Right Reason

The blog of Dr Glenn Andrew Peoples on Theology, Philosophy, and Social Issues

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Episode 039: Divine Command Ethics

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On March 27, 2011

In meta-ethics, philosophy of religion, podcast

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NOTE: In this episode I call it episode 40. It’s not. It’s episode 39.

The podcast is back. Actually, episode 39 was going to be on another topic, but then someone suggested this one to me, so as I already had a document called “episode 039” I called this “document 040.” And then when I started recording it I thought – “Hey, this is the 40th episode. Cool!” and I made a big deal of it in the recording. And then after I uploaded it I realised that since I skipped over the episode 39 that I’m writing, this isn’t really 40 at all, it’s episode 39! So that was an epic fail.

So no sooner do I release another podcast episode, I am making excuses for it! This episode is based on a lecture on divine command ethics that I gave a few years ago at the University of Otago. Enjoy!

 

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Episode 037: Classical Liberalism and Natural Law

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On September 25, 2010

In meta-ethics, philosophy of religion, podcast, political philosophy

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This is the second time I have ever actually apologised for an episode. It’s long. It’s dry. You might fall asleep. I’m sorry. Go ahead and skip it. I would.

 

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Confusing the Good and the Right

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On September 20, 2010

In meta-ethics, philosophy of religion

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Today Erik Wielenberg’s book Value and Virtue in a Godless Universe arrived in the mail. Wielenberg is a proponent of the claim that moral facts exist without God. They are just brute facts. They are there, and that is that, with no deeper explanation to be offered. Because of my keen interest in the moral argument for theism, I was interested in seeing what he had to say.

At the moment I’m still at the stage of flicking through the pages, but already I am recognising some familiar friends (or enemies!) on the pages I read. The first one I thought I would mention is the perennial confusion of the the concept of moral rightness with more general goodness.

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A simple explanation of the moral argument

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On September 1, 2010

In apologetics, philosophy of religion

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Recently there has been some discussion here about the moral argument for theism, with a couple of correspondents announcing with great certainty (but unfortunately little else) that the argument is just terrible. I beg to differ. Today I appeared on an episode of the Unbelievable? radio show, hosted by Justin Brierley (actually we did two shows), and the other guest was atheist Arif Ahmed.

I’ll have some more things to say about the show another time (these discussions always leave one wishing that more had been said, or “I wish I had thought of this reply at the time!”, plus there are the inevitable structures of the radio show itself). For now, however, I just want to present the version of the moral argument that I used. What follows is the “prepared” version, as though I were giving a presentation on the argument – a very simple presentation, intended for a radio audience consisting of laypeople. Of course, in a discussion style radio show it wasn’t presented as one continuous explanation like this, and plenty of parts were left out. Time is short on such occasions, so not everything gets said. But you get to read it anyway 🙂 Here it is:

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The Great Pumpkin Objection

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On June 20, 2010

In apologetics, atheism, epistemology, philosophy of religion

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In the last podcast episode on Plantinga and properly basic beliefs, I briefly discussed the “Great Pumpkin Objection.” As it’s a subject worthy of a blog post of its own, and given that I know some people prefer things in writing, I thought I’d add a blog entry focused on that objection.

Alvin Plantinga has hammered out and defended the notion that if God (the Christian God that he believes in) really exists, then a Christian’s belief in God can be construed as properly basic. A properly basic belief is one that is rationally held and yet not derived from other beliefs that one holds (this is another way of saying that it is not justified by what is often called evidence). We hold many such beliefs, for example, the belief that the universe was not created just five minutes ago, any beliefs based on memory, belief that other minds exist, the belief that we are experiencing a certain colour, and so on. Set aside, for now, the fact that a lot of Christians think that they can produce decent evidence for the existence of God. Plantinga argued – successfully in my view – that even if that’s true, theism can be construed as properly basic and hence suitably justified even without such evidence. God created us in such a way that when we function properly we believe in him. The normal epistemic response to creation is to believe things like “God created this,” or more fundamentally, “God is real.” For more details, check out the podcast episode.

