I thought Bruce’s latest reply deserved its own post. He critiques some arguments for God’s existence, and in so doing he distorts the arguments and falls far short.
The moral argument:
You should be grateful she (Greta) didn’t (critique it), this is one of the worst arguments for religion given how many immoral religious people there are, and how many upright and moral atheists there are. It is essentially bigotted.
Bruce, did you even read the link? The moral argument doesn’t claim moral superiority on Christians’ part. Where did Craig claim what you wrote? Give me a quote.
credit: freethoughtpedia.com....ironic, I think
Actually, Craig claims just the opposite. He says,
Can we be good without God? At first the answer to this question may seem so obvious that even to pose it arouses indignation. For while those of us who are Christian theists undoubtedly find in God a source of moral strength and resolve which enables us to live lives that are better than those we should live without Him, nevertheless it would seem arrogant and ignorant to claim that those who do not share a belief in God do not often live good moral lives–indeed, embarrassingly, lives that sometimes put our own to shame.
But wait. It would, indeed, be arrogant and ignorant to claim that people cannot be good without belief in God. But that was not the question. The question was: can we be good without God? When we ask that question, we are posing in a provocative way the meta-ethical question of the objectivity of moral values. Are the values we hold dear and guide our lives by mere social conventions akin to driving on the left versus right side of the road or mere expressions of personal preference akin to having a taste for certain foods or not? Or are they valid independently of our apprehension of them, and if so, what is their foundation? Moreover, if morality is just a human convention, then why should we act morally, especially when it conflicts with self-interest? Or are we in some way held accountable for our moral decisions and actions?
Today I want to argue that if God exists, then the objectivity of moral values, moral duties, and moral accountability is secured, but that in the absence of God, that is, if God does not exist, then morality is just a human convention, that is to say, morality is wholly subjective and non-binding. We might act in precisely the same ways that we do in fact act, but in the absence of God, such actions would no longer count as good (or evil), since if God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist. Thus, we cannot truly be good without God. On the other hand, if we do believe that moral values and duties are objective, that provides moral grounds for believing in God.
In its bare bones, the argument goes like this:
1) If God did not exist, objective moral values and duties would not exist.
2) Objective moral values and duties do exist.
3) Therefore, God exists.
The argument is obviously valid (the conclusion follows the premises); is it sound, though?
Bruce, you agree with premise 2, otherwise you wouldn’t have mentioned how immoral religious people can be and how moral atheists can be.
Of course, by that statement you could mean that you prefer what atheists do to what religious people do, or that atheists prefer their own morality. You could mean that what atheists do has been preserved by natural selection and is beneficial to the species/individual. You could mean that morality is a social convention, and thus what atheists do follows the West’s social contract.
But then again, if you meant something like that, you wouldn’t have called me making the argument “bigoted.”
So the question is, “is premise 1 true?”
You might try to suggest that objective moral values exist on their own because they depend upon biological or physical properties of nature, but that would commit the is/ought fallacy and would gut morality of one of it’s essential qualities: the “oughtness” of moral values. Moral properties are prescriptive in nature.
You also might try to suggest that premise 1 is false based on the Euthyphro dilemma. For an answer to that, see Copan’s treatment here (scroll to p17 for the E dillemma).
You might also say, “I don’t need God to know right and wrong. An atheist can recognize what’s moral without God existing.” This response confuses epistemology with metaphysics. That is, an atheist can indeed recognize right and wrong without belief in God, but I am talking about “what grounds/justifies morality?” That is a metaphysical question. If God doesn’t really exist, then we, the atheist and theist alike, might think they are correctly identifying moral values, but they are not; it’s all just the herd mentality, nothing more.
All this is light years away from Bruce’s treatment. He has changed the subject from the argument to talking about theists and atheists moral behavior.
He goes on:
The cosmological argument
Is an element of argument from design – and doesn’t actually lead to God. A “First cause” wouldn’t have to actually be sentient for it to be a first cause, God on the other hand is. Aside from that, it doesn’t actually solve the question, it just begs it, after all from whence came God? And you can’t say “God always was” because if God always was, why couldn’t the universe have always been?
First, he never defines the argument from design. Actually, we’ve been talking all this time without Greta or Bruce demonstrating that they understand the argument correctly. All they’ve mentioned at this point is a label. The best they’ve said is, “the design argument? That’s been shattered by evolution!”
