My Response to William Lane Craig’s Critique of My Divine Love Theory

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On October 17, 2022, William Lane Craig discussed an article of mine in which I explained my Divine Love Theory. My article was published in the Worldview Bulletin Newsletter here: Divine Love Theory: How the Trinity Is the Source and Foundation of Morality.

You can listen to Craig’s podcast about my Divine Love Theory here: Divine Love Theory and the Trinity | Podcast | Reasonable Faith.

First, I’ll provide key quotes from Craig’s podcast. Craig said he has reservations about my Divine Love Theory because “it proposes that the love between the members of the Trinity is the source and foundation of morality, and I think that is a distorted and lopsided view because, as important as divine love is, it also equally belongs to God’s moral perfection to be just and to be holy.”

Debate: God & Morality: Craig vs Wielenberg (How to Go Deeper)

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A Debate on God and Morality
By Craig, William Lane, Wielenberg, Erik J.

In 2018, William Lane Craig debated Erik Wielenberg. Both Craig and Wielenberg are influential in the current literature on the moral argument. Craig is well known for his defense of the deductive moral argument and the need for God in order to have an objectively meaningful life. Wielenberg is an atheist and a Platonic moral realist, who also specializes in the thought of C. S. Lewis.

You may have seen the debate (if not, you can find it below). But you may not know that Adam Johnson edited a volume on the debate with excellent essays from David Baggett, J.P. Moreland and others. If you liked the debate and want to explore the ideas further, be sure to check out this resource.

A Dozen Moral Arguments

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The Center for the Foundations of Ethics at Houston Baptist University exists to generate a community of scholars devoted to exploring the rich resources of moral apologetics. Moral apologetics has for its focus the evidential significance of moral realities of various sorts. On occasion such evidence can be put into premise/conclusion format. The following is a nonexhaustive list of moral arguments hammered into discursive format, in an effort to show some of the range of possibilities in two senses:

First, there is diversity when it comes to the moral phenomena under consideration. Second, there are several ways in which to couch the evidential connections—from natural signs to induction, from deductive to abductive formulations. Obviously, all of these arguments invite critique and critical scrutiny; the purpose of this list is not to settle such matters, but simply to provide some examples of possible arguments. The footnotes have been kept to a relative few, but point to some of the complexities involved in the analysis of such arguments, and a few of the salient sources.

Immanuel Kant: Arguments from Grace and Providence

            Argument from Grace:

1. Morality requires us to achieve a standard too exacting and demanding to meet on our own without some sort of outside assistance, resulting in a “moral gap.”

2. Exaggerating human capacities, lowering the moral demand, or finding a secular form assistance are inadequate for the purpose of closing the moral gap.

3. Divine assistance is sufficient to close the gap.

4. Therefore, rationality dictates the postulation of God’s existence.

Argument from Providence:

1. Full rational commitment to morality requires that morality is a rationally stable enterprise.

2. In order for morality to be a rationally stable enterprise, it must feature ultimate correspondence between happiness and virtue.

3. There is no reason to think that such correspondence obtains unless God exists.

4. Therefore, rationality dictates the postulation of God’s existence.[1]

Henry Sidgwick: An Argument Based on the Dualism of Practical Reason

1. Morality can be made completely rational only if a complete harmony between the maxim of rational self-love and the maxim of rational benevolence can somehow be demonstrated.

2. If God exists, we may legitimately infer Divine sanctions such that there is a complete harmony between rational self-love (one’s interest) and rational benevolence (universal happiness).

3. If we can legitimately infer that there is complete harmony between rational self-love and rational benevolence, morality can be made completely rational.

4. Therefore, if God exists, morality can be made completely rational.[2]

C. S. Lewis: Argument from Book 1 of Mere Christianity

1. There is a universal Moral Law.

2. If there is a universal Moral Law, there is a Moral Law-giver.

3. If there is a Moral Law-giver, it must be something beyond the universe.

4. Therefore, there is something beyond the universe.

 Austin Farrer: An Argument Based on Human Worth/Dignity

  1. Human persons have a special kind of intrinsic value that we call dignity.

  2. The only (or best) explanation of the fact that humans possess dignity is that they are created by a supremely good God in God’s own image.

