The Moral Paradox: Ontological Tensions Between Universal Intuition and Materialist Metaphysics

1. Introduction: The Ghost in the Machine

The contemporary intellectual landscape is defined by a profound and unsettled contradiction. On the one hand, the dominant metaphysical paradigm of the Western academy and scientific establishment is naturalistic materialism—the view that the universe is a closed system of particles and forces, governed by blind physical laws, devoid of inherent purpose or teleological direction. On the other hand, the lived experience of the human species is inextricably bound to a perception of objective moral truth—a conviction that certain actions are intrinsically “good” or “evil,” regardless of individual preference, cultural consensus, or evolutionary utility.

This tension constitutes the “Moral Paradox.” It is the friction between an ontology that denies the existence of non-physical facts (such as moral truths) and a phenomenology that screams their reality. When a human being witnesses an act of profound cruelty—such as the abuse of a child or the genocide of a people—they do not experience it merely as a violation of a social contract or a reduction in species fitness. They experience it as a violation of the fabric of reality itself, a dissonance with a fundamental “ought” that presses upon the human conscience with the weight of a physical law. This inherent conflict is vividly experienced by many, epitomized by the question, “either you believe in God or you believe in psychology.” This dichotomy reflects a perceived battle for authority over the mind, where psychology’s standards, often criticized for their shifting nature (“the whims of men” as highlighted by critiques like PsychoHeresy: The Psychological Seduction of Christianity by Martin and Deidre Bobgan), clash with the demand for consistent, objective moral truths that resonate with an underlying, unchanging Logos.

The paradox is sharpened by the findings of modern psychology and cognitive science. Far from revealing morality to be a culturally constructed illusion, empirical research suggests that human beings possess an innate “Universal Moral Grammar,” a biological preparedness to detect injustice that manifests as early as three months of age. Simultaneously, psychological mechanisms like the “Just World Hypothesis” reveal a deep-seated cognitive imperative to believe in a moral structure to the universe—a belief so essential that its disruption leads to significant psychological distress.

Yet, if God is dead—as Nietzsche famously declared, marking the collapse of the transcendent anchor for values—where does this moral structure reside?. If the universe is fundamentally indifferent, why has the human mind evolved to demand cosmic justice? And why, as survey data indicates, do a significant majority of self-identified atheists and secular philosophers continue to cling to the doctrine of Moral Realism, asserting the existence of objective moral facts while simultaneously rejecting the metaphysics required to ground them?.

This report provides an exhaustive analysis of this paradox. It synthesizes cross-cultural studies on moral intuition, evolutionary psychology’s attempts to naturalize ethics, the philosophical failures of secular grounding (from Social Contract Theory to the “Moral Landscape”), and the emerging theoretical frameworks of “Theophysics”—including the “Grace Operator” and “Law V”—that attempt to map the physics of moral restoration. The analysis suggests that modern materialism is haunted by a “ghost in the machine”—not a soul in the Cartesian sense, but a moral structure that the materialist worldview can neither explain nor excise.

2. The Empirical Baseline: The Universal Moral Intuition

To understand the scope of the paradox, one must first establish the empirical reality of the “moral sense.” For much of the 20th century, the social sciences were dominated by the “blank slate” hypothesis, which posited that human beings are born amoral and learn right from wrong entirely through cultural conditioning. This view has been effectively dismantled by rigorous experimental data from developmental psychology and anthropology.

2.1 The “Just Babies” of the Yale Lab

The most compelling evidence against the blank slate comes from the Infant Cognition Center at Yale University, led by Paul Bloom and Karen Wynn. Their research, detailed in Bloom’s Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil, demonstrates that moral judgment is an innate biological capacity that precedes language, mobility, and socialization.

In a series of landmark studies, infants as young as three months were shown puppet shows featuring a “protagonist” attempting to achieve a goal, such as climbing a hill or opening a box. The scenarios were designed to be pre-linguistic and universally intelligible.

