Human Approximations of Morality

Kant lecture

Adam Lee, author of Daylight Atheism, has just gotten into an argument with Peter Hitchens over Divine Command Theory.  Peter Hitchens contends: "For a moral code to be effective, it must be attributed to, and vested in, a nonhuman source. It must be beyond the power of humanity to change it to suit itself." Adam responded in two posts, the first titled "There Is No Non-Human Moral Authority" and a second responding to comments Hitchens made in-thread. I think I disagree with both the guys in … [Read more...]

It’s a Fair Cop, Douthat

From Nietzsche Family Circus

In a response to a lot of the debate that followed Jennifer Fulwiler's conversion story at Why I'm Catholic, NYT columnist Ross Douthat posed a question to atheists that I find hard to answer.  Jennifer wrote that she abandoned atheism because she thought she was required to be a nihilist in a world without God, and, of the three propositions: God is not real Atheism logically requires nihilism Nihilism sucks so bad it can't be true She thought she was most likely to be wrong about … [Read more...]

Who Gets to Use Lewis’s Excuse?

Now that college is over, and I'm wrapping up my guest stint at Daylight Atheism, I finally have time to get back to reading and blogging about books (or more precisely, books about atheism and philosophy, since if I were blogging through all the YA fantasy I've been reading, this would be a very different blog).  I've just finished C.S. Lewis's The Problem of Pain, but I'm not that interested in discussing the main thesis of the book since, as I've said before, I don't think theodicy is a … [Read more...]