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. I outlined four assumptions about the kind of requirements morality imposes upon us. These […]
Entries Tagged as 'Stephen Layman'
Thinking Matters Talk: Does Morality Need God? Part Two:
August 29th, 2022 Comments Off on Thinking Matters Talk: Does Morality Need God? Part Two:
Tags: Bruce Russell · Dualism of Practical Reason · Henry Sidgwick · Stephen Layman · Walter Sinnott-Armstrong
Does the Incommensurability of Prudential and Impartial rationality avoid the dualism of Practical Reason?
August 14th, 2021 Comments Off on Does the Incommensurability of Prudential and Impartial rationality avoid the dualism of Practical Reason?
I have been discussing the dualism of practical reason. As I understand it, this is an inference from three premises: [1] We always have most reason to do what is morally required [2] An act is morally required if and only if it is impartially demanded: demanded by rules justified from a perspective of impartial […]
Tags: Derek Parfit · Dualism of Practical Reason · God and Morality · Henry Sidgwick · Peter Bryne · Stephen Layman
Does the Dualism of Practical Reason assume Egoism?
July 30th, 2021 Comments Off on Does the Dualism of Practical Reason assume Egoism?
Recently, I have been examining the question, “If there is no God, why be good?” As I interpret it, this expresses an argument about the “dualism of practical reason” made by Henry Sidgwick and John Gay. This argument had three steps. First, unless we assume that it is always in our long-term self-interest to follow […]
Tags: David Brink · Divine Command Theory · Dualism of Practical Reason · Henry Sidgwick · John Gay · Stephen Layman · Walter Sinnott-Armstrong · Why be Moral?
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
There’s Probably No God? Fisking Atheist Billboards
July 12th, 2010 430 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
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.