The Helper: In one variation, a character (the Helper) assists the protagonist in achieving their goal.
The Hinderer: In another, a character (the Hinderer) actively blocks or frustrates the protagonist.

When presented with the puppets afterward, the vast majority of infants reached for the Helper, indicating a strong, innate preference for prosocial behavior. This preference was not merely an attraction to motion or color; it was a moral judgment. Even more strikingly, older infants (around eight months) demonstrated a preference for a puppet that punished the Hinderer, suggesting an innate sense of retributive justice. They preferred a character who took a ball away from the “bad” puppet, over one who treated the “bad” puppet kindly.

Bloom concludes that babies are born with a “naive morality”—a rudimentary moral compass that includes a sense of fairness, empathy, and judgment. This morality is limited; it is parochial, favoring the in-group and showing bias against those who are different. However, the core distinction between “helping is good” and “hindering is bad” appears to be part of the biological hardware of the human species, not a software package installed by culture.

2.2 The “Universal Moral Grammar” Hypothesis

Building on the linguistic theories of Noam Chomsky, researchers like John Mikhail and Marc Hauser have proposed the “Universal Moral Grammar” (UMG) hypothesis. Just as humans possess an innate “language acquisition device” that allows them to learn any language based on a universal underlying structure (Universal Grammar), UMG suggests humans possess an innate “moral organ.”

Mikhail’s research focused on the “Trolley Problem”—a classic ethical thought experiment.

Scenario A (The Switch): You can pull a switch to divert a runaway trolley onto a side track, killing one person to save five.
Scenario B (The Footbridge): You can push a large man off a footbridge to stop the trolley, killing one to save five.

Across diverse cultures—from urban Americans to remote hunter-gatherer societies—people intuitively distinguish between these two scenarios. Most agree that pulling the switch is permissible, while pushing the man is forbidden. Crucially, subjects often cannot articulate why they feel this difference. They simply “know” it is wrong.

Mikhail argues this reveals an unconscious computational system that distinguishes between intended harm (battery) and foreseen harm (side effect), mirroring the philosophical Doctrine of Double Effect. This computation happens rapidly and automatically, suggesting that moral judgment is a cognitive reflex, not a deliberate calculation. The “moral grammar” imposes constraints on what human beings can conceptualize as a “good” act, just as linguistic grammar imposes constraints on what constitutes a valid sentence.

2.3 Donald Brown’s Human Universals

The anthropologist Donald Brown provided the definitive refutation of extreme cultural relativism in his seminal work Human Universals (1991). Brown identified hundreds of traits found in every distinct society known to ethnography, many of which are explicitly moral.

Table 1: Selected Moral Universals Across Cultures

Universal Trait	Description	Implication
Fairness	Concepts of reciprocity and equity in exchange.	Justice is not a Western invention; it is a human necessity.
Prohibitions	Every society prohibits murder (in-group) and rape.	Fundamental protections of life and bodily autonomy are universal.
Empathy	The ability to understand and share the feelings of others.	Biological basis for altruism exists species-wide.
Redress	Concepts of compensation for wrongs committed.	The intuition that imbalance must be corrected is innate.
Shame/Guilt	Internal mechanisms for social regulation.	Morality is internalized, not just enforced by external police.
Distinction	Distinguishing “right” from “wrong” and “good” from “bad”.	The category of morality is universal, even if specific content varies.

These universals suggest that the “moral landscape” is not a flat plain of infinite cultural variability, but a terrain with deep, fixed valleys of “right” and “wrong” that human societies inevitably settle into. We are not free to invent any morality we please; we are constrained by our nature.

3. The Psychological Imperative: The Just World and Narrative Satisfaction

If the human mind is hardwired for moral judgment, it is also hardwired for moral teleology—the belief that the universe itself has a moral trajectory. This is most evident in the psychological phenomenon known as the “Just World Hypothesis” and our insatiable appetite for narrative justice.

