William Lane Craig recently debated Stephen Law on the question “Does God Exist?” (the audio is available here)
I’ve listened/watched/read loads of Craig’s debates and I think he’s comfortably won every encounter. However, I think that Stephen Law actually got the best of him in this excellent debate, and provided better arguments for the claim that “God does not exist” than Craig did for the claim that “God does exist”, at least so long as “God” is defined with philosophical rigour. In fact, the brilliance of Law’s approach to the debate is that it completely concentrated on disproving (or providing evidence against) one of God’s attributes, not ALL of them; in particular, he attacked the good character of God. He employed an argument involving the notion of an “Evil God” and Craig in fact let out an admission which gave Law’s strategy great power, which is that the definition of God necessarily implies God’s goodness. And indeed that is the philosophically correct way to understand God. But that means that, so long as Law could successfully argue against God’s goodness, Law would, by virtue of doing that, be arguing against the existence of God. So long as one attribute of God is shown to be rationally untenable, God full stop is shown to be rationally untenable. I think he pulled off his strategy brilliantly.
Craig opened with only three of his usual arguments for God’s existence, the Kalam Cosmological Argument, the Moral Argument and a (very) minimal facts case for the resurrection of Jesus. Craig normally brings 5 arguments and I think his dropping two actually suited Law well. Law didn’t touch the KCA since his strategy was to target only God’s goodness and that argument doesn’t say anything about the character of the first cause of the universe. Craig didn’t go into nearly enough detail with the resurrection argument for it to be at all dialectically useful. I can’t imagine any non-Christian being persuaded from that extremely bare bones presentation. He reduced the standard 4 or 5 facts to a mere 3 and relied solely on authority to uphold them, rather than delve into the reasons why they are generally conceded as facts. As such, Law didn’t have to do much to shake the audience’s confidence in the case except point out some general worries that “supernatural” theories have when appealed to as the best explanation. Because of this the debate was entirely focussed on the moral argument and Law’s rather novel and intriguing argument from “Evil God”, or “Anti-God” as Craig re-named him.
Craig didn’t help himself in that he actually misunderstood the argument. He thought that the argument was trying to show that, on an inductive survey of the evidence, an evil creator god is as likely as a good creator god. But that wasn’t the argument. It was actually something like this:
1. There is just as much evidence from the goodness/evil of the world that the creator god is evil, as there is that the creator god is good.
2. We are justified in believing that evidence of goodness in the world demonstrates that there is not an evil creator god.
3. Therefore, we are equally justified in believing that the evidence of evil in the world demonstrates that there is not a good creator god.
The argument was thus designed to support the general evidential argument from evil, and undercut the attempts to soften the argument by appeals to “skeptical theism”. After all, Law contended, nobody takes considerations of sceptical theism seriously in dismissing evil god, so why good god? Craig did implicitly counter the argument by incidentally denying the second premise, but his misunderstanding meant that he didn’t make it explicit and so Law’s argument appeared unchallenged.
As for the moral argument, again Law took the upper hand and made similar criticisms that I myself made in a post here. That is, Craig didn’t show that, necessarily, atheism cannot account for objective moral values and duties. Now perhaps Law, and myself, have misunderstood the argument. Even granted that, Craig didn’t clarify it to make an adequate response and so failed to defend it. Craig also revealed something interesting about the moral argument; in the Q&A he spoke of it in terms of induction and “best explanation”. So perhaps it shouldn’t be formulated deductively, as it leads to confusion.
Moreover, although this wasn’t discussed as a feature of the debate, I wonder if Craig’s moral argument could be twisted to support the existence of “Anti-God”? Perhaps there is a transcendent being with all the attributes of God except necessary existence and moral goodness (to concede that maximal greatness entails moral goodness). We’ll give him moral badness instead and call him “Anti-God” as Craig does. What makes this argument any more or less compelling than the standard moral argument?
1. If Anti-God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.
2. Objective moral values and duties exist.
3. Therefore, Anti-God exists.
After all, what’s required for objective moral values and duties is a transcendent source of moral values and duties. But what stops that source being an inherent evil being, rather than an inherently good being? Either way, objective values find a source. Craig could say such a being can’t exist because God necessarily exists, but at that point he’s forced to use the ontological argument, and the moral argument ceases to be dialectically useful.
Again that argument wasn’t made, but I do find it interesting. I conclude that Stephen Law won because he provided a better case for the non-existence of God (who is necessarily good) than Craig did for the existence of God. However, I imagine that Craig might take the moral victory. After all, with the KCA untouched he did put forward an unchallenged case for an immaterial, all-powerful, spaceless, timeless, unchanging, personal being. Although not technically theism, it is theism in spirit. So perhaps both debaters can walk away happy. Law had a narrow and focussed objective, which he succeeded in achieving, but it may not have been broad enough to satisfy his fellow atheists.
