Over at the First Things: Evangel blog we’ve been discussing whether ethics can be sufficiently grounded apart from the existence of God. Here are some links relating to that topic:
From William Lane Craig:
The Indispensability of Theological Meta-Ethical Foundations for Morality
From my blog:
Hitchens on “Finding Morals Under Empty Heavens”
Grounding for Morality Outside of Theism?
Does It Matter If Morality Is Well Grounded?
What Do “Right” and “Wrong” Then Mean?
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Possibly related posts (automatically generated):
W.L. Craig does great work on some topics, but he’s below par on this one. For a far better treatment of the general subject, check out the five John Locke Lectures from 2009.
http://www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/lectures/john_locke_lectures/past_lectures
Thanks, Janice. I’m downloading them. It will take me some time to listen through them—maybe a week or so.
Well, it’s going to be more than a week, for the mundane reason that I couldn’t find my iPod for a few days and couldn’t listen to them in the car!
Well, I’m really pleased by the effort.
Let me say this about these lectures. They’re tough because (a) they’re addressed to professional philosophers, (b) they’re given by a person who, characteristically, makes no effort to sell himself or his arguments, and (c ) they don’t directly engage any theistic positions. On the other hand, as far as this topic and the profession is concerned, these lectures are state-of-the-art. Also, although they’re not explicitly addressed to any theistic views, these lectures do a considerable job of dissolving the sorts of puzzles which motivate basically all of the theistic arguments from morality.