Overview

Like many contemporary issues, moral discourse finds itself in the middle of a great divide. On one side of the chasm sits much of contemporary Western philosophy, moral psychology and the social sciences, which often view morality as a purely natural phenomenon. This view argues that human morality can be fully explained by appealing to naturalistic processes such as kin selection, reciprocal altruism, cultural evolution, and various models of social contract theory. In this context, God's existence is superfluous for morality. On the other side of the chasm sits popular Christian notions of ultimate morality, which believe it to emanate from the nature of God. Because of this, no Godless explanation of morality will be adequate. It is the opinion of this author that the divisive climate surrounding contemporary moral discourse would be aided by a constructive project designed to both engage the current moral research being done in the sciences, while taking seriously certain theological arguments linking ultimate morality to the existence of God. The current manuscript represents such a project.More specifically, this project focuses on universal forms of morality. The book's thesis is that universal morality is most successful when grounded in God. Unlike most other books of this kind which often dismantle or ignore the research being done in moral psychology and the social sciences, this manuscript is able to successfully integrate the newest empirical research into a theological framework.

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9781443846004

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Dr Joseph Bankard is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Northwest Nazarene University. His research is focused primarily on the interdisciplinary dialogue taking place between science, religion, and morality. He is the author of several journal articles including Moral Instincts and the Problem with Reductionism: A Critical Look at the Work of Marc Hauser (Theology and Science, vol. 9, no. 4, November 2011), Training Emotion Helps Cultivate Virtue: How Loving-Kindness Meditation Develops Compassion and Increases Helping Behavior (forthcoming), and Is Christian Hope a Form of Long Term Economy?: An Argument from the Writings of Albert Camus? in Gift and Economy: Ethics, Hospitality, and the Market (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012). Dr Bankard also serves as the Philosophy Department Chair at Northwest Nazarene University.

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