Overall it’s a wonderful and refreshing debate that I highly recommend listening to. It was nice not to see Craig’s opponent make the same typical blunders and misunderstandings. Law clearly has a sharp mind and I’m keen to look into his work; I was smiling all throughout his inventive “Evil God” argument. Craig was by no means white-washed, but his opening hand set him up for a difficult time given Law’s tactics.
If it seems I’m being harsh on Craig, I should balance this with the fact that I’m extremely excited to hear him talk (and hopefully to meet him) at the be-thinking.org apologetics day conference this Saturday! Can’t wait!
EDIT: I now have some further comments on the evil god argument over here, and thoughts on Law’s discussion with Glenn Peoples on the argument over here.
Lets grant that arguments against God’s goodness were enough to carry the debate. Did Law provide good arguments against God’s goodness? No, he provided a good argument against the inference that God is good from the observance of good in the world. But as no-one holds their belief in God’s moral perfection on the basis of empirical deduction it’s an argument against a straw man.
Did Craig misunderstand the ‘evil god’ argument? No – Law was flipping between two arguments. Or more properly two conclusions from one argument. Initially he was claiming that we have no reason to prefer believe in a good god or an evil god. Then he contradicted himself by claiming that rather than being agnostic towards both, we should be atheistic towards both. That relied on an arbitrary dismissal of evil God, but no argument was provided as to why we should dismiss him. Indeed his opening presentation was mostly taken up with a successful defence of evil god’s existence despite the improbability thrown on him by the presence of good.
Was 2) a premise in Law’s argument? Throughout his opening speech he was arguing quite the opposite of this – that we can’t dismiss evil god on the basis of good in the world. He developed a number of possible motivations as to why evil god may allow good in the world. You’re right that he did then contradict himself by asserting that we can reject evil god, but provided no arguments for this. He didn’t even attempt to dismantle his own anti-theodicy. So I maintain his argument was the opposite of 2), but his contradictory assertion was 2).
However on the night Craig demolished your representation of the argument at least twice by refuting that premise. He explained that, in effect, the problem of good is adequately solved by Law’s anti-theodicy. He was pitting Law against Law. As Law himself argued, we have no good reason, on the basis of empirical observation alone, to reject evil god. Similarly we can’t reject God on the basis of evil. In other words the problem of evil fails (note here that the whole evil god charade adds nothing to the discussion of the classic POE other than to confuse). Craig did go over this very quickly – it was a short debate – so I accept that listeners may not seen the full force of Craig’s rebuttal.
So in the end whilst it was interesting and entertaining, this was actually one of the most one-sided debates I’ve heard. You could say that Craig won by a majority of 2 to 1, with Law’s unwittingly arguing on Craig’s side for much of the night.
Incidentally Law’s argument isn’t novel. Check out Wes Morriston’s “The Evidentialist Argument from Goodness”. See his conclusion, which is much more modest that Law and as far as you can go with the argument.
Hey there,
I very much disagree with you that Law did not provide an argument against God’s goodness. He did, which was the evidential argument from evil. The “evil god” argument was designed to show that Craig’s appeal to our cognitive limitations in defence against the evidential argument, doesn’t work (or so he argued), because the same considerations don’t work against the existence of evil god. Again, Law’s argument was not an attempt to undermine an inductive argument in favour of God’s goodness. Law has in fact linked to my review and quoted it as an example of a correct understanding of his view:
http://randalrauser.com/2011/10/where-stephen-law-goes-wrong-with-his-evil-god-argument/ (see comments)
I’m not sure that Law would endore my premise by premise formulation of it, but clearly I’m on the right track.
I think charity thus requires that we stop thinking of his argument as you suggested. Now I agree with you that Craig did deny that second premise, I even said that in my review. But, as I said, he only really denied it “accidentally” and in return Law pointed out how counter-intuitive such a denial seems to be. Craig, not understanding the argument, didn’t do anything to weaken the impression that his view was counter-intuitive, which I agree, prima facie, it is.
Now I’m not saying that I think law presented sound arguments against God, or against skeptical theism (sound in the philosophical sense), but I think that, on the night, they weren’t adequately refuted.
