I ran across an odd argument from David Bentley Hart being articulated by Damon Linker, a fellow whose views I have been critical of before. The charge is that atheists and secularists have misunderstood what god is and have consequently attacked a straw man representation of religious views. The argument is dredges up a slew of old fallacies, and is an excellent case study in what not to do.
Tag: Subjectivism
The Peculiar Similarity of Subjectivists and Solipsists
A thought occurred to me this morning that I think well worth sharing about subjectivism and solipsism, and how these two ideas are much more similar to one another than perhaps they appear. I want to share it.
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The Moral Irrelevance of the God Question
A while back, I wrote about the separation of moral philosophy and metaphysics. I argued in agreement with Dworkin that whether or not a moral claim is true does not rely on objective metaphysical blunt facts about the nature of the universe. It occurred to me today that this makes the entire debate between the new atheism of Dawkins, Hitchens, and the like and traditional religion irrelevant to questions of moral philosophy–the metaphysical debate about whether or not there is a deity and what that deity’s nature might be can have no bearing whatsoever on our moral theory.
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Divorcing Morality from Metaphysics
Religious deontologists and subjectivist relativists have something in common–both believe that they can derive moral conclusions from their metaphysical theories. This is the most significant mistake made by both groups. Here’s why.
A Critique of Subjectivism
Today I wish to take on subjectivism, the belief that truth is necessarily agent-relative or determined by one’s perspective or point of view, or that it is socially constructed and does not refer to any metaphysical external reality. In short, I will defend metaphysical (i.e. not Randian) objectivism, the belief that truth exists independently of one’s interpretation, perspective, society, et al, and that this truth can be discovered through science and logic.
Benjamin Studebaker 