3.1 The Just World Belief: A Cognitive Necessity

Proposed by psychologist Melvin Lerner in the 1960s, the Just World Hypothesis (or Just World Belief) posits that individuals have a fundamental need to believe that the world is an orderly, fair place where people get what they deserve. This is not merely a preference; it is a cognitive coping mechanism essential for long-term planning and psychological stability.

If the world were truly random—if merit and virtue had no correlation with outcome—human agency would be paralyzed. The belief that “good things happen to good people” allows individuals to invest in their future, believing their efforts will be rewarded. However, this belief creates a vulnerability. When confronted with undeniable injustice—such as an innocent victim of crime or disease—observers experience intense cognitive dissonance.

To resolve this dissonance, the human mind often engages in irrational rationalizations:

Victim Blaming: “She must have provoked the attack,” or “He was careless.” This restores the sense of justice by assigning guilt to the victim.
Restorative Justice: If the victim cannot be blamed, observers are often motivated to intervene and help, restoring the balance of fairness.

The existence of this psychological drive presents a paradox for the materialist. If the universe is fundamentally indifferent, why did humans evolve a psychological need to believe it is fair? While evolutionary psychologists argue this belief promotes social cohesion and contract-keeping , the intensity of the intuition—the feeling that injustice is a “cosmic” violation—overshoots its utility. The human mind appears designed for a universe where justice is an ontological law, yet it finds itself in a material universe where justice is a statistical anomaly.

3.2 The Satisfaction Question: Why We Need Poetic Justice

This psychological hunger is mirrored in our art. The concept of “poetic justice”—where virtue is rewarded and vice punished in a fitting manner—is a cornerstone of narrative structure. Audiences feel a profound, visceral satisfaction when a villain receives their “comeuppance” and a deep sense of wrongness when they do not.

Psychological research into “true crime” consumption suggests that people engage with these dark narratives partly to reinforce their sense of justice and to position themselves on the side of moral order. The “thrill” of the genre is not just the crime, but the re-establishment of order through the pursuit of the criminal. We consume these stories to soothe the anxiety that the world might be chaotic; the narrative structure imposes the order we crave.

When a story ends with the villain unpunished and the hero unrewarded (a “Hitchcockian” or nihilistic ending), it often produces a specific type of dissatisfaction—not just disappointment, but a sense of incompleteness or wrongness. This suggests that the human intuition for justice is not just about social utility; it is about resonance with a perceived natural order. We feel that the universe ought to resolve into justice, and when it doesn’t, we feel a “cosmic injustice.”

In a materialist worldview, this “ought” is an orphan. There is no particle of “justice,” no force of “karma” in the standard model of physics. Yet, we write our stories as if these forces are as real as gravity.

4. The Grounding Problem: Materialism’s Dilemma

The existence of universal moral intuition and the psychological need for justice leads inevitably to the “Grounding Problem.” If we accept that certain things (like torturing babies) are objectively wrong—meaning they are wrong regardless of whether a culture approves of them—we must ask: What makes them wrong? Where does the “wrongness” reside?

4.1 The Evolutionary Debunking Argument

The standard materialist explanation is evolutionary psychology: morality is a suite of adaptations selected for their survival value. Altruism, cooperation, and punishment of cheaters helped our ancestors pass on their genes. The “Cheater Detection Module,” proposed by Cosmides and Tooby, suggests the brain has specialized circuits for detecting violations of social contracts, which explains our sharp reaction to unfairness.

However, philosophers like Sharon Street and Richard Joyce have weaponized this explanation against moral realism in what is known as the “Evolutionary Debunking Argument” (EDA). The argument runs as follows:

Causal Premise: Our moral beliefs are heavily influenced by evolutionary processes.
Epistemic Premise: Evolution selects for survival, not truth. (A belief that “it is good to run from lions” is selected because it saves you, not because “running” is a moral truth).
Conclusion: Therefore, there is no reason to believe our moral intuitions track independent moral truths.

