PHIL 389: Contemporary Issues: Selected Topics
PHIL 389: Contemporary Issues: Selected Topics
The Generic Catalog Description
The various sections of this course discuss a wide variety of contemporary issues.
PHIL 389: God and Morality
Thomas Carson
This class will focus on two of the central questions of philosophy. The first question is: “what difference does it make for morality if God exists or does not exist?” People hold very divergent views on this topic. Some think that God has everything to do with morality and hold that God’s will or Gods’ commands are the only possible basis for an objective morality. Others think that God is irrelevant to morality. Starting with Plato, the dominant view in Western philosophy is that basic moral standards are independent of God. We will begin by examining the extremely influential arguments of Plato’s Ethyphro and some of the standard objections to the divine command theory of morality. We will then read and discuss two recent important books that defend moral theories based on God and God’s nature/will, Robert Adams’s Finite and Infinite Goods (1999) and Linda Zagzebski’s Divine Motivation Theory (2005), as well as selections from Robert and Marilyn Adams's The Problem of Evil (1990).
The second question concerns the problem of evil: “Is the existence of so much suffering and evil in the world consistent with the existence of a loving, morally good, and omnipotent God?” We will read many of the classic treatments of this topic. Among the topics to be discussed are: “the free will defense” and other theories about the nature of the goods for the sake of which God permits evil/suffering, the problem of horrendous/gratuitous evils, and “the evidential problem of evil” (does the existence of so much evil and suffering in the world make it less likely that God exists?)
PHIL 389: The Grant Seminar..
Jennifer Parks
The description is forthcoming.