MandM: William Lane Craig

Showing posts with label William Lane Craig. Show all posts

Sunday, 26 April 2009

Antony Flew v William Lane Craig debate "Does God Exist?"

In 1948 Bertrand Russell and Frederick Copleston debated the existance of God on the BBC radio. That debate was considered the definitive debate of that generation.

Fifty years later, to commemorate this debate, a debate re-examining the arguments for and against the existence of God was arranged between William Lane Craig and Antony Flew before 4,000 students at the University of Wisconsin in 1998.

Flew has since, famously, become a theist but at the time he was one of the world's leading atheists so this is a great engagement of minds. This debate is now online. Watch and enjoy.

Hat Tip: Many thanks to Josh Darville who sent us this link via Twitter.

Monday, 20 April 2009

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, William Lane Craig and the Argument from Harm Part II

In my last post, I discussed Walter Sinnott-Armstrong’s argument from harm. I concluded by suggesting that his conclusion missed the point and failed to address the conditional, defended by William Lane Craig that, if theism is true then there exists a sound foundation for moral duties. In this post I will argue that the same problem afflicts Armstrong’s two major arguments for his harm-based account of wrongness.

Armstrong’s Arguments for the Superiority of the Harm-Account
The same failure to actually address the contention at hand is evident in the two main arguments Armstrong musters in favour of the harm-based foundation. These arguments are

(a) The harm account is more economical than a divine command theory;
(b) The harm account makes moral obligations more objective than a divine command theory does.

Economy and Simplicity
Of his first argument, Armstrong writes,

The secular view is also preferable on grounds of simplicity. Like the secular view, the divine command theory must recognise harm and its relevance to morality. Then the divine command view adds a new supernatural level to its theory of morality. That added complication brings no benefits for the objectivity of morality, as I have just argued. We should prefer simpler views when we have no reason to complicate matters. Hence, we should prefer the secular view.[1]

Armstrong appeals to Ockham’s razor, multipicandum sunt praetor necessitatem, entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity. The idea is that if two theories can explain the phenomena equally well then the one that postulates the least entities is the preferred one.

This principle is the basis of Armstrong’s critique. He notes that both his own secular view and the divine command theory both explain the objectivity of moral obligation equally well. The divine command theory, however, does so by adding “a new supernatural level [God]” and so the harm based account is preferable.

“there are cases where rape is gravely wrong and yet no one is harmed or if they are, the harm is minimal and yet the action remains gravely and seriously wrong”In response to this argument I will make two points. First, even if the divine command theorist does add “a new supernatural level” his theory does not follow that Ockham’s razor automatically means it is a less preferable theory. Ockham’s razor tells us that if two theories can explain the phenomena equally well then the one that postulates the least entities is the preferred one. For Armstrong’s objection to be cogent, he needs to argue that his own harm based account explains the existence and nature of moral obligations better than a divine command theory. Armstrong does not do this; all he does s show that both theories explain the objectivity of moral properties equally well. However, objectivity is only one feature of moral obligations that a viable ontological foundation must explain. Showing your theory explains one feature as well as a rival theory does is a long way from showing it explains all features as well.

This is important, because one of the arguments made by defenders of divine command theory, such as Robert Adams, is that it can explains all the features of moral obligation better than its rivals. Adams maintains divine commands “best fill the role assigned to wrongness by the concept”.[2] He notes that divine commands explain, not just the fact, that “wrongness is an objective property of actions,”[3] they also account “for the wrongness of a major portion of the types of action that we have believed to be wrong,”[4] and “play a causal role ... in their coming to be regarded as wrong.”[5] In addition, Adams argues that they account for the intuition that our moral duties comprise, “a standard that has a sanctity greater than that of any merely human will or institution”.[6]

In other articles Adams has noted that divine commands capture the intuition that moral properties such as rightness and wrongness are “non-natural in the sense that they cannot be stated entirely in the language of physics, chemistry, biology, and animal or human psychology,”[7] and also, the idea that “having an obligation to do something consists of being required (in a certain way, under certain circumstances), by another person or group of persons, to do it”.[8]

Stephen Layman has argued that theism explains the overriding nature of moral obligations, that to have a duty to do something entails that one has decisive reasons for doing it; reasons that override any non-moral reasons to the contrary. Moreover, Layman argues that secular views do not explain this feature of moral obligation anywhere near as well as theism does.[9] Now these arguments may not be successful but given that theists have made them, Armstrong owes us an argument showing they are not; especially if he is going to conclude that his arguments call into question, not just Craig’s arguments, but the “arguments for a religious view of morality” of “other theists” and that these other theists cannot “avoid all the problems in Craig’s account without leaving traditional Christianity far behind.”

