This book offers an argument for theism. It claims only purposive accounts of the universe can do justice to our pre-philosophical moral commitment to objective moral truth and explain the human acquisition of belief-generating and belief-evaluating capacities which track such truth.This book begins with a defence of moral realism, arguing for its ‘deliberative indispensability’. It claims that the practical deliberation human beings engage in on a daily basis only makes sense if they take themselves to be aiming at a normative truth — that is to say, a truth which goes beyond their own sentim ... More

This book offers an argument for theism. It claims only purposive accounts of the universe can do justice to our pre-philosophical moral commitment to objective moral truth and explain the human acquisition of belief-generating and belief-evaluating capacities which track such truth.This book begins with a defence of moral realism, arguing for its ‘deliberative indispensability’. It claims that the practical deliberation human beings engage in on a daily basis only makes sense if they take themselves to be aiming at a normative truth — that is to say, a truth which goes beyond their own sentiments or the conventions of their culture. Furthermore, when humans engage in practical deliberation, they necessarily take their processes of reasoning to have some ability to track the truth.The central argument of the book builds on this first claim: arguing that we need an explanation as well as a justification of our cognitive capacities with respect to moral truth. It claims that evolutionary biology is not able to generate the kind of explanation which is required — and, in consequence, that all secular philosophical accounts are forced either to abandon moral objectivism or to render the human capacity for moral knowledge inexplicable. This case is made with discussions of a wide range of moral philosophers including Simon Blackburn, Thomas Scanlon, Philippa Foot, and John McDowell. The book concludes by arguing that only purposive accounts of the universe (such as theism and Platonism) can account for human moral knowledge. Among such purposive accounts, it makes the case for theism as the most satisfying, intelligible explanation of our capacity for moral knowledge.