News Bits
Vox’s 5th letter to me is up.
My debate with Tom Gilson of Thinking Christian is rip-roarin’ over here.
Bradley Monton wrote a review of Greg Dawes’ Theism and Explanation (my #2 best atheist book of the decade).
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Thanks for the link to the review of Theism and Explanation Luke! I’d been looking for a professional review of it.
You’re right, it’s such an important book!
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Do you know if Dawes is an atheist or a theist? In your Philosophers of Religion post you list him as an atheist but Monton suggests he may be a theist.
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In his interview with Luke, Dawes states pretty unambiguously that he is an atheist.
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Greg is an atheist. That Morton mistakes him for a theist just means that Dawes is very good at writing about these matters fairly.
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Luke,
In your debate with Tom, you state that “Most humans have an inner sensation that objective moral values exist.” Have you read the post over at _Experimental Philosophy_ that challenges this assumption. Here it is:
http://experimentalphilosophy.typepad.com/experimental_philosophy/2009/10/are-people-actually-moral-objectivists.html
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Anonymous,
Thanks for the link. Yes, I am very excited that experimentalists are finally trying to answer questions that meta-ethicists have had for a century. The question is also the subject of Finlay’s paper ‘The Error in the Error Theory’, which I summarize here.
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I’m actually quite pleased to see that the letters between Luke and Vox are finally starting to make some progress. VD still strikes me as a snob, but I suppose his tone now is about as good as it’s going to get. I don’t quite agree with his definition for evil – the “pleasure” bit strikes me as odd – but I do like it better than Luke’s starting point of just plain ol’ suffering. It was a worthy start, though
For being such a “genius”, though, VD sure seems to use a lot of comma splices…
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Do you know what a comma splice is?
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Interesting where Tom is going in Letter 6 with his “10 Points”. I think to be a Christian (in the evangelical sense) one would have to affirm them all. Without them, Original Sin doesn’t make sense.
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Regarding your use of the term “contra-causal free will”.
By this do you mean that if we were to stop time and “rewind the tape,” a person will always choose the same way because his “choice” is predetermined (I assume by some combination of genetics and experience)?
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By “contra-causal free will” I refer to the supposed ability to create events that are not 100% determined by previous causes.
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Yes, I do. Do you?
“Apes do read theology, Luke, they just don’t understand it.”
“This is not an answer, this is just hope and hand-waving.”
“I did not declare “that the truth value of a proposition does not depend on the meaning of its terms”, I merely stated that given the context of the question, which your belief in any form of evil.”
“Meta-ethical philosopher Stephen Finlay’s belief in evil is of zero relevance here, it is only your belief that is relevant to this discussion.”
I used to get marks taken off for them all the time in English essays, so I learned to spot them readily. Anyway, I didn’t mean it as an earth-shattering revelation; I just found it interesting that someone who prides himself on his eloquent phrasing and large vocabulary would get tripped up over commas.
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