  3. Probably there is a supremely good God.[3]

 Alvin Plantinga: A Moral Obligations Argument

1. If there are objective moral duties, then God exists.

2. There are objective moral duties.

3. So, God exists.[4]

Richard Swinburne: An Inductive Epistemic Argument

  1. Humans possess objective moral knowledge.

  2. Probably, if God does not exist, humans would not possess objective moral knowledge.

  3. Probably, God exists.[5]

C. Stephen Evans: Natural Signs Approach

1. Natural signs satisfy the Pascalian constraints of wide accessibility and easy resistibility and dispose us to believe in God.

2. Human value and authoritative moral obligations function as moral natural signs.

3. Therefore, human value and authoritative moral obligations dispose us to believe in God.[6]

William Lane Craig: Value and Duties Argument

1. If God doesn’t exist, then objective moral values and duties don’t exist.

2. Objective moral values and duties do exist.

3. Therefore, God exists.

C. Stephen Layman: Authority of Morality Argument

1. The overriding (or strongest) reasons always favor doing what is morally required. (“Overriding Reasons Thesis” (ORT))

2. If there is no God and no life after death, then ORT is not true. (“Conditional Thesis”)

3. Therefore, either there is a God or there is life after death in which virtue is rewarded.

4. If (3) then God exists.

Mark Linville: A Deductive Epistemic Argument

1. If evolutionary naturalism (EN) is true, then human morality is a byproduct of natural selection.

2. If human morality is a byproduct of natural selection, then there is no moral knowledge.

3. There is moral knowledge.

4. So, EN is false.[7]

Baggett/Walls: A Four-Fold Abductive Cumulative Argument

  1. Moral facts[8], moral knowledge, moral transformation, and moral rationality require robust explanation.[9]

  2. The best explanation of these phenomena is God.

  3. Therefore, God (probably) exists.[10]

 

[1] See John Hare’s Moral Gap: Kantian Ethics, Human Limits, and God’s Assistance for these formulations.

[2] This formulation has obvious limitations. Even if we affirm that morality can be made completely rational, it doesn’t logically follow that God exists. It is probably best interpreted either inductively or abductively.

[3] This formulation is not directly from Farrer, but Farrer focused heavily on the value we should recognize in our neighbor for being made in God’s image.

[4] See my article on this argument in Walls and Dougherty’s Two Dozen (Or So) Arguments for God.

[5] Find Swinburne’s discussion in his Existence of God. He thinks of the argument as a P-inductive argument, increasing the likelihood of theism somewhat, without making it more likely true than not (though the argument might be part of a cumulative case that does do the latter). Angus Ritchie gives an epistemic moral argument in his From Morality to Metaphysics: The Theistic Implication of Our Ethical Commitments.

[6] Find Evans’ argument in his Natural Signs and Knowledge of God.

[7] Find Linville’s argument online here: https://appearedtoblogly.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/linville-mark-22the-moral-argument22.pdf. That article also features critiques of the standard substantive ethical theories of egoism, utilitarianism, and virtue theory with respect to intrinsic human worth.

[8] Among relevant moral facts we discuss are moral goodness per se (objective values), human moral worth, binding moral duties, moral freedom, moral regrets, etc.

[9] Moral transformation and moral rationality correspond to the two Kantian arguments above, and to the two aspects of Kantian moral faith: (a) that morality is possible (and we emphasize three existential moral needs, namely, to be forgiven, changed, and perfected) and (b) that morality is a fully rational enterprise.

[10] See God and Cosmos: Moral Truth and Human Meaning for a fuller explication of this approach. For a slightly more accessible discussion, see The Morals of the Story: Good News about a Good God. For a much more comprehensive history of moral apologetics, see The Moral Argument: A History.

David Baggett is professor of philosophy and director of the Center for Moral Apologetics at Houston Baptist University. Author or editor of about fifteen books, he’s a two-time winner of Christianity Today book awards. He’s currently under contract for his fourth and fifth books with Oxford University Press: a book on moral realism with Jerry Walls, and a collection on the moral argument with Yale’s John Hare.

