Review of Wielenberg's Value and Virtue in a Godless Universe

John Cottingham (University of Reading, Emeritus) reviews the book for NDPR, here. Wielenberg's book is an excellent critique of the common apologetic argument that without God, value and meaning cannot be accounted for.

Btw, Cottingham has a new book out defending religious belief: Why Believe?. The recent book seems to be continuous with two of his previous books: On the Meaning of Life and The Spiritual Dimension.

3 comments:

Luke said...

Wielenberg gives no compelling argument for the existence of objective moral facts without God.

exapologist said...

Hi Luke,

I agree, but I don't think that was Wielenberg's aim with this book. For it seems to me that he's not offering a rebutting defeater for Craig et al.'s claim that without God, moral facts wouldn't exist -- i.e., I don't think he's offering an argument that such values can or do exist without God; rather it seems to me that he's offering an undercutting defeater by showing that Craig has failed to show that such values can't exist without God. And it seems to me that Wielenberg's defeater succceeds. What do you think?

Luke said...

I suppose, but the second half of the book does make a wandering and failed argument for naturalistic moral realism, and the title of the book is "Value and Virtue in a Godless Universe."

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