God, Naturalism, and the Foundations of Morality

by Paul CopanOctober 6th, 2008 Be First to Comment In February 2007, I participated in the Greer-Heard Forum at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. The two featured speakers were the Christian theologian Alister McGrath and the “new atheist” philosopher Daniel Dennett. I had the opportunity to present a paper entitled “God, Naturalism, and the Foundations of Morality.” I argued that God’s existence makes much better sense than naturalism to account for our basic moral intuitions, human rights/freedom/responsibility, moral duties. Naturalism cannot get us to objective morality, and the subjective morality that roots morality solely in survival-enhancement fails to account for what is integral to human nature.A couple of weeks ago, the book based on this particular Greer-Heard Forum appeared in print: The Future of Atheism: Alister McGrath and Daniel Dennett in Dialogue, edited by Robert Stewart (Fortress Press). My essay, published therein, is available at my website. It’s a long piece, but here it is. I welcome your comments.When Daniel Dennett responded to it at the Forum, he observed that I had hit on all the important challenges that naturalists had to come to grips about morality. He claimed that, by “reverse engineering,” he could account for objective morality naturalistically. I argued in response that, even given evolution, theism offers a more robust backdrop to explain the emergence of value than does naturalism. Dennett’s view begins with valuelessness and ends with value; theism begins with value (in the good character of God) and ends with the basic moral values we commonly agree on.So check out the essay for yourselves and let me know what you think.If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Tags: alister mcgrath, atheist, basic moral values, christian theologian, daniel dennett, fortress, freedom responsibility, human nature, moral intuitions, naturalism, Naturalism/Atheism, new orleans baptist theological seminary, objective morality, reverse engineering, subjective morality