Is morality independent of religion? One common argument for this position is that denying it makes God’s commands arbitrary. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong argues, Let’s assume that God commanded us not to rape. Did God have any reason to command this? If not, his command was arbitrary, and then it can’t make anything morally wrong. On the […]
Entries Tagged as 'Walter Sinnott-Armstrong'
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong on God, Morality and Arbitrariness
July 17th, 2009 21 Comments
Tags: Atheist · Divine Command Theory · God and Morality · Philosophy of Religion · Walter Sinnott-Armstrong · William Wainwright
Sunday Study: Slavery, John Locke and the Bible
June 28th, 2009 100 Comments
It is often affirmed, as an incontestable and obvious truth, that the Bible supports slavery. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong cites Leviticus 25:44 as evidence of this charge in “Why Traditional Theism is not an Adequate Foundation for Morality.”[1] Although Armstrong is not the alone in making this claim, I think the charge is mistaken; the Bible does […]
Tags: John Locke · John Loftus · Old Testament Ethics · Selection · Slavery · Sunday Study · Theology · Walter Sinnott-Armstrong
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, William Lane Craig and the Argument from Harm Part II
April 20th, 2009 7 Comments
In my last post, I discussed Walter Sinnott-Armstrong’s argument from harm. I concluded by suggesting that his conclusion missed the point and failed to address the conditional, defended by William Lane Craig that, if theism is true then there exists a sound foundation for moral duties. In this post I will argue that the same […]
Tags: Divine Command Theory · Ethics · God and Morality · Walter Sinnott-Armstrong · William Lane Craig
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, William Lane Craig and the Argument from Harm Part I
April 18th, 2009 1 Comment
This is the first of a two-part series where I examine a recent argument criticising religious ethics by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong. In many of his publications and debates William Lane Craig has defended the contention that if theism is true then there exists a sound foundation for moral duties. In a recent article, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong has […]
Tags: Divine Command Theory · Ethics · God and Morality · Walter Sinnott-Armstrong · William Alston · William Lane Craig
Maverick Philosopher on the Historical Atrocities Argument
April 11th, 2009 7 Comments
In making their case against theism many of the “new atheists” (indeed many of the old) commonly appeal to historical atrocities allegedly committed by believers in God. I was discussing this phenomena recently with Doug Geivett in the aftermath of the Craig v Hitchens debate. I cited the need for Christian apologists to rebut not […]
Tags: Alvin Plantinga · Apologetics · Atheism · Christian History · Christopher Hitchens · Philosophy of Religion · Walter Sinnott-Armstrong · William Lane Craig
Tooley, The Euthyphro Objection and Divine Commands: Part II
March 25th, 2009 8 Comments
In my last post, Tooley, The Euthyphro Objection and Divine Commands: Part I, I made some critical remarks on Michael Tooley’s critique of William Lane Craig’s version of the divine command theory. Tooley contends that this theory implies the conditional that if God had commanded mankind to torture one another as much as possible then […]
Tags: Divine Command Theory · Ethics · Euthyphro Dilemma · God and Morality · Philosophy of Religion · Walter Sinnott-Armstrong
Tooley, The Euthyphro Objection and Divine Commands: Part I
March 23rd, 2009 12 Comments
In a debate with William Lane Craig at the University of Colorado, Michael Tooley stated, There is a theory which has the consequence that there cannot be objective moral laws unless God exists—that’s the so-called ‘divine command theory of morality’. What it says is that an action is wrong because and only because God forbids […]
Tags: Divine Command Theory · Ethics · Euthyphro Dilemma · God and Morality · Philosophy of Religion · Selection · Walter Sinnott-Armstrong
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.
