Eliezer said: “If Overcoming Bias has any religious readers left, I say to you: it may be that you will someday lose your faith: and on that day, you will not lose all sense of moral direction.”
He’s addressing all religious people here, right? I responded to this comment as a theistic philosopher.
Further, specifically to Eliezer, I consider myself a religious fundamentalist (many Christian philosophers do), so I took him to be addressing me on that score as well. I guess I don’t know what you mean by it. Plantinga suggests that most people who use the term mean something like, “Sum’bitch.” I take it you mean something more.
I think that most theists may be divine command theorists, but I’m not sure most theists have thought about it. Of theists who’ve thought about it, it’s hard to say.
I do think, however, that most serious Christians do not think that the primary reason to obey God is to secure reward or avoid punishment. I do think that’s a caricature. Yes, televangelists use that term and a number of rural preachers, but in my own experience and the experience of many others I know, we’re primarily exhorted to obey God because He loves us or He wants us to, etc. Christians, at least, know that God is love, and while some talk up hell, that is rarely their primary emphasis.
Eliezer said: “If Overcoming Bias has any religious readers left, I say to you: it may be that you will someday lose your faith: and on that day, you will not lose all sense of moral direction.”
He’s addressing all religious people here, right? I responded to this comment as a theistic philosopher.
Further, specifically to Eliezer, I consider myself a religious fundamentalist (many Christian philosophers do), so I took him to be addressing me on that score as well. I guess I don’t know what you mean by it. Plantinga suggests that most people who use the term mean something like, “Sum’bitch.” I take it you mean something more.
I think that most theists may be divine command theorists, but I’m not sure most theists have thought about it. Of theists who’ve thought about it, it’s hard to say.
I do think, however, that most serious Christians do not think that the primary reason to obey God is to secure reward or avoid punishment. I do think that’s a caricature. Yes, televangelists use that term and a number of rural preachers, but in my own experience and the experience of many others I know, we’re primarily exhorted to obey God because He loves us or He wants us to, etc. Christians, at least, know that God is love, and while some talk up hell, that is rarely their primary emphasis.