G. E. Moore

G. E. Moore (1873-1958) was a British philosopher who, while not primarily focused on philosophy of religion, made significant contributions relevant to the God debate through his ethical philosophy and epistemological work. His famous "open question argument" in Principia Ethica (1903) challenged naturalistic definitions of goodness, indirectly supporting non-naturalist approaches to ethics that some theologians found compatible with divine command theory. Moore's defense of common sense and his rigorous analytical method influenced how philosophers approached religious claims, demanding clarity and precision in theological discourse. His work on the naturalistic fallacy has been employed in debates about whether moral properties can be reduced to natural or supernatural facts. Though Moore himself was largely agnostic, his emphasis on careful analysis of concepts and his intuitionism in ethics provided tools later philosophers used to examine religious language, the nature of religious experience, and arguments about God's existence, particularly regarding the relationship between divine commands and moral truths.