Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T17:51:56.370Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
Series:   Elements in the Philosophy of Religion

God and Morality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 April 2019

Anne Jeffrey
Anne Jeffrey
Affiliation:
University of South Alabama

Summary

This Element has two aims. The first is to discuss arguments philosophers have made about the difference God's existence might make to questions of general interest in metaethics. The second is to argue that it is a mistake to think we can get very far in answering these questions by assuming a thin conception of God, and to suggest that exploring the implications of thick theisms for metaethics would be more fruitful.
Get access

Keywords

theismmoral valuemoral obligationnormativitymoral epistemologymoral motivation
Type
Element
Information
Series: Elements in the Philosophy of Religion
Online ISBN: 9781108567701
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication: 09 May 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adams, M. M. (2006). Christ and Horrors: The Coherence of Christology. Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Adams, M. M. (2008). Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Adams, R. M. (1999). Finite and Infinite Goods: A Framework for Ethics. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Almeida, M. J., & Oppy, G. (2003). Sceptical Theism and Evidential Arguments from Evil. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 81(4), 496–516. https://doi.org/10.1080/713659758CrossRefGoogle Scholar
al-Attar, M. (2012). Islamic Ethics: Divine Command Theory in Arabo-Islamic Thought. New York; London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Anscombe, G. E. M. (1958). Modern Moral Philosophy. Philosophy, 33, 1–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Attridge, H. (2009). Wolterstorff, Rights, Wrongs, and the Bible. Journal of Religious Ethics, 37(2), 209–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bedke, M. (2009). Intuitive Non-Naturalism Meets Cosmic Coincidence. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 90(2), 188–209.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bergmann, M. (2001). Skeptical Theism and Rowe’s New Evidential Argument from Evil. Nous, 35(2), 278–296. https://doi.org/10.1111/0029-4624.00297CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bergmann, M. (2012). Common Sense Skeptical Theism. In Science, Religion, and Metaphysics. Rea, Michael & Clark, Kelly (Eds.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bergmann, M. (2014). Skeptical Theism, Atheism, and Total Evidence Skepticism. In Skeptical Theism: New Essays. Dougherty, Trent & McBrayer, Justin (Eds.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bergmann, M., Murray, M. J., & Rea, M. C. (eds.). (2011). Divine Evil? The Moral Character of the God of Abraham. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bergmann, M., & Rea, M. (2005). In Defence of Sceptical Theism: A Reply to Almeida and Oppy. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 83(2), 241–251. https://doi.org/10.1080/00048400500111147CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blackman, Reid. (forthcoming). Nietzsche’s Repudiation of Guilt. In Cokelet, B. & Maley, C. (Eds.), The Moral Psychology of Guilt. London: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Bogardus, T. (2016). Only All Naturalists Should Worry About Only One Evolutionary Debunking Argument. Ethics, 126(3), 636–661. https://doi.org/10.1086/684711CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brewer, T. (2009). The Retrieval of Ethics. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brody, B. (1981). Morality and Religion Reconsidered. In Helm, P. (Ed.), Divine Commands and Morality. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Chignell, A. (2014). Rational Hope, Possibility, and Divine Action. In Religion within the Bounds of Mere Reason: A Critical Guide (pp. 98–117). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Cockayne, J. (2018). The Dark Knight of the Soul: Weaning and the Problem of Divine Withdrawal. Religious Studies, 54(1), 73–90. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412516000366CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cottingham, J. (2005). The Spiritual Dimension: Religion, Philosophy, and Human Value. Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Craig, W. L., & Kurtz, P. (2009). The Kurtz/Craig Debate. In Garcia, R. K. & King, N. L. (Eds.), Is Goodness without God Good Enough? A Debate on Faith, Secularism, and Ethics. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Craig, W. L., & Sinnott-Armstrong, W. (2004). God? A Debate between a Christian and an Atheist. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Cudworth, R. (1996). A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality. (Hutton, S., Ed.). New York; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cuneo, T. (2016). Ritualized Faith: Essays on the Philosophy of Liturgy. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Danaher, J. (2017). In Defence of the Epistemological Objection to Divine Command Theory. Sophia. