Bill Pratt | April 3, 2013
Post Author: Bill Pratt Picking up the argument from part 1, let’s recap. When we make moral judgments, we just take for granted that our judgments apply regardless of time period, place, or even species. Another way to say this is that our moral judgments transcend time, place, and species. If this is true, then it seems [...]
Bill Pratt | April 1, 2013
Post Author: Bill Pratt When we humans make moral judgments, when we call some activity morally good or bad, we think that our judgment is universal, that it transcends time, place, and even our own human species. Let me explain each one in turn. With regard to time, we humans believe that it is perfectly [...]
Bill Pratt | November 15, 2011
Post Author: Bill Pratt Immanuel Kant is a famous philosopher who lived in the eighteenth century. One of Kant’s most lasting contributions to philosophy was in the field of ethics. He believed that moral laws could be derived from reason, and that all immoral behavior was, therefore, unreasonable or irrational. Kant argued for the idea of [...]
Bill Pratt | May 16, 2011
Post Author: Bill Pratt The use of the scientific method as a way of learning about the natural world has yielded fantastic technologies and discoveries over the last few hundred years. Nobody can doubt the power of the scientific method – collecting data, developing hypotheses about that data, and then testing those hypotheses with empirical [...]
Bill Pratt | January 12, 2011
Post Author: Bill Pratt In the previous post, I explained atheist Dan Barker’s argument in a debate he had with Christian Matt Slick. If you don’t remember what I said, please go back and quickly remind yourself, as this post won’t make sense otherwise. Below I pick up where I left off. What I don’t [...]
Bill Pratt | January 10, 2011
Post Author: Bill Pratt This week I’ve been listening to a debate between Matt Slick (Christian) and Dan Barker (atheist) on whether humans can be good without God. Barker’s argument during the debate struck me as illogical, and here’s why. Barker explained that moral values are merely natural inclinations that are built into human beings [...]
Bill Pratt | October 6, 2010
Post Author: Bill Pratt In part 1 I introduced eight questions that every worldview should answer. These eight questions are as follows: What is ultimate reality? Where did the world around us come from and what is its nature? What are human beings and where did they come from? Why do humans suffer? Is there [...]
Bill Pratt | December 26, 2009
Post Author: Bill Pratt Social Darwinism is the theory that persons, societies of people, and races develop and evolve in much the same way that biological organisms evolve due to natural selection. It is frequently described by the phrase, “survival of the fittest,” which was coined by British philosopher Herbert Spencer just a few years [...]
Bill Pratt | June 29, 2009
Post Author: Bill Pratt Incredibly, this was the sage advice of a writer who showered us with his wisdom in the letters to the editor section in our local newspaper. I rarely read the letters to the editor, because they almost never say anything of substance, but in a moment of weakness, I read them [...]
Bill Pratt | May 20, 2009
Post Author: Bill Pratt We have discussed, on this blog, the idea that a person’s religious beliefs and worldview have a direct effect on their moral behavior. Worldviews not only affect people, but entire nations. In the March 2009 publication of First Things, Jean Bethke Elshtain wrote a brilliant article which examines the decline of [...]