Anywizzle thank you for the paper recommendation!
agree that Law won this one. As well as philosophically out-wtting Craig on the night he also presented an argument that will have wider appeal to the layman – the evidential prolbem of evil is the argumenst that perhaps resonates most srtongly with sceptics and Law made a great presentation of it
Slimer: From Law’s own notes of his opening speech: “Clearly, despite these and various other ingenious manoeuvres that might be made in defence of belief in an evil god, it remains the case that there’s far, far too much good stuff in this world for it to be the creation of such an evil deity. We can still, on the basis of what we observe around us, reasonably conclude there’s unlikely to be an evil god. So my question is: if the evil god hypothesis can, solely on the basis of observational evidence, be ruled out as highly unlikely, why can’t we similarly rule out the good god hypothesis?” That looks pretty like our host’s (2), to me.
Law’s anti-theodicies aren’t arguments he’s advancing in favour of Evil/Anti God which he then needs to dispose of. It’s Law’s premise that it’s entirely reasonable to reject Evil/Anti God (a premise which Craig agrees with), so if we grant that, those anti-theodicies have no force. Grant that they have no force, and it’s a short step to granting that theodicies have no force either.
I’m not sure I agree with Craig that Christians believe God is good solely on the basis of the moral argument. How many of them have even heard it? That looked like a retreat: plenty of Christians make arguments from the beauty of creation, for example.
I’m not sure Craig meant to imply that Christian believe in God’s goodness because of the moral argument. After all, he is a reformed epistemologist so he doesn’t believe Christian need evidence (of the “public” kind anyway) to rationally believe Christianity. Rather I think he was just pointing to the moral argument because in his presentation he was relying on that to demonstrate God’s goodness.
“So long as one attribute of God is shown to be rationally untenable, God full stop is shown to be rationally untenable.” I stopped reading there. How is that philosophically sound? I think the important question is: Does MORAL GOODNESS constitute towards MAXIMAL GREATNESS. God is logically required to exist (ontological, cosmological arguments). Yes, this does not prove a GOOD God (that requires a cumulative case ie moral argument). But just because Law could show that the ‘neutral-god’ arguments do not prove a “Good God” does not dismantle the entire case. At best, it can prove that we can’t assume that maximal greatness requires moral goodness. It’s clearly more plausible that because God is the ultimate mediator of truth and judgement, that therefore he also represents maximal Goodness. Therefore I’d argue that an “Evil God” is an oxymoron in its own right. You think Law won this debate? I think his ENTIRE CASE, which was built on a SINGLE argument, is based on a LOGICAL CONTRADICTION to begin with, in which case he offered nothing in refutation at all.
I agree that a theist, if she wants, can deny that goodness is a great-making property. But Craig did not make that defence, In fact, he argued the opposite. So, by the understanding of God that both debaters had, Law’s attack on God’s goodness was equivalent to an attack on God.
Controversy lol.
I shan’t be able to reply to these comments till at least tomorrow evening, but I will reply eventually. Thanks for your thoughts.
So you agree that Law simply asserted that we can dispense with evil God, rather than argue against his existence?
“Law’s anti-theodicies aren’t arguments he’s advancing in favour of Evil/Anti God which he then needs to dispose of.” – Why not? What’s wrong with them as a defence of evil god? Are they logically inconsistent? Less plausible than their negations? Where’s his argument?
“It’s Law’s premise that it’s entirely reasonable to reject Evil/Anti God” – On what basis? What argument was provided for this claim?
Don’t get me wrong, it’s an intriguing argument, but it doesn’t show what he thinks it shows.
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I agree that Dr Law did a lot better against Dr Craig than people are giving him credit for. However,
the definition of God necessarily implies God’s goodness. And indeed that is the philosophically correct way to understand God.
The definition of God certainly implies God’s goodness, but in classical theism God’s goodness is not moral goodness as far as I can see. God surely doesn’t have moral obligations. Thus Dr Law didn’t touch classical theism.
Also, I think Craig did give an explanation of evil – he didn’t just play the mystery card. He said perhaps it is what is necessary to enable people to enter into salvation. In contrast, Law didn’t offer an explanation of moral values – he just played the mystery card. So I think Craig did in fact remain ahead there – just.
In the light of this, and as Dr Law didn’t touch the Kalaam argument and moral goodness is arguably not part of God’s nature, I think he fell well short of answering the case for theism.
Of course, it’s perhaps quite an interesting comment on the state of atheism that we are saying Dr Law did quite well because his atheism wasn’t completely demolished by Dr Craig.
Yo. You’re right that God does not have moral obligations. But classical theism stil maintains that God is essentially good, and so, God can’t do any evil. The evidential argument from evil is not an argument that God violated his moral duties, it is an argument that God has acted badly, and thus cannot be God.
I agree with that Craig did not just appeal to mystery (or, if he did, it was not in an anti-intellectual manner). But the point of Law’s evil god argument is to undermine the considerations of skeptical theism, and I don’t think Craig adequately addressed that argument. I also don’t think that Law had any obligation to provide a meta-ethical account, all he had to do is challenge the premises of the moral argument, and I agree that Craig didn’t defend the first premise well, or at least I’m not certain that he did. The problem I have is that the moral argument is just really unclear. I’m hoping that at the be-thinking conference I can get him to clarify it for me.