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-017-0622-9CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Darwall, S. L. (1995). The British Moralists and the Internal “Ought”, 1640–1740. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davidson, M. (1999). A Demonstration Against Theistic Activism. Religious Studies, 35(3), 277–290. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412599004886CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davies, B. (2006). The Reality of God and the Problem of Evil. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Deng, N. (2018). Eternity in Christian Thought. In Zalta, E. N. (Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2018). https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2018/entries/eternity/Google Scholar
Draper, P. (1996). The Skeptical Theist. In Howard-Snyder, D. (Ed.), The Evidential Argument from Evil. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Ebels-Duggan, K. (2015). The Right, the Good, and the Threat of Despair: (Kantian) Ethics and the Need for Hope in God. In Kvanvig, J. L. (Ed.), Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion (Vol.7, pp. 81–110).Google Scholar
Emon, A. M. (2010). Islamic Natural Law Theories. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Enoch, D. (2007). An Outline of an Argument for Robust Metanormative Realism. In Shafer-Landau, R. (Ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics (Vol.2, pp. 21–48). New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evans, C. S. (2014). God and Moral Obligation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Evans, C. S. (2018). Moral Arguments for the Existence of God. In Zalta, E. N. (Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2018 Edition). Retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2018/entries/moral-arguments-god/Google Scholar
Fisher, J. (2001). The Theology of Dis/similarity: Negation in Pseudo-Dionysius. The Journal of Religion, 81(4), 529–548. https://doi.org/10.1086/490935CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fitzpatrick, W. (2015). Debunking Evolutionary Debunking of Ethical Realism. Philosophical Studies, 172(4), 883–904.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hare, J. E. (2015). God’s Command (1st edn.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harrison, G. K. (2018). Normative Reasons and Theism. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90796-3CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heathwood, C. (2017). Could Morality Have a Source? Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, 6(2), 1–20. https://doi.org/10.26556/jesp.v6i2.62CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hendrickson, W. A., & Ward, K. B. (1975). Atomic Models for the Polypeptide Backbones of Myohemerythrin and Hemerythrin. Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications, 66(4), 1349–1356.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hieronymi, P. (2005). The Wrong Kind of Reason. Journal of Philosophy, 102(9), 437–457. https://doi.org/10.5840/jphil2005102933CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoover, J. (2007). Ibn Taymiyya’s Theodicy of Perpetual Optimism. Leiden: Brill.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ichikawa, J. (2011). Quantifiers, Knowledge, and Counterfactuals. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 82(2), 287–313. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1933-1592.2010.00427.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jacobs, J. D. (2015 The Ineffable, Inconceivable, and Incomprehensible God: Fundamentality and Apophatic Theology. In Kvanvig, J. L. (Ed.), Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion (Vol. 6, pp.158–176).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jeffrey, A. (2015). On the Moral Significance of Conscience. Dissertation, Washington, DC. http://hdl.handle.net/10822/761505Google Scholar
Jeffrey, A. (forthcoming). A Thomistic Account of Conscience and Guilt. In Cokelet, B. & Maley, C. (Eds.), The Moral Psychology of Guilt. London: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Jeffrey, A. (2015). On the Moral Significance of Conscience (Doctoral Dissertation). Retrieved from Georgetown University Institutional Repository: Graduate Theses and Dissertations. (Accession no. 2015-09-11T19:25:08Z)Google Scholar
Jonas, H. (1987). The Concept of God after Auschwitz: A Jewish Voice. The Journal of Religion, 67(1), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1086/487483CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jordan, J. (2006). Does Skeptical Theism Lead to Moral Skepticism? Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 72(2), 403–417. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1933-1592.2006.tb00567.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Joyce, R. (2001). The Myth of Morality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Korman, D., & Locke, D. (2020). Against Minimalist Responses to Moral Debunking Arguments. In Oxford Studies in Metaethics (Vol. 15). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Legenhausen, G. (1986). Is God a Person? Religious Studies, 22(3–4), 307. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412500018345CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, C. S. (1952). Mere Christianity. New York: Harper Collins.Google Scholar