This leads to a devastating conclusion for the atheist moral realist: if evolution is the sole source of morality, then morality is purely functional. If “rape” had proven evolutionarily advantageous for the species (as it arguably is for some species), then it would be “moral” in that evolutionary sense. Materialism can explain why we feel rape is wrong (it reduces group fitness/cohesion), but it cannot explain why it is wrong in an objective sense. It reduces “good” to “useful for survival.” This is the “Darwinian Dilemma”: one cannot have both a purely evolutionary origin of morality and a belief in objective moral truth.

To escape the evolutionary trap, some turn to Social Contract Theory—morality is an agreement we make for mutual benefit. But this fails the “objectivity” test.

The Slavery Problem: For centuries, the “social contract” in many civilizations (including the U.S.) permitted slavery. It was legal, culturally approved, and economically beneficial for the ruling class.
The Intuition: We judge slavery to have been wrong then, even though society said it was right.
The Paradox: If morality is just the social contract, then slavery was “moral” in 1850. If we say slavery was “objectively wrong” in 1850 despite the contract, we are appealing to a standard above the contract. What is that standard?

Materialism has no “standard above” human opinion. It leads to the conclusion that slavery was only “wrong” because we now dislike it, not because it violated an absolute law. This is a conclusion most atheists find repugnant, yet it is the logical terminus of their worldview.

4.3 Sam Harris and the “Moral Landscape”

Neuroscientist and “New Atheist” Sam Harris attempted to solve this with The Moral Landscape, arguing that science can determine human values. He equates “good” with “the well-being of conscious creatures”.

The Argument: We know facts about the brain. We know certain states constitute suffering and others well-being. Therefore, we can objectively say “moves away from suffering” are “good.”
The Critique: Philosophers have savagely critiqued this as a sleight of hand. Harris simply assumes that “maximizing well-being” is the Good. He does not prove it; he treats it as an axiom.
The Open Question: G.E. Moore’s “Open Question Argument” applies here: It is always coherent to ask, “I know this action maximizes aggregate well-being, but is it good?” (e.g., framing an innocent man to prevent a riot might maximize well-being, but is it moral?).

Harris attempts to bypass the “Is-Ought” distinction by claiming that “values” are just a certain type of “fact.” However, critics point out that he is merely redefining morality as “utilitarian well-being” without justifying why the universe cares about well-being. If a sadist derives well-being from causing pain, Harris has to argue that the sadist is “factually incorrect” about his well-being, which is a difficult philosophical climb. Harris’s system presuposes the very moral realism he is trying to prove via science.

5. The Atheist Moral Realist Paradox

Despite the lack of philosophical grounding, empirical data shows that atheists are stubbornly resistant to moral nihilism or relativism. They do not want to let go of “objective” right and wrong.

5.1 Survey Data: The Refusal of Relativism

The 2020 PhilPapers survey of professional philosophers reveals a fascinating discrepancy. While 67% of philosophers lean towards atheism, a significant portion still accept Moral Realism (the view that moral facts exist independent of human opinion). They reject God, yet they accept a universe populated by objective moral facts.

Among the general public, the data is even more stark. A Pew Research Center study found that 58% of atheists believe in “absolute standards of right and wrong”. While this is lower than the religious population (where numbers range from 60-80%), it is a majority. Most atheists are not moral relativists. When asked about issues like “torturing innocent people,” they do not say “it depends on the culture”; they say “it is wrong.”

Table 2: Belief in Absolute Standards of Right and Wrong (Pew Research)

Religious Affiliation	% Believing in Absolute Standards
Evangelical Protestant	78%
Catholic	78%
Muslim	72%
Jewish	63%
Atheist	58%
Agnostic	59%

This creates a massive cognitive dissonance:

Metaphysics: The universe is accidental, purposeless matter.
Ethics: Some acts are absolutely, objectively wrong, regardless of human opinion.
Conflict: Objective laws usually require a lawgiver or a legislative structure. Matter does not legislate. Where do these absolute standards live?