One bandwagon that anti-theists have jumped on is to claim that if theists can claim that their belief in God is basic, then just anybody at all can do this in regard to their belief in just anything. Here’s one popular version of that objection: In the comic strip Peanuts, the character Linus believes that there exists a Great Pumpkin who rises from the pumpkin patch every Halloween and rewards good children with presents. If Christians get to think that belief in God can be properly basic, then why couldn’t a person (like Linus) think that belief in the Great Pumpkin is properly basic, and so claim the right to believe it even though he cannot produce evidence for the belief’s truth?

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Episode 036: Alvin Plantinga and Properly Basic Beliefs

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On June 11, 2010

In epistemology, philosophy of religion, podcast

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Here’s episode 36, in honour of the recent retirement of Alvin Plantinga as the John O’Brien Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. It’s sort of a “nuts and bolts” podcast episode on Alvin Plantinga, introducing the listener to his account of belief in God as a properly basic belief – a belief justifiably held, but not held on the basis of evidence or argument.

Enjoy.

 

 

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The Lottery Fallacy Fallacy

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On May 5, 2010

In apologetics, atheism, philosophy of religion

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Some arguments are like mosquitoes. They get slapped and well and truly squashed – unambiguously defeated in plain sight for all to see, obviously crushed. The smeared body is witnessed. But then as soon as you try to relax again, that familiar whining sound fades in again. You think, Didn’t I just squash you? Yes you did, and it’s back.

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, objections to divine command theories of ethics are a good example of arguments like this. But they’re not alone. Another is the Lottery Fallacy Fallacy. I know, calling something a “fallacy” is a bit of a rhetorical device, but I use the term because the argument that I want to rebut – again – is one that trades on using that word for rhetorical effect, so my use of the word twice must surely double the effect!

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Episode 035: Sam Harris, Science and Morality

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On April 25, 2010

In atheism, meta-ethics, philosophy of religion, podcast

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So-called new atheist Sam Harris maintains that moral values are really scientific facts, and that they have no connection to God (indeed, God does not exist, thinks Harris).

Episode 35 is an analysis of a recent talk given by Harris gave on science and human values. The talk was part of a TED conference, and you can see it here. Here I offer an explanation of how I think he has failed. In brief, I think his entire presentation is an exercise in circular reasoning.

Harris has a new book on the subject, The Moral Landscape, which is to be released later this year.

 Glenn Peoples

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Episode 016: The Liberal Theocracy

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On September 16, 2008

In meta-ethics, philosophy of religion, podcast, political philosophy

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The Liberal Theocracy? “What?!” You ask in disbelief. A contradiction in terms, you might think. Not so. This episode is, well, long. I noted the howls of protest at my decision to shorten the episodes, and I was listening. But don’t think you’ll get this every episode! The next one will probably be a short one.

EDIT: Also, this is without a doubt the most intolerably boring episode ever. I am so sorry. The degree of banality possessed by this episode has dissuaded me from trying to have a paper on this subject published. It would put the reader to sleep!

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Episode 015: Why become an atheist?

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On September 1, 2008

In apologetics, atheism, philosophy of religion, podcast

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It’s back!

The last month has been pretty crazy for me: changing job and moving house being among the main culprits for this state of affairs. But after much ado, here it is, Episode 15! This time I’m asking a simple question: Why be an atheist? And if you’re not one, why become one? And if you are one, why try to persuade other people to become one?

I’ve started a new trend with this episode. Some previous episodes were just too long for a lot of listeners, so I’m making a fairly strict rule that episodes shall not exceed forty minutes. This one’s just under twenty eight minutes, so I’m off to a good start. Also, I’ll only be putting episodes up each fortnight rather than weekly, just because I don’t have quite as much time as I did before – plus with all these people downloading an episode every week I literally couldn’t afford the bandwidth!

So here it is, enjoy. As always, comments either here or by email to be discussed on the show are more than welcome.

Glenn Peoples

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