APPLETON, WIS. — In the absence of God, are all human lives meaningless and no action considered morally wrong or obligatory?
Erik Wielenberg, associate professor of philosophy at DePauw University, examines the relationship between God and human virtue in the Lawrence University address “God and the Distortion of Morality” Monday, April 30 at 7 p.m. in Riverview Lounge. A question-and-answer session will follow the talk, which is free and open to the public.
According to Wielenberg, attempts to provide a theistic foundation for objective morality “are flawed in that they tend to distort morality in various ways and suggest that objective morality does not require an external foundation at all.” The absence of God, Wielenberg argues, “does not entail the absence of genuine values and moral obligations.”
A scholar in ethical theory and the philosophy of religion, Wielenberg is the author of the 2005 book “Virtue and Value in a Godless Universe” and the forthcoming book “God and the Reach of Reason: C.S. Lewis, David Hume, and Bertrand Russell,” which is scheduled to be published later this year.
A 1994 graduate of Lawrence, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy, Wielenberg holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from University of Massachusetts-Amherst. He joined the faculty at DePauw in 1999.
Wielenberg’s appearance is sponsored by the Lawrence Philosophy Club.
