Description
Book SynopsisIn The Morality Wars, contributors from religious and non-religious backgrounds debate the origin and nature of human goodness. While the subject is often addressed by prominent figures on both sides of the believer/atheist divide on public platforms and social media, participants seldom get the opportunity to explain their viewpoints in depth. In addition to engaging the traditional conflict between science and religious faith over the content and nature of the moral conscience, the contributors also draw on and engage with figures who are often neglected when committed theologians and atheists debate each other, such as Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche, David Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Jacques Lacan.
Trade ReviewThis book offers a lively debate concerning the nature of morality and its foundations by a wide variety of contributors from both religious and nonreligious perspectives. The international list of contributors are all well-known and seasoned debaters. They include neuroscientists, analytic philosophers, theologians, Christian apologists, philosophers of science, mathematicians, bioethicists, and a theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate. Rarely do the perspectives represented by this high-caliber slate of contributors find their way into a single volume. The spirited debate offered in these pages deserves a wide hearing.
-- Philip Blosser, Sacred Heart Major Seminary
In a remarkable contribution to a much-needed discussion, The Morality Wars brings together the academic contributions of naturalist, ambivalent, and theist thinkers in order to explore the different ways that they seek to ground philosophically the moral impetus that is human. As they seek to base their diverse answers to the question “How then can we live?” to borrow the question from the prophet Ezekiel, they touch upon urgent questions that the transcendental believer and unbeliever alike must confront for life in society for this 21st century.
-- Davi Charles Gomes, International Director of the World Reformed Fellowship; Former Chancellor of Mackenzie University, São Paulo
This is a fantastically useful and stimulating book. It provides an overview of a range of positions on the origins and nature of morality articulated by some of their best-known and most impressive defenders.
-- Stephen Law, editor of Think; honorary research fellow in philosophy at Roehampton
Table of ContentsThe Morality Wars: A Discussion on Why We Are Good Louise Mabille
Part I: The Naturalists
1. A Science of Good and Evil Sam Harris
2. The Origins of Morality in the Human Psyche Bert Olivier
3 .Morality as Delusion Michael Ruse
4 .Return to the Enlightenment Susan Neiman
Part II: The Ambivalents
5. No science of morality Steven Weinberg
6. Misunderstanding Moral Psychology Jonathan Haidt
7. The Use and Abuse of Naturalism for Morality Louise Mabille
Part III: The Theists
8. My God-Given Conscience Henk Stoker
9. Theism as Meta-Ethical Foundation for Morality William Lane Craig
10. Morality as Based on Natural Law Richard Howe
11. Ethics Needs God Paul Copan
12. Biologizing Ethics and the Destruction of Morality John Lennox