Thanks for your reply,
The evidential argument from evil is not an argument that God violated his moral duties, it is an argument that God has acted badly
I’m not sure it can be so easily separated. How has God acted badly? All he has done is make things be and being, in classical theism equates to goodness. So all God has done is make goodness. How then has he acted badly? He could have made more goodness, but if he is not under any moral obligations that is hardly an objection to his existence or his goodness.
But the point of Law’s evil god argument is to undermine the considerations of skeptical theism
But as the argument from evil and suffering is the atheist’s argument, all Craig needs to do is to show that it has not been shown that evil and suffering excludes the possibility of a good God. Craig doesn’t need to show at this point that God is good only that evil does not exclude the possibility. Consequently, Law’s objection here fails.
The issue is whether, having used scepticism to answer evil, Craig is entitled stop Law using scepticism to answer morality. This wasn’t really resolved in the debate, partly because Law made his most important points too late for their significance to become clear.
The question of scepticism is whether scepticism is justified. We are clearly justified in doubting that we can know God’s purposes, as God is infinite, and so to some extent hidden. But I’m not sure, given that we believe that there are moral values, that we can be justified in our scepticism as to their cause. It seems hard to know that they are real and objective, if we cannot even provide a provisional basis for a category in which they could be real and objective.
Craig didn’t defend the first premise well
Agreed. Do please post if he offers a clearer answer – I’m dying to know, as this was clearly the heart of the debate!
Enjoy the conference!
Thanks, I did enjoy the conference and I managed to ask Craig a couple questions about the moral argument. I may blog about it when I’ve strung some thoughts together.
You’re right that there is a tradition of being equalling goodness, but I don’t think Craig takes himself to be standing in that tradition. Basically you seem to be saying that we could never meaningfully think that God has acted badly. Well, certainly God can’t act badly, but the point is whether evil would give us evidence agains the existence of such a perfectly good being. If you think that God could, by virtue of doing anything, make that act good then you’re right, you couldn’t challenge that sort of God via evil. But then I think that’s false. I think there are acts that are bad, which God cannot do. God cannot torture children for fun for instance. If we had evidence that the creator being did such an act, we would have evidence that the creator isn’t God.
I agree that Craig’s job is to show that the argument for evil fails, and it tried to by invoking the considerations of skeptical theism. But Law argued to undermine skeptical theism and I don’t think Craig properly responded.
I’m glad you enjoyed the conference, do please blog on the outcome of your questions!
You’re right that there is a tradition of being equalling goodness
I think it is the mainstream classical theist tradition, though unfortunately Craig doesn’t appear to belong to it. It seems to me that he (and many others) create problems for themselves by making God a rather large agent like ourselves. But this is not how God has traditionally been conceived – nor, I think, is it how the Bible thinks of God.
whether evil would give us evidence agains the existence of such a perfectly good being
It depends on what is meant by “a perfectly good being”. If we mean someone who has moral duties and obligations, then I don’t think we are talking about God, since God, as the supreme being cannot be subordinate to duties. But if perfectly good being means a being who is without defect, then God must be this, since he is pure act and there is no idea of God aside from his existence. Consequently, it is not possible for God to fail to substantiate perfectly the idea of God.
If you think that God could, by virtue of doing anything, make that act good
That makes it sound as if I am defending some form of voluntarism – I am defending the opposite. I am not saying that something becomes good when God does it, I am saying it is only logically possible for God to do good, because, as Augustine says “God is not the author of evil because He is not the cause of tending to not-being.”
I think there are acts that are bad, which God cannot do. God cannot torture children for fun for instance.
I agree of course, but not because I think there is some moral rule preventing God from doing this, but because, as Augustine implies, God isn’t the kind of being who operates as an agent in the world as we do. God simply makes things be and that is good. He thus makes no difference to anything in the universe, and can no more be thought to torture someone than to tickle their armpit or run a three minute mile!
What could (indeed does) happen however, is that God could make someone be who does torture children. But then the fault is not in God but in the choice of the torturer.
If you haven’t seen it, there’s a very good reply to Stephen Law’s evil God challenge, by Edward Feser here:
http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2010/10/laws-evil-god-challenge.html
@Slimer: as you know from your exchange with Law, Law thinks that Craig agrees that Evil God is absurd, and even if Craig doesn’t, that Craig failed to demonstrate that Good God is more plausible. Going by the debate, that seems fair to me: the moral argument relies on a couple of premises which Craig mostly defended by quoting people who agree with him (I did enjoy our host’s Evil God version of the moral argument: Law should add that to his collection of flipped arguments), and I don’t believe in alien abductions either, however many “eyewitness accounts” I see.
