God and the Moral Order: Replies to Objections

by C. Stephen Layman

Faith and Philosophy (Volume 23, Issue 2, pp. 209-212) 2006
  • Philosophy of Religion

Peter Byrne has offered three important objections to the main argument in my "God and the Moral Order." In this essay I provide replies. The central claims of "God and the Moral Order" may be boiled down to: the Reasons Thesis ("The strongest reasons always favor doing what is morally required") and the Conditional Thesis ("If there is no God and no life after death, then the Reasons Thesis is false"). Byrne's objections are: (1) Non-theists can readily accept the Conditional Thesis because the cases used to support it are rare and rather extreme. (2) The cases used to support the Conditional Thesis in fact fail. (3) My argument falsely presupposes that agents can weigh prudential and moral reasons from some neutral standpoint.