The Necessity of a Cosmic Mind

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Anyone who is anyone in apologetics has heard of the kalam cosmological argument. Short, concise, and powerful; the kalam argument notes the causal agency behind the origins of the universe. Simply put, the kalam argument holds:

1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.

2. The universe began to exist.

3. Therefore, the universe has a cause (C&M, 102).

After further researching the kalam argument, it was discovered that an ontological reality underlies the argument. That ontological reality is that one cannot escape the necessity of a Cosmic Mind for three reasons.

1. Necessity from Absolute Beginning of All Physical Universes. Physicists like Stephen Hawking and others posit that this universe is but one of many endless universes. Some theories contend that an endless movement of branes (not brains) collide and cause universes to “pop” into being. Other theories hold that an eternal multiverse gave rise to universes like ours. However, William Lane Craig and others have noted that the BGV theorem, named for its founders (Arvind Borde, Alan Guth, and Alexander Vilenkin), indicates that any and all physical universes demand an absolute beginning. I do not deny that a multiverse could exist. A multiverse is entirely possible as are many other universes. Neither is problematic for the Christian worldview. When one notes the enormity of God’s Being, multiple universes become child’s play for such a God. Nonetheless, mindless universes cannot be the answer for why something exists as they too would require an explanation for their existence.

2. Necessity from an Impossibility of an Infinite Regress. Second, it is impossible for an infinite regress of physical past events to have occurred. That is, endless physical events of the past are impossible. There comes a point where something beyond the scope of the physical world is required to explain physical origins. Craig offers two philosophical arguments to verify this claim.

1. An actual infinite cannot exist.

2. An infinite temporal regress of events is an actual infinite.

3. Therefore an infinite temporal regress of events cannot exist (W&D, 390).

While mathematical infinities can exist, Craig notes that such infinities are a different story when considering physical infinities. Craig does not dismiss infinities. Rather, he holds an Aristotelian model of time where time is viewed as eternal but broken into segments (C&M, 114; W&D, 398-399). However, infinite past physical events are impossible given that actual infinities do not exist in spacetime.

            Additionally, Craig argues,

1. A collection formed by successive addition cannot be an actual infinite.

2. The temporal series of events is a collection formed by successive addition.

3. Therefore, the temporal series of events cannot be an actual infinite (W&D, 396).

Herein, no universe or universes could hold an infinite number of additions in time’s past. Thus, physical universes are temporal and finite.

3. Necessity from the Inability of Forms to Explain the First Cause. Some, like Erik Wielenberg, agree that the answer to the finitude of the universe is not found in an infinite regress of events, but rather in transcendent entities. However, these transcendent entities are not God, per se, but mindless Platonic Forms. Yet this is a fairly simple objection to answer. Mindless entities can do nothing. If mindless entities exist in the world of Platonic Forms, they just are. They do not do anything. They exist. Thus, a transcendent Mind is the only logical answer to this problem. This Cosmic Mind would need to be, as Swinburne and Craig note, “immaterial, beginningless, uncaused, timeless, and spaceless” (C&M, 193). Interestingly, the Cosmic Mind that is necessitated sounds a lot like the God of the Bible.

If one follows the trail of necessities, one lands at the necessity of a Cosmic Mind. While this does not necessarily connect the God of the Bible with the Cosmic Mind implied, the similarities are so intricately connected that it would take more faith not to connect God with the Cosmic Mind than to connect the two. This Cosmic Mind knows all and sees all. Thankfully, this Cosmic Mind eventually became the Incarnate Son who provided redemption for all who would receive him.

Source

Craig, William Lane, and J. P. Moreland, eds. The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology. West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.

Walls, Jerry L., and Trent Dougherty, eds. Two Dozen (Or So) Arguments for God. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2018.

