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Moral arguments for the existence of God

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2008)

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  1. The Psychopath Objection to Divine Command Theory.Matthew Flannagan - 2021 - European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 13 (3).
    : Recently, Erik Wielenberg has developed a novel objection to divine command meta-ethics. The objection that DCM "has the implausible implication that psychopaths have no moral obligations and hence their evil acts, no matter how evil, are morally permissible". This article criticizes Wielenberg's argument. Section 1 will expound Wielenberg's new "psychopath" argument in the context of the recent debate over the Promulgation Objection. Section 2 will discuss two ambiguities in the argument; in particular, Wielenberg’s formulation is ambiguous between whether Wielenberg (...)
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  • Divine Command Theory and Psychopathy.Erik Wielenberg - forthcoming - Religious Studies.
    I advance a novel challenge for Divine Command Theory based on the existence of psychopaths. The challenge, in a nutshell, is that Divine Command Theory has the implausible implication that psychopaths have no moral obligations and hence their evil acts, no matter how evil, are morally permissible. After explaining this argument, I respond to three objections to it and then critically examine the prospect that Divine Command Theorists might bite the bullet and accept that psychopaths can do no wrong. I (...)
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  • (8 other versions)Critique of Pure Reason.Immanuel Kant - 1781 - Mineola, New York: Macmillan Company. Edited by J. M. D. Meiklejohn.
    Immanuel Kant was one of the leading lights of 18th-century philosophy; his work provided the foundations for later revolutionary thinkers such as Hegel and Marx. This work contains the keystone of his critical philosophy - the basis of human knowledge and truth.
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  • Warranted Christian Belief.Alvin Plantinga - 2000 - New York, US: Oxford University Press USA.
    This is the third volume in Alvin Plantinga's trilogy on the notion of warrant, which he defines as that which distinguishes knowledge from true belief. In this volume, Plantinga examines warrant's role in theistic belief, tackling the questions of whether it is rational, reasonable, justifiable, and warranted to accept Christian belief and whether there is something epistemically unacceptable in doing so. He contends that Christian beliefs are warranted to the extent that they are formed by properly functioning cognitive faculties, thus, (...)
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  • Taking Morality Seriously: A Defense of Robust Realism.David Enoch - 2011 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK.
    David Enoch develops, argues for, and defends a strongly realist and objectivist view of ethics and normativity more broadly. This view--according to which there are perfectly objective, universal, moral and other normative truths that are not in any way reducible to other, natural truths--is familiar, but this book is the first in-detail development of the positive motivations for the view into reasonably precise arguments. And when the book turns to defend Robust Realism against traditional objections, it mobilizes the original positive (...)
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  • Is Goodness Without God Good Enough?: A Debate on Faith, Secularism, and Ethics.Robert K. Garcia & Nathan L. King (eds.) - 2008 - Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
    Morality and religion: intimately wed, violently opposed, or something else? Discussion of this issue appears in pop culture, the academy, and the media―often generating radically opposed views. At one end of the spectrum are those who think that unless God exists, ethics is unfounded and the moral life is unmotivated. At the other end are those who think that religious belief is unnecessary for―and even a threat to―ethical knowledge and the moral life. -/- This volume provides an accessible, charitable discussion (...)
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  • A moral reason to be a mere theist: improving the practical argument.Xiaofei Liu - 2016 - International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 79 (2):113-132.
    This paper is an attempt to improve the practical argument for beliefs in God. Some theists, most famously Kant and William James, called our attention to a particular set of beliefs, the Jamesian-type beliefs, which are justified by virtue of their practical significance, and these theists tried to justify theistic beliefs on the exact same ground. I argue, contra the Jamesian tradition, that theistic beliefs are different from the Jamesian-type beliefs and thus cannot be justified on the same ground. I (...)
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  • (4 other versions)The Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals.Immanuel Kant - 1785 - Harper Collins.
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  • Studies in Christian Philosophy.W. R. Matthews - 1922 - Philosophical Review 31 (2):191-194.
