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The idea of obligation is rationally unstable without the accompanying idea of a sufficiently good and powerful obligator to give the command and sustain the order in which the command is observed.

— John E. Hare Evolutionary Theory and Theological Ethics (2012)

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More quotes by John E. Hare

To the extent that we are free we are like God, who has no need of an idea of a God over Godself or of an incentive other than the moral law itself. But to the extent that we are also natural beings, we desire our own happiness in everything else that we desire, and we need the practical postulate of God to bring that happiness together with morality.

Ethics and Religion: Two Kantian Arguments (2011)

It is basically a bad idea to take some area of human thought and experience that has been the locus of careful analyses and subtle distinctions for centuries, and start again, as it were, from scratch. What in fact happens when this is done is that some ideas from that tradition re-emerge, but are isolated from the context in which they were embedded in the preceding conversation.

Evolutionary Theory and Theological Ethics (2012)

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