The Quest for Morality

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In the early mid 19 sixties into the early seventies, there was a renewed interest that we could return to this quest and maybe actually find the foundations morality. A scientific approach to morality sort of re emerged on to the scene in the seventies with socio logy down to the present. And it's a quest that is undulated in terms of it's of its interest, in the hope and the possibility that it actually misses a nut that could be cracked. Pa: The question that has animated the project from the beginning, from the early modern origins, is the same problem we face to day. It's the problem of pluralism.

In their book Science and the Good, professional philosophers James Hunter and Paul Nedelisky trace the origins and development of the centuries-long, passionate, but ultimately failed quest to discover a scientific foundation for morality. The conversation takes a decidedly interesting turn when Drs. Hunter and Nedelisky reveal that they are both theists and that their Christian worldview informs their thinking on moral issues. The three then dig into the weeds of the difference between religious and secular moral systems, the nature of God and morality, why a purely naturalistic approach to morality does not negate religion or even the existence of God (natural law could be God’s way of creating moral values), natural rights and rights theory, consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics, progress in philosophy, why philosophers never seem to reach consensus on important subjects like morality, how to think about issues like abortion, why they believe in God and follow the Christian religion and yet reject Divine Command Theory, and much more.