Talk:Divine command theory/GA1

GA Review

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch

Reviewer: Mark Arsten (talk · contribs) 19:21, 31 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Will review, comments to follow this weekend, hopefully. Mark Arsten (talk) 19:21, 31 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, finished my read through, I'll try to get my thoughts written out in more detail over the next couple days. First of all, this is very interesting/thought provoking and was enjoyable to read/very informative. The first issue I want to mention is that some copyediting is needed. You might just want to read over the article again slowly. Some prose issues I spotted:
"The theory, and the importance of God's commands or will in establishing morality, has often accepted by followers of various monotheistic and polytheistic religions, both ancient and modern."
"Is also casts God as sovereign, because he remains the source of morality and is himself the moral law."
"Adams does not propose that it would be logically impossible for God to command cruelty, rather that it would be unthinkable for God to do so because of his nature. He emphasised the importance of faith in God, " (change in tense)
"and that right and wrong is tied to their belief in God;" I think this should be "are" instead of "is", there is a similar issue in the first sentence I quoted here.
"Austin content that commanding cruelty for its own sake is not illogical, so is not covered by Aquinas' defence"
"Hugh Storer Chandler has challenged the theory based on modal ideas of what might exist in different world."

Will post more detailed/less obvious issues later. My main concerns are about flow, some parts read fairly choppy, although I guess that's unavoidable to some extent. A few bits are hard to understand, but it should be possible to smooth them out a bit. Mark Arsten (talk) 01:34, 3 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, here's a few more observations:
"Hare challenges this view, arguing that Kantian ethics should be seen as compatible with divine command theory." Which Hare? There are two of them mentioned in this paragraph.
"American philosopher William Alston attempted to defend divine command by making the view philosophically strong." Should probably explain what "philosophically strong" means.
I feel like the number of short sections breaks the flow of the article a bit. Paul Copan and Moral motivation are particularly small, could they be expanded/combined with others?
First paragraph of Alston and Moral motivation are somewhat confusing, you might want to take another look at that one.
Is there a way that the Semantic section could be tweaked to flow a bit more? Mark Arsten (talk) 17:16, 3 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The initial two sentences are Ok, but I feel like they could express the concept a bit more clearly and concisely. I can try to help with that if you want.
Should it be "divine command theory" or "the divine command theory"? Same question for "Natural law"
"Various forms of divine command theory have been presented in the past by philosophers including William Ockham, St Augustine, Duns Scotus, and John Calvin. It teaches that moral truth does not exist independently of God " You should probably write out what "It" is here.
It looks like the Austin source is repeated, should use the Ref name for that.
"American philosopher William Alston attempted to defend divine command by making the view philosophically strong." I'm not sure that you should shorten the theory to "divine command", since it's unclear if specific divine commands or the theory in general is being referred to.
It's hard to avoid, but see if you can cut down on repetition of "God" at all.
The end of the first paragraph of Robert Adams needs a citation.
Minor issue, but you might want to work some of the terms from See also into the body of the article if you can. Mark Arsten (talk) 17:44, 3 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much. I have dealt with all of those issues, and also gone through and copyedited the article. Is there anything else that needs work? ItsZippy ^{(talk • contributions)} 20:10, 3 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]