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  • Robust Ethics: The Metaphysics and Epistemology of Godless Normative Realism.Erik Joseph Wielenberg - 2014 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
    Erik J. Wielenberg draws on recent work in analytic philosophy and empirical moral psychology to defend non-theistic robust normative realism, according to which there are objective ethical features of the universe that do not depend on God for their existence. He goes on to develop an empirically-grounded account of human moral knowledge.
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  • Religion and the Queerness of Morality.George Mavrodes - 1986 - In Robert Audi & William J. Wainwright (eds.), Rationality, religious belief, and moral commitment: new essays in the philosophy of religion. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. pp. 213--26.
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  • Evolutionary Debunking, Moral Realism and Moral Knowledge.Russ Shafer-Landau - 2012 - Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 7 (1):1-38.
    This paper reconstructs what I take to be the central evolutionary debunking argument that underlies recent critiques of moral realism. The argument claims that given the extent of evolutionary influence on our moral faculties, and assuming the truth of moral realism, it would be a massive coincidence were our moral faculties reliable ones. Given this coincidence, any presumptive warrant enjoyed by our moral beliefs is defeated. So if moral realism is true, then we can have no warranted moral beliefs, and (...)
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  • (4 other versions)Critique of judgment.Immanuel Kant - 1790 - New York: Barnes & Noble. Edited by J. H. Bernard.
    Kant's attempt to establish the principles behind the faculty of judgment remains one of the most important works on human reason.
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  • On Pragmatic Encroachment in Epistemology.Matthew McGrath - 2007 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 75 (3):558-589.
    We argue, contrary to epistemological orthodoxy, that knowledge is not purely epistemic—that knowledge is not simply a matter of truth‐related factors (evidence, reliability, etc.). We do this by arguing for a pragmatic condition on knowledge, KA: if a subject knows that p, then she is rational to act as if p. KA, together with fallibilism, entails that knowledge is not purely epistemic. We support KA by appealing to the role of knowledge‐citations in defending and criticizing actions, and by giving a (...)
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  • (2 other versions)God and the Moral Order.C. Stephen Layman - 2002 - Faith and Philosophy 19 (3):304-316.
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  • On the evolutionary debunking of morality.Erik J. Wielenberg - 2010 - Ethics 120 (3):441-464.
    Evolutionary debunkers of morality hold this thesis: If S’s moral belief that P can be given an evolutionary explanation, then S’s moral belief that P is not knowledge. In this paper, I debunk a variety of arguments for this thesis. I first sketch a possible evolutionary explanation for some human moral beliefs. Next, I explain how, given a reliabilist approach to warrant, my account implies that humans possess moral knowledge. Finally, I examine the debunking arguments of Michael Ruse, Sharon Street, (...)
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  • Moral realism: a defence.Russ Shafer-Landau - 2003 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    Moral Realism is a systematic defence of the idea that there are objective moral standards. Russ Shafer-Landau argues that there are moral principles that are true independently of what anyone, anywhere, happens to think of them. His central thesis, as well as the many novel supporting arguments used to defend it, will spark much controversy among those concerned with the foundations of ethics.
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  • (1 other version)Finite and Infinite Goods: A Framework for Ethics.Robert Merrihew Adams - 1999 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    Renowned scholar Robert Adams explores the relation between religion and ethics through a comprehensive philosophical account of a theistically-based framework for ethics. Adams' framework begins with the good rather than the right, and with excellence rather than usefulness. He argues that loving the excellent, of which adoring God is a clear example, is the most fundamental aspect of a life well lived. Developing his original and detailed theory, Adams contends that devotion, the sacred, grace, martyrdom, worship, vocation, faith, and other (...)
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  • The sources of normativity.Christine Marion Korsgaard - 1996 - New York: Cambridge University Press. Edited by Onora O'Neill.