But we don’t know, exactly, what it is they think has been shattered by evolution. All they’ve provided us with is a name.
I ask: how, exactly, is the cosmological argument an element of the design argument, and if so, why is that bad? He never says.
Secondly, while none of the cosmological arguments out there lead to a full version of the triune biblical God, none of them actually purport to do so. Thirdly, some versions of the argument, like the kalam argument, go past merely identifying a “first cause.”
In its bare bones, here is the kalam argument:
1) Whatever begins to exist has a cause
2) The universe began to exist.
3) Therefore, the universe has a cause.
1 is pretty uncontroversial, and there are several philosophical and scientific tools available to demonstrate the soundness of 2. For those tools, just follow the original link I provided in the first post.
Most importantly, careful consideration helps us discover some of the attributes this first cause must have in order to cause the universe. For one, it must transcend space and time, because it is the cause of space and time. It must exist atemporally and nonspacially. Next, it must be changeless and immaterial. Timelessness entails changelessness, and that in turn implies immateriality. It must be powerful enough to cause something like the universe.
Most importantly, its plausible to think the first cause is personal. Out of the two types of causal explanations (scientific–referencing laws and initial condtions; agentive–persons and their decisions), the first cause cannot have a scientific explanation, because a) nothing came before it, b) the only things we know that are timeless and immaterial are minds or abstract objects, and abstract objects dont’ cause anything, and c) in the first cause, a temporal effect–the universe–came from a timeless cause. Craig notes,
…if the necessary and sufficient conditions of the effect are timelessly given, then their effect must be given as well. The only way for the cause to be timeless and changeless but for its effect to originate anew a finite time ago is for the cause to be a personal agent who freely chooses to bring about an effect without antecedent determining conditions.
He continues:
The teleological argument
Isn’t essentially an argument from design, it is THE argument from design, using a big word to describe it.
Again, he just uses the phrase “argument from design” but he demonstrates no actual understanding of the argument. I’m beginning to wonder if he ever took a cursory glance at one of the links I offered, like I asked.
The argument from the resurrection
The record of that resurrection is the Bible, so it fits precisely into 1, because without the Bible there is no record of that resurrection. Raising it in defence of Christian belief is essentially, circular reasoning.
This is yet another gross misunderstanding, for the argument does not depend upon the reliability of the Bible at all. Basically, there are four historical facts that the overwhelming majority of New Testament scholarship agrees happened. Even the Jesus Seminar fellows go with most of them, and they definitely are no friends of the Bible:
1) Jesus was crucified.
2) He was buried in a tomb. Three days later, that tomb was empty
3) The disciples experienced appearances of the risen Jesus
4) They had a radical and rapid change of mind and lifestyle.
Again, the vast majority of NT scholars, both believing and skeptical, hold to 1-4. Some take the Bible to be complete bunk but go with 1-4 or at least a portion of them. The question is, “what is the best explanation of those facts?”
Bruce’s rebuttal (actually, its a dismissal. Calling it a rebuttal doesn’t fit) demonstrates a misunderstanding of the way historical and biblical study is conducted. Just because the Bible, on the whole, might be unreliable (I happen to think it is reliable, I’m just going with this for the sake of the argument) doesn’t mean everything it contains is malarkey.
The argument from consciousness
This is an argument from design – it is also contradicted by physical evidence. Brain damage can change someone’s character quite drastically, indicating that “consciousness” is actually an effect of the physical biological processes going on in our brains.
Correlation does not entail causation. Second, Bruce needs to explain how merely arranging matter in a more complicated fashion leads to consciousness. How can something that’s inanimate become animate, just by re-arranging the matter?
Besides, Bruce displays he again hasn’t taken the time to actually examine the argument.
Moral truths are best at home in a theistic metaphysic rather than a naturalistic one
This is just a retread of the argument from morality. It is like saying morality is best at home in a white skin, while ignoring highly moral black people. It fails to account for evidence to the contrary in the presence of highly moral atheists.
Read the argument, Bruce! I refer to my earlier comments regarding the moral argument. The existence of a “highly moral atheist” actually helps out my argument, not yours.
The properly basic nature of theistic belief
Which is just saying the argument from intuition in different words.
???you’ve got to be kidding me.
So, apart from the argument from morality (Which is actually also an argument from design come to think of it) all of those arguments fit into Greta Christina’s four categories.
I beg to differ.
