I finished this book a while ago, but left it in my car and never reviewed it till now. Paul Copan's book is a worthwhile read. The secondary title is quite descriptive of the contents: Defeating the slogans that leave Christians speechless.Besides the title accusation, Copan deals with a lot of 1-liners that I've encountered:
"Who are you to judge?"
"Christians are intolerant!"
"What about Gandhi?"
"You can't trust the Bible!"
"What about those who've never heard?"
And many more. It's basically a refutation of relativism and an argument for the uniqueness of Christianity. The best part about it may be that each chapter is quite short and so it's a nice quick reference for on-the-go apologetics.
8 comments:
So narcassistic engine search polls and book reviews. I hoep this isn't what u're blog's been reduced to. Just messin' w/ ya Matt. I'd like to read that Apologetics for Relativists book. It sounds like it would be a practical and relevant resource.
Hey, when ya post everyday, you win some and lose twenty! :)
This is a very good book. I had to read it in Bible School
its prolly a good thing he tired to defeat one liners, cause he mighta had trouble with sumthin a bit more substatative. lol, srry, i should prolly keep my heckles else where.
OK, here’s one. How would this author defeat the following view of morality?
Moral facts do not exist in the world. If they did, they would be a strange form of metaphysical entity that has the power to affect and verify our actions.
Instead, when we make moral statements, we are not talking about moral properties of the world, but rather, the current state of our emotional, psychological and rational make up.
When we engage in moral discourse, we are partaking in a rich process of dialogue that is action guiding. This is not a form of relativism. In fact, there is no objectionable relativism which has power over this argument.
To the critic who says for shame, “you’d have me believe what ever you say is true for you, and not for me?” To that, I apply a sort of golden rule, one of reasonableness that destroys the very possibility this sort of relativism.
When I try to determine the best possible way to act, in a situation with “moral outcomes,” as the moral realist would call it, I must place myself in the position of those who would be affected by my actions. If I were the other, and I could reasonably reject a particular action, then it is not just to carry it out.
Under this rule, the best possible decision must be born out of clear and decisive reasoning, taking all relevant considerations into account. Engaging in this sort of moral discourse, produces not the revitalized, flabby moral world- but rather, a deeply intricate formula aimed at the best possible world.
Now, I can never posses all the necessary facts to reason correctly all of the time, and even in situations where I possess all of the relevant facts, I may not possess the emotional or psychological makeup to produce the best decision. But it is in the effort and through the dialogue that moral reasoning becomes tried and tested, and best suited for daily practice.
Haha, well...one-liners are simply what the public takes from the wordy declarations of modern philosophers, so taking those one liners and refuting them with many words is a fair chiasm.
The problem I have with your view of morality is that it is 'us' centered. We make the statements. It's about OUR emotional makeup. WE try to determine the best way to act. We arrive at it by OUR reason. Etc.
I believe moral truth exists the same way mathematical truth exists. 2+2 truly equals 4 whether humans are here to write that fact down or not. Rape, murder, hatred, etc are wrong whether we arrive reject them or not...because it's not up to us, morality flows out of the nature of God.
The difficulty, of course, is in the definitions. All sex isn't rape. All killing isn't murder. Not everything we call hatred is evil hatred, etc.
The goal, then, becomes somewhat similar to yours. We make the effort, take part in the dialogue, use our reason, and put into practice the morality that (instead of reflecting our current, ever-changing, view of what's best) reflects our current, ever-changing view of a timeless, never-changing God.
The moral facts never change in this system. Our morality comes closer and departs from it many times.
Here’s the problem I have with your response. Assuming that God is the ultimate source of Truth and morality, and since what is moral is independent of human thought (how we take the world to be,) then moral value is not a product of human action. If we to say that goodness comes from the truth of an action, then one can be good, without God. If I act right, then I am a good person.
But your contention is that goodness is a property of God, and remains constant independent of human thoughts about the world. What is good is always good, and what is evil is always evil. If this is the case, then there is a disconnect between our thoughts about the world and goodness itself.
Further, if goodness is eternal and immaterial, like numbers, what property of an action counts as a moral property? Is it simply the truth of the action i.e. John did x, x is good. If it’s the action, and goodness as a property exists independent of human thought, then how can goodness, as a value in the world, be known? Is it possible for animals with no rationality to “be good?” The common answer it seems, is no. Why then do we ascribe goodness only human deeds? Is it because we are the only creatures that think?
If the answer is- because we’re the only one’s who can know what is good, then that runs up against the problem of goodness independent of human thought. How do we really know what is truly good, if we are neither the arbitrators nor the determiners of morality? It is human morality we are talking about. It seems to me, if goodness exists independent of thought, then as a property of the world it could affect animals just as easily as humans on an instinctual level. But this doesn’t seem to be the case.
Perhaps, moral value is just an ancient myth that describes how humans feel and what humans think about human action. Please keep in mind that I am in no way trying to use this argument as a proof of the non-existence of God. Its perfectly compatible with religious belief, we just have to recognize the difference between the statements, “I believe, and I know.”
Good thoughts jkig
I don't see the extremity of the disconnect b/w human moral action and moral truth in my view just b/c God is the holder of rightness. God, in Christianity, is far from being disconnected from humanity.
In fact, He's so connected He actually became one of us. And because of that incarnation, we have the great opportunity to observe the morality of God in the flesh. Right-action can be seen in the life & times of Christ and therefore morality, any morality, can be measured by that standard.
Part of the reason we are not seeing eye to eye on these matters is probably b/c in reality there has been a mixture of real morality (bound in the nature of God) and false morality (created by the thoughts of men). Making the problem even more difficult, however, is the fact that most created morality isn't distinct from bounded morality, it is simply a slight (in varrying degrees) distortion of it.
Before we get too wordy, I'll try to state my case in the most straight-forward way possible:
When faced with a moral decision, the best policy is to attempt to make the decision Christ would make, because goodness is bound up in Him. How close we come to goodness is relative to how close we are to Christ.
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