    Ethical concepts are, or purport to be, normative. They make claims on us: they command, oblige, recommend, or guide. Or at least when we invoke them, we make claims on one another; but where does their authority over us - or ours over one another - come from? Christine Korsgaard identifies four accounts of the source of normativity that have been advocated by modern moral philosophers: voluntarism, realism, reflective endorsement, and the appeal to autonomy. She traces their history, showing how (...)
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  • A Darwinian dilemma for realist theories of value.Sharon Street - 2006 - Philosophical Studies 127 (1):109-166.
    Contemporary realist theories of value claim to be compatible with natural science. In this paper, I call this claim into question by arguing that Darwinian considerations pose a dilemma for these theories. The main thrust of my argument is this. Evolutionary forces have played a tremendous role in shaping the content of human evaluative attitudes. The challenge for realist theories of value is to explain the relation between these evolutionary influences on our evaluative attitudes, on the one hand, and the (...)
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  • Divine Commands and Moral Requirements.Philip L. Quinn - 1978 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
    In this wide-ranging study, Quinn argues that human moral autonomy is compatible with unqualified obedience to divine commands. He formulates several versions of the crucial assumptions of divine command ethics, defending them against a battery of objections often expressed in the philosophical literature.
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  • (1 other version)Moral Values and the Idea of God.W. R. Sorley - 1919 - Mind 28 (110):234-238.
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  • (3 other versions)Critique of Practical Reason.Immanuel Kant (ed.) - 1788 - New York,: Hackett Publishing Company.
    With this volume, Werner Pluhar completes his work on Kant's three Critiques, an accomplishment unique among English language translators of Kant. At once accurate, fluent, and accessible, Pluhar's rendition of the Critique of Practical Reason meets the standards set in his widely respected translations of the Critique of Judgement (1987) and the Critique of Pure Reason (1996).
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  • Humanism and the Death of God: Searching for the Good After Darwin, Marx, and Nietzsche.Ronald E. Osborn - 2017 - New York, New York: Oxford University Press UK.
    Humanism and the Death of God is a critical exploration of secular humanism and its discontents. Through close readings of three exemplary nineteenth-century philosophical naturalists or materialists, who perhaps more than anyone set the stage for our contemporary quandaries when it comes to questions of human nature and moral obligation, Ronald E. Osborn argues that "the death of God" ultimately tends toward the death of liberal understandings of the human as well. Any fully persuasive defense of humanistic values--including the core (...)
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  • (2 other versions)The Will to Believe: And Other Essays in Popular Philosophy.William James - 1897 - New York: Cambridge University Press. Edited by Frederick Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers & Ignas K. Skrupskelis.
    For this 1897 publication, the American philosopher William James brought together ten essays, some of which were originally talks given to Ivy League societies. Accessible to a broader audience, these non-technical essays illustrate the author's pragmatic approach to belief and morality, arguing for faith and action in spite of uncertainty. James thought his audiences suffered 'paralysis of their native capacity for faith' while awaiting scientific grounds for belief. His response consisted in an attitude of 'radical empiricism', which deals practically rather (...)
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  • Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason.J. L. Schellenberg - 1993 - Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
    In Part 1 of this book, the first full-length treatment of its topic, J. L. Schellenberg argues that when we notice how.
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  • Good God: The Theistic Foundations of Morality.David Baggett - 2011 - Oxford University Press. Edited by Jerry L. Walls.
    This book aims to reinvigorate discussions of moral arguments for God's existence.
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  • Justice as inherent rights: A response to my commentators.Nicholas Wolterstorff - 2009 - Journal of Religious Ethics 37 (2):261-279.
    The critical comments by my fellow symposiasts on my book, Justice: Rights and Wrongs , have provided me with the opportunity to clarify parts of my argument and to correct some misunderstandings; they have also helped me see more clearly than I did before the import of some parts of my argument. In his comments, Paul Weithman points out features of the right order conception of justice that I had not noticed. They have also prodded me to clarify in what (...)
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  • (4 other versions)The methods of ethics.Henry Sidgwick - 1884 - Bristol, U.K.: Thoemmes Press. Edited by Emily Elizabeth Constance Jones.
    This Hackett edition, first published in 1981, is an unabridged and unaltered republication of the seventh edition as published by Macmillan and Company, Limited. From the forward by John Rawls: In the utilitarian tradition Henry Sidgwick has an important place. His fundamental work, The Methods of Ethics, is the clearest and most accessible formulation of what we may call 'the classical utilitarian doctorine.' This classical doctrine holds that the ultimate moral end of social and individual action is the greatest net (...)
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  • Robust Ethics and the Autonomy Thesis.Matthew Flannagan - 2017 - Philosophia Christi 19 (2):345-362.
    In his monograph, Robust Ethics: The Metaphysics and Epistemology of Godless Normative Realism, Erik Wielenberg offers arguably one of the most sophisticated defenses of the autonomy thesis to date. Wielenberg argues that the divine command theory is problematic because it cannot account for the moral obligations of reasonable unbelievers; Godless normative robust realism can be formulated in a way that avoids the standard objections to the autonomy thesis; and GRNR provides a better account of intrinsic value. In this paper, I (...)
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  • Value and Virtue in a Godless Universe.Erik J. Wielenberg - 2005 - International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 59 (3):179-182.
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  • The Best Argument Against God.Graham Robert Oppy - 2013 - New York: Palgrave-Macmillan.
    Preface -- Introduction -- Preliminary matters -- Some big ideas -- Minimal theism and naturalism -- Standard theism and naturalism -- Conclusion.
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  • From morality to metaphysics: the theistic implications of our ethical commitments.Angus Ritchie - 2012 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    Part I: The 'explanatory gap'. 1. Why take morality to be objective? -- 2. The gap opens: evolution and our capacity for moral knowledge -- Part II: Secular responses. 3. Alternatives to realism: Simon Blackburn and Allan Gibbard -- 4. Procedures and reasons: Tim Scanlon and Christine Korsgaard -- 5. Natural goodness: Philippa Foot's moral objectivism -- 6. Natural goodness and 'second nature': John McDowell and David Wiggin -- Part III: Theism. 7. From goodness to God: closing the explanatory gap (...)
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  • (1 other version)The Existence of God.R. G. Swinburne - 2004 - Philosophical Books 6 (3):16-17.
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  • (2 other versions)An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent.John Henry Newman & Nicholas Lash - 1870 - Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press. Edited by Charles Frederick Harrold.
    This classic of Christian apologetics seeks to persuade the skeptic that there are good reasons to believe in God even though it si impossible to understand the Deity fully. First written over a century ago, the _Grammar of Assent _speaks as powerfully to us today as it did to its first readers. Because of the informal, non-technical character of Newman's work, it still retains its immediacy as an invaluable guide to the nature of religious belief. An introduction by Nicholas Lash (...)
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  • The moral gap: Kantian ethics, human limits, and God's assistance.John E. Hare - 1996 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    Is morality too difficult for human beings? Kant said that it was, except with God's assistance. Contemporary moral philosophers have usually discussed the question without reference to Christian doctrine, and have either diminished the moral demand, exaggerated human moral capacity, or tried to find a substitute in nature for God's assistance. This book looks at these philosophers--from Kant and Kierkegaard to Swinburne, Russell, and R.M. Hare--and the alternative in Christianity.
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  • God and Cosmos: Moral Truth and Human Meaning.David Baggett & Jerry L. Walls - 2016 - New York: Oxford University Press USA.
    Naturalistic ethics is the reigning paradigm among contemporary ethicists; in God and Cosmos, Baggett and Walls argue that this approach is seriously flawed. This book canvasses a broad array of secular and naturalistic ethical theories in an effort to test their adequacy in accounting for moral duties, intrinsic human value, prospects for radical moral transformation, and the rationality of morality. In each case, the authors argue, although various secular accounts provide real insights and indeed share common ground with theistic ethics, (...)
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  • The Moral Argument.Mark D. Linville - 2009 - In William Lane Craig & J. P. Moreland (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology. Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 391–448.
    An Argument From Evolutionary Naturalism An Argument from Personal Dignity References.
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  • (2 other versions)Theism and Humanism.A. J. Balfour - 1916 - International Journal of Ethics 26 (2):284-289.
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  • Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong.Fred Feldman & J. L. Mackie - 1979 - Philosophical Review 88 (1):134.
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  • (1 other version)God and Morality: A Philosophical History.John E. Hare - 2007 - Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
    _God and Morality_ evaluates the ethical theories of four principle philosophers, Aristotle, Duns Scotus, Kant, and R.M. Hare. Uses their thinking as the basis for telling the story of the history and development of ethical thought more broadly Focuses specifically on their writings on virtue, will, duty, and consequence Concentrates on the theistic beliefs to highlight continuity of philosophical thought.
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  • (1 other version)Does God Exist?A. E. Taylor - 1946 - Mind 55 (218):173-178.
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  • God and Moral Obligation.C. Stephen Evans - 2013 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    God and moral obligations -- What is a divine command theory of moral obligation? -- The relation of divine command theory to natural law and virtue ethics -- Objections to divine command theory -- Alternatives to a divine command theory -- Conclusions: The inescapability of moral obligations.
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  • Another Step in Divine Command Dialectics.Alexander Pruss - 2009 - Faith and Philosophy 26 (4):432-439.
    Consider the following three-step dialectics. (1) Even if God (consistently) commanded torture of the innocent, it would still be wrong. Therefore Divine Command Metaethics (DCM) is false. (2) No: for it is impossible for God to command torture of the innocent. (3) Even if it is impossible, there is a non-trivially true per impossibile counterfactual that even if God (consistently) com­manded torture of the innocent, it would still be wrong, and this counterfac­tual is incompatible with DCM. I shall argue that (...)
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  • Atheism, morality, and meaning.Michael Martin - 2002 - Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books.
    Divided into four parts, this treatise begins with well-known criticisms of nonreligious ethics and then develops an atheistic metaethics. In Part 2, Martin criticizes the Christian foundation of ethics, specifically the ’divine command theory’ and the idea of imitating the life of Jesus as the basis of Christian morality. Part 3 demonstrates that life can be meaningful in the absence of religious belief. Part 4 criticizes the theistic point of view in general terms as well as the specific Christian doctrines (...)
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  • Natural signs and knowledge of God: a new look at theistic arguments.C. Stephen Evans - 2012 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    Is there such a thing as natural knowledge of God? C. Stephen Evans presents the case for understanding theistic arguments as expressions of natural signs in order to gain a new perspective both on their strengths and weaknesses. Three classical, much-discussed theistic arguments - cosmological, teleological, and moral - are examined for the natural signs they embody. At the heart of this book lie several relatively simple ideas. One is that if there is a God of the kind accepted by (...)
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  • The Moral Argument for Christian Theism.H. P. Owen - 1965 - Philosophy 41 (157):275-277.
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  • Why the Horrendous Deeds Objection Is Still a Bad Argument.Matthew Flannagan - 2022 - Sophia 61 (2):399-418.
    A common objection to divine command meta-ethics is the horrendous deeds objection. Critics object that if DCM is true, anything at all could be right, no matter how abhorrent or horrendous. Defenders of DCM have responded by contending that God is essentially good: God has certain character traits essentially, such as being loving and just. A person with these character traits cannot command just anything. In recent discussions of DCM, this ‘essential goodness response’ has come under fire. Critics of DCM (...)
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  • (1 other version)The Faith of a Moralist.A. E. Taylor - 1931 - Mind 40 (159):364-375.
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  • The Moral Interpretation of Religion.Peter Byrne - 1998 - Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
    The Moral Interpretation of Religion provides a critical examination of the traditional attempt to interpret religion in moral terms alone.
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