Structure
- Introduction (1 Paragraph)
Begin with a compelling opening to engage your reader. Consider incorporating one or more of the following elements:
- Strong Statement: Present a bold or intriguing assertion.
- Emotional Appeal: Evoke curiosity or empathy.
- Provocative Question: Pose a thought-provoking inquiry.
- Brief Anecdote: Share a concise, relevant story.
This approach aligns with the Feynman Technique—learn, teach, and revise—to ensure clarity and comprehension.- Body (1–3 Paragraphs)
Delve into your main points with clarity and purpose:
- Topic Sentence: Clearly state the main idea of each paragraph.
- Evidence: Provide concrete details, examples, or data to support your points.
- Commentary: Offer analysis or interpretation of the evidence presented.
The Jane Schaffer method recommends a structured approach: one topic sentence, followed by concrete details and commentary, concluding with a summarizing sentence.- Conclusion (1 Paragraph)
- Summarizing: Recap the main points discussed.
- Reflecting: Offer insights or implications of your discussion.
- Connecting: Relate the topic to broader concepts or personal experiences.
- Use Active Voice
How do you argue against someone who attempts to pigeon hole you into a worldview that is simply subjectivist where you are unable to make any moral claim? They’ll say that you can make anything ethical if so and it’ll lead to nihilism and arbitrariness. Ending up with a “my morality vs. your morality” problem. Many debates these days especially from the likes of Christian apologists, such as Andrew Wilson or Jay Dyer, will eventually lead into topics of philosophy. Those arguments at their foundation are that their morality is objective, due to God, and everyone else has a subjective morality and therefore their the only ones that can make claims about what people ought to do.
How does one challenge this objective position? Is it even objective? Christian moral philosophers state that their morality is objective because it’s grounded in the nature of God who is necessary, unchanging and goodness itself. This exposes some problems. One is called the Epistemic Access Problem which states that there is no way to know for certain if the Bible accurately reflects that objective morality. These issues are reflected in the fact that the Bible was written by fallible humans across centuries and contradictions and moral disputes exist even within Christianity. In addition divine revelation is not universally available. At best it could be understood as a hypothetical objectivity. If God exists and if the Bible reflects his nature, then morality is objective.
Another objection is called the Religious Diversity Objection which challenges the uniqueness and certainty of Christian moral claims. Either most people are wrong or moral objectivity is not tied to any one religion. Fundamentally without evidence of God’s existence and without unambiguous access to his moral will the claim of objectivity is questionable and Christian ethics appears as a sophisticated form of subjectivism—subjective to the Bible, the tradition, or the believer’s interpretation.
How does one have an objective system of morality without a supernatural man in the sky? Enter secular moral realism and constructivism. These two metaethics meet the standards of:
- Internal consistency
- Normative force
- A mechanism for interpersonal moral reasoning
Arguing from this position prevents you from collapsing into moral relativism.
You build your argument first by saying morality comes from human nature, reason and interpersonal needs. Nobody would call the rules of chess “subjective” even though they aren’t coming from the sky. They have internal consistency and external consequences. Morality, like mathematics, isn’t meaningless since it’s a human construction—its grounded in empirical facts about human nature. You may get an objection about Is-Ought, but remember the Christian position also has an Ought and that’s God’s will instead of human dignity, or flourishing. Remind that they you just aren’t smuggling in divine command to cover the gap. Your structure, instead of theres, is accessible to anyone, believer or not.
You can challenge them to show you this God. Show me why I should believe His will is good. Otherwise, “your objectivity is a black box with a cross on it.” “You’re not solving the problem of moral authority—you’re outsourcing it to a supernatural being whose existence you haven’t proven.”
The Euthyphro problem, which originated in Plato‘s dialogue Euthyphro, where Socrates asks, “Is what is morally good commanded by God because it is good, or is it good because God commands it?” If the former, your morality is divine subjectivism (arbitrary). If the latter, then morality exists apart from God—and welcome to my side. Someone like Jay Dyer may attempt to sidestep the dilemma and do the third-way strategy. Essentially, God doesn’t choose what is good but good isn’t external to God either. Instead God is the good. His nature just is the moral standard.
This sidestep creates three major problems. You can press for a definition of “good” and follow up with what if God’s nature included cruelty, would that be good? If so, were back at arbitrariness. If not, then you do have a standard of goodness apart from God’s nature. Why not apply the same logic to your God? Exposing the epistemic and definitional circularity in grounding morality in God’s nature. You can then following this up with the Epistemic Access Problem. “Even if God’s nature is perfectly good, how do you know what it is? Is slavery good because it was allowed in Leviticus? Is genocide good because God commanded it in Joshua? If your standard is scripture, then you’re back to interpreting texts—fallible, human, contested.”
You will force the person to either define goodness as independent of God, surrounding moral grounding to secular standards. Define goodness as whatever God is, reducing it to tautology or divine subjectivism, you have to admit that our access to God’s natural is fallible and disputed, collapsing into a system of interpretive relativism. Whichever way he turns, the claim to objective moral certainty grounded in God collapses—either philosophically, semantically, or epistemologically.