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 […]
Entries Tagged as 'God and Morality'
Divine Command Theory and the Euthyphro Dilemma: Part I
May 9th, 2021 Comments Off on Divine Command Theory and the Euthyphro Dilemma: Part I
Tags: Divine Command Theory · Euthyphro Dilemma · God and Morality · Harry Gensler · Paul Kurtz
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”
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, […]
Tags: Divine Command Theory · God and Morality · Henry Sidgwick · John Gay · Utilitarianism · Why be Moral?
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?
Published in Sophia “Why the Horrendous deeds objection is still a bad argument”
February 12th, 2021 3 Comments
My paper, “Why the Horrendous deeds objection is still a bad argument” has now been published by Sophia here. The abstract is as follows: A common objection to divine command meta-ethics (‘DCM’) is the horrendous deeds objection. Critics object that if DCM is true, anything at all could be right, no matter how abhorrent or […]
Tags: Brad Hooker · Divine Command Theory · Erik Wielenberg · Euthyphro Dilemma · God and Morality · Jason Thibodeau · Louise Anthony · Walter Sinnott-Armstrong · Wes Morriston
Dawkin’s dilemma: How not to answer the question “Why Be Moral?”
January 21st, 2021 Comments Off on Dawkin’s dilemma: How not to answer the question “Why Be Moral?”
In his bestselling book, the God Delusion, Richard Dawkin’s responds to the question: “If there is no God, Why be good?” Posed like that, the question sounds positively ignoble. When a religious person puts it to me in this way (and many of them do), my immediate temptation is to issue the following challenge: ‘Do you really mean […]
Tags: God and Morality · Henry Sidgwick · Richard Dawkins · The God Delusion · Thomas Reid · Why be Moral?
Problems in Value Theory An Introduction to Contemporary Debates: My Chapter with Graham Oppy is finally published
February 10th, 2020 Comments Off on Problems in Value Theory An Introduction to Contemporary Debates: My Chapter with Graham Oppy is finally published
Yesterday, I was informed that the book Problems in Value Theory An Introduction to Contemporary Debates has finally been published. The book is now available both on amazon on Bloomsbury’s website. Chapter 3 of this book “Does Morality Depend on God?” is co-authored by myself and Graham Oppy (Monash University). Both Graham and I each wrote […]
Tags: Divine Command Theory · God and Morality · Graham Oppy
Divine Command Theory: answering classic and contemporary objections
February 3rd, 2020 Comments Off on Divine Command Theory: answering classic and contemporary objections
Last week Jordan Hampton from Crash Course Apologetics interviewed me about chapters 12-13 of my book Did God Really Command Genocide. In this is the section of the book, I discuss divine command metaethics and critique some of the most important objections raised against divine command theories. The interview is nearly two and a half hours long. We […]
Tags: Arbitrariness Objection · Divine Command Theory · Erik Wielenberg · God and Morality · Michael Tooley · Russ Shafer Landau · Sam Harris · Wes Morriston
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.
