Tuesday, June 01, 2010
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A forum for discussing matters of moment, from a curmudgeonly perspective. (The ideas posted here do not necessarily represent those of any organization with which I am a part). Rude and insulting remarks will not be published, but civil disagreement is welcome.
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About Me
- Douglas Groothuis, Ph.D.
- Nothing on this blog represents the position of Denver Seminary. I am a Christian, philosopher, teacher, writer, and preacher, who is Professor of Philosophy at Denver Seminary. My most recent of my twelve books is Philosophy in Seven Sentences. My magnum opus is Christian Apologetics: A Comprehensive Case for Biblical Faith (InterVarsity Press, 2011). I have published ten others, including Truth Decay and On Jesus. I direct the Christian Apologetics and Ethics MA program at Denver Seminary.
5 comments:
Moderating irrational atheists is a guilty pleasure. They can't complain - or at least they shouldn't - because in a nothingness to molecules to life to Angelina Jolie world there could be no universal "evil" of moderating atheists.
And of course, if they whine about it they should be forced to see Expelled! ten times. After all, if getting moderated on a blog is bad then what about people whose careers and reputations are at stake for speaking what they see as truth?
The natural world provides everything necessary to define morality. You are welcome to argue that the resulting morality is deficient in some way, but it does exist.
Dr. Polhemus,
I am interested in your statement, as I have debated some who have expressed something similar. What is the standard for morality that you propose, which the natural world commends to you? Are you suggesting that nature offers certain cues or constraints that imply moral incumbency?
Does anyone know what ape meat tastes like? Since humanape revels in his ape identity, he presumably believes that killing him and eating him would be no different than killing and eating an ape or a cow. It's enough to drive an apeman to vegetarianism!
Paul,
I've read some of your blog, and I hope I understand what you are looking for here. At a minimum, we'd like an objective criteria for distinguishing good actions from bad actions. As I understand it, you would like to use God's assessment as the criteria:
Good = God approves
Bad = God disapproves
This is perfectly reasonable, if God exists. I don't think He does, so I'd like to use features of the natural world to distinguish good actions from bad. I'll use happiness and suffering in the world, which are clearly real. (This refers not just to my own happiness and suffering, but all happiness and suffering.)
Good = increases amount of happiness / decreases suffering
Bad = decreases happiness / increases suffering
It is often difficult to determine all of the consequences of our actions and the resulting change in happiness and suffering, but morality is often hard. There are a lot of arguments about what God's approval and disapproval as well.
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