There is a second, more important problem, with Armstrong’s appeal to Ockham’s razor. This is that when one takes into account the dialectical context of Armstrong’s argument it is not clear that the divine command theory does violate Ockham’s razor. Plantinga articulates this point in a recent paper he presented before the American Philosophical association; he argued

Suppose we land on a planet we know is inhabited by intelligent creatures. We come across something that looks exactly like an arrow-head complete with grooves and indentations apparently caused by the process of shaping and sharpening it. Two possibilities suggest themselves, that it acquired these features by erosion or that it was intentionally fashioned by the inhabitants. Someone with a couple of courses in philosophy might suggest that the former hypothesis is to be preferred because it posits fewer entities than the latter. He'd be wrong of course, since we already know that the planet is inhabited by intelligent creatures, there is no additional Ockhamistic cost in assuming these structures were designed.[10]

Plantinga’s insight is correct. He goes on to note that if we did not know the planet was inhabited by intelligent beings and the erosion hypothesis was not significantly less probable then an appeal to Ockham’s razor, in favour of the erosion hypothesis, would have “teeth”. However, if one already knows that the planet is inhabited by intelligent beings then we do not violate Ockham’s razor by appealing to the existence of these beings to explain the existence of grooves and indentations on what appears to be an arrow-head.

Something analogous occurs here. Craig is arguing that if theism is true then there is a plausible ontological foundation for moral obligation in divine commands. He is not, then, proposing the theory in a context where people do not know whether God exists, nor is he proposing it in a context where people do not know that divine commands exist that are co-extensive with moral duties. Rather, he is proposing it in a context where one assumes, for the sake of argument, that theism is true and asks what theory best explains the nature of moral obligation given these assumptions.

Once this is realised, however, it is far from clear that the theist is adding “a new supernatural level.” Rather, the existence of a supernatural element is already granted. The question, then, is how best to understand this element’s relationship to morality.

Armstrong’s appeal to Ockham’s razor seems to presuppose a dialectical context whereby both theist and non-theist start from an agnostic perspective and try to work out the best foundation for the nature of moral obligation given the shared information available to both of them. The problem is that Craig was not arguing for his theory in that context. His argument is that if theism is true then a sound foundation exists. To rebut the contention that Craig actually defends, Armstrong needs to show that if God exists such a foundation does not exist. This, however, is precisely what he does not do.

Objectivity
The same problems afflict Armstrong's appeal to objectivity. Armstrong states,

This secular foundation makes morality objective. If what makes rape morally wrong is the harm to rape victims, then whether rape is wrong does not depend on whether I or rapists believe that rape is wrong. It also does not depend on whether any one wants to rape. Regardless of any-one's desires and moral beliefs, rape causes harm to the victim, and that harm makes rape wrong. This secular foundation, thus, makes morality every bit as objective as the divine command theory.[11]

Armstrong here shows that with regard to the objectivity of duties the harm-based account and the divine command theory are on par. However, he then argues that, in fact, the divine command theory fails to explain the objectivity of moral duties.

If God did not think that rape was morally wrong, then God would not command us not to rape, and then rape would not be morally wrong, according to this theory. ... In contrast, the secular harm-based view makes morality independent even of what God thinks. If God somehow thought that rape was not morally wrong, and if God forgot to command us not to rape, or even if God commanded us to rape, none of that would make any difference. Rape would still be morally wrong, because it would still harm rape victims.[12]

I think Armstrong is mistaken here. Theism, as Craig defines it, includes the claim that God is omniscient; hence, even if rape is wrong in virtue of the harm it causes and not because of any divine commands, it still would be impossible for rape to be wrong independently of God thinking it is wrong. An omniscient being only believes true propositions and never believes false propositions; hence, it is impossible for rape to be wrong and God to not believe that it is wrong.

Once this is realised, it is clear that Armstrong’s examples assume that theism is false. He puts forward situations where God forgets to issue commands or where God mistakenly believes rape is not wrong. This can only occur if God is not omniscient and, hence, theism is false. However, Craig is not arguing that a divine command theory is plausible if theism is false. His claim is that if God exists then there is a sound ontological basis for moral duties.

Does Harm Explain the Wrongness of Rape?
My final criticism directly challenge the harm account. Throughout his critique, Armstrong, contends that rape is wrong because of the extreme harm it causes rape victims. Despite its initial plausibility, I am inclined to think this account of the wrongness of rape fails. This is because there are cases where rape is gravely wrong and yet no one is harmed or if they are, the harm is minimal and yet the action remain gravely and seriously wrong.

Take the following case, a doctor is performing surgery on a woman. He puts her under general anaesthetic and she falls unconscious. Then, prior to performing surgery, he has intercourse with her. He does so using a condom. He takes care to be gentle. The physical harm to his patient is minimal. The patient is unconscious; she is unlikely to ever be aware of what has occurred; the risk of psychological trauma is not present. Hence, it is implausible to suggest that the doctor has caused extreme harm to the patient, yet his actions are clearly rape and it is also clear that what he has done is gravely and seriously wrong. Hence, what makes the action wrong cannot be the extreme harm done to the rape victim.

This example can be strengthened when we compare it to another proposed by Robert Adams.[13] Adams asks us to imagine the case of a person whose doctoral dissertation is destroyed by a computer hacker. We would consider the sabotage of the computer a reprehensible act but nowhere near as serious a crime as the rape committed by the doctor in the previous example. Despite this, it is not