Is It Arbitrary to Adopt God’s Nature as the Good?
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ON THE BASIS FOR OBJECTIVE MORALITY
Is There Objective Truth?
Dr. Craig,
Life has become absurd to me. Having had conversations with several individuals in my school years has taught me that most do not think that there is such a thing as truth, rather the word “truth” is only a matter of opinion and, therefore, has no absolute meaning. At the end of my conversations it has been revealed to me that anything that is not a scientific fact is false, and that this “truth” is only a coping mechanism that human beings have created to make it appear that life has meaning, but in reality it has none.
How do you as a philosopher/theologian deal with this? I am anxious for your response!
Steven
United States
Dr. Craig’s Response
Steven, your despair is wholly unnecessary and even misconceived. The individuals who told you that “there is no such thing as truth” are not clear thinkers or reliable guides. The position that they espouse is self-referentially incoherent, that is to say, it is literally self-refuting.
Just ask yourself the question: is the statement “1. There is no such thing as truth” true? If not, then no need to worry, right? On the other hand if (1) is true, then it follows that (1) is not true, since there is no truth. So if (1) is false, it’s false; and if (1) is true, it’s false. So either way (1) is false. The position that your friends espoused is just incoherent.
Please don’t dismiss this response as mere logic-chopping. The position your friends taught you is just self-refuting and silly.
Indeed, the rest of your letter reveals that you implicitly reject their self-defeating view, for you go on to affirm quite a number of alleged truths:
2. The word “truth” is only a matter of opinion and, therefore, has no absolute meaning.
3. Anything that is not a scientific fact is false.
4. Truth is only a coping mechanism that human beings have created.
5. Life really has no meaning.
If (1) is true, then (2)–(5) cannot be true. Now, since (1) is self-defeating, you’ll have to abandon it and just assert the truth of (2)–(5).
But then the problem is that (1) was given as the justification for asserting (2)–(5). So if you give up (1), what warrant is there for (2)–(5)?
Indeed, (2)–(5) have self-referential problems of their own. Take (2). This statement is a real mess. Clearly the word “truth” is not a matter of opinion. The word “truth” is an English word with five letters. It doesn’t assert anything and so can’t be a matter of opinion. Similarly, what does it mean to say that “truth” has no absolute meaning? Clearly, this word has a meaning (look it up in any dictionary), as is evident from the fact that we are discussing it. If it has a meaning in English (unlike, say, “zliibckk”), I don’t know what is meant by saying that the meaning isn’t absolute. Of course, the meaning of “truth” is relative to the English language. It has no meaning in German, for example (as opposed to “Wahrheit”). Clearly, what is meant by (2) is something more like
2*. What is true is person-relative and only a matter of opinion.
“True for you,” as they say, “but not true for me.” But then the same self-referential problems arise again. If (2*) is true, then (2*) itself is just matter of opinion and is person-relative. But then it’s not objectively true that truth is only a matter of opinion. It’s just your opinion that truth is a matter of opinion, so who cares? The problem is that relativists want to assert that (2*) is objectively true; but in that case (2*) is false. So once more, it’s self-defeating.
Or take (3). (3) is not itself a scientific fact. There are no experiments you could conduct to prove it, nor will you find it asserted in any science textbook. It is a philosophical statement about the nature of facts. But it states that anything that is not a scientific fact is false. But then it follows that (3) itself is false! Wake up, Steven! How could you have been blind to these incoherencies?
INSIGHT
We all are led by something or someone. If our “guides” cannot direct us to what is real and knowledge of it, (among other reasons) they should not be considered reliable. Dr. Craig’s exhortation is authentic and important.
What about (4)? Truth and falsehood are properties of statements. A statement S is true if and only if what S says is the case really is the case. For example, “Snow is white” is true if, and only if, snow is white. Obviously, truth is not a coping mechanism, since coping mechanisms are not properties of statements. This is just muddled thinking. What is intended by (4) must be something like
4*. We think that S is true only because so thinking enables us to cope in life.