5.2 The “Companions in Guilt” Argument

To defend this precarious position, atheist philosophers have developed the “Companions in Guilt” (CGA) argument. This is a defensive maneuver designed to protect moral realism from the “argument from queerness” (the idea that moral facts are too strange to exist in a physical world).

The Argument: Moral anti-realists (error theorists) say moral facts don’t exist because they are “categorical” (you ought to do X regardless of your desires) and “prescriptive.”
The Companion: Terence Cuneo and others argue that epistemic norms (facts about logic, evidence, and rationality) are also categorical. You “ought” to believe the truth, even if you don’t want to. You “ought” not to believe contradictions.
The Trap: If you reject moral facts because they are non-physical “oughts,” you must also reject epistemic facts. If you reject epistemic facts, you can’t argue for your theory (or for science, or for evolution). If there are no objective reasons to believe anything, then the argument against morality fails.

The CGA concludes that to save science and logic, you must allow for non-physical normative facts. Therefore, moral facts are no “stranger” than logical facts.

While this argument is robust, it leads to a startling conclusion: it effectively admits that normativity (the existence of “oughts”) is fundamental to reality. The universe is not just atoms; it is atoms plus norms. This looks less like materialism and more like a universe structured by Logos (Reason/Word). It is a backdoor admission that the universe has a “moral” or “rational” grain that cannot be reduced to physics. The atheist saves morality by elevating the universe to something quasi-divine—a realm of objective Reason and Law.

6. The Logical Thread: The Theistic Connection

If we pull the thread of “objective morality” to its logical conclusion, we find ourselves moving steadily away from materialism and toward theism. The logical sequence is relentless:

If Good and Evil are real (not just preferences)…
And they exist independently of human opinion (Realism)…
And they possess authority (they command us)…
Then reality contains a non-physical, authoritative moral structure.
A moral structure implies a moral mind or a moral nature behind the cosmos.

C.S. Lewis famously articulated this in Mere Christianity: “My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line.”. The very ability to judge the universe as “evil” or “unfair” presupposes a standard of “Good” that transcends the universe. If the universe were truly meaningless, we should never have found out it was meaningless—just as a fish would never discover it was wet if it had no concept of dry.

6.1 The Euthyphro Dilemma Revisited

Atheists often counter this with the Euthyphro Dilemma, derived from Plato: “Is something good because God wills it (which makes morality arbitrary), or does God will it because it is good (which makes God subject to a higher standard)?“.

This dilemma is often presented as a “checkmate” to theistic morality. However, classical theology offers a third option that resolves the paradox: The Good is rooted in God’s nature.

God does not consult a rulebook (Horn 2).
God does not flip a coin (Horn 1).
God is the Good. His commands are expressions of His immutable character.

In this view, “Wrongness” is not a violation of a rule, but a dissonance with the fundamental frequency of existence—the nature of the Creator. This provides the “Ultimate” grounding that materialism lacks. It explains why the “moral grammar” is universal (we are made in that image) and why the “just world” desire is so potent (it is a memory of home).

6.2 The Death of God and the Collapse of Value

Nietzsche, unlike many modern atheists, understood that you cannot keep Christian morality without the Christian God. In The Gay Science and Twilight of the Idols, he argued that “God is dead” means the death of the entire interpretive framework that gave value to “pity,” “human rights,” and “equality”. He predicted that without God, Western civilization would eventually have to abandon these values or face a collapse into nihilism.

Dostoevsky echoed this in The Brothers Karamazov through Ivan Karamazov: “If God does not exist, everything is permitted”. This does not mean atheists will immediately become murderers; it means there is no ontological barrier to murder. There is no “cosmic stop sign.” Modern atheists who cling to moral realism are, in Nietzsche’s view, living on the fumes of a dead religion, unwilling to face the terrifying freedom of a truly godless universe.

