When Bob was probing the possibility of homicide, we found that he could ask (at least) three kinds of why questions. One “why?” can be answered with an explanation about whether it is in fact legal or moral. Another “why?” could be answered with an explanation of why it is immoral to murder. If, after […]
Talking to the World about Christian Morality II: Getting Past the Gospel of Legalism
In trying to convince Bob not to kill Sam in the previous post, we ran into a series of “why” questions and corresponding kinds of answers. There is a strictly legal response, a moral response, and an enforcement mechanism (punishment or reward) response. We determined that once you are talking about enforcement mechanisms, you are […]
Talking to the World about Christian Morality: Why Shouldn’t Bob Kill Sam?
The Moral and Amoral “Why?” When an ethical law of the form, ‘Thou shalt…’, is laid down, one’s first thought is, ‘And what if I do not do it?’ It is clear, however, that ethics has nothing to do with punishment and reward in the usual sense of the terms. So our question about the […]
Is God Rightfully a Narcissistic Tyrant? Power, Love, and How We Think about God (and Ourselves)
God, Love, and Power, Part 1: Knowing God and Knowing About God This piece, which covers an issue that I think has become a prevalent problem in thinking about God, is rather long. Nevertheless, rather than breaking it into separate posts, I wanted to keep it all as one to help see how the parts […]
Morality as Natural: Why the “I don’t need a god to be moral” critique fails
Rather than continue the series on the moral argument with further takeaways—they are too numerable to include in a single post, and it would begin to look silly having a 10-part series—I have decided to develop these ideas as separate arguments in their own posts. I will make reference to claims made in the series […]