Now, on the face of it, (4*) strikes me as utterly implausible. Surely you can think of all sorts of statements you think are true quite independently of whether so thinking helps you to cope in life. Indeed, some of the things we think are true are positive impediments to our coping successfully with life! But let that pass. The more important thing is that if (4*) is true, then the only reason you believe (4*) is because it helps you to cope. In that case we might feel sorry for you, but we won’t be worried about the objectivity of truth as a result.
As for (5), that is a coherent and important assertion. I agree with you that if God does not exist, then (5) is true. But if He does, then (5) is false. So what evidence do you have to support your view? It’s going to be pretty tough for you to give any evidence for your view if you deny that truth is objective and can be objectively known!
The bottom line, Steven, is that it is a substantive claim to say that life is absurd, and these acquaintances of yours who have led you to embrace such a belief have deceived you through sophomoric arguments and self-refuting assertions. I urge you to shake off the stupor caused by such sophisms and come to think clearly about such matters!
On the Value of Appealing to One’s Moral Experience
Dear Dr. Craig,
I asked my pastor if one could present your argument from the existence of objective moral values to the atheist as evidence of God’s existence. The argument was:
1. If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist.
2. Objective moral values do exist.
3. Therefore, God exists.
My pastor flat out deemed this as logically flawed, saying that we could not use it at all. He disagreed with premise 2, that objective moral values exist. He said that although we believe they exist, we cannot say they exist until we know that God exists. He also said that while we are tempted (probably by our social values) to say that objective moral values do exist, we cannot know that they do until there is a transcendent God to ground them in. I suspect his argument would go like this:
1. If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist.
2. God exists.
3. Therefore, objective moral values do exist.
However this immediately raises the same question, namely, how do we know that the second premise (in each argument) is true?
How could I show him that objective moral values do exist? Is there any way apart from affirming them because we apprehend a realm of objective morality? Couldn’t premises 2 and 3 just be circular?
Keep up the great work!
Yours In Christ,
Rohit
Dr. Craig’s Response
I was disheartened to read your email, Rohit, because it illustrates so well the sloppy thinking that all too often characterizes pronouncements from evangelical ministers. (I’m assuming, of course, that you have accurately represented your pastor’s views and that it is not you who are confused!) His muddled response to your argument underlines the importance of some philosophical training in the seminary studies of our future ministers.
His fundamental confusion concerns the difference between the truth of a premise and our warrant for it. I take it as obvious that a statement can be true even if we have no evidence at all for its truth; by the same token we can have pretty strong evidence for a statement that is, in fact, false. I’ll leave it up to you to think of some examples.
Now, I don’t think your pastor really denies the truth of premise (2) (if he did, you’d better look for another church!). Rather what he thinks is that we have no warrant for believing (2) independent of our belief in God. For he thinks that once we do know that a transcendent God exists, then we know that there is a ground for objective moral values. So he really does believe that objective moral values exist, and, therefore, he should agree that (2) is true. Moreover, (3) follows logically from (1) and (2) by the rule of inference called modus tollens. So your pastor shouldn’t complain about the logic of the argument. (Your attempt to reconstruct his thinking presumably doesn’t accurately represent his reasoning because it is just logically invalid: no rule of logic will permit you to infer (3´) from (1´) and (2´).)
Rather your pastor’s complaint is best understood as the allegation that we can’t use the moral argument, not because it is formally invalid or has a false premise, but because it is question-begging, that is to say, the only reason we have for believing (2) is that we already believe (3). So anyone who uses this argument is reasoning in a circle.
So understood, I think that he is clearly mistaken. People don’t believe in (2) because they believe in God. They believe in (2) because of their moral experience, in which they apprehend certain values that impose themselves upon us and certain duties that lay claim upon us. That goes for atheists and agnostics as well as theists. Non-theists who accept (2) obviously do not do so in a question-begging way, and neither do theists, I should say.
