A recording is now available of Rethinking Ethics and God: the useful and the not-so-useful arguments.
“You can’t have objective morality without God”. This statement or something like it is not hard to find in Christian popular writing, even that of famous apologists. But is this statement true? What does this statement even mean?
In our May PEACE talk, Dr Emma Wood discusses the plausibility of a number of possible interpretations of this statement about God and objective morality. Can objective moral facts exist even if God does not? To what extent does moral knowledge and moral motivation depend on faith in God? Careful thinking about such questions is needed if Christians are to engage ethically-minded non-believers in constructive ways.
Dr Emma Wood graduated from University of Sydney with philosophy honors in 2008. Her honors thesis was on divine command theory and the euthyphro dilemma, both key themes of the night’s topic.
Emma went over to New Zealand to do a philosophy PhD in metaethics, under the supervision of a well known moral sceptic, Richard Joyce. She argued in favor a new way of conceiving of moral objectivity, and against the sceptical supervisor!
Emma graduated with a PhD in 2015, and now work as a research associate at the Institute for ethics and society at the university of Notre Dame. She currently work on a range of topics in applied ethics, metaethics, and philosophy of religion.”
About PEACE: ‘PEACE’ stands for Political, Ethical, Artistic, & Cultural Engagement. We hold monthly discussion nights and lectures related to all of these areas on the first Saturday of each month. As a ministry of St George’s Anglican church, we hope to serve the community through providing a context for open and honest discussion, as well as rigorous intellectual engagement in a time where such things are often neglected.