick, his argument had three steps. First, […]
Entries Tagged as 'Theologians'
What is the Question?: John Gay’s “Dissertation Concerning the Fundamental Principle of Virtue or Morality”
April 3rd, 2021 Comments Off on What is the Question?: John Gay’s “Dissertation Concerning the Fundamental Principle of Virtue or Morality”
Tags: Divine Command Theory · God and Morality · Henry Sidgwick · John Gay · Utilitarianism · Why be Moral?
FETICIDE IN CHRISTIAN MORAL THOUGHT (Part Four) : Feticide in the Reformed Protestant Tradition
May 28th, 2019 Comments Off on FETICIDE IN CHRISTIAN MORAL THOUGHT (Part Four) : Feticide in the Reformed Protestant Tradition
In our last post we saw how Medieval Christian’s adopted the same position on abortion we saw developed in Alexandrian Judaism and by Patristic theologians. We also saw how this position found its way into European and English law. Of course during the medieval period, Christian’s in Europe were Catholic. However, during the sixteenth and […]
Tags: Abortion · Feticide · John Calvin · Martin Luther · Melanchthon · Puritans · William Gouge
Divine Command Theory and Utilitarianism forgotten bedfellows? Paley’s Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy (part two)
January 18th, 2018 1 Comment
In my last post, I explained the position of Theological Utilitarianism as expounded in William Paley’s The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy. I pointed out The Principles was first published in 1785, four years before Jeremy Bentham published An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. In this post, I want to look at the influence Theological Utilitarianism had […]
Tags: Abraham Tucker · Christian History · Divine Command Theory · God and Morality · Jeremy Bentham · John Brown · John Gay · John Locke · John Stuart Mill · Utilitarianism · William Paley
Divine Command Theory and Utilitarianism forgotten bedfellows? Paley’s Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy (part one)
January 16th, 2018 Comments Off on Divine Command Theory and Utilitarianism forgotten bedfellows? Paley’s Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy (part one)
This post is adapted from a short essay I wrote on William Paley’s Ethics In a widely used textbook, James Rachels refers to “revolution in ethics” which occurred in the 18-19th centuries. Referring to upheavals such as the American Revolution, French Revolution, Rachel’s contends that people began to think differently about Ethics. There arose “A […]
Tags: Christian Hist · Divine Command Theory · Utilitarianism · William Paley
Annihilationism and the Infinity of Hell: Bawulski and the Disproportionality Argument
January 5th, 2018 10 Comments
This is part of a talk I gave at the Rethinking Hell Conference in Auckland earlier this year. Evangelical Annihilationist’s such as John Stott, Edward Fudge, John Wenham, and various others challenge the traditional view that hell is a place of eternal conscious torment. They contend that biblical language such as “eternal fire,” “eternal destruction,” “death,” […]
Tags: Annihilationism · Hell · Shawn Bawulski
Contemporary Philosophy of Religion and NCEA Religious Studies: Part one
October 17th, 2017 Comments Off on Contemporary Philosophy of Religion and NCEA Religious Studies: Part one
This is a talk I gave to the New Zealand Association of Philosophy Teachers annual conference at St Cutherberts College in September this year. Several people have asked me to make this talk available. I have broken my talk up into four parts. Part One introduces what philosophy of religion. In part two I will […]
Tags: Anselm · Augustine · Bentham · David Hume · James Rachels · Jeremy Bentham · John Locke · Philosophy of Religion · Utilitarianism · William Paley
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.