Of course, your pastor may be skeptical of our moral experience, thinking that it is as plausibly attributed to social conditioning as to a genuine experience of moral values. But why agree with him about that? I am far more confident that I apprehend objective moral values and duties than I am of the premises in any argument for moral skepticism. And so are most non-theists, whom we are seeking to persuade.
Your pastor seems to be confusing the order of knowing (ordo cognoscendi) with the order of being (ordo essendi). In the order of knowing, we first apprehend a realm of objective moral values and then infer to God as their ground. But in the order of being, God is primary as the ground of objective moral values, and moral values depend for their objective reality upon Him. Just because God comes first in the order of being doesn’t imply that He comes first in the order of knowing.
So in answer to your question, the best way to convince anyone of the objective reality of moral values is to appeal to his moral experience. Give some illustrations of moral outrages and ask people if they think such things are really evil or wrong. I think you’ll find 98 percent of people will agree on the basis of their experience that we do apprehend at least some objective moral values and duties. With such persons your argument does not beg the question.
INSIGHT
This is an important encouragement to take stock of our own moral experience and to help others learn to pay attention and articulate their experiences in this way. One may think of heinous moral acts—e.g., the 2012 Colorado theater shooting—and show that the response was (and justifiably so) moral outrage at such an evil and unjust act of killing. For it was not a mere “human tragedy” (like a tsunami, for example).
How Can God Be the Ground of Morality?
My question concerns the discussion of God as a logically necessary being in the book where you debate then atheist Antony Flew.12 For clarification, you say that for God to be logically necessary, he must be all-powerful, all-knowing, and morally perfect in all possible worlds. You demonstrated these by the kalam, fine-tuning, and moral arguments respectively. Is this brief summary correct?
My question regards Christian philosophers Keith Yandell’s/Richard Swinburne’s objection that God cannot explain the objectivity of morality. You argue that because God is logically necessary that thus (and among other reasons) He can explain morality. But it seems like a circular (I think) argument because you need the proof from the moral argument to prove that God is logically necessary so that you can counter Swinburne’s objection. But you have to counter the objection before arguing that God is logically necessary. What is your reply? Have I understood this correctly?
Thomas
Dr. Craig’s Response
Your question evinces some misunderstanding. So before I address your question directly, let me clarify what I said. First, God’s existing necessarily is not related to His being all-powerful, all-knowing, and morally perfect, at least in any direct way. For God to be logically necessary He simply needs to exist in every logically possible world; indeed, to say that God is logically necessary just is to say that He exists in every possible world. Now, of course, since the attributes you mention are essential to God, it follows that He will have such attributes in every possible world. But I’m not suggesting that God exists in all possible worlds because He has these attributes.
Second, I did not attempt to demonstrate that God has these attributes by means of the three arguments you mention. The kalam and fine-tuning arguments imply the existence of an enormously powerful and intelligent being, but not an omnipotent or omniscient being. The moral argument can be augmented to lead to the conclusion that God, as the ground of objective moral value, is morally perfect, but that is not the conclusion of the argument itself.
Now, Yandell and Swinburne think that God cannot be the ground of moral value in part because they both think that God exists merely contingently rather than necessarily, whereas at least some moral values exist necessarily. So on their view there are possible worlds in which God does not exist and yet moral values exist. My point is that the classical theist faces no such problem, since he believes that God is a logically necessary being and so can ground moral values in every logically possible world. So the objection finds no purchase against the classical theist.
I think you can see now that there is no circularity involved. If God is a contingent being, He cannot ground moral values. Agreed! It is now up to Yandell or Swinburne to prove that God is a contingent being. Unless they do that, the conclusion does not follow that God cannot ground moral values.