To go beyond the debate, it seems to me that Craig fails to link the entities he’s hoping to prove exist. Even if, for the sake of argument, we accept Craig’s conclusions individually, we have the creator (though why only one?) outside the universe, the being who “grounds” objective morality, and whatever is responsible for resurrecting Jesus. It seems plausible to those of us who spent a lot of time in and around Christianity that these are all the same thing, but I see no particular reason to suppose that they must be.
I suppose Craig would just appeal to Occam’s Razor. It’s simpler to say they are one being.
I think that’s a misunderstanding of Occam’s Razor. It is an injunction to avoid unnecessary postulates when explaining a phenomenon. If we have three distinct phenomena, I see no reason why Occam would insist they share a cause.
Well if all three phenomena can be explained by either three entities, or one, it seems much simpler just to posit one.
Ignoring that it multiplies the complexity of the mechanism at least threefold, and thereby doesn’t seem (to me, at least) to be simpler at all, Occam’s Razor isn’t an appeal to simplicity. It just says that, all other things being equal, when explaining a given phenomenon (the creation of the universe, say), we make as few assumptions not supported by data as possible.
It’s a fallacy to insist on a single cause for phenomena as disparate as the Resurrection and the Big Bang, without some other evidence or reasoning to suggest they share a cause. Occam’s Razor just doesn’t get you there.
The reductio of this might be that it is presumably “simpler” to suppose that if I write three essays, one on, say, Aristotle’s Ethics, one about Hawking radiation, and one about the Israel-Palestine conflict, hand them into three different classes, and insist that it would be “simpler” if they were all graded by the same TA, despite having no reason to think that this would be so.
I’m not suggesting that there are no reasons to think that the resurrector, moral law-giver, and big banger are the same identity, but that’s a case that has to be made on its own merits, not merely assumed as “simpler”.
Oops, second-to-last paragraph got a bit muddled there.
Fixed:
The reductio of this might be to say that supposing I write three essays, one on, say, Aristotle’s Ethics, one about Hawking radiation, and one about the Israel-Palestine conflict, and hand them into three different classes, I could reasonably insist that it would be “simpler” if they were all graded by the same TA, despite having no particular reason to think that this would be so.
‘Even if, for the sake of argument, we accept Craig’s conclusions individually, we have the creator (though why only one?) outside the universe, the being who “grounds” objective morality, and whatever is responsible for resurrecting Jesus.’
Don’t we also have Satan as well, who is an immortal, supernatural being? Sounds like a god to me, even if theological correctness means Christians can’t use the g-word when describing him (even if Paul does refer to the god of this world)
And what about the being who inspired the Jews to write that a man who rapes a woman should be punished by forced marriage to the woman he raped?
Is that the same god who inspired an Old Testament which never mentions he had a son?
Or a different god?
If Satan can be said to be ‘immortal’ in some sense, it is not the same sense in which God might be said to be immortal in Christian theology. God is a necessary being, whereas Satan is a contingent creation of God.
I seriously don’t see how anyone can claim Law had a sound argument against Craig, let alone won the debate.
Careful, I’m not claiming that Law’s arguments, all things considered, are sound (in the philosophical sense). What I am claiming is that, given the material presented on the night from both debaters, Law’s arguments come out on top.
1. If the evidence of goodness in the world demonstrates that there is not an evil creator god, then the evidence of evil in the world demonstrates that there is not a good creator god. [Premise]
2. The evidence of goodness in the world demonstrates that there is not an evil creator god. [Premise]
3. Therefore, the evidence of evil in the world demonstrates that there is not a good creator god. [(1), (2), M.P.]
Law seemed to support (1) with his symmetry thesis: ‘There is just as much evidence from the goodness/evil of the world that the creator god is evil, as there is that the creator god is good.’
I also just want to note that Law’s argument seems to defeat the resurrection case as well. The hypothesis that God raised Jesus from the dead (R) will only be probable if it’s probable that *God* exists and would desire to raise Jesus. Law’s argument takes out the God needed to establish R’s probability.
I’m not sure about that. Depends on our background knowledge. Perhaps God is improbable relative to the existence of evil, but not overall improbable given other considerations. The resurrection could be one of those considerations.
The reason flipping the moral argument like this:
1. If Anti-God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.
2. Objective moral values and duties exist.
3. Therefore, Anti-God exists.
doesn’t work is because premise 1 now becomes false. Objective moral values would still exist even if Anti-God didn’t. Why? Because God could exist! So all this does is simply multiply the problem. Objective moral values would exist whether Anti-God exists or if God exists. So “Anti-God” now doesn’t become the only transcendent being.