Lisska, A. J. (1998). Aquinas’s Theory of Natural Law: An Analytic Reconstruction. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Lord, E. (2018). The Importance of Being Rational. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lott, M. (2018). Must Realists Be Skeptics? An Aristotelian Reply to a Darwinian Dilemma. Philosophical Studies 175(1),71–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mackie, J. L. (1955). Evil and Omnipotence. Mind, 64, 200–212.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mackie, J. L. (1973). Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong. London: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
McBrayer, J. P., & Swenson, P. (2012). Scepticism about the Argument from Divine Hiddenness. Religious Studies, 48(2), 129–150. https://doi.org/10.1017/S003441251100014XCrossRefGoogle Scholar
McGinnis, J. (2015). The Hiddenness of “Divine Hiddenness”: Divine Love in Medieval Islamic Lands. In Green, A. & Stump, E. (Eds.), Hidden Divinity and Religious Belief: New Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
McPherson, T. (2011). Against Quietist Normative Realism. Philosophical Studies, 154(2), 223–240. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-010-9535-yCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, C. (2013). The Euthyphro Dilemma. Blackwell International Encyclopedia of Ethics: 1–7.Google Scholar
Milona, M. (2018). Finding Hope. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/00455091.2018.1435612CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morton, J. (ms). Can Theists Avoid Epistemological Objections to Moral (and Normative) Realism?Google Scholar
Moon, A. (2017). Plantinga’s Religious Epistemology, Skeptical Theism, and Debunking Arguments. Faith and Philosophy, 34(4), 449–470.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morriston, W. (2009) The Moral Obligations of Reasonable Non-believers. International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 65(1), 1–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morriston, W. (2012). God and the Ontological Foundation of Morality. Religious Studies, 48 (1), 15–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morton, J. (2018). When Do Replies to the Evolutionary Debunking Argument Against Moral Realism Beg the Question? Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/00048402.2018.1455718CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morton, J., & Sampson, E. (2014). Parsimony and the Argument from Queerness. Res Philosophica, 91(4), 609–627. https://doi.org/10.11612/resphil.2014.91.4.4CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murphy, M. C. (1998). Divine Command, Divine Will, and Moral Obligation. Faith and Philosophy, 15(1), 3–27. https://doi.org/10.5840/faithphil19981512CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murphy, M. C. (2002). An Essay on Divine Authority. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Murphy, M. C. (2011). God and Moral Law: On the Theistic Explanation of Morality. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murphy, M. C. (2014). Perfect Goodness. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2014 Edition). Edward N. Zalta (ed.), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2014/entries/perfect-goodness/.Google Scholar
Murphy, M. C. (2017). God’s Own Ethics: Norms of Divine Agency and the Argument from Evil. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nagasawa, Y. (2018). The Problem of Evil for Atheists. In Trakakis, N. N. (Ed.), The Problem of Evil: Eight Views in Dialogue (pp. 151–175). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Trakakis, N., & Nagasawa, Y. (2004). Skeptical Theism and Moral Skepticism: A Reply to Almeida and Oppy. Ars Disputandi, 4(1), 222–228. https://doi.org/10.1080/15665399.2004.10819851CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nielson, K. (1973). Ethics Without God. Buffalo: Prometheus Books.Google Scholar
O’Donovan, O. (2009). The Language of Rights and Conceptual History. Journal of Religious Ethics, 37(2), 193–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Olson, J. (2011). In Defense of Moral Error Theory. In Brady, M. (Ed.), New Waves in Metaethics (pp. 62–84). London: Palgrave Macmillan UK. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230294899_4Google Scholar
