What Makes Us Moral?: Science, Religion and the Shaping of the Moral Landscape. A Response to Sam Harris

Is science really all we need to make moral decisions? Will there come a time when reason and science alone can tell us everything we need to know about human values? Will this brave new world be better than the current one? Is religion making its last stand in this debate? Theologian and ethicist Craig Hovey exposes the flaws in the idea that science alone answers our moral questions. He directly engages the latest book by Sam Harris, The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values on a host of questions. Hovey argues that Harris' views about human well-being owe and unacknowledged debt to Judaism and Christianity, while his vision of a purely rational moral progress is a fantasy. Hovey draws on Christian morality to give a strikingly different vision of human well-being - one that is more interesting as well as more concrete and beautiful.