 

About the Author

Brian G. Chilton is the founder of BellatorChristi.com, the host of The Bellator Christi Podcast, and the author of the Layman’s Manual on Christian Apologetics. He received his Master of Divinity in Theology from Liberty University (with high distinction); his Bachelor of Science in Religious Studies and Philosophy from Gardner-Webb University (with honors); and received certification in Christian Apologetics from Biola University. Brian is enrolled in the Ph.D. program in Theology and Apologetics at Liberty University and is a member of the Evangelical Theological Society and the Evangelical Philosophical Society. Brian has served as a pastor in pastoral ministry for nearly 20 years.

https://www.amazon.com/Laymans-Manual-Christian-Apologetics-Essentials/dp/1532697104

© 2020. BellatorChristi.com.

Recent Work on the Moral Argument, Part II

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Recent Work on the Moral Argument.jpg

In this second installment of exciting recent work in moral apologetics, we asked Dr. Mark Linville to offer a quick summary of what he’s been up to. He does really excellent work, and MoralApologetics.com is always happy to direct people to his substantive contributions. In his own words here is that summary:

I titled my essay, “Darwin, Duties, and the Demiurge.”  I begin by comparing the “evolutionary debunking arguments” of C. S. Lewis and Alex Rosenberg.  No two thinkers could be further apart in their views of the nature of the universe, but they agree on two fundamental points: A consistent naturalism entails either moral subjectivism or nihilism, and most naturalists are not consistent, as they seek ways of avoiding the full--and repugnant--implications of their worldview.  Rosenberg embraces both naturalism and its repugnant implications. Lewis rejects both.

In contrast to both Lewis and Rosenberg, I argue not that naturalism entails or requires some variety of moral non-realism, but that moral realism--the idea that some acts really are right or wrong--does not find a good “fit” on that worldview.  And where they argue that the consistent naturalist would embrace some variety of moral non-realism, I instead advance an epistemological argument to the effect that the consistent naturalist is a moral skeptic. Where a naturalist of Rosenberg’s stripe will reject any teleological explanation for what Rosenberg calls “core morality”--basically, the common sense moral beliefs that are widely distributed--the theist thinks that human moral faculties are designed for the purpose of discerning moral truth.  “Theism thus provides underpinnings for the expectation that the human moral sense is capable of discerning moral truth.”

After recounting a general Darwinian “genealogy of morals,” I consider some objections to the sort of argument that I advance.  I assess Louise Antony’s direct replies to my earlier work. Perhaps the heart of her critique is that despite the origins of our moral faculties, we are still in a position to evaluate moral claims and beliefs by appeal to “reason and evidence.”  And she cites an important recent article by Roger White (“You Just Believe That Because….”) in support of her argument. The heart of my reply is that certain of our most basic moral convictions, such as Chesterton’s example that “Babies should not be strangled,” is not had by any inference of reason.  We do not reason to this as a conclusion, but we reason with it as we evaluate other moral claims.  And it is not as though babies have the empirically discernible property of not-to-be-strangledness stamped under their bonnets, giving us empirical evidence for the belief.  Rather, the best evidence for that conviction is it seeming to us to be true, and self-evidently so.  And it is this very seeming that is undercut on Antony’s naturalism.

I then turn to Erik Wielenberg’s interesting and ingenious attempt at avoiding evolutionary debunking arguments by appeal to a “third factor” involved in the explanation of human moral beliefs.  His aim is to challenge the debunker’s claim that even if there were objective values the naturalist would not be in a position to know them.  The core of his argument, I think, is that if there are rights, and if such rights supervene upon the possession of reason, and if believing that there are rights requires the possession of reason, then it would appear that our evolution, aiming only at fitness, has also guided us to truth.  My main reply to Wielenberg invokes George Santayana’s critique of the young Bertrand Russell’s early embrace of both moral realism--a Moral Platonism similar to Wielenberg’s--and naturalism.  The heart of Santayana’s argument--what one commentator on Santayana calls his “most telling criticism”--is what might be dubbed the demiurge argument.  Santayana argued that, unlike Plato’s scheme, Russell’s Platonic Good “is not a power,” and so cannot be thought to influence the course of nature. And so there is a great gulf fixed between those Platonic precepts and whatever shape the world takes, with the result of a Platonism “stultified and eviscerated.”  In a world in which “man is a product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving,” there is no reason to expect that the moral convictions of evolved rational creatures would be informed in any way by the moral declarations in the Platonic Empyrean.  What is missing, then, is someone or something that can fill the role of Plato’s demiurge, and the theist has the perfect candidate.