7. Theophysics: Entropy, Sin, and the Grace Operator

The prompt introduces a novel theoretical framework called “Theophysics,” which attempts to map these theological concepts onto physical laws using mathematical formalism. This interdisciplinary approach offers a rigorous way to conceptualize the “force” of morality in a structural universe.

7.1 Law V: Moral Decay as Thermodynamic Reality

Just as the Second Law of Thermodynamics dictates that closed systems tend toward entropy (disorder), theological traditions have long described a “law of sin” or “corruption” that degrades moral order.

Physical Entropy (S): A measure of disorder in a system. In a closed system, ΔS≥0. Energy disperses, structure degrades.
Theophysics “Law V” (Law of Sin): In the absence of external intervention, moral systems (individuals/societies) decay. This maps to the biblical concept in Romans 7:21 (“When I want to do good, evil is right there with me”)—an intrinsic drag coefficient on the soul.

Insight: If morality requires constant energy input to maintain (willpower, social pressure, education), it behaves like a low-entropy state (ordered). “Sin” is not just “bad behavior”; it is the thermodynamic equilibrium of a fallen system. It is the path of least resistance. This explains why it is easier to destroy trust than build it, easier to be lazy than virtuous. The “natural” state of a closed moral system is decay.

7.2 The “Binary Soul” Crisis (Jonah and Javert)

The “Binary Soul” concept illustrates the collision between a rigid moral taxonomy (Law) and the chaotic, transformative power of Mercy. This is exemplified by the literary archetypes of Inspector Javert (Les Misérables) and the Prophet Jonah.

The Model: Javert and Jonah operate on a binary logic: σ=±1 (Righteous or Wicked). There is no spectrum. The Law is absolute.
The Crisis: Javert is confronted with Jean Valjean’s mercy—a “wicked” convict performing a “righteous” act of saving Javert’s life. Jonah is confronted with God’s mercy toward Nineveh—a “wicked” city that is spared.
The System Crash: The binary system cannot compute “unmerited favor.”
- Javert: “I am the Law, and the Law is not mocked.” If Valjean is good, then Javert’s entire life—defined by hunting Valjean—is an error. He cannot integrate Grace because Grace violates the conservation of moral energy (Karma). In a closed system, you get what you deserve. Grace is an “illegal” operation in his code. Javert commits suicide because he cannot reboot his soul to an operating system that accepts Grace.
- Jonah: Jonah wants to die because he feels God has betrayed the binary moral structure by sparing the wicked. “I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God… therefore I fled.” He is angry that God broke the rules of “Law V”.

7.3 The Grace Operator (G)

In the “I AM Singularity” framework proposed by Antonios Valamontes, Grace is formalized not as a sentiment, but as a mathematical operator that overrides the entropic decay of the soul.

G:Ψ→Ψ+EΩ∘K

Table 3: Theophysics Variables

Symbol	Concept	Definition
Ψ (Psi)	State of the Soul	The current moral/ontological condition of the conscious agent.
G	Grace Operator	A non-conservative operator that adds order/coherence.
EΩ	Uncreated Energy	External input from the “I AM” Singularity (God).
K	Kernel of Receptivity	The capacity of the soul to receive the input (Faith/Humility).

Implication: In this model, “Grace” is a non-conservative force. In physics, a conservative force (like gravity) conserves energy within the system. Grace adds “coherence” to the system from an external source, reversing the “Law V” entropic decay.

This solves the “Satisfaction Question.” We crave justice because we live in a causal universe where actions have consequences (Entropy/Law). But we survive only by Grace (Negative Entropy/Life). The materialist universe allows for the former (cause and effect) but has no mechanism for the latter (redemption). Javert’s suicide is the result of trying to run a “Law only” simulation in a universe that requires the “Grace Operator” to function.

8. Conclusion: The Unavoidable Attraction

The investigation yields a clear and striking picture of the Moral Paradox. Humans are amphibious beings—biological organisms driven by survival, yet possessing a “moral soul” that demands objective justice, absolute wrongness, and narrative satisfaction. We are beasts that insist on being angels.