So now, which being exists? First, the evidence for the resurrection gives us reason to think that Jesus’ claims were correct and that God is good. So all things being equal, Good God prevails because we have evidence for Him via Christ’s resurrection. Contrary to what Steven says above, Law’s argument does not show that the existence of God is improbable (another reason why Law lost the debate because he was arguing for an “evil god” when he was suppose to be arguing for “no god”. Evil god is still in the god category not the atheist category). What he showed was that we have no basis for saying God is good or evil inductively by experience. But that’s not how we know that God is good. As far as I know we do this via the moral argument and the verification of Jesus’ claims via his resurrection. To say that his argument is a defeater for the resurrection hypothesis is to be begging the question that Christians think God is good prior to the resurrection hypothesis.
Second, even if the resurrection hypothesis fails, which isn’t the case, the Ontological argument shows that Anti-God would not be perfect, and therefore would not be God. This eliminates the whole evil god hypothesis right away without even having to go into all of my first point.
I think you are right that either God or Anti-God could be candidates for “ground” of moral duties and values (assuming something like the moral argument works) and thus we have to eliminate one or the other. But that’s an important thing to note because it robs the moral argument of the power to, by itself, establish God’s goodness.
I disagree with your take on what Law’s evil god argument was all about. As I responded to another comment, Law seems to think I’ve got the jist of it http://randalrauser.com/2011/10/where-stephen-law-goes-wrong-with-his-evil-god-argument/ (see comments)
I don’t see at all how it robs the moral argument of any power. For even if I say the sole purpose of that argument is to prove God’s existence, did it do that? Yes! We’ve concluded that either God or evil god are the only grounds for objective morals. Both of which are still theism. So the moral argument proves God’s existence.
But does the moral argument lose its power to show that God is good? No, I think not. For if evil god exists, then he would give us moral obligations to do what is wrong. But if that is the case, then moral obligations and moral values would never aline. Because it would always be right to follow our obligations, yet to follow our obligations would mean we would be doing something evil (or bad). Similarly, if we were to disobey our moral obligations and not do what evil god says, then we would be doing what is wrong, and yet it would be good! Now this is in complete contrast to our moral intuitions. Because what is right is good, and what is wrong is bad, not the other way around.
But what if evil god commanded us to do what is right? Than that would mean that, as Dr. Craig as said, “Since this being is evil, that implies that he fails to discharge his moral obligations. But where do those come from? How can this evil god have duties to perform which he is violating? Who forbids him to do the wrong things that he does? Immediately, we see that such an evil being cannot be supreme: there must be a being who is even higher than this evil god and is the source of the moral obligations which he chooses to flout, a being which is absolute goodness Himself. In other words, if Law’s evil god exists, then God exists.”
So I really do think the force of this argument really disappears. Both to prove God’s existence and to show that an evil god could exist.
Yes, I agree with you that my inverse moral argument is poor. You are right that an evil god wouldn’t generate the moral obligations we do in fact take ourselves as having.
Sorry it took so long for me to respond. I had almost completely forgot that I had written this response hah. I appreciate you starting this discussion though as it is important. Also I had never seen the moral argument formulated that way so it was very interesting!
No problem, I’m pretty awful at responding even to people I know in real life, so a ‘late’ response on a stranger’s blog is no biggy! =)
lol good deal
Hey Rob, I think you’re right about Martin’s Evil/Anti God version of the moral argument, since the point of Law’s anti-theodicies is that they address objections to Evil God which would not also be objections to Good God.
Still, I think we can modify it contain a disjunction “1. If Evil God or Good God does not exist…” or even “1. If one or more gods of some type (Lawful Evil, Lawful Good, Chaotic Neutral or one of the other 5 alignments) does not exist…” The theist facing this modified moral argument has to be a lot more specific about the origin of these mysterious “morality grounding” powers in order to show why their first premise is more likely than these modified premises, because if the modified argument goes through, it doesn’t show that God is good.
Law does mention miracles in his paper, and says the Evil God certainly has an interest in promoting various contradictory miracle stories (Christian resurrection of Jesus, Mohammed’s flight to Mecca and so on) to promote religious conflicts.
Still, I think it’s worse for Craig than that. He comes back with the sceptical theist response to the PoE, but he’s perfectly happy to say that the resurrection is evidence for God’s goodness. What? The resurrection, if it happened, is an event in the world. Craig already said we can’t draw conclusions about God’s moral properties from those. Or does sceptical theism only apply to arguments against Craig’s God? :-)
Aye, the moral argument needs to be made a lot more specific than it is. I’m quite curious about what properties of God the moral argument is supposed to require (I take it that “God” is short-hand for a being with some of God’s properties, and that a cumulative case is required to establish all of the properties).
