Bill Pratt | June 12, 2013
Post Author: Bill Pratt Can a person be moral without knowing God? Yes, but this kind of moral life is stunted and incomplete. It is only through relationship with God that the moral life flowers. Once again, I must quote from David Baggett and Jerry Walls’ brilliant work, Good God: The Theistic Foundations of Morality. If [...]
Bill Pratt | May 29, 2013
Post Author: Bill Pratt It certainly seems that our moral and political discourse these days is always talking about rights and duties. Gay people want the right to marry. We tell people it is their duty to pay their taxes. These words seem to dominate the conversation. George Mavrodes sees a day in the future [...]
Bill Pratt | May 24, 2013
Post Author: Bill Pratt If you are a dictator, and you have complete control over your nation, and you have good reason to believe you will remain in control, why should you not take whatever you want from whomever you want in order to bring yourself pleasure? Why would it be rational for you to [...]
Bill Pratt | May 22, 2013
Post Author: Bill Pratt Many people know that it is wrong to rape, but know nothing about the goodness of the Christian God. How we come to know moral facts is often different from how we come to know theological facts. Based on this truth, many skeptics claim moral facts must be independent of God. [...]
Bill Pratt | May 6, 2013
Post Author: Bill Pratt I have been asked, on occasion, why it is that human beings should obey the commands of God. After all, just because God created us does not mean that he has ultimate authority over us. We would never argue that a mother who gives life to her child has ultimate authority [...]
Bill Pratt | May 3, 2013
Post Author: Bill Pratt Classical Christian theism affirms that God is the Good. David Baggett and Jerry Walls explain that in some important sense we wish to argue that God just is the ultimate Good. This view . . . has a venerable history within Christianity. Thomists, Anselmians, theistic Platonists, and theistic activists, including such [...]
Bill Pratt | April 29, 2013
Post Author: Bill Pratt Theists are constantly claiming that without a personal, perfect, unchanging God, objective moral values and duties make no sense. I have written on this topic, myself, on numerous occasions. But is it only theists who recognize that God and morality go together? No. There are several prominent atheists thinkers who agree. [...]
Bill Pratt | April 24, 2013
Post Author: Bill Pratt Clearly the answer must be “yes.” In fact, the apostle Paul teaches this very truth in the book of Romans. There are some moral truths that can be known without a person ever acknowledging God’s existence. In fact, the world would be a complete disaster if everyone had to agree on [...]
Bill Pratt | April 22, 2013
Post Author: Bill Pratt There are two major worldview contenders today, at least in western civilization: naturalism and theism. As morality is central to the human experience, both worldviews owe us an account of where moral values and duties come from. Bertrand Russell, one of the most famous naturalistic philosophers of the 20th century, described the world [...]
Bill Pratt | April 19, 2013
Post Author: Bill Pratt If God does not exist, then who has the authority to provide normative moral evaluations and obligations? David Baggett and Jerry Walls wonder about this question in the introductory chapter of their book, Good God: The Theistic Foundations of Morality. Baggett and Walls cite an essay written by Yale law professor [...]