Other Relevant Recent Work

“God is Necessary for Morality” is my main essay in my printed “debate” with Louise Antony in Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion, 2nd edition, eds., Michael Peterson and Raymond VanArragon (Blackwell, 2019).  Antony and I also exchange brief replies to each other’s main essays.

 
 

“Moral Argument” in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Religion eds., Stewart Goetz and Charles Taliaferro (Wiley-Blackwell).  I believe this comes out this year.

“Respect for Persons Makes Right Acts Right” is my main essay in my printed “debate” with Alastair Norcross (who defends Act Utilitarianism) in Steven B. Cowan, Problems in Value Theory (Bloomsbury, 2020).  I offer a brief critique of Divine Command Theory here along the same lines as my critiques of several other ethical theories (along the way to defending a Kantian respect for persons principle). Perhaps of at least indirect relevance is my fairly extensive ("Chestertonian") critique of Alex Rosenberg's Scientism in "A Defence of Armchair Philosophy: G. K. Chesterton and the Pretensions of Scientism" in An Unexpected Journal (December, 2019)--online and Amazon hard copy.  (This journal is put together by several graduates of the HBU apologetics program.)

 
 

We appreciate Dr. Linville doing that for us! Be on the lookout for all those exciting essays to come. In our next installment we’ll take a look at two younger scholars doing exciting work on aspects of moral apologetics, namely, Suan Sonna and Adam Johnson.

Chapter 2: “The Case for Abduction” of God and Cosmos: Moral Truth and Human Meaning

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In this chapter, Baggett and Walls motivate using an abductive moral argument over a deductive moral argument. They first review what they call the Anti-Platonist Moral Argument (APMA), such as the one proposed by William Lane Craig:

P1. If God does not exist, then objective moral values and duties do not exist. P2. Objective moral values and duties do exist. C3. Therefore, God exists

To prevent ruling out theistic ethics, Baggett and Walls take Craig's definition of objective moral (deontic) truths to be facts according to which some actions and motivations are right or wrong independently of whether any human mind believes it to be so.

As previously mentioned in Good God, some theists have reservations about the argument. C. Stephen Layman, a theist himself, rejects APMA because of P1 which he thinks is unappealing to nonbelievers, especially Platonists. If Platonism is true, then P1 is false, because one can appeal to a possible world where God does not exist but objective moral value and duties do (since moral values and duties exist necessarily on their view). One may counter that God’s existence is necessary, so there is no such world and Platonism is false. However to do so would be to appeal to C3 which would be circular. Hence, Layman thinks that P1 lacks non-circular justification, wide enough support, adequate intuitive force, and sufficient obviousness.

John Milliken, another theist, similarly rejects P1. He imagines a world such us ours without God. He thinks intuitively that, in such a world, morality still holds. In more philosophical terms, he takes P1 to be a nontrivially false counterpossible (since he is committed to Divine necessity).

In Good God, Baggett and Walls have also previously offered their criticisms, and in John Hare's (another theist) review of Good God, Hare says that Baggett and Walls have argued convincingly that Craig's view that atheism leads to moral nihilism is unlikely to be persuasive. Note that Baggett and Walls do not think Craig's argument is bad or unsound, rather that it is relatively unpersuasive to many atheists for a few reasons. Hence they propose one should adopt their abductive moral argument instead.

God and Cosmos: Moral Truth and Human Meaning
By David Baggett, Jerry L. Walls

For the classical theist, a world such as ours could not even exist without God, while for the atheist, the world is possible without God. Hence a world such as ours, with at least the appearance of love, relationships, satisfactions of morality, social harmony, clear moral apprehensions, etc., is possible without God for the atheist. Baggett and Walls think that it is better to approach atheists by affirming their common convictions about moral truth and then asking what better explains such facts, rather than encouraging them to assume such a world like the actual world is consistent with atheism, providing them a lot of theoretical resources to use, and inviting them to construct a secular moral theory. It would be strange if atheists could not come up with a substantive moral theory using the rich resources of a world like ours, which is only here (if theists are right) because God created it with such features. This allows atheists to travel some distance down the road in building an ethical theory. Hence Baggett and Walls prefer an abductive moral argument that does not rely on P1.

