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This chapter defines and introduces the conceptual category of ‘moral atheism’ — i.e. the denial of the existence of a deity with moral attributes — and distinguishes between two main versions of the position. A ‘weak moral atheist’ rejects the existence of a morally praiseworthy divinity; while a ‘strong moral atheist’ rejects the existence of a morally assessable divinity. The chapter also relates the category of moral atheism to early modern ways of thinking about religion, irreligion, and atheism. It introduces the main interpretive thesis of the book: the claim that Hume is a strong moral atheist. It also addresses a preliminary objection from the lack of explicit textual evidence.

This is the second of two chapters examining Hume's argument from sentimentalism to moral atheism. According to the argument, human passions, including our feelings of moral approval and disapproval, range only so far as the outer frontier of sense and imagination. Given Hume's sentimentalist metaphysics of morals, it follows that the projected properties of virtue and vice are confined to the immanent world, and cannot characterize any transcendental order beyond this permanent horizon: the deity cannot have any moral attributes. It is argued that Hume is committed to this argument, and that he is aware that he is so committed. The chapter also examines possible objections to the argument, and concludes that it is defensible on Hume's own terms.

Chapter 22 reports on a longitudinal study of early emerging adults, aged 18 to 21, that investigated three aspects of character: character traits (Big Five facets), character strivings (based on Values in Action character strengths), and moral self-attributes (self-evaluations of moral behavior). The study posed three questions: What is character like in early emerging adulthood and how does it change? How do aspects of character interrelate? What does character prospection reveal about which aspects of character are important, ideal, and expected to improve? EResults indicate that 18- to 21-year olds see themselves as typically acting in good character but also as improving somewhat in college; those higher in moral self-attributes also have higher levels of character traits and strivings. Simultaneously, emerging adults project ideal character levels higher than their current levels, expect character traits to improve in the near future, and view character striving as highly important.

Our first task in this chapter is to assess what we have learned to this point, tabulating what we have learned from our discussions in the two previous sections. Our second task is to note the attributes of deity that carry weight in assessing a metatheology that don’t fall under the starting points of the metatheologies we are considering and weren’t covered in our discussion of the initial shared ground. For this task we can begin by listing some of the common attributes of God that we have not discussed to this point, and assess the capacity of each of our metatheologies for deriving these attributes.