God and Cosmos: Moral Truth and Human Meaning

ISBN: 0199931194

Author: Baggett, David

Condition: New

Product DescriptionNaturalistic ethics is the reigning paradigm among contemporary ethicists; in God and Cosmos, David Baggett and Jerry L. Walls argue that this approach is seriously flawed. This book canvasses a broad array of secular and naturalistic ethical theories in an effort to test their adequacy in accounting for moral duties, intrinsic human value, moral knowledge, prospects for radical moral transformation, and the rationality of morality. In each case, the authors argue, although various secular accounts provide real insights and indeed share common ground with theistic ethics, the resources of classical theism and orthodox Christianity provide the better explanation of the moral realities under consideration. Among such realities is the fundamental insight behind the problem of evil, namely, that the world is not as it should be. Baggett and Walls argue that God and the world, taken together, exhibit superior explanatory scope and power for morality classically construed, without theneed to water down the categories of morality, the import of human value, the prescriptive strength of moral obligations, or the deliverances of the logic, language, and phenomenology of moral experience. This book thus provides a cogent moral argument for God's existence, one that is abductive, teleological, and cumulative.Review"Baggett and Walls provide a veritable history of ethical philosophy as they develop and support their thesis. The number of scholars cited-ancient, enlightenment, and modern-is impressive "--CHOICE"This is the book I had hoped they would write after Good God. Their previous book was mostly constructing their own theory, but God and Cosmos engages in significant detail with much of the best recent work in non-theist ethical theory. It is characteristically punchy in style, but at the end movingly eloquent in defense of a theist foundation for the authority of morality. The section on moral knowledge is especially fine, and takes the subject forward in an interesting way." --John E. Hare, Noah Porter Professor of Philosophical Theology, Yale Divinity School"Baggett and Walls are to be commended for developing a very interesting and important line of reasoning that I hope they and others will continue to explore in the coming years." --Notre Dame Philosophical ReviewsAbout the AuthorDavid Baggett is a professor of philosophy and apologetics in the graduate school of the School of Divinity at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. He has written or edited about ten books, in such areas as philosophy and popular culture, apologetics, and ethics. He is the executive editor of MoralApologetics.com.Jerry L. Walls is Professor of Philosophy and Scholar in Residence at Houston Baptist University. He is the author or co-author of over a dozen books, including a trilogy on the afterlife. His book Good God: The Theistic Foundations of Morality, co-written with David Baggett, won Christianity Today's 2012 Best Book in Apologetics.