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 […]
Moral Argument
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 […]
Moral Arguments III: Might Might Make Right, Right?
In the previous two posts, we’ve talked about one of the central criticisms of any claim that morality is derived in some way from a divine being: The Euthyphro Dilemma. We’ve looked briefly at the original text of Plato’s Euthyphro, examined how the Dilemma develops in the dialogue. And, so far, we have found Plato/Socrates […]
Moral Arguments II: Disagreeing over God(s)
When we make arguments in support of a Christian view, those arguments can avoid accusations of question-begging by appeal to sources other than Scripture. Given that the Euthyphro Dilemma, which has been wielded against the idea of God as a source of morality, originated with Plato, what if Plato already had within the Euthyphro the […]
Moral Arguments I: The Euthyphro Dilemma
Morality, God, and the Euthyphro Dilemma Christians often appeal to the moral argument when speaking of the secular movement of our culture, and its (probably related) moral decay: “Without God,” one might say, “there is no ground for morality. We’ve rejected belief in God and now we’re reaping what we’ve sown.” If you’ve ever made […]