Craig however thinks that his formulation has the advantage of meeting the atheist in the world as he conceives it to be and asking whether morality would be objective without God. The problem however is that while one allows such a world with such rich resources to be consistent with atheism, one (potentially anyway) dismisses too hastily the atheists' serious efforts to build a secular ethic. This explains why so many secular theories have emerged and sport considerable merit. It is not as if secular theories fail altogether to explain anything morally. They can get somewhere given the resources of the world. Baggett and Walls think however that this world conjoined with God provides a better explanation of the full range of moral facts.

Other theistic ethicists seem to recognize this. Robert Adams, for example, thought social requirement theory had its strengths in explaining the idea that obligations are owed to persons. Human social requirement theory is not without resources to make sense of this, but adding God is crucial to complete the theory. Another example is Linda Zagzebski who grounds morality in motivations and admits that the first half of her theory can be constructed without reference to God at all. She then completes her theory by bringing God in.

Craig however thinks that when it gets down to showing that the best explanation of objective moral values and duties is God, one will slip into arguing that, given atheism, objective moral values and duties would not exist. So the abductive argument still ends up doing the same thing as the deductive argument. Contra Craig, Baggett and Walls think that they are doing something different. The deductive argument says, "Imagine the world is atheistic, now try to make sense of morality, you can't." The abductive argument instead says, "Suspend belief on whether the world is atheistic or theistic, try to make sense of morality. Given its features, you can make some progress. But what better explains the fuller range of moral facts in need of explanation, the world alone or the world and God?”

In short, they list five main problems in total with the deductive argument (TDA). In a footnote, they construct an Acrostic called CARBS:

1. Counterpossibles. Counterpossibles are counterfactuals with an impossible antecedent. For example, "If a necessarily good and loving God commanded murder and torture for fun, it would be right to do so," or "If there were a square circle, mathematicians would be puzzled." For the classical theist, if God exists necessarily, then "God does not exist" would be impossible. Hence P1 is a counterpossible (according to classical theists), and a particularly intractable counterpossible—one in which the being presumed to be the very ground of being doesn’t exist. Presuming to know the features of such an intractably impossible world strains credulity. (Note that “If God doesn’t exist, then God didn’t create the world,” doesn’t seem particularly problematic, but it’s also analytic.)

2. Acknowledging the rich features of a world like this if it could exist without God. The deductive method doesn't allow enough room to acknowledge what would be the simply amazing features of a world like this if it could exist without God, whereas the abductive approach allows the world without God to explain some of morality, while providing the explanation for why it can.

3. Rejecting realism instead of naturalism. By allowing the atheist to think this world with its features is compatible with atheism, it is easy for them to reject moral realism instead of naturalism, contributing to the escalation of nihilism Nietzsche predicted would ensue from the “death of God.” The abductive method instead keeps the moral facts in question front and center as the starting data in need of explanation.

4. Bridge-breaking. The deductive version can sever the bridge with naturalists by focusing on differences rather than similarities. The abductive argument agrees that the world can account for some of the moral data to a certain extent, and then shows how adding God to the picture offers a considerably more robust explanation.

5. Saying uncomfortable things. The deductive version makes us say very uncomfortable, unintuitive, and unnecessary things like "If God does not exist, then rape is not wrong." The abductive version avoids this.

Video Debate: "Is the Foundation of Morality Natural or Supernatural?" William Lane Craig vs. Sam Harris

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This debate features atheist and neuroscientist  Sam Harris and Christian philosopher William Lane Craig. Harris defends a theory of ethics that he takes to be both objective and scientific, while Craig defends theistic ethics. If you haven't had a chance to to watch this debate yet, it is well worth the time!