This year the New Zealand apologetics organization Thinking Matters, ran a “Confident Christianity Conference” in Auckland. I was asked to speak at this conference on the topic. Does Morality Need God? Below is a slightly streamlined version of the talk I gave. “If God does not exist, then everything is permissible.” These words from Ivan […]
Entries Tagged as 'Robert Adams'
Thinking Matters Talk: Does Morality Need God? Part One
August 24th, 2022 Comments Off on Thinking Matters Talk: Does Morality Need God? Part One
Tags: Divine Command Theory · God and Morality · John Stuart Mill · Peter Singer · Robert Adams
Can a Divine Command Theory Vindicate the Objectivity of Morality: Huemer on Observer Independence, part two
September 12th, 2021 Comments Off on Can a Divine Command Theory Vindicate the Objectivity of Morality: Huemer on Observer Independence, part two
In my last post, I discussed Michael Huemer’s argument that a divine command theory cannot vindicate the objectivity of moral requirements. As I interpret him, the argument is: [1] Our commitment to morality presupposes that moral requirements are objective. [2] Moral requirements are objective just in case there obtain facts about what is right and […]
Tags: Alvin Plantinga · Divine Command Theory · John Foster · Michael Huemer · Objectivism · Robert Adams
The Psychopath Objection to Divine Command Theory: Another Response to Erik Wielenberg (Part three)
October 8th, 2019 Comments Off on The Psychopath Objection to Divine Command Theory: Another Response to Erik Wielenberg (Part three)
In Part One, I expounded the Psychopath objection to divine command meta-ethics (DCM) that has recently been defended by Erik Wielenberg. Wielenberg argues as follows: R1) If God commands a person S to do act A, this command imposes an obligation on S to do A, only if S is capable of recognising the requirement […]
Tags: C Stephen Evans · Erik Wielenberg · Psychopathy · Robert Adams
The Psychopath Objection to Divine Command Theory: Another Response to Erik Wielenberg (part one)
September 3rd, 2019 Comments Off on The Psychopath Objection to Divine Command Theory: Another Response to Erik Wielenberg (part one)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iVyVJAMiOY.
Recently, Erik Wielenberg has developed a novel objection to divine command meta-ethics (DCM). DCM “has the implausible implication that psychopaths have no moral obligations and hence their evil acts, no matter how evil, are morally permissible” (Wielenberg (2008), 1). Wielenberg develops this argument in response to some criticisms of his earlier work. One of the […]
Tags: C Stephen Evans · Divine Command Theory · Erik Wielenberg · God and Morality · Psychopathy · Robert Adams · William Lane Craig
Erik Wielenberg and the Autonomy thesis: part four Intrinsic goodness
March 31st, 2017 23 Comments
In my last two posts, I argued that Erik Wielenberg fails to show that Godless Normative Robust Realism (GRNR) avoids some of the standard objections to the autonomy thesis. This brings me to Wielenberg’s third claim III, Wielenberg suggests that GRNR is prima facie preferable to various theistic accounts of axiological properties. Several authors have […]
Tags: Erik Wielenberg · God and Morality · Intrinsic Value · Linda Zagzebski · Mark Murphy · Moral Realism · Robert Adams · supervenience · Thomas Carson
Erik Wielenberg and the Autonomy Thesis: Part Two Standard Objections to the Autonomy Thesis, Reasons to be Moral Without God
March 20th, 2017 3 Comments
The autonomy thesis contends that there can be moral requirements to φ regardless of whether God commands, desires, or wills that people φ. In his monograph, Robust Ethics: The Metaphysics and Epistemology of Godless Normative Realism,[1] Erik Wielenberg offers arguably one of the most sophisticated defences of the autonomy thesis to date. Wielenberg argues three […]
Tags: Erik Wielenberg · God and Morality · Robert Adams · Stephen Layman · Why be Moral? · William Lane Craig
Is Ethical Naturalism More Plausible than Supernaturalism? A Reply to Walter Sinnott-Armstrong: Part II
April 26th, 2012 7 Comments
This is the second part of the paper I presented to the Naturalisms in Ethics Conference at Auckland University last year. In my previous post, I noted that Robert Adams has argued that if God exists, then divine commands “best fill the role assigned to wrongness by the concept”.[1] He argues that if moral obligations are […]
Tags: Divine Command Theory · John Hare · Robert Adams · Stephen Layman · Walter Sinnott-Armstrong · William Lane Craig
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.