Interesting point about the resurrection. I need to mull all this over.
Interesting point about the resurrection. I need to mull all this over.
You might like John Danaher’s summary of a paper by Rob Lovering. Craig’s resurrection argument needs what Lovering calls Narrow Skeptical Theism, but Craig hasn’t shown what principle he’s relying on to distinguish the resurrection from the sorts of events the PoE uses.
Thanks for the recommendation.
Hi Paul, nice to meet you.
I think the part on Dr. Craig’s response is misunderstood. As he says, we do not believe God is good by looking into the world at all the good things that happen. That would be alined to saying, “since Jesus did so many good miracles that helped thousands of people, God must be good.” It is not on that basis that we say God is good. Rather it is the confirmation of Jesus’ claims indicated by His resurrection. Jesus made truth claims that God was good (moreover He made claims that He was God) and as a confirmation of those claims, the resurrection argument is best explained that God raised Jesus from the dead.
Although I’m not really convinced that Dr. Craig even needed to go into the resurrection when there are problems with the concept of evil god in and of themselves. It might have just been that this was the first thing that came to mind. I just posted my response about the inconsistencies with evil god up above to martin.
On further thought, Anti-God might be sufficient for objective moral values, but it’s hard to see how he would be for moral duties, or at least, the kind of duties that we do in fact have (why does Anti-God give us an obligation not to murder?) … still, I think it would be hard to explain why Anti-God so fails without offering some sort of meta-ethical account, thus making the moral argument more meta-ethically committed than it claims to be.
Holy Crap Martin, one post on how Bill Craig lost a debate and your usually quiet apologiapad is the hottest place on the web. Haha……… I’ve been reading through the loads of comments that have been made and certainly many great observations have been made by people. While I haven’t listened to the debate I would agree with you that Law’s problem of evil argument was subtle yet sharply original. One thing that eerks me, though, is that I think Law’s entire argument is based on a certain theory of theistic morality. I’m curious as to how Law would deal with a divine command ethic in which what God commands is moral regardless of whether or not we perceive it as moral. It seems as, though, such a perspective would undercut Law’s entire argument.
To make what I mean about certain theory of theistic morality more specific, I think that Law’s argument is based on a theory of theistic morality that is empirical in nature. I wonder how he’d do with one that was based solely on the fact that God and God alone is the arbitrator of moral values since only God is fit for the position
Lol, yeah activity did sort of spike rather massively. In the few days after posting this review my total views went up over 500%!!
Anyway I’m not sure that divine command theory really helps here. Sure, proponents of this view think that what is moraly obligatory just is what God has commanded, but they don’t think that God can command just anything. They think God can command only what is in accord with his perfectly good nature. So he cannot, say, command the torture of children for fun. So the evidential argument for evil can still attempt to provide evidence against the perfectly good nature of God. God’s commands don’t really come into it.
I think it’s great that activity has spiked so much for your blog. Now other people can see the amazing articles you write=).
Anyhow, I have to disagree with your assessement of Divine Command Theory. In fact, I think your assessement of Divine Command Theory is seriously mistaken. You say that God can only command what is in accord with his perfectly good nature and then say that God couldn’t command child torture. This begs a huge question, though, that also strongly undercuts the evidential argument from evil as well. The question is, “Why do you consider child torture to be a violation of God’s goodness? Doesn’t the very fact that you consider it
to be a violation of God’s goodness imply that you already know what God’s goodness is and are thus basing your idea of goodness not on what God commands?” The evidential argument from evil doesn’t work since it assumes the goodness or evilness of a particular action which begs the question of why that action is to be considered good or evil. Even if there is a basis for thinking a particular action is immoral, there is still the question of whether or not it’s a sound basis.
By the way I’m sorry I cluttered your blog arguing with a fundy atheist. Please forgive me.
Thanks for the kind word! Speaking of articles, I have about 6 drafted and ready to post on Thoughtful Faith. I just need to finish the last sexuality entry. LOL.
Anyway, I’m sticking to my guns on the point about divine command theory. There’s some confusion of your presentation of DCT because, on this view, moral goodness isn’t identical to what God commands, only what is morally obligatory is. At any rate, DCT doesn’t entail any particular view about moral epistemology. It isn’t the claim that we know what is morally obligatory only because of God’s commands. It is the claim that what is morally obligatory just is what God has commanded. And the theist and atheist aren’t at great dispute (on the whole) about what is morally obligatory, or what is morally good.
