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 […]
Entries Tagged as 'Why be Moral?'
Does the Dualism of Practical Reason assume Egoism?
July 30th, 2021 Comments Off on Does the Dualism of Practical Reason assume Egoism?
Tags: David Brink · Divine Command Theory · Dualism of Practical Reason · Henry Sidgwick · John Gay · Stephen Layman · Walter Sinnott-Armstrong · Why be Moral?
What is the Question?: John Gay’s “Dissertation Concerning the Fundamental Principle of Virtue or Morality”
April 3rd, 2021 Comments Off on What is the Question?: John Gay’s “Dissertation Concerning the Fundamental Principle of Virtue or Morality”
In recent posts I have been looking at the rhetorical question: “if there is no God, why be good?” In my last post, I suggested one way to understand this question was in terms of Henry Sidgwick’s famous argument regarding the “dualism of practical reason. As I interpreted Sidgwick, his argument had three steps. First, […]
Tags: Divine Command Theory · God and Morality · Henry Sidgwick · John Gay · Utilitarianism · Why be Moral?
What is the Question?: Henry Sidgwick’s Dualism of Practical Reason
March 26th, 2021 Comments Off on What is the Question?: Henry Sidgwick’s Dualism of Practical Reason
In a previous post, I criticised Richard Dawkins’s discussion of the question: if there is no God, why be good? One criticism I raised was that Dawkins seemed to misunderstand the challenge this rhetorical question presents. This raises the question as to how we should understand this rhetorical question. What exactly is the problem being […]
Tags: Divine Command Theory · Dualism of Practical Reason · God and Morality · Henry Sidgwick · Utilitarianism · Why be Moral?
Dawkin’s dilemma: How not to answer the question “Why Be Moral?”
January 21st, 2021 Comments Off on Dawkin’s dilemma: How not to answer the question “Why Be Moral?”
In his bestselling book, the God Delusion, Richard Dawkin’s responds to the question: “If there is no God, Why be good?” Posed like that, the question sounds positively ignoble. When a religious person puts it to me in this way (and many of them do), my immediate temptation is to issue the following challenge: ‘Do you really mean […]
Tags: God and Morality · Henry Sidgwick · Richard Dawkins · The God Delusion · Thomas Reid · 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
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.