Materialism can explain the biological substrate (the brain) and the evolutionary history (survival), but it fails to ground the phenomenology of the moral life. It cannot tell us why rape is wrong rather than just maladaptive. It cannot explain why we weep when justice is denied in a film. It cannot explain why atheists fight for “human rights” as if they were objective facts rooted in the cosmos, rather than cultural preferences rooted in the cortex.

When the atheist moral realist asserts that “Cruelty is wrong,” they are not speaking the language of physics. They are speaking the language of theology. They are assuming a universe that is not just a collection of atoms, but a moral drama. They are, in the words of the prompt, “borrowing a moral structure from a worldview they have rejected.”

The “Killer Question” Diagnostic

The “Killer Question” sequence provided in the prompt serves as the scalpel to expose this tension in any intellectual debate:

“Do you believe in good and evil? Like, actually wrong—not just culturally disapproved?” (Most will say Yes).
“Where does that wrongness come from? What makes it wrong?” (They will appeal to evolution or society).
“If it’s evolution, is rape only wrong because it reduces fitness?” (They will recoil: No, it’s really wrong).
“So it’s wrong independent of human opinion. It’s objectively wrong.” (Yes).
“Okay. In a universe of hydrogen and helium and gravity—where does WRONGNESS live? Point to it. What particle carries the ‘wrong’ charge?”

The resulting silence is the sound of the Moral Paradox. It is the realization that the speaker is standing on a foundation they claim does not exist.

The data—from the Yale baby labs to the PhilPapers surveys—suggests that the human mind is structured to perceive a moral reality that materialism claims is an illusion. The “Binary Soul” within us craves the Law, but the human condition requires the “Grace Operator” to survive the inevitable entropy of our own failings. The tension remains because modern man is trying to run software designed for a Teleological Universe on the hardware of a Random one. As Javert discovered, the system cannot hold. Eventually, the worldview must reboot, or the machine will break.

Citations (Bloom/Infant Morality) (Moral Grammar/Hauser/Mikhail) (Donald Brown/Universals) (Just World/Psychology) (Poetic Justice) (Evolutionary Debunking/Street/Joyce) (Sam Harris/Moral Landscape) (Social Contract/Slavery) (Survey Data/Atheist Realism) (Companions in Guilt) (C.S. Lewis Moral Argument) (Dostoevsky/Nietzsche) (Euthyphro Dilemma) (Entropy/Law V/Binary Soul) (Grace Operator/Theophysics) * Bobgan, M., & Bobgan, D. (1987). PsychoHeresy: The Psychological Seduction of Christianity. Eastgate Publishers.

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the-brights.net

Morality is a “human universal” (ie, exists across all cultures worldwide), a part of human nature acquired during evolution. - The Brights’ Net

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storyality.wordpress.com

StoryAlity #81 – `Human Universals’ (Donald Brown) and EO Wilson on sociobiology

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joelvelasco.net

Donald E. Brown’s List of Human Universals - Joel Velasco

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blas.com

Human Universals

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scu.edu

The Just World Theory - Markkula Center for Applied Ethics - Santa Clara University

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en.wikipedia.org

Just-world fallacy - Wikipedia

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scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu

Using the Just World Hypothesis to Understand Victim Blaming, Apathy, and Support on Social Media - ScholarSpace

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pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Detecting Cheaters without Thinking: Testing the Automaticity of the Cheater Detection Module - PMC - NIH

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bibisco.com

What is Poetic Justice Narrative Technique? - Bibisco

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pinotspalette.com

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rasmussen.edu

The Psychology Behind Society’s True Crime Obsession | Rasmussen University

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pinotspalette.com

The Psychology Behind America’s True Crime Craze - Pinot’s Palette

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pmarkhamca.medium.com

Story and Justice in Movies. Moral equilibrium as audience wish… | by Peter Markham