Thus, it is really irrelevant why the classical theist believes that God is logically necessary. He might believe it on religious grounds or on the basis of the ontological argument or the argument from contingency. He might, as you suggest, believe it on moral grounds. For if objective moral values imply God’s existence, this is plausibly not merely a contingent fact. Moral values cannot exist without God; they entail His existence. So if moral values exist necessarily, it follows that God exists necessarily.
So the argument looks like this:
1. Necessarily, if moral values exist, then God exists.
2. Necessarily, moral values exist.
3. Therefore, necessarily, God exists.
Yandell and Swinburne deny (1) because they think that God is contingent. But you can’t just assume that God is contingent or else you’re begging the question. For that just is to assume that the conclusion (3) is false, that God does not exist necessarily. So if anyone is in danger of circular reasoning, it is the objector to the moral argument.
So the classical theist who believes even on moral grounds that God is logically necessary is not reasoning in a circle. To the objector who denies (1) because God exists contingently, he replies, “Prove it (without begging the question)!” The ball is now in the objector’s court.
The Importance of Distinguishing Between Moral Epistemology and Moral Ontology
Dr. Craig,
I have been debating several atheists regarding the existence of objective moral values being grounded in God. I have been doing quite well avoiding the red herring of moral epistemology and have managed to keep the debate to moral ontology. Now, I am stuck and need your help.
Quoting you in a debate with Dr. Harris you said, “Theism provides a sound foundation for objective moral duties. On a theistic view, objective moral duties are constituted by God’s commands. God’s moral nature is expressed in relation to us in the form of divine commandments. These constitute our moral obligations.”13
By saying this, is not one already providing an argument for Revealed Theology and thus making an argument for moral epistemology? That is, unless divine commandments don’t come through Revealed Theology.
Please help, I don’t know how to wiggle out of this one. It seems I am trapped into having to discuss moral epistemology now.
Bethany Joy
Dr. Craig’s Response
As I explain in Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, it is vitally important in discussing moral arguments for God’s existence to distinguish clearly various areas of Moral Theory.14
The claim that moral values and duties are rooted in God is a Meta-Ethical claim about Moral Ontology, not about Moral Linguistics or Epistemology. It is fundamentally a claim about the objective status of moral properties, not a claim about the meaning of moral sentences or about the justification or knowledge of moral principles.
I’m convinced that keeping the distinction between moral epistemology and moral ontology clear is the most important task in formulating and defending a moral argument for God’s existence of the type I defend. A proponent of that argument will agree quite readily (and even insist) that we do not need to know or even believe that God exists in order to discern objective moral values or to recognize our moral duties. Affirming the ontological foundations of objective moral values and duties in God similarly says nothing about how we come to know those values and duties. The theist can be genuinely open to whatever epistemological theories his secular counterpart proposes for how we come to know objective values and duties.
INSIGHT
By distinguishing between moral epistemology and moral ontology we can be in a better place to introduce Scripture’s witness as an indispensable source of knowledge and wisdom about the moral life and its duties. We can do this by helping people pay attention to their moral experience and considering how Scripture has insight into questions like “how do I become moral?”
So I am delighted that you have been keeping the distinction between moral epistemology and moral ontology clear in your discussions with non-theists. If you maintain a firm grasp on that distinction, I think you can readily see the answer to your question: “By saying [that objective moral duties are constituted by God’s commands], is not one already providing an argument for Revealed Theology and thus making an argument for moral epistemology?” So saying will, indeed, imply that one of the ways we could come to know our moral duties is via a (scriptural) revelation of God’s commands. But that isn’t to say that the only way of coming to know our moral duties is through such a means. As Paul says, “When Gentiles who have not the law do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or perhaps excuse them” (Romans 2:14–15).
The salient point is that God’s commands constitute our moral duties. That is a claim of moral ontology. How we come to know our moral duties is a matter of moral epistemology and is irrelevant to the argument. There’s nothing to wriggle out of.
Is It Arbitrary to Adopt God’s Nature as the Good?
