Adam Johnson

Metaethics is the study of what makes something good or bad. It is not the study of what is good or bad, but why there are such things as moral good and moral bad. What is morality? Where did it come from? There are many theories of what morality is; some think morality is subjective and depends on individual people, cultures, and circumstances. Others believe that morality is objective, that it is independent of human beings. Most theists think that morality comes from God, but many atheists claim that God is not necessary for morality. Non-naturalists, for example, believe that morality can exist objectively without God. Thinkers throughout Western history have defended many positions, both subjective and objective as well as theistic and atheist ones. Listen in as Adam gives an overview of the different metaethical theories.

What is philosophy? Philosophy can sometimes be a hard word to define since our culture uses it in many ways. However, the academic study of philosophy could be broadly summed up by three areas of study: the study of existence (metaphysics), the study of knowledge (epistemology), and the study of ethics. Philosophy deals with big ideas that shape cultures, including ours, and the ideas of our cultures shape how we think. Philosophy attempts to answer ultimate questions: Why are we here? What is the meaning of life? If we want to understand how our culture thinks and why it promotes the ideas it does, we have to understand the philosophy that gave birth to those ideas and the history of how they came to be accepted.

Take a look with me at the greatest sermon of all time, Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. It’s three chapters in Matthew, chapters 5, 6, and 7. Many people throughout history, even many non-Christians, have said this is the greatest sermon of all time. We’re all aware that the best leaders know how to cast a powerful vision of how things could be, how things should be. They masterfully paint an ideal picture of what we should be striving for. Consider Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a dream…” speech; he said “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

Mark D. Linville and Louise Antony recently participated in a written debate on the question of whether or not God is necessary for morality. Linville argued that God is necessary for morality whereas Antony argued that God is not. Adam interacts with the arguments made by these two authors and also puts forth his case that God is the best explanation for objective morality.

By Adam Lloyd Johnson, Ph.D.

Different Christian groups and denominations have disagreed about this issue over the years.  Thus, just like with any theological disagreement, we should look into the various positions which have been put forth, make a decision as to which position seems most biblical, and then calmly and rationally explain why we hold our position while showing grace, humility, love, and respect with Christians who have taken other positions (Romans 14).

Keep in mind that the Old Testament law was given by God to the Israelites through Moses and includes over 600 commands that cover a wide range of issues including clothing, house styles, worship instructions, governmental society rules and respective punishments, food to eat and not eat, sexual practices, hygiene, etc. 

By Adam Lloyd Johnson, Ph.D.

In an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation entitled “Emergence”, the crew’s spaceship, the USS Enterprise, developed its own consciousness. The crew members were perplexed as to how this could have happened until Lieutenant Commander Data, a conscious synthetic android with artificial intelligence, explained that

[c]omplex systems can sometimes behave in ways that are entirely unpredictable. The human brain, for example, might be described in terms of cellular functions and neurochemical interactions. But that description does not explain human consciousness, a capacity that far exceeds simple neural functions. Consciousness is an emergent property.1

Data theorized that the ship’s newly formed consciousness was a similar emergent property.

Christians believe that the Bible, both the Old and New Testaments, is a message from God, but how do we know that the Bible is true? Can we really trust what we read there? How do we know what books should be in the Bible, and who originally made that decision? Join Adam for this eight-part series as he shows that there is good evidence to believe that the Bible really is a message from God and that we can trust what it says. In fact, our eternal destiny depends on its message.

On April 22, 2020, during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Adam Lloyd Johnson and Luke Pitts engaged in a debate over Zoom about whether the Bible was true and could be trusted. Adam, as a Christian, defended that the Bible is true, that it gets the major events right and is also correct in all its details. Luke, a skeptic, argued that the Bible was not reliable or trustworthy because of many strange, unusual, and even contradictory things found within it. The exchange included four speeches by each participant as well as a time for questions at the end.

By Adam Lloyd Johnson, Ph.D.

Both Christians and Muslims affirm the following argument:

However, which understanding of God, the Christian’s or the Muslim’s, is a better explanation for objective morality? In this paper I argue that Christianity’s trinitarian God is a better explanation for objective morality than Islam’s God. As part of this argument, I propose a Trinitarian Metaethical Theory (TMT) which maintains that the ultimate ground of morality is God’s trinitarian nature.

In this interview by Crash Course Apologetics, Adam defends his model of morality which holds that God’s existence as a Trinity, His triune nature, is the foundation of all morality. Specifically, the loving relationships between the members of the Trinity are the basis for all moral values and duties for human beings since humans are called to imitate that love and reflect it to others. As Jesus explained in Matthew 22:37-40, love of God and love of neighbor are the foundations of all morality, and this love flows from the loving relationships within the Trinity, which is why Adam proposes that God’s triune nature is a superior explanation for the existence of morality than atheistic models.