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uhra.herts.ac.uk

University of Hertfordshire Research Archive

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gabryant.scholar.ss.ucla.edu

Detecting cheaters

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pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Evolutionary Debunking Arguments - PMC - PubMed Central - NIH

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pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Evolutionary arguments against moral realism: Why the empirical details matter (and which ones do) - PubMed Central

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digitalcommons.liberty.edu

Evolutionary Debunking Arguments and Theism: How Moral Knowledge Points to the Existence of God - Scholars Crossing

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reddit.com

What do Moral Realists say to the Evolutionary origin of Morality? : r/askphilosophy - Reddit

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scholar.utc.edu

Assessing the damage: moral realism and the evolutionary debunking argument - UTC Scholar

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thepublicdiscourse.com

What’s Wrong with Social Contract Theory - Public Discourse

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charlesreding.medium.com

Mere Christianity: 2. Some Objections | by JM | Medium

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philosophy.stackexchange.com

What are the moral arguments for slavery? - Philosophy Stack Exchange

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pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

The Science of Values: The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris - PMC - NIH

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samharris.org

Facts & Values - Sam Harris

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cambridge.org

SAM HARRIS, THE MORAL LANDSCAPE, AND SOME UNANSWERED QUESTIONS | Think | Cambridge Core

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proginosko.com

Craig’s Modal Critique of Harris’s Moral Landscape - Analogical Thoughts

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samharris.org

Response to Critics of The Moral Landscape - Sam Harris

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righteousmind.com

Why I think Sam Harris is wrong about morality | The Righteous Mind

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reddit.com

PhilSurvey 2020: There Are Less Religious Philosophers, a Lack of Consensus Around Theistic Arguments Hurts Theism and Theists Hold Niche Views! - Reddit

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pewforum.org

U.S. Religious Landscape Survey Religious Beliefs and Practices: Diverse and Politically Relevant

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personal.victoria.ac.nz

Moral and epistemic normativity: The guilty and the innocent Richard Joyce - Penultimate draft of paper appearing in C. Cowie & R. Rowland (eds.), Companions in Guilt Arguments in Metaethics (Routledge, 2019) 53-72. - Victoria University of Wellington

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ndpr.nd.edu

Companions in Guilt: Arguments in Metaethics - Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

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r.jordan.im

Companions in guilt arguments

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reddit.com

Have any philosophers responded to the Companions in Guilt Argument by conceding that objective norms exist, but only epistemic norms, not moral norms? : r/askphilosophy - Reddit

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cambridge.org

Ontological Entanglement in the Normative Web | Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie | Cambridge Core

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reformedclassicalist.com

The Moral Argument - The Reformed Classicalist

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philosophicaldisquisitions.blogspot.com

C.S. Lewis and Mere Christianity: An Overview - Philosophical Disquisitions

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str.org

Euthyphro’s Dilemma - Stand to Reason

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reddit.com

The Euthyphro Dilemma and the Nature of God: A Failed Theist Rebuttal - Reddit

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trendsettercase.wordpress.com

Answering The Euthyphro Dilemma with C.S. Lewis and Cornelius Van Til

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reddit.com

In Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, a character says “Without God, everything is permitted”. What are your thoughts on this? : r/religion - Reddit

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interpreterfoundation.org

If God Does Not Exist, Is Everything Permitted? - The Interpreter Foundation

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philosophy.stackexchange.com

What did Dostoyevski mean with his character saying “Without God and the afterlife, all things are allowed”?

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reddit.com

Nietzsche’s declaration “God is dead” is often misunderstood as a way of saying atheism is true; but he more means the entirety of Western civilization rests on values destined for “collapse”. The appropriate response to the death of God should thus be deep disorientation, mourning, and reflection.. : r/philosophy - Reddit

Opens in a new window](https://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/smmdsa/nietzsches_declaration_god_is_dead_is_often/)[