Dear Dr. Craig,
I thought you did very well in your debate with Sam Harris. Not only did you “knock down” his arguments but he knocked himself down by pretending that you weren’t even on the stage with him!
However, something is troubling me about your Divine Command Theory. It takes the form of two questions, one simple and the other more complex:
1) Simple question: If Christianity were proven false, and Islam true, would you simply drop your current moral convictions and adopt those of Islam because you found you “had the wrong God”? Would there not be a part of you that may rebel, against Allah, when faced with certain scenarios concerning judgments on creaturely well-being?
2) Trickier question: you say that God is the Good, or that Goodness flows from God’s nature. This is supposed to split the horns of the Euthyphro Dilemma: that God doesn’t conform to external standards of morality, but neither does He subjectively decide them on a whim.
However, I genuinely am troubled by the thought that this only seems to push the problem back one notch, because we can then ask:
Is Goodness “good” because it is found in God’s nature, or is God “good” because His nature necessarily matches Good?
Or, let’s put it as conditional statements to choose from:
A) If (X) is to be found in God’s nature, then (X) is good.
or:
B) If (X) is good, then (X) is to be found in God’s nature.
These choices of contention, “A” and “B,” seem to open up different possibilities when it comes to modal logic:
Consider “A,” that if something just so happens to be in God’s nature, then we must call it “good.” The trouble is, we can conceive of different possible worlds where God values completely different things and holds a different moral nature. We could imagine a world where, frankly, the questioner who claimed homosexual love-making was good … is correct! Or, like my first question, we could imagine a God of an Islamic nature, or one that says, “rape is OK.”
In this respect, we can imagine there are many different possible moralities that God could hold to, as if they were cards in a pack, and we have been “dealt” a particular “moral” card. God’s moral values could have been a “King of Clubs” compared to the “Ace of Spades” or the “Six of Hearts” (to make an analogy) and we just so happen to live in a world where our God holds the nature of the “3 of Diamonds.”
If we adopt “A” then we simply have to say, no matter what possible world we find ourselves in, that the mere fact that God’s moral values just so happen to be a certain way, means that they are “The Good.” We would be saying this of God no matter what His moral nature actually (and specifically) turned out to be. Potentially, you may even be saying this depending on your answer to the first question.
How, therefore, do we guarantee that something is truly “good” if it is entirely contingent upon our simply “waking up” in a possible world where God’s nature swings one way, rather than the other?
As for “B” this would imply that “Goodness” is self-existent, independent of God, and that God’s moral nature cannot vary, because He is necessarily “locked” into reflecting these external, necessary truths.
So, if we adopt “B” we don’t have the problem of God’s moral nature being free to vary—and our merely calling it “Good” because that’s the way things are in this world. We’d end up with a God whose moral nature is necessarily fixed a certain way.
Trouble is, that’s simply because His nature conforms to a standard which doesn’t require Him in the first place … and maybe some sort of “science” (better than Sam Harris’, of course) could discover it? (i.e., the Euthyphro argument would succeed in showing that the Good is independent of God.)
I hope that made sense. It’s a real brain teaser, and currently holds me back from adopting a DCT model. Many thanks again for your brilliant work, Dr. Craig!
Peter
United Kingdom
Dr. Craig’s Response
Nice to hear from you, Peter! I look forward to meeting you in October during our U.K. visit.
Let’s deal first with the simple question. “If Christianity were proven false, and Islam true, would you simply drop your current moral convictions and adopt those of Islam because you found you ‘had the wrong God’?” This question is, I think, misphrased. The important question is not what I would do under the envisioned circumstances, but what I should do. What I would do is an autobiographical fact about my personal psychology, which is of little philosophical interest. Moreover, it would be presumptuous for me to make predictions about what I would do under different circumstances (remember the apostle Peter on the night of Jesus’ betrayal?). What is of interest rather is what I should do under the envisioned circumstances. So stated, the question’s answer is clear: if Islam were proven true and Christianity false, then Islam would be true, and so of course I should believe in it. The same answer would present itself to the atheist: if atheism were proven false and Islam true, then should you obey the commands of Allah? Of course, for then Islam is the truth, and you really do have those moral obligations, however difficult it might be for you to stomach them.
