Right Reason

As you may know, while I was in the UK recently I visited Justin at Premiere Radio who hosts the Unbelievable? Radio show. We recorded two episodes, and the first one aired on the 4th of September (my birthday – how appropriate!) and is now available in the show’s podcast. You can subscribe to the show over at the iTunes store, or you can head on over to the Unbelievable website and find the episode there.

The first show was a discussion with John Haldane of St Andrews University on the mind-body problem from a Christian point of view. It was a real pleasure to chat with John, he’s a scholar and a gentleman, and the conversation was most cordial and enjoyable. Enjoy!

We recorded two episodes on that day. The second was a discussion between me and Arif Ahmed, an atheist from the University of Cambridge on morality and God. That episode will air three weeks after this one. Apparently the Pope is visiting the UK and that’s more important in terms of radio coverage. Sheesh, priorities!

On Monday the 6th of September I spoke at the University of Auckland on The New Atheists, Science and Morality. The talk is like a live presentation version of a podcast on Sam Harris and morality that I did a while back, with some updates and variations.

Jachin over at the Explaining the Bible website took some really good video footage of the talk, so whether you were there or not, you get to watch it in high quality:

The new atheism, science & morality with Glenn Peoples 6 September 2010 from E†B: ExplainingTheBible.com on Vimeo.

Philosophers who defend theism by making use of the classical arguments or some variation thereof (like the cosmological argument, the teleological and fine tuning arguments and the moral argument) have always been realistic about what each of these arguments, if sound, establishes. The cosmological argument establishes that the universe has a cause with certain features (the features of being spaceless, timeless and if Bill Craig is right, personal). The teleological argument, if sound, establishes that there is a creator with intelligent intentions. The arguments are obviously and intentionally limited in scope, so it makes no sense to complain that one of them doesn’t establish, say, the Apostles’ Creed. This is a point sometimes lost on apologists for atheism. Richard Dawkins, for example, complained that the cosmological argument doesn’t also tell us that the one true God has the properties of omniscience, omnipotence, creativity, mercy and so on. But the answer to this complaint, as Bill Craig duly noted, is a rather obvious “so what”?

I was prompted by a recent comment by a visitor to have another look at what I take to be a related and more recent line of argument against traditional arguments for theism, this time an argument by Stephen Law (I was prompted further still when Stephen Law joined in the discussion himself). In his original and enjoyable article “the evil-god challenge,” Law explains:

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Public Lecture: The New Atheism, Science and Morality

As you know (and a number of you have very kindly supported me in the endeavour), shortly I’ll be flying off to Oxford for a conference at which I’ll be speaking (more on that another time). When I get back I have a couple of speaking engagements lined up in Auckland before returning home to Dunedin. Here’s one of them.

The New Atheists, that outspoken motley crew full of passion and godlessness (a description I rather suspect they’d appreciate and endorse), have little time for the view that the existence of moral truths is correctly explained with reference to God as the moral lawgiver. That view, says Sam Harris, is downright dangerous in our day and age. Instead, we should think of moral facts as being scientific facts, facts revealed to us by neuroscience as it describes the human brain and its ability to produce the experience of either happiness or suffering. With this argument in hand, many might think that the New Atheists have latched on to a way of preserving genuine moral truths in a world without God.

But have they? In this public lecture I’ll explain how Dr Harris presents his view, and I will also explain the fundamental moral issues that his account overlooks altogether. Far from being an explanation of morality that makes God redundant, what the New Atheists really have in Harris’s account is a model of morality that lacks foundations unless God is re-introduced as the lawgiver who decides which states of affairs we ought to be trying to bring about in the first place.

Date: Monday the 6th of September 2010, 7pm

Place: University of Auckland, Library Basement 15

EDIT: HERE is the Facebook page for this event.

“Is God the Source of Morality?”
Is it rational to ground right and wrong in commands issued by God?
Matthew Flannagan (left, affirmative) vs Raymond Bradley (right, negative)
University of Auckland, 2^nd of August 2010

Few subjects in philosophy are more interesting to me than the meta-ethical question of what makes any moral claims true. My particular area of interest is the question of whether or not moral facts can be grounded in a purely naturalistic view of reality. The topic of this debate therefore grabbed my interest as soon as it was announced – and this was in no small part due to the fact that one of the debate participants was my good friend Matthew Flannagan, who blogs at MandM. What follows is my summary and review of that debate. As someone with no duty whatsoever to not take a side in the debate, I’ll comment on the arguments as they unfold throughout the debate rather like one commentating a live boxing match. And now the opening bell rings.

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