Why Does William Lane Craig’s Brain Fall Out When He Talks About the Moral Argument?
William Lane Craig's horrible, terrible, no good, very bad, views on meta-ethics
Craig is notorious for winning debates. He has done a lot of debates and won many fo them. Yet at the hands of Kagan, he got totally annihilated. Blown to bits. Turned into dust. (Insert 100 other synonyms of getting destroyed).
I recently left a comment on Richard Carrier’s blog, leaving to him responding. While I think Carrier misses the point of Wielenberg’s morality, he is right about one thing: atheists often don’t grapple with the low tier meme arguments about morality from theists. They often miss the forest (why be good at all) for the trees (how we can robustly ground morality with moral platonism). So I thought in this article, once and for all, I would explain why no one serious takes these arguments seriously.
At around the 25:00 minute mark, Craig says that atheists can’t account for objective moral values. Craig says that God supplies morality because he has a loving nature. I’ve already responded to this in depth here, so I won’t rehash it.
Craig asks absent God what the basis is for objective moral values. Well, there are lots of them including natural facts, irreduceable normative supervenience, moral platonism, a view like Parfit’s that says they’re just true with no external basis, and numerous others. The atheist can run an exactly parallel argument. If they accept
A) Objective moral values exist
and
B) Absent adopting moral platonism or theism, moral values don’t exist
C) Theism is false
Then they should accept
D) Moral platonism is true.
Craig asks why think human beings have moral worth? Well, human beings have the ability to suffer and be happy to they have moral worth. This is because suffering is bad. We observer the badness of suffering directly, whenever we experience it. That’s why most philosophers are atheists and moral realists and why even theists like Cunneo and Swinburne are rather embarrassed by Craig’s poor argument.
Craig then talks about the universe being big and that it will end at some point. This is a red herring, a big universe doesn’t eliminate moral worth. If it did, then finding out that the universe was smaller than we thought and would last longer would increase our credence in moral realism. It shouldn’t. This is because Craig is just whining about our cosmic insignificance rather than giving an argument. He also talks about how we evolved on a rock. This once again is just complaining, it is not a reason why we lack moral worth.
Craig then says he can’t see a reason to think human well-being is objectively good any more than insect or monkey well-being. I agree, however, humans have much greater capacity for well-being than insects or monkeys, so they matter more even if their well-being is equal. God can’t solve this problem for reasons I explain here. Natural facts have properties, e.g. yellow is a bright color. Pain is bad, the same way yellow is bright. We don’t need god for this to be true. We know pain is bad because it makes sense of lots of our moral intuitions and we have direct introspective access to it, the same way we know yellow is bright.
Craig then says that on naturalism morality is just a biological byproduct. However, this doesn’t make it untrue. We evolved to learn math and science, but that doesn’t mean they’re not true. If you think that morality can be debunked evolutionarily, that would eradicate all of Craig’s arguments for moral realism.
Craig next quotes Michael Ruse who is an atheist arguing for moral anti-realism. Oh, well if Ruse says it it must be true, despite the consensus disagreeing. Wow, powerful stuff from Craig!
Then Craig says that if one rewound evolution different moral values might have evolved. This is true, but it’s not an argument with any implications. If we’d evolved differently we may have had different religious or scientific views. That’s not an argument against religion or science. Facts can be true even if we wouldn’t have realized that if we’d evolved differently.
But now, we can take a page out of Carrier’s play book and employ some bayesian counter apologetics. Why the heck would god make our intuitions terribly off base, leading to many throughout human history being okay with truly horrific things like slavery, torture, and rape. As Ozy says
“Even today, many people read Greek and Roman philosophers for moral guidance and inspiration. I’m hardly going to be accused of excessive modesty if I say no one is going to be taking life advice from my writings in two thousand years. But there are lots of issues where I am right and Greek and Roman philosophers are wrong.
And these are not especially controversial moral issues. Here’s a quick list of examples of beliefs I’m talking about:
You shouldn’t keep slaves.
You shouldn’t torture people.
You should also care about people who live in a different city than the one you live in, who were born in a different city than the one you live in, or who speak a different language than you.
You should let women vote, leave the house, choose who they marry, and generally exercise some amount of self-determination over their own lives.
