New blog: Rational Perspectives

We are a group of students concerned with a variety of controversial philosophical, scientific, ethical, and religious issues. The title of our blog is meant to express a commitment to sober-minded, rational discussion. We assume the classical principles of logic and we uphold the stylistic virtues of clarity and precision. Although the issues we treat are wide-ranging, an ongoing theme in this blog is the articulation and defense of philosophical theism. We reject the new militant atheism, the “brights” movement, new age fluff, and moral and epistemological relativism.

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Most people want to accept that moral obligation exists - that there are some actions we ought to perform and some actions we ought to refrain from performing. And we would like to think (and it seems quite natural to think) that if one ought to perform a certain action at a certain time, then one is able to perform it. But if determinism is true, then that’s false. There are actions one is morally obligated to perform that one is unable to perform. And there are actions one is morally obligated to refrain from performing that one must perform.

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