Padgett, A. (1992). God, Eternity and the Nature of Time. London: Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peels, R. (2016). Can God Repent? In Kvanvig, J. L. (Ed.), Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion (Vol. 7, pp. 190–212). Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pessin, S. (2013). Ibn Gabirol’s Theology of Desire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Plantinga, A. (1965). The Free Will Defense. In Black, Max (Ed.), Philosophy in America (pp. 204–220). Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Plantinga, A. (2011). Content and Natural Selection. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 83(2), 435–458. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1933-1592.2010.00444.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quinn, P. L. (1978). Divine Commands and Moral Requirements. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quinn, P. L. (1990). The Recent Revival of Divine Command Ethics. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 50: 345. https://doi.org/10.2307/2108047CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rachels, J. (1971). God and Human Attitudes. Religious Studies, 7(4), 325–337.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rea, M. C. (2013). Skeptical Theism and the “Too-Much-Skepticism” Objection. In McBrayer, J. P. & Howard-Snyder, D. (Eds.), The Blackwell Companion to the Problem of Evil (pp. 482–506). Malden: Wiley-Blackwell.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rea, M. C. (2018). The Hiddenness of God. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosen, G. (2003). Culpability and Ignorance. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 103(1), 61–84. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0066-7372.2003.00064.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rowe, W. (1996). The Evidential Argument from Evil: A Second Look. In Howard-Snyder, D. (Ed.), The Evidential Argument from Evil (pp. 262-285). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Rutledge, J. C. (2017). Commonsense, Skeptical Theism, and Different Sorts of Closure of Inquiry Defeat. In Faith and Philosophy, 34(1), 17–32. https://doi.org/10.5840/faithphil201712576CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scanlon, T. M. (1998). What We Owe to Each Other. Cambridge: Belknap Press.Google Scholar
Schellenberg, J. L. (2015). The Hiddenness Argument: Philosophy’s New Challenge to Belief in God. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Setiya, K. (2012). Knowing Right from Wrong. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shafer-Landau, R. (2009). A Defence of Categorical Reasons. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 109, 189–206. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9264.2009.00264.xGoogle Scholar
Shoemaker, D. (2000). Reductionist Contractualism: Moral Motivation and the Expanding Self. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 30(3), 334–370. https://doi.org/10.1080/00455091.2000.10717536CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simmons, J. A. (2011). God and the Other: Ethics and Politics after the Theological Turn. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Sinclair, N. (2011). The Explanationist Argument for Moral Realism. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 41(1), 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1353/cjp.2011.0005CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sinnott-Armstrong, W. (2009). Morality without God? Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Street, S. (2006). A Darwinian Dilemma for Realist Theories of Value. Philosophical Studies, 127, 109–166.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stump, E. (2010). Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stump, E. and Green, A. (2015). Hidden Divinity and Religious Belief. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Tennyson, A. L. (1851). In Memoriam. Boston: Knight and Millet.Google Scholar
Wainwright, W. J. (2005). Religion and Morality. Burlington, VT: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Warmke, B. (2017). God’s Standing to Forgive: Faith and Philosophy, 34(4), 381–402. https://doi.org/10.5840/faithphil201711690CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Westphal, M. (2001). Overcoming Ontotheology. New York: Fordham University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wielenberg, E. J. (2010). On the Evolutionary Debunking of Morality. Ethics, 120(3), 441–464. https://doi.org/10.1086/652292CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wielenberg, E. J. (2014) Robust Ethics: The Metaphysics and Epistemology of Godless Normative Realism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wolterstorff, N. (2008). Justice: Rights and Wrongs. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zagzebski, L. T. (2013). Omnisubjectivity: A Defense of a Divine Attribute. Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Marquette University Press.Google Scholar

Save element to Kindle

To save this element to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

God and Morality
  • Anne Jeffrey, University of South Alabama
  • Online ISBN: 9781108567701
Available formats
×

Save element to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

God and Morality
  • Anne Jeffrey, University of South Alabama
  • Online ISBN: 9781108567701
Available formats
×

Save element to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

God and Morality
  • Anne Jeffrey, University of South Alabama
  • Online ISBN: 9781108567701
Available formats
×