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whence moral law?

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June 2013

June 19, 2013

How much should you trust your empathy?

Recently, in The New Yorker, psychologist Paul Bloom took a shot at the idea that...

January 2013

January 16, 2013

God and the Moral Law in Mormonism

After I wrote a review of The God Who Weeps, a book about Mormonism, I...

October 2012

October 24, 2012

Bob, can I interest you in Transhumanism?

Bob Seidensticker has looked over my recent post on objective morality and hard to get...

October 19, 2012

Objective Morality and Hard to Get at Truths

Bob Seidensticker has been checking out C.S. Lewis, and he's put up a post explaining...

September 2012

September 24, 2012

What are your utils denominated in?

In the comment threads for the "Hey! I didn't say Science Says!" post, there...

July 2012

July 23, 2012

Head to Head with Hemant Mehta

Last week, I got to do an interview/argument with fellow Patheos blogger and Friendly Atheist...

June 2012

June 18, 2012

Doing Comment Triage [check back for updates]

I really appreciate all the warm messages of support that I'm getting in the announcement...

June 18, 2012

This is my last post for the Patheos Atheist Portal

Update: I'm starting to work through the comments section and respond here. For several years,...

June 11, 2012

It’s Teleology All the Way Down (Blogathon 4/12)

This post is number four of twelve for the Secular Student Alliance Blogathon. I'm responding...

May 2012

May 07, 2012

Have Humans ‘Won’ Evolution?

In the comments of my last post on evolution and the source of moral law,...

May 04, 2012

Scared of Darwin for All the Wrong Reasons

UPDATE: I've expanded a response to a commenter in a new post: "Have Humans 'Won'...

April 2012

April 25, 2012

Immoral Moral Law, Unnatural Nature

Squeltchtoad's Immoral Moral Law thought experiment was weird and paradoxical enough that I had a...

April 23, 2012

An Objective Immoral Moral Law

My friend Squelchtoad has posed another useful thought example up at his interblag. I'm excerpting...

April 12, 2012

Morality in Multiple Dimensions

In college, I got into a lot of debates about moral relativism, cultural imperialism, and epistemological modesty. When we...

April 12, 2012

We Go Together / Like Essence and Telos / Doo-bop a doo-bee doo

Here's Adam of Daylight Atheism's reply to the questions I asked him yesterday about the...

April 11, 2012

Human-Independent Morality

Adam Lee of Daylight Atheism recently reran an essay he wrote in response to Peter Hitchens ("Atheists...

April 02, 2012

If only I weren’t determined to fight about free will!

The Chronicle of Higher Education is holding an essay symposium on Free Will and I...

February 2012

February 29, 2012

Evolution Doesn’t Select for Ethics

Remember you can vote once per day for the About.com Atheism Awards. I’m one of five...

January 2012

January 03, 2012

It’s Utilitarianism All the Way Down?

In the recent thread on human-independent morality, Ash had a question for me and Adam...

December 2011

December 30, 2011

Human Approximations of Morality

Adam Lee, author of Daylight Atheism, has just gotten into an argument with Peter Hitchens...

November 2011

November 29, 2011

It’s a Fair Cop, Douthat

In a response to a lot of the debate that followed Jennifer Fulwiler's conversion story...

May 2011

May 29, 2011

Who Gets to Use Lewis’s Excuse?

Now that college is over, and I'm wrapping up my guest stint at Daylight Atheism,...

April 2011

April 04, 2011

Challenge Accepted: God’s Obligations

Brandon Watson, a philosophy professor who blogs at Siris, has taken a crack at one...

March 2011

March 30, 2011

Play it Again: God’s Genocides

This is a new feature for the site, where I'm going to try to pull...

March 06, 2011

The Euthyphro Strikes Back

This week, The King and I blog (which is doing a guided reading through the...

February 2011

February 16, 2011

Case Study in my Ethics/Metaphysics

Yesterday, I posted an adaptation of a speech I gave at Yale and promised to...

January 2011

January 20, 2011

Follow Up on Sam Harris

Just as a quick follow-up to my post on The Moral Landscape, I wanted to...

January 18, 2011

Taking a Wrong Turn in the Moral Landscape

I really, really wanted to like Sam Harris’s The Moral Landscape: How Science Can...

December 2010

December 31, 2010

Questions for Atheists: Does Moral Law Exist in Itself?

This post is one in a series responding to Michael Egnor's challenge to New Atheists to explain what they...

August 2010

August 11, 2010

Natural Moral Theory is Bunk

This is part of a series of posts on gay marriage. You can see all...