Let’s turn, then, to the second question: “Is Goodness ‘good’ because it is found in God’s nature, or is God ‘good’ because His nature necessarily matches Good?” Again, I think the wording of the question might be improved by selecting certain qualities like compassion, fairness, generosity, and so forth, and asking, “Are these qualities good because they are found in God’s nature or are they good quite independently of God?” The answer to that question is obvious: the theistic view is that these qualities are good because they are found in God’s nature. The alternative (that God is good because His nature matches the Good) is just Platonism all over again, which we’ve already rejected.15
So what’s the problem supposed to be for the classical theist? The objection is that we can conceive of different possible worlds in which God’s moral character is different. But, Peter, that isn’t the model I defend! On most Divine Command theories God possesses His moral qualities essentially (indeed, that’s just what it means to say they’re part of His nature!). So there is no possible world in which God is not kind, impartial, gracious, loving, and so on. So I don’t think it is possible that Allah is God, since Allah is not all-loving and impartial.
GOD’S MORAL QUALITIES ARE AN ESSENTIAL PART OF HIS NATURE
Your deck of cards analogy presupposes that God’s moral qualities are contingent properties of God. But classical theism holds these properties to be essential to God. So it’s fundamentally mistaken to say that God’s moral qualities “just so happen to be a certain way.”
INSIGHT
Note this crucial point in Dr. Craig’s reasoning: God’s moral qualities are an essential part of His nature. It’s a helpful condition for adjudicating between different “God-claims” and “God-talk” among different religions.
Let’s think a minute as well about alternative B. Why think that the content of the Good is the same in every possible world? What about worlds in which the Good comprises different moral properties? And why think that God is necessarily locked into reflecting the Good? Why, on this view, couldn’t it also be contingent that God is good? I think you’d rightly say that there are no such worlds. The content of the Good is essential to it, and God is necessarily good, so He could not have failed to reflect the Good. I agree; but then why isn’t a similar answer available to the classical theist? The only difference between the Platonist and the classical theist on this score is that the theist identifies the Good with God Himself. Just as the Good could not have been different, so God could not have been different.
I think that what this objection is really getting at is the claim that it’s somehow arbitrary to adopt God’s nature as the Good. But every moral realist theory has to have an explanatory stopping point at which one reaches the ultimate good. Anyone who broaches a moral theory is entitled to identify whatever he wants as his ultimate explanatory stopping point. The question then becomes, is the explanatory ultimate posited by some moral theory plausible? In the case of theism, taking God to be one’s explanatory ultimate is, I think, eminently plausible. For the very concept of God is the concept of a necessary, metaphysically ultimate being, one, moreover, that is worthy of worship. Indeed, He is the greatest conceivable being, and it is greater to be the Good than merely to reflect it. So the theist’s stopping point, in contrast to, say, the humanist’s, is not at all arbitrary or premature.
12. See Does God Exist? with Antony Flew. Responses by K. Yandell, P. Moser, D. Geivett, M. Martin, D. Yandell, W. Rowe, K. Parsons, and Wm. Wainwright. Ed. Stan Wallace (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003).
13. To view and read the whole debate, you can access it for free at ReasonableFaith.org (http://bit.ly/ HarrisDebate).
14. See Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, “Moral Skepticism and Justification,” in Moral Knowledge? Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Mark Timmons, eds. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 4–5.
15. See Dr. Craig’s three-pronged critique of “Platonism”: “Why are (some) Platonists so insouciant?” Philosophy 86:2 (2011): 213–29. You can access this article for free by going to ReasonableFaith.org (http://bit.ly/Platonism).