Value and Virtue in a Godless Universe
Erik J. Wielenberg
Language: English
Pages: 204
ISBN: 0521607841
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Suppose there is no God. This supposition implies that human life is meaningless, that there are no moral obligations and hence people can do whatever they want, and that the notions of virtue and vice, right and wrong, and good and evil have no place in the universe. Erik J. Wielenberg believes this view to be utterly erroneous and, in this thought-provoking book, he explains the reasons why. He argues that, even if God does not exist, human life can still have meaning, humans do have moral obligations, and human virtue is still possible. Wielenberg offers readers a cognent explanation of the ethical implications of naturalism--a view that denies the existence of the supernatural in human life. In his view virtue exists in a godless universe but it is significantly different from virtue in a Christian universe, and he develops naturalistic accounts of humility, charity, and hope. The overarching theme of Virtue and Value in a Godless Universe is what ethics might look like without God. Erik Wielenberg takes readers on an extraordinary tour of some of the central landmarks of this under-explored territory.
three conditions that must be met: (1) A divine command will always involve a sign, as we may call it, that is intentionally caused by God. (2) In causing the sign God must intend to issue a command, and what is commanded is what God intends to command thereby. (3) The sign must be such that the intended audience could understand it as conveying the intended command.63 It is not clear if Adams intends these three conditions to be jointly sufficient for God to impose a moral obligation on human
slice of cheesecake before me is laced with arsenic but don’t much care. I have no inclination to refrain from eating the cheesecake. In this case we may say that while I have no psychological reason to refrain from eating the cheesecake (I am not in fact motivated to refrain from eating it), I have a normative reason to refrain from doing so (I should be motivated to refrain from eating it). That the cheesecake is poisoned constitutes a (normative) reason for me to refrain from eating the
beautiful piece of writing. . . . He began with the argument that we whites, from the point of development we had arrived at, “must necessarily appear to them [savages] in the nature of supernatural beings – we approach them with the might as of a deity,” and so on, and so on. “By the simple exercise of our will we can exert a power for good practically unbounded,” &c., &c. From that point he soared and took me with him. The peroration was magnificent, 83 Value and Virtue in a Godless Universe
among the things that their parents taught them and are accepted on that basis. But Russell is surely correct that fear sometimes drives people to religion. This is the idea behind the old saying that “there are no atheists in foxholes.” Mark Juergensmeyer (2000) mentions an incident that took place in 1870 in which a group of American Indians were trapped by the U.S. Cavalry and “responded by spontaneously creating a ritual of dancing and hypnotic trances known as the Ghost Dance religion.”53 So
that we are sufficiently significant to make our lives meaningful. What is important is not whether God cares about your life but rather whether you care about it (in the appropriate way). Taylor’s view of what gives human life internal meaning has an interesting implication for philosophy. Specifically, it implies that there is a real danger involved in reflecting on the question of whether 19 Value and Virtue in a Godless Universe one’s life has any meaning. This danger is illustrated by the