Your national sport shouldn’t be watching people get murdered.
You shouldn’t rape pubescent children, especially if they are also your slaves.
If a country consists exclusively of former child soldiers with CPTSD and the slaves they can randomly murder on a whim, that is in fact bad, and not good.”
Then Craig says only caring about humans is specesism. I’d agree with that.
Craig then says that naturalists are committed to materialism. This is obviously false, many naturalists aren’t materialists, like Parfit, Kagan, and Singer.
Then Craig says that if we’re materialists we have to reject free will. This is also false, most philosophers are compatibilists thinking that free will can coexist with determinism. One could also believe in some type of strong mental emergence leading to free will. Determinism just relates to the origins of our thoughts, however, it doesn’t mean that we can’t punish people. Craig then compares it to a tree growing a branch, but if a tree was growing a branch in a way that would harm people, that could be deterred, and the tree had thoughts and did rational cost benefit analysis’ then we would punish the tree for growing a branch through the heart of a 5 year old child.
Craig says that we’d just be like puppets, but puppets lack value. Well yes, puppets aren’t sentient. However, we are, so we have moral value. Puppets also can’t respond to rational deterrence.
To illustrate this, imagine that puppets could feel pain. Would it be bad to set them on fire? Craig would have to say no, yet this answer is patently absurd.
Also, if God knows the future then we can’t have free will because he knows what we’ll do in advance.
Then Craig quotes Dawkins expressing moral anti realism. Dawkins does not represent all or even most atheists about this, so this is a red herring. But I guess quoting random people is what you have to resort to if you have no good arguments on your side.
Craig once again repeats that evolution says we’re apes and the world is big. Cool story, but that doesn’t undermine morality at all.
Next Craig moves on to talk about objective moral duties, which relate to whether something is right or wrong. He says that the distinction between right and wrong is different from that between good and bad, because you’re not always obligated to do the most good. It would be good to be a doctor but you’re not obligated to be a doctor.
Ah yes, we need god to explain why we don’t have to be doctors to be good people.
Craig says duties come from gods commands. However, this runs into euthephro’s dilemma. Does god have a reason for giving duties? If not then they’re arbitrary and give us no reasons but if he does, then those reasons are independent of god. Craig says they’re grounded in his character, but that fails for reasons given above.
Craig then says we’re just animals. Well we are animals, but we’re not just animals. Animals don’t have moral duties because they don’t understand the world enough to understand duties. However, if they did, they would have duties. If a giraffe was well versed in moral philosophy and had read Parfit and then choose to stomp children to death when it didn’t need to, it would run afoul of its duties. That’s why a super intelligent animal would have duties but a mentally feeble human or a baby doesn’t have duties.
Craig says that a shark may forcefully copulate with another shark but he doesn’t rape the female shark. The distinction above explained this. A 2 year old may kill their parent, but they do not murder their parent. This is because they don’t understand morality.
Then Craig says that violating moral rules isn’t wrong, but just violates social rules on atheism. This begs the question against atheist morality.
Next Craig says that on atheism can’t account for moral accountability. He says this is true because god punishes bad people and rewards good people, always making it in people’s self interest to act well. He is right that atheists would deny that. However, if you need to personally benefit from it in order to be convinced that you shouldn’t torture people, then your morality is pretty screwed up. The reason we should be moral isn’t because it benefits us, it’s because it’s good to be moral.
Any account that says you need to personally benefit from being moral to do it is defective. But there’s another reason to be moral, layed out by Parfit in Reasons and Persons. We would surely agree that one who neglected their future interests would be irrational, for example, one who procrastinates leading to their life being worse in the long run. However, what’s the relevant difference between not caring about your future self and not caring about others?
One might say that they will be their future self at some point, but they’ll never be other people. However, their present self won’t be their future self, so this is irrelevant. A person who only cares about their present self could similarly say that their present self will never care experience the life of their future self. Additionally, Parfit argues that there is no irreduceible identity, so there’s no true sense in which you’re the same person as your 4 year old self. Thus, this distinction is illusory. This seems to give a good account. Finally, a world in which we help others will go better or ourselves for contractarian reasoning. Those who help others more are generally happier.
Then Craig says that “…if life ends at the grave then it makes no difference whether you live as a Stalin or a Mother Teresa.” Why? Your life and the lives of others will be better if you’re better. Why the hell does the duration of the universe matter to the question of whether you should help people. This claim is just bizarre. It is once again, Craig whining about life not going on forever and how sad it would be, rather than giving an argument.
He then quotes Dostoyevsky saying that absent immortality nothing matters. Oh Dostoyevsky said it so it must be true! He doesn’t explain why the fact that the universe won’t go on forever makes things no matter. If a person is brutally tortured for years and then killed that is bad, regardless of what the future will hold. This is obvious. Would Craig really hold that if heaven only lasted 100000^1000^100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000^1000000 years then nothing would matter?
Then Craig complains about how bad things are bad, and it’s sad that they’re not offset. I agree, it is sad. However, some sad things are true.
Then Craig asks again why we should be moral. I explained why above, he’s repeating himself.
Then Craig says that there’s no reason to be moral unless it pays off. This is false, one shouldn’t torture people even if it would make their life better.
Craig then says it would be demoralizing. Oh shoot, I guess it might make us sad if there’s no god. There MUST be a god. Craig says it will make people less moral. This is an empirical claim given with no empirical evidence. However, even if atheism made us less moral, that wouldn’t mean it couldn’t account for morality, any more than claiming that Christians are less moral than Sikhs would prove Christianity can’t ground morality.
Also, on the subject of god given morality, let’s look at god’s impeccable moral character. God allows tens of thousands of small children to die every day. Is that moral? God doesn’t intervene to stop 9/11, covid, the holocaust, the black plague, malaria, typhoid, or anything else. Is that moral? God creates in many humans a sexual attraction to children, leading to lots of kids being raped. Is that moral? God intentionally doesn’t create a mechanism for filtering out extreme agony, such as the pain experienced when one is on the cusp of death, slowly being ravaged by cancer or being burned to death in a fire. Is that moral?
Oh and in the old testament, god’s commands were as barbaric as they get. Here are some lovely passages.
Leviticus 24:16 New International Version (NIV) 16 anyone who blasphemes the name of the Lord is to be put to death. The entire assembly must stone them.
In Noahs flood god drowns babies. That seems unethical. God could have made death painless.
Numbers 31:17-18 “Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man intimately. But all the girls who have not known man intimately, spare for yourselves.”
(Isaiah 13:9–16 NIV) "See, the day of the Lord is coming — a cruel day, with wrath and fierce anger. . . . I will put an end to the arrogance of the haughty. . . . Their infants will be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses will be looted and their wives violated."
(Jeremiah 13:15–26 NRSV) "Hear and give ear; do not be haughty, for the Lord has spoken. . . . And if you say in your heart, 'Why have these things come upon me?' it is for the greatness of your iniquity that your skirts are lifted up, and you are violated . . . because you have forgotten me and trusted in lies. I myself will lift up your skirts over your face, and your shame will be seen."
Exodus 21:20-21New International Version
“Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result, 21 but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property.”
That’s partially why slave owners used the bible to justify slavery.
In the exodus story god hardens pharoahs heart when he’s going to relent and kills firstborn children.
I could go on and on. However, I think it’s clear that the bible is no paragon of virtue.
Oh also, Jesus weirdly doubles down on his disciples not washing their hands, plausible leading to millions of deaths. In Luke he says
“37When Jesus had finished speaking, a Pharisee invited him to eat with him; so he went in and reclined at the table. 38But the Pharisee was surprised when he noticed that Jesus did not first wash before the meal.
39Then the Lord said to him, “Now then, you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. 40You foolish people! Did not the one who made the outside make the inside also? 41But now as for what is inside you—be generous to the poor, and everything will be clean for you.
42“Woe to you Pharisees, because you give God a tenth of your mint, rue and all other kinds of garden herbs, but you neglect justice and the love of God. You should have practiced the latter without leaving the former undone.”
Carrier has pointed out just how much harm this caused.
If you watch the Kagan debate, it’s hard to understate just how brutally blown out Craig got. Why is this? Kagan isn’t a professional debater, he’s just a philosopher. The reason is because Craig’s arguments are so bad that not even his gifted debate skills can save him. Christians need to stop running this deeply terrible argument—especially with it’s many Craig based awful additions.