Last week I had the privilege of hearing Professor John Hare, of Yale Divinity school, speak on God and morality at the Naturalisms in Ethics and APRA conferences. One idea Hare proposes, which fascinates me, is that commitment to morality presupposes belief in what he calls “strong providence” the position that “the world is so [...]
Entries Tagged as 'John Hare'
Does Moral Commitment Presuppose Belief in Providence?
July 21st, 2011 36 Comments
Tags: God and Morality · Happiness · John Hare
Ethics: What Does God have to do with it? @ Auckland University
July 11th, 2011 2 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 [...]
Tags: Glenn Pettigrove · John Hare · Mark Murphy · Thinking Matters
Abraham, Isaac, Virginity, Rape and Child Killing (Another Old Testament Ethics Post)
January 23rd, 2011 88 Comments
Randal Rauser has published a blog post touching on Old Testament ethics called “An update in the wake of Atlanta (plus a bit on rape and child killing)“. His post gives an update on his thoughts following his interaction with Paul Copan, Richard Hess and myself in the Evangelical Philosophical Society’s break-out panel discussion “Is Yahweh [...]
Tags: Abraham and Isaac · David Boonin · Don Marquis · Evangelical Philosophical Society · Homicide · John Hare · Michael Tooley · Old Testament Ethics · Paul Copan · Peter Singer · Randal Rauser · Richard Hess · Society of Biblical Literature
An Atheist and a Christian walk into a Bar… Original Sin & the Existential Paradox
January 5th, 2011 30 Comments
My previous post, William Lane Craig, Original Sin and Original Guilt, touched on the doctrine of original sin. According to the standard western articulation of this doctrine it has three components. First that human beings have a propensity towards doing wrong. Second, this propensity is inherited from our ancestors, it is not that we come [...]
Tags: Atheist · Edward Oakes · God and Morality · John Hare · Moral Gap · Original Guilt · Original Sin
Contra Mundum: Abraham and Isaac and the Killing of Innocents
October 3rd, 2010 124 Comments
Since 9/11 a choir of commentators have claimed that the willingness to murder innocent people in the name of God stems from the progenator of the Abrahamic faiths. Abraham, the father of Christianity, Judaism and Islam is commended for attempting to kill his own son. The account of this episode is arguable the most infamous [...]
Tags: Abraham · Contra Mundum · Investigate Magazine · Isaac · John Hare · Killing Innocents
There’s Probably No God? Fisking Atheist Billboards
July 12th, 2010 401 Comments
On the way back from Bloggers drinks we drove past one of the controversial atheist advertising billboards, put up by NZ Atheist Campaign, The Humanist Society and NZARH, which have appeared around Auckland. This appears to have come on the back of the Richard Dawkins inspired bus advertising that made headlines earlier this year. It [...]
Tags: Alvin Plantinga · Bad Reasoning · Christopher Hitchens · John Hare · NZ Atheist Campaign · NZARH · Paul Kurtz · Philip Quinn · Richard Dawkins · Robert Adams · Stephen Layman · The Humanist Society · William Lane Craig
Sunday Study: Abraham and Isaac – Did God Command the Killing of an Innocent?
July 26th, 2009 13 Comments
Perhaps the most infamous passage in the Hebrew scriptures occurs in Genesis 22:2, Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.” Of course, as anyone who [...]
Tags: Abraham · Abram · Ethics · Genesis · Isaac · John Hare · Kant · Kenneth Kitchen · Killing Innocents · Louise Anthony · Old Testament Ethics · Philip Quinn · Robert Adams · Selection · Stephen Evans · Sunday Study
The Euthyphro Objection Part I: Against Divine Commands & Avoiding Strawmen
October 28th, 2007 2 Comments
Perhaps the most common argument against an appeal to divine commands in ethical reasoning is the Euthyphro dilemma, first articulated by Plato and utilised by numerous critics of divine commands ever since. A representative example of this line of argument occurs in Peter Singer’s widely-acclaimed monograph Practical Ethics. In the first chapter of Practical Ethics, [...]
Tags: Divine Command Theory · Edward Weirenga · Ethics · Euthyphro Dilemma · God and Morality · John Hare · Peter Singer · Philip Quinn · Philosophy of Religion · Robert Adams · William Alston
