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Entries Tagged as 'God and Morality'

Tekton E-Book: John Loftus’ Why I Became an Atheist Refuted Feat. MandM

September 17th, 2009 5 Comments

Tekton Education and Apologetics ministries have released an online book, John Loftus’ Why I Became an Atheist Refuted, as a special edition for their E-Block Online Journal. While most of the book is authored by JP Holding, Chapter 2 is not completely, Chapter 2: “The Christian Illusion of Rational and Moral Superiority” — Two part […]

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Walter Sinnott-Armstrong on God, Morality and Arbitrariness

July 17th, 2009 21 Comments

Is morality independent of religion? One common argument for this position is that denying it makes God’s commands arbitrary. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong argues, Let’s assume that God commanded us not to rape. Did God have any reason to command this? If not, his command was arbitrary, and then it can’t make anything morally wrong. On the […]

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John W. Loftus on The Christian Illusion of Moral Superiority Part II

May 8th, 2009 5 Comments

In my previous post, John W. Loftus on The Christian Illusion of Moral Superiority Part I, I argued that Loftus’ position was based on a confusion between ontological and epistemological foundations. I will now address his arguments against divine command theory. Loftus’ Arguments Against a Divine Command Theory After misconstruing the divine command theory as […]

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John W. Loftus on The Christian Illusion of Moral Superiority Part I

May 7th, 2009 14 Comments

Several Christian thinkers, most notably, C S Lewis, John Hare, Robert Adams and William Lane Craig have argued that Theism provides a superior foundation for moral obligation than Naturalism does. Most of these thinkers defend this notion by developing and defending a divine command theory.[1] John W Loftus is aware of this and in The […]

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Divine Commands and Intuitions: A Response to Ken Perrott

May 5th, 2009 34 Comments

Ken Perrott from Open Parachute has asked me some questions about my views on morality and divine commands. Views I have repeatedly expressed on this blog. Given that others have from time to time asked me similar questions, and given the length of my response, I have decided to turn my answers into a post. […]

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With God Anything can be Permitted: Another Bad Argument against Theistic Morality

April 28th, 2009 30 Comments

Dostoevsky’s Ivan Karamazov’s famously contended that if God does not exist then anything is permissible. Ken over at Open Parachute disagrees and goes one step further and argues that the shoe is on the other foot. Ken maintains that theistic accounts of obligation lead to an “extreme form of moral relativism” and in fact, Dostoevsky’s […]

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Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, William Lane Craig and the Argument from Harm Part II

April 20th, 2009 7 Comments

In my last post, I discussed Walter Sinnott-Armstrong’s argument from harm. I concluded by suggesting that his conclusion missed the point and failed to address the conditional, defended by William Lane Craig that, if theism is true then there exists a sound foundation for moral duties. In this post I will argue that the same […]

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