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- [00:04]
A
Welcome to Defenders, the teaching class of Dr. William Lane Craig. Today an excursus on Natural Theology, Part 20. For more resources from Dr. Craig, go to reasonablefaith.org We've been talking about the moral argument for God's existence, and last time we looked at an objection to the first premise, which is that if God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist. And that objection comes from Plato's dialogue Euthyphro, in which Plato says that if you say that something is good just because God wills it, then that makes good and evil arbitrary, which seems wrong. But if you say God wills something because it really is good, then the good is independent of God and, and therefore needn't be dependent upon him for its objectivity. And I suggested that this is a false dilemma, that what Christians say instead is that God wills something because he is good. That is to say, God is himself, the standard of goodness and value. And that nature then is expressed toward us in the form of divine commandments which constitute our moral duties. So moral values are rooted in the nature of God. Our moral duties are rooted in the commands of God. Now, was there any final discussion or question about this solution to the objection before we proceed? Dennis?
- [01:45]
B
So, Bill, would it be correct to say that God then never deliberates over good and evil, but simply is the good?
- [01:53]
A
And I think that would be good.
- [01:54]
B
There's no choice made here.
- [01:56]
A
He might deliberate over right and wrong. Robert Adams, who defends this divine command theory of morality, would say that not every moral command is necessarily true, that God could issue certain commands, such as one has, for example, in Old Testament laws that are provisional and temporary. So he could deliberate over that. But in terms of value itself, this is not rooted in the will of God, but rather in the nature of God. And that's why this isn't a voluntarist view, as is often alleged against it. Any other comment or question? Yes. Give us your name.
- [02:37]
B
Hi, I'm Jonathan. I tried to get at this in your lecture at ksu, but the question wasn't particularly well worded. But basically, the thing I struggle with, with the Euthyphros dilemma is why exactly does saying that something is good because God wills it or commands it, why exactly is that wrong? Other than that it's arbitrary? Because the way I understand it is if something is arbitrary to God, then if God's an objective being, then if it's to say it's arbitrary to God doesn't seem like that big of a problem to me. I mean, and it also Seems like that would actually flow naturally out of the idea that something is asked that
- [03:20]
A
question last week and what I said to him was that it seemed to me that a voluntaristic view of divine command theory would suggest that no moral values and duties are necessarily true. And that seems wrong. It would seem that certain moral duties, such as loving God with your heart, all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, all your strength, that that would be necessarily true, that God couldn't have willed otherwise. And if that's the case, then these moral duties are not simply rooted in the will of God. They're deeper than that. They would be expressions of his very nature.
- [04:07]
C
Yes, Eric, I wasn't here last week, so hopefully this hasn't been asked already. But is it necessary then that God be good, or another way to think of it? If God had a nature other than he was, would that nature then be good?
- [04:21]
A
It is necessary that God be good. On this view. It's an essential property of God. And God as the greatest conceivable Being, must be a morally perfect being. So there's no question about this being contingent or happenstance. This is necessary. Yes, Steve.
- [04:41]
D
Okay, so this is about duty as well.
- [04:43]
A
Yes.
- [04:44]
D
And so God is holding us to his own standard of Himself. If we have that, which means epistemologically, we must also be able to know him as he is, which means we'll be transformed to be in the self, same image. I mean, I think all that flows from that.
- [05:04]
A
Yes. I haven't talked about how we know the content of our moral duties. As I said the other day, I'm open to any theory about how we come to know our moral duties. But certainly what you said about being conformed to his image, sanctified in Christ, that would be all part of the work of the Spirit in our lives.
- [05:24]
D
As we move toward, as we let his will be ours, then we get to walk in his shoes and therefore we see him clear. Then you can see somebody outside of you. So him coming in the flesh is him coming mainly in us as believers, letting him rest. I mean letting us rest with contentment, with his will. And that changes us to be the self, same image. Because now you can really see him because you see his desires, his hopes, his goodness.
- [05:49]
A
Okay, now the mention of Plato brings to mind another possible atheistic response to premise one. And I call this atheistic moral Platonism. Plato thought that the good just exists on its own as a sort of self existent idea. Now if you find this difficult to grasp, then join the company later. Christian thinkers equated Plato's good with God's moral nature, but Plato himself thought that the good just existed on its own. And so some atheists might say that that moral values like justice, mercy, love and so on just exist without any foundation. They're not grounded in God, they just exist on their own. And we can call this view atheistic moral Platonism. It holds that objective moral values do exist, but they're not grounded in God. Indeed, they're not grounded in anything. They just exist on their own. So what might we say about this view? Well, I have three responses. First, the view seems unintelligible. What does it mean to say, for example, that the moral value justice just exists? It's hard to make sense of this. It's easy to understand what it means to say that some person is is just. But it's bewildering when somebody says that in the absence of any people, justice itself just exists. It becomes even more bewildering when you reflect on the fact that justice itself is not just, any more than loyalty is loyal or intemperateness is intemperate. So if there were no people around who are just, then how could justice exist? It seems like there wouldn't be any justice. This abstract object is not just. There aren't any just people. So justice wouldn't seem to exist. Which contradicts the view that justice just exists on its own. As an idea, moral values seem to be properties of persons. And so it's hard to understand how moral values like justice can exist as an abstraction. Secondly, this view provides no basis for moral duties. It tries to give a basis for moral values, but it has nothing to say by way of an explanation of our moral duties. Let's suppose for the sake of argument that moral values like justice, loyalty, mercy, forbearance, and so on just exist. How does that reflect result in any moral obligations? For me, why would I have a moral duty to be, say, merciful? Who or what lays such an obligation upon me? Notice that on this view, moral vices such as greed, hatred, rapacity, selfishness and sloth also exist, and as abstractions. So why are we morally obligated to align our lives with one set of these abstractions rather than with some other set of these abstractions? Atheistic moral Platonism, lacking a moral law giver, has no grounds for moral obligation. And finally, number three, it's fantastically improbable that the blind evolutionary process should spit forth precisely those sorts of creatures who correspond to the abstractly existing realm of Moral values. This seems to be an utterly incredible coincidence when you think about it. Remember that this realm of moral values as an abstract realm is utterly independent of the natural realm. It is causally unconnected with the natural realm. So how is it that exactly that kind of creature should emerge from the blind evolutionary process that corresponds to this independently existing moral realm? It's almost as though the moral realm knew that we were coming. I think it's far more plausible to think that both the natural realm and the moral realm are under the authority of a God who, who gave us both the natural laws and the moral law than to think that these two independent realms of reality just happen by coincidence to mesh. So for those reasons, I think that atheistic moral Platonism is a less plausible theory of ethical values and duties than is theism. Any question or comment about this point of view? Let me see if there's someone who hasn't asked a question yet. It appears not. So we'll go to Cody here.
- [11:05]
E
Yeah, so I was wondering, are there any atheist philosophers who defend atheistic moral Platonism? And if so, how do they usually respond to these kind of criticisms?
- [11:14]
A
I think there are. I sort of just invented this view on my own as a possible response, but I think someone like Eric Wielenberg would affirm something close to this. But I do not know how they would respond to these three points. I find it, as I say, just an unintelligible view. And many people have made the point that it seems to lack a basis for moral obligation and prohibition, having no lawgiver. And then the third point is again a point made in the literature that I haven't seen a good response to. So I can't say. Cody? Yes.
- [11:53]
E
Seems to me that the atheistic, plural, I mean platonistic, atheistic worldview on morals would be almost like a Star wars universe where you have light and dark side, but you can kind of. It doesn't really. You don't really have a moral obligation to be one side or the other. You just kind of pick whichever side you want.
- [12:12]
A
Well, that's an interesting analogy. And this light and dark side isn't rooted or based in anything deeper on this.
- [12:19]
E
Well, I mean, there's the force that has both light side and dark side, but it doesn't command anyone to do one thing or another thing. You just kind of do what you want and whatever side you want to do is what you want to do.
- [12:30]
A
That is a kind of sci fi analogy to this view.
- [12:33]
C
Okay, Eric, I guess this is sort of a bizarre thought, but in this kind of Platonic idea, where the good is this abstract, would that also apply to non sentient beings? Would animals be therefore, you know, somehow under this moral code as well?
- [12:48]
A
I guess there's. You have to ask yourself, since it doesn't have a basis for moral duties in it, you'd have to ask yourself to what extent it would apply to animals. And I suspect that those who hold to this would say that because animals are not rational, therefore they are not moral agents, and so they have no moral duties. So when a wolf eats a lamb, it harms the lamb, but it doesn't do anything wrong. It doesn't violate the lamb's moral rights or do anything wrong. But these people might say, if you were to eat the lamb, then you would be doing something morally wrong to the lamb because you are a rational agent. At least that's the best sense I could make of it. I think there was another question over there, wasn't there? Let's see. Sam. Right. Okay. All right.
- [13:39]
B
This isn't really a question, and I really hate to be that guy, but in response to the Star wars analogy.
- [13:46]
A
Yeah.
- [13:49]
B
I would just like to point out that the Force does indeed favor the light side because the dark side tends to have violent repercussions for the user, like Darth Plagueis. He was so hungry for power that eventually.
- [14:08]
A
Okay, we'll give Kevin one chance to respond, and then I'm going to bow out of this debate because I am not a Star wars aficionado.
- [14:16]
E
Now, from my understanding, what the Force really wants is balance. And balance doesn't mean getting rid of the dark side. It just means that there is an equal amount on both sides. Right. So you may have one side that's being really destructive. All right, he's got his hand up again. We may do this later. We're going to debate this later.
- [14:35]
A
Yeah, good. You know, it's remarkable how much this sounds like Manichaeism, which was an ancient heresy that St. Augustine encountered, which was that the world is divided into light and dark, and you have to decide which side you're on. All right, any question, though, about atheistic moral Platonism, not Star Wars.
- [14:57]
B
Okay, Drew, I'm just wondering if anyone's gone the Aristotle route with this. You know, with Aristotle, the universes aren't in some heaven. They're like. The roundness is, like, in this table. Right. So I'm wondering, has anyone gone that way, saying that moral values supervene on physical states of affairs and maybe our obligations are in our natures?
- [15:16]
A
I'll say something about a view kind of like that later, but I would alert you to a philosopher named Richard Taylor who is very interesting on this. Taylor argued very strongly that in the absence of God there are no objective moral duties. That in the absence of a lawgiver there is no right and wrong. He said we're just like animals and animals aren't moral agents. But Taylor's response was to adopt an Aristotelian view of ethics where he said ethics or virtues are sort of like skills. And just as say a carpenter can be very skilled at his carpentry, or plumber very skilled at his plumbing, so humans can be morally skilled and live lives that are virtuous in highly developed, skillful ways. Not that this is right to do or wrong not to do, but it is just a sort of skill you developed at living well, so to speak. And I had a debate with Richard Taylor on this subject and I believe it's on YouTube and I commend it to you because I thought it was a very interesting debate where I pointed out on the one hand on atheism it was hard to see why you would call these virtues at all. And then on the other hand I argued that you could have a theistic based virtue ethics where God is the source of certain virtues and that therefore it really is good and obligatory to develop these virtues in. So you're right that there is that alternative and Taylor would be a representative of it. All right, any other comment? Yes, Steve.
- [17:03]
D
I've always thought Plato was addressing the little gods, that his society was so and that he was thinking that was really kind of like the ultimate God. But they didn't see him being intimately involved in the ongoing.
- [17:15]
A
Yeah, this is a fair comment. The Euthyphro dilemma was about the gods plural of Greece. And do the gods will what is good or is the good just what the gods will? So for Plato, in a sense the good is a kind of God surrogate. It is the sort of metaphysical ultimate from which the world flows and it is the ultimate standard of goodness and so forth. But I think it's fair to say it's not a personal being. And in that sense this is different than theism. But certainly early Christians found in Plato inspiration they identified the good as God.