Neither party disagrees that the agonising death of a deer is a bad thing. Or the death of a child by cancer. These aren’t things the theist disputes, even if she is a DCTer. The difference is that the theist thinks there is a God who has morally justifiable reasons to allow these things to occur. And it is the task of an evidential argument from evil/suffering to show that, probably, no such thing is the case.
Moreover, the atheist doesn’t need to suppose that there is such a thing as moral evil to run the argument. She just needs to point out that there is gratuitous suffering (which is a non-moral phenomena) and show that suffering counts against theism, because suffering would be morally bad in a theistic universe. Craig in fact conceded this very point in the debate.
Also, so you should be sorry! Though it was probably irresistable to whack such stupidity on the head.
Ok I think I better understand what your viewpoint is, and I’ll admittedly have to do more study in the area of Divine Command Ethics. By the way speaking of your series on sexuality I just finished part 2 and will be sending it to you shortly.
Also it was sooooooo irresistable! LOL
‘….is that I think Law’s entire argument is based on a certain theory of theistic morality’
CARR
But that really is ‘just a theory’ , like the creationists say.
Unlike the theory of evolution , which has empirical data to back it up, sometimes literally rock-solid data, Craig’s Divine Command Theory is literally just a theory.
It is no more to be taken seriously than the theory of astrology, or my theory as to why my pens kept going lost, even when I bought a box of 20 just the day before.
Hey curtmudgeon,
If you had even half a brain you’d realize that evolution is a scientific theory while Divine Command is a philosophical theory. If your pens keep going missing it’s probably because they ran away to avoid being used by someone with an IQ of 20
That is indeed what I said. Evolution is a scientific theory while Divine Command theory is simply a theory with nothing to back it up.
But I am pleased that you confirmed that what I said was correct. Always good to get confirmation from an independent source.
Uh……. yeah, but here’s the problem a philosophical theory isn’t like a scientific theory bonehead.
More gibberish as response.
I point out that Craig’s Divine Command Theory has no facts to back it up, unlike theories which should be taken seriously.
Refutation – Craig’s Theory is not like a theory that has facts to back it up.
What can I say?
I forgot. I also got insults, pardon me, Christian love, as well as gibberish as an answer to my post.
I’m sure bonehead was meant in a very loving way, after all even Jesus loved the people he called fools, snakes and sons of the devil.
Listen this is going to be my final reply to your nonsense. Science seeks to understand the empirical world so it’s theories require empirical evidence. Science can gather empirical date, but it can’t make moral value judgements. An is does not make an ought. Philosophical theories like ones that deal with morality or ethics on the other hand deal with moral value judgements and can be based on a number of things such as what is the best possible good for the most number of people or in the example of the Divine Command theory based
on God. They cannot, however, be based on scientific facts or empirical evidence since as I stated previously an is cannot make an ought. In this light your objection is naive and foolish. Also concerning me calling you bonehead, consider that an example of agape=)
ROB
First, the evidence for the resurrection gives us reason to think that Jesus’ claims were correct and that God is good.
CARR
Really? Wasn’t Jesus supposed to be God’s Son?
So the evidence that the Mafia looks after its own family is evidence that the Mafia is good?
Once again curtmudgeon,
While I hesitate to agree with Rob’s suggestion, your suggestion is anathema to me. First of all, when the Bible says that Jesus is God’s Son it doesn’t mean it in a biologically familial sense like you take it. You might want to actually know what you’re talking about before you troll.
It appears that gibberish is now regarded as a refutation.
This alleged god allegedly looked after his own son and let everybody else go to Hell.
I compared this to the Mafia looking after its own.
Refutation – Jesus isn’t literally God’s son.
Well, what can I say?
Whoa Whoa what Bible are you reading in which God simply looked after his own son and let everybody else go to Hell? John 3:16 ring a bell? Also you still show no understanding of the trinity. On top of that even if what you say is true, how in the world anything you just said refutes the idea of Jesus literally being the Son of God is one for the hopelessly insane.
Also you don’t need to say anything just go to this website and shut up troll
http://www.BlankWebsite.com
John 3:16 ring a bell ring a bell?
Are you claiming people have gone to Heaven because, roll of drums, an Old Book says so?
Gosh, the Evil God would love to lead on people who believe everything the Evil God tells it.
Why should I believe your god is good, just because an Old Book issues IOU’s of Heaven?
Is an IOU as good as money? No. Show me this alleged Heaven you speak of, rather than the 3 dollar-bill of your Old Book.
Oh dear. A great many intelligent responses and now this.
Just because the Christian ‘logic’ was neatly skewered with an apt analogy is no reason to ignore the disembowelling of the Christian argument that happened….
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I have some thoughts on the “evil god” argument up now.
http://apologiapad.wordpress.com/2011/11/08/the-evil-god-argument/
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