Matt’s talk “Divine Commands and the Canaanite Massacre” at Windsor Park Baptist, is now available online. Matt’s talk was part of a series of talks hosted by “Reasons for Faith” an apologetics group based at Windsor Park Baptist Church.
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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.
Today's New Atheists proclaim themselves our culture's party of reason. It is a claim they cannot sustain. Reason is the New Atheists' weakness, not their strength and in fact, the Christian faith is a far better place to look for True Reason. Making their case accessible to the first-time inquirer as well as the serious student, this top-flight team of writers presents a sound defense and a strong introduction to the true reason uniquely found in Christianity.
The book begins by examining foundational philosophical approaches to the Bible as well as the methodological challenges those philosophies create for interpreting the Bible. It then addresses textual and historical challenges and how to deal with them. Finally it looks at ethical, scientific, and theological challenges demonstrating the Bible's moral integrity in relationship to contemporary moral emphases.
Many philosophers have considered the strengths and weaknesses of a virtue-centered approach to moral theory. Much less attention has been given to how such an approach bears on issues in applied ethics. The essays in this volume apply a virtue-centered perspective to a variety of contemporary moral issues.
The challenge of a seemingly genocidal God who commands ruthless warfare has bewildered Bible readers for generations. A range of expert contributors engage in a multidisciplinary approach that considers this issue from a variety of perspectives: biblical, ethical, philosophical and theological.
The nineteen essays here raise classical philosophical questions in fresh ways, address contemporary challenges for the church, and will deepen the thinking of the next generation of apologists. Packed with dynamic topical discussions and informed by the latest scholarship.
While New Atheists like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and others proclaim loudly their rationality, clear thinking, and incontrovertible scientific arguments, others are beginning to wonder how genuinely rational they are. Have they proved anything? Have they argued convincingly? Have they pinpointed any real challenges to the credibility of Christian faith?
I’ve read some people categorize DCT as a subjectivist meta-ethical approach since it holds rightness to be reducible and dependent on the attitudes of God.
This categorization makes a lot of sense to me. The divide isn’t really so wide between DCT proponents and other subjectivist approaches at least in terms of what it is these properties are reducible and dependent on.
Anyway, I want to get your thoughts on what I see as a very serious problem for DCT.
I don’t believe in God because I think the evidential problem of evil is a sufficient countervailing reason (assuming the god in question is the classical conception). That is really my basic problem. There are other issues involving divine hiddenness and the problem of non-belief and all that but I think those involve tentacles of the basic problem of evil.
Of course, the problem of evil isn’t a problem for DCT directly but it’s a problem for God’s existence which is in turn a problem for DCT.
The real problem I want to discuss is a kind of euthyphro take on it. I am going to lift the argument from Michael Huemer’s book “Intuitionism.”
The problem goes like this:
1. If no characteristics of God grounds an obligation to obey God’s commands, then there is no obligation to obey God’s commands
2. The morally neutral characteristics of God do not ground an
obligation to obey God’s commands.
3. If the morally significant characteristics of God ground an
obligation to obey his commands, then some moral facts are
independent of God’s commands and attitudes.
4. If either (a) there is no obligation to obey God’s commands or (b)
some moral facts are independent of God’s commands and
attitudes, then the divine command theory is false.
C. Therefore, DCT is false
Thanks