What Explains God’s Moral Grounding Power? Part II
In an earlier article, I wrote about a question for divine command metaethics, a question that I called the Moral Grounding Question. Moral Grounding Question (MGQ): In virtue of what do God’s commands...
View ArticleSome Thoughts on Naturalism and Morality
It is supposed, by some, to be difficult for naturalism to account for moral properties (both axiological properties like goodness and badness and deontic properties like rightness and wrongness)....
View ArticleA Primer in Religion and Morality
My recent interview for the Atheistically Speaking podcast inspired me to compile this quick primer in religion and morality, in order to help clarify the many different concepts at play when we talk...
View ArticleAn Amazing Coincidence about God’s Commands
Isn’t it amazing that God’s commands as reported by holy books just happen to reflect the views of the culture in which they were written? It’s almost as if the authors of those books took their own...
View ArticleJonathan MS Pearce on Christianity and Inter-Testamental Moral Relativism
Jonathan MS Pearce recently posted a very interesting argument. Pearce starts with the fact that there are important differences between Old Testament ethics and New Testament ethics. If Divine Command...
View ArticleCharles Pidgen on the So-Called “Naturalistic Fallacy” in Meta-Ethics
A common objection to reductive moral naturalism (aka ‘ethical naturalism’) is the so-called “naturalistic fallacy.” This fallacy comes into flavors: logical and semantical. The Logical Form This...
View ArticleKai Nielsen on Natural Law and Divine Command Theory
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Taylor Carr republished on The Secular Outpost with permission. The original post may be found on his blog, The Godless Skeptic. It’s common to hear theists make...
View ArticleA Moral Argument for God which Begs the Question against Theists
Reposting a comment I left on fellow Patheos blogger Bob Seidensticker’s blog, Cross Examined. Bob was writing about Geisler’s and Turek’s book, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist. Bob quoted...
View ArticleCraig, Koons, and Divine Command Theory
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Taylor Carr republished on The Secular Outpost with permission. The original post may be found on his blog, The Godless Skeptic. In a recent episode of the...
View ArticleDivine Commands and Informative Identity
Last week I had an exchange with Matthew Flannagan on divine command theory (DCT) in the comments section of the post “Does William Lane Craig Actually Believe in Evil?” I raised some standard...
View ArticleOpen Combox for Debating Objective Morality
Feel free to debate in the combox as your heart desires. I have just one suggestion: make sure you clearly define your terms. Notoriously polysemous words to define include “objective” “morality”...
View ArticleBibliography on Arguments for Atheism
(redated post originally published on 7 November 2011) The purpose of this bibliography is to provide a comprehensive listing of academic resurces which contain presentations, formulations, or defenses...
View ArticleJerry Coyne on Goodness without God
(Originally published on 17 October 2011) Jerry Coyne recently wrote an op-ed in USA Today entitled, “As Atheists Know, You Can Be Good Without God.” Christian philosopher Matt Flanagan wrote an...
View ArticleBiological vs. Philosophical Perspectives on Morality
(Redated post originally published on 18 October 2011) (This is from my archives and is undated; I’m guessing I wrote this about a decade ago. I think it is still relevant, as evidenced by Jerry...
View ArticleWes Morriston’s God and the Ontological Foundation of Morality
(Redated post originally published on 7 September 2012) Ouch! LINK
View ArticlePreliminary Remarks Concerning Euthyphro-style Ojections to the Divine...
This post is meant to set the stage for a follow-up post in which I will argue that the Euthyphro Dilemma provides a definitive (or as close to definitive as we can reasonably expect to get) objection...
View ArticleNaturalism, Theism, and Moral Ontology: A Reply to William Lane Craig
(Reposting since this seems to be so popular. So far as I am aware, neither WLC nor anyone else has responded to this.) Abstract: This paper considers William Lane Craig’s metaethical argument for...
View ArticleMoral Arguments for God and Coining a Name for a Common but Fallacious Objection
In response to Wintery Knight’s recent blog post on the plausibility of objective morality on atheism, I posted a comment in the combox on his site. The comment consisted solely of a link to my YouTube...
View ArticleAre Atheism and Moral Realism Logically Incompatible?
I am a regular reader of Victor Reppert’s blog, Dangerous Idea. In the combox for one of his recent posts, Steve Hays claimed that atheism and moral realism are logically incompatible. I wrote a...
View ArticleEuthyphro Dilemmas
As I explained on page 25 of my Primer in Religion and Morality I think there are multiple dilemmas floating around under the name “Euthyphro Dilemma” (hereafter, ED). ED: The literal, original...
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