Divine Command Theory - A Tippling Philosopher

A Tippling Philosopher

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Divine Command Theory

A collection of 13 posts

Where do we get our morals?

If you, like me, are atheist, then you have no doubt had this question leveled at you as well. It's ubiquitous in such circles, but it has no merit, really. Rather similar is the idea that if "God is dead" then we will just go about

Divine command theory defended, and re-attacked

Having recently written a piece drawing on fellow OnlySky writing colleague Phil Zuckerman's brilliant book What It Means To Be Moral: Why Religion Is Not Necessary for Living an Ethical Life, it is always nice to receive critiques of my writing. Just to remind you, the piece was

Divine command theory: How the religious are often not moral agents

Divine Command Theory

Divine command theory: How the religious are often not moral agents

Phil Zuckerman, a sociologist of religion and nonreligion and fellow OnlySky columnist, has written a superb book called What It Means To Be Moral: Why Religion Is Not Necessary for Living an Ethical Life that should be compulsory reading. One of the early chapters, "You Will Obey," is

Responding to Breuer on Conceptual Nominalism

conceptual nominalism

Responding to Breuer on Conceptual Nominalism

Luke Breuer kindly responded to my request and provided a critique of my position of conceptual nominalism recently. I hope to look at his claims and analyse them in my reply here today. I have a forthcoming book that sets out my position with a lot more depth and clarity

conceptual nominalism

Spontaneous Abortion: God Has the Right to Take Lives?

I was recently involved in a discussion/argument that started off with a Christian stating: We want freedom from stupid govt. lockdowns for a non-pandemic. [I will edit these quick Facebook comments only for grammar/punctuation.] Which then distilled down to a conversation about abortion. Because that's what

Dietmut Teijgeman-Hansen - Flickr - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/

Divine Command Theory

On Divine Command Theories

Christians are often quick to accuse atheists of having no grounding to their moral frameworks; however, the reality is that their own groundings are fraught with terminal issues. One such problematic moral framework is Divine Command Theory. The basic premise is this: morality does not exist independently of God, it

Dietmut Teijgeman-Hansen - Flickr - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/

My Atheistic Moral Philosophy; Objective, Subjective and Theistic Morality

As promised, here, finally, is a hopefully succinct synopsis (ha, er, impossible) of my moral philosophy. In setting it out, I will also counter positions adopted and claimed by theistic thinkers and apologists (am I implying apologists aren't thinkers?). Let's set out the basics. What is

Dietmut Teijgeman-Hansen - Flickr - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/

Atheists and Morality: Moral Oughts

Religionists so often bang out the claim that atheists have no basis for a moral ought. Take this comment, from another thread (Atheists and Morality: On Christian Theories of Ethics): Moral obligation ( ought ) and moral prohibition ( ought not ) make absolutely no sense in an essentially and ultimately meaningless existence. All

Divine Command Theory

Atheists and Morality: On Christian Theories of Ethics

I was recently railing against naive claims that some theists mistakenly throw about. Let me give you some more of the chapter I wrote for John Loftus' book Christianity Is Not Great, a continuation of that last post: On Christian Theories of Ethics I will endeavor to run briefly

consequentialism

16 Problems with Divine Command Theory

Divine Command Theory, or DCT, is the most prominent ethical framework adopted by religious thinkers in modern times. The idea for them is that it gets them an objective grounding for morality. DCT says that whatever God commands is necessarily good because God commands it, and this is based on

Biblical Exegesis

The Exodus Revisited: Taking a Commenter to Task

I posted some notes I made on the ridiculousness of the Exodus account the other day. It has been met with pretty universal agreement by fellow skeptics, unsurprisingly, on the threads here and on facebook. So it was interesting when I received the following comment: Because you are self-described philosopher,

Divine Command Theory

Taking Nabeel Qureshi to task over morality

Nabeel Qureshi is great; he is a great resource for critiquing Islam, Muhammad, the Qu'ran and the Hadith. He is an ex-Muslim who converted to Christianity and now runs and MA course at Biola and runs his own ministry. His knowledge of Islam is super and his videos have certainly helped me in my exe

Divine Command Theory

The Problem with Divine Command Theory #2

Further to my post yesterday on Inter-Testamental Moral Relativism, I would like to make a few more points (which I have mentioned before here) on morality concerning God. Divine Command Theory (DCT) is the Christian/theistic ethical system whereby whatever God commands is rendered morally good and