In “The Gay Science,” Friedrich Nietzsche mused about a madman who provoked ridicule as he ran around a marketplace looking for God and declaring we killed him. “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.” In Nietzsche’s world without God, Nietzsche claimed the impossibility of moral realism, which is an objective moral …
What Does Atheism Have to Offer? The Atheist Value Proposition
Over the past few hundred years, the move to "secular rational modernism" has supplanted "traditional religious" views in many parts of the West. Atheists sometimes think Christianity will one day be toppled and atheists of the past century such as Lenin, Stalin, Pol Pot, and Mao Tse Tung certainly gave that effort their best shot. …
Continue reading "What Does Atheism Have to Offer? The Atheist Value Proposition"
Jesus’ Commandments Answer the Objective Morality Question
The intention of this writing is to showcase the way Jesus’ commandments to love the Lord above all else and to love our neighbors as ourselves is the highest and most important objective moral standard against which humans are called to judge our actions and the actions of those around us. By summing the Ten …
Continue reading "Jesus’ Commandments Answer the Objective Morality Question"
A Football Analogy for the Euthyphro Dilemma and the Divine Source of our Morality
The Euthyphro Dilemma Socrates and Plato once discovered what they determined to be a dilemma, which some have used to try to crack holes in the moral position that God is the grounding of our objective morality. They wondered whether someone is loved by the gods because he is pious or whether it is because …
Moral Values and Duties are Universal, Objective, and Grounded in a Benevolent God
“You find out more about God from the Moral Law than from the universe in general just as you find out more about a man by listening to his conversation than by looking at a house he has built. Now, from this second bit of evidence we conclude that the Being behind the universe is …
Utilitarianism or Evolution Do Not Explain Grounding for Our Objective Moral Duties
Do we have universal and objective moral values and duties to do what's right? If we do, what grounds them? Atheists and agnostics frequently suggest our social development, the heritability of social traits, or utilitarianism offer an explanation of grounding, yet these explanations fail for several reasons. Below I have identified the reasons. Do we …
Thank God We Have a Moral Compass
Tonight I happened upon a video made by a person on YouTube who refers to himself as "Prophet of Zod." The Prophet of Zod and I have been in a discussion before on YouTube in which we discussed whether we have objective moral values and duties to do what's right. He is an atheist who …
Can Evil and God Co-Exist?
After reading and reflecting upon “The Problem of Evil” by Fyodor Dostoevsky, it struck me that he would devote his full attention to some of the most egregious crimes against humanity by focusing on the brutality of those who have tortured children in front of their mothers for pleasure. One can’t help but plea for …
Philosophers Point to God as a Source of Our Objective Terminal Values
In times of increasing “Euro-secularization” and decreasing religiosity in many countries in the West, many youth have gravitated away from God. For those who seek God, however, God answers their calls, often through spiritual experiences, churches, Biblical studies, or Apologetics. “Ask and it shall be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and …
Continue reading "Philosophers Point to God as a Source of Our Objective Terminal Values"
The Weeds in Sam Harris’ Moral Landscape
Revised and updated June 17, 2018 Sam Harris, who is a best-selling author, outspoken atheist, and neuroscientist is considered one of the “four horsemen” of New Atheism, with Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, and the late Christopher Hitchens. Yet his views contrast the views of other “New Atheists” because he endorses objective morality instead of relative …