- [17:57]
D
To him it'd be the unapproachable, unknowable.
- [18:01]
A
All right, any other comment? Well, let me look then at one final objection which I call stubborn humanism. So what is the atheist supposed to do at this point? Most of them want to affirm the objective reality of moral values and duties. It is not true that most ethicists or philosophers are relativists or moral nihilists. They want to have objective moral values and duties, and so most of them simply embrace humanism and just stop there. Whatever contributes to human flourishing is good, and whatever detracts from it is bad, and that's the end of the story. This would be the position of someone like Sam Harris, for example, who is very strong on objective moral values and duties and simply roots them in human flourishing. What might we say in response to this? Well, I would argue that just taking human flourishing as your ultimate stopping point seems to be premature because of the arbitrariness and implausibility of such a stopping point. Given atheism, why think that what is conducive to human flourishing is more valuable than what is conducive to the flourishing of ants or mice or chimpanzees? Why think that inflicting harm on another member of our species is wrong? When I put this question to the Dartmouth ethicist Walter Sinnett Armstrong in our debate on the existence of God, he replied, it simply is objectively. Don't you agree? Well, of course I agree that it is wrong to harm another human being. But I pointed out that that wasn't the question. The question is, why would it be wrong if atheism were true? Given an atheistic worldview, picking out human flourishing as morally special seems to be arbitrary. Moreover, and this is the second point, it seems implausible as well. Atheists will sometimes say that moral values simply attach necessarily to certain natural states of affairs. The technical term here is supervene. These moral properties supervene on natural states. An example of supervention would be the property of wetness supervenes on hydrogen and oxygen when it's combined in a certain way. Neither hydrogen nor oxygen is wet. But if you combine hydrogen and oxygen as H2O, then wetness is a property that necessarily attaches to that substance. It supervenes on that state of affairs. And so the claim is that moral properties, in a similar way, supervene on natural states of affairs. So the property of goodness naturally attaches to a mother's nursing or infant. The property of badness necessarily supervenes on a man's beating his wife. And atheists will say that once all of the natural properties are in place, then the moral properties just sort of come along with them necessarily. Now, on atheism, this seems to me to be extraordinarily implausible. Why think that these strange Non natural properties like goodness and badness even exist, much less that they naturally or necessarily rather supervene on various natural states of affairs. I can't see any reason to think that on atheism a full description of the natural properties and involved in some situation would determine or fix any of the moral properties of that situation. These humanistic philosophers have simply taken a shopping list approach to ethical questions because they hold to humanism. They simply help themselves to the moral properties that they need in order to do the job. They just wheel their shopping cart down the moral aisle and pick the moral properties that they want to be part of their view. But what's needed to make this view plausible is some sort of explanation for why moral properties would necessarily supervene on certain natural states of affairs. And again, it's inadequate for the humanist to assert that we do in fact see that human beings have intrinsic moral value, because that's not in dispute. Indeed, that's the second premise of the moral argument. What we want from the humanist is some reason to think that human beings would be morally significant if atheism were true. As it is, I think their humanism is just a stubborn moral faith. Now, somebody might persist, but why is God the ultimate standard of moral value? Now, in a certain sense, this question is just misconceived. Anybody has the right to present his moral theory and to explain its parameters. The apropos question will be whether that moral theory is plausible. In particular, whether its moral ultimate or its explanatory ultimate is a non arbitrary ultimate, adequate stopping point. And I've argued that on humanism that stopping point is premature. It is arbitrary and implausible. In contrast to humanism, I think that theism has a novel or adequate stopping point. For God by definition is the greatest conceivable being. A being that by definition is worthy of of worship. Anything that does not have that property just is not God. So nothing higher could be imagined. And so identifying the good with God himself, I think supplies a foundation for a plausible moral theory. Well, with that we're out of time. And so let's go ahead and bow our heads. And now maybe the God of love, fill your hearts with love, both for him and for one another, as we go throughout our weekly duties through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. The copyright for the content of this recording is held by Dr. William Lane Craig. For more go to reasonablefaith.org.