Thanks for a thought-provoking essay. I think of Alasdair MacIntyre’s work and O. Carter Snead’s “What It Means to be Human” as exemplary in this regard.
As I was reading here, Joel, I kept thinking of I Corinthians 2:14-15, which led me to try to find what might be called secular arguments for what we do read in Scripture but often would not want to quote in some settings because it would not be accepted as authoritative. Romans 2:14-15 is pertinent as well. Russ
The first Corinthians passage is interesting; I would think it’s about special revelation in the gospel. When you are looking for secular reasons for moral truths, those are things that can be known apart from the spirit of God, by natural law and common grace!
Sorry I say this with all due respect but this argument fails. Saying we always talk about morality before we understand metaphysics therefore it precedes it is just plain wrong. This would be like when my 7-year-old nephew got 2 100-dollar bills for his First Communion, and he thought he had 1000 dollars would prove that 100 + 100 = 1000 because he said something before truly understood. Ethics cannot be done without understanding what is actually true. As for the idea of giving "religious people" a space I agree that is a false dichotomy because it implies religion is simply an experiential feeling I have rather than what is true. However, Cass (along with the other secular people you mentioned) still fails and much worse because even though they say arguments should be secular (aka accessible to public reason) their reason doesn't even work because through act/potency, per se casual series, essence/existence you can easily show theism is true which is why all serious philosophers before modernity were theists. However, because of their pride (Cass' case saying religion "doesn't click") or through bad arguments (the expert scientists say so) all these thinkers are totally incoherent and any moral argument they give boils down to consequentialism of how nice it is to live in a Christian society where others make sacrifices, yet they don't want to have to make the sacrifices themselves.
I appreciate these objections, but I would consider that the moral argument was parallel to the kinds of cosmological arguments you mentioned. No one starts from God. We start from finite things, and we reason back to their cause. The same goes for morality. You could find lots of moral realist among contemporary analytic philosophers. You can use this as a leverage to show them that purely naturalistic view of the world does not suffice. That’s the kind of thing I’m arguing. It’s also the best attitude to take towards unbelieving thinkers in order to persuade.
Yeah I just think that moral realism among analytic philosophers is crazy and makes no sense but they all just want to be good liberals because that's fashionable. But I get what you're saying, we need to be strategic, but I don't think it's the best strategy, I think teaching people the truth directly is the best strategy because if you go off intuitions they can often be wrong, especially given that intuitions are shaped by the environment which is totally run by people hostile to religion
But I don’t think we just know the truth (of Christianity) directly. Why do you or I really think that there’s anything more to this world thanmatter in motion? I know that the inescapability of morality and the fact that it’s not reducible to the material is one of the reasons I believe. So I can follow that argument within an unbeliever who sees that there’s something going on with morality.
Thanks for a thought-provoking essay. I think of Alasdair MacIntyre’s work and O. Carter Snead’s “What It Means to be Human” as exemplary in this regard.
Both of them Catholic iirc. 😉
As I was reading here, Joel, I kept thinking of I Corinthians 2:14-15, which led me to try to find what might be called secular arguments for what we do read in Scripture but often would not want to quote in some settings because it would not be accepted as authoritative. Romans 2:14-15 is pertinent as well. Russ
The first Corinthians passage is interesting; I would think it’s about special revelation in the gospel. When you are looking for secular reasons for moral truths, those are things that can be known apart from the spirit of God, by natural law and common grace!
Sorry I say this with all due respect but this argument fails. Saying we always talk about morality before we understand metaphysics therefore it precedes it is just plain wrong. This would be like when my 7-year-old nephew got 2 100-dollar bills for his First Communion, and he thought he had 1000 dollars would prove that 100 + 100 = 1000 because he said something before truly understood. Ethics cannot be done without understanding what is actually true. As for the idea of giving "religious people" a space I agree that is a false dichotomy because it implies religion is simply an experiential feeling I have rather than what is true. However, Cass (along with the other secular people you mentioned) still fails and much worse because even though they say arguments should be secular (aka accessible to public reason) their reason doesn't even work because through act/potency, per se casual series, essence/existence you can easily show theism is true which is why all serious philosophers before modernity were theists. However, because of their pride (Cass' case saying religion "doesn't click") or through bad arguments (the expert scientists say so) all these thinkers are totally incoherent and any moral argument they give boils down to consequentialism of how nice it is to live in a Christian society where others make sacrifices, yet they don't want to have to make the sacrifices themselves.
I appreciate these objections, but I would consider that the moral argument was parallel to the kinds of cosmological arguments you mentioned. No one starts from God. We start from finite things, and we reason back to their cause. The same goes for morality. You could find lots of moral realist among contemporary analytic philosophers. You can use this as a leverage to show them that purely naturalistic view of the world does not suffice. That’s the kind of thing I’m arguing. It’s also the best attitude to take towards unbelieving thinkers in order to persuade.
Yeah I just think that moral realism among analytic philosophers is crazy and makes no sense but they all just want to be good liberals because that's fashionable. But I get what you're saying, we need to be strategic, but I don't think it's the best strategy, I think teaching people the truth directly is the best strategy because if you go off intuitions they can often be wrong, especially given that intuitions are shaped by the environment which is totally run by people hostile to religion
But I don’t think we just know the truth (of Christianity) directly. Why do you or I really think that there’s anything more to this world thanmatter in motion? I know that the inescapability of morality and the fact that it’s not reducible to the material is one of the reasons I believe. So I can follow that argument within an unbeliever who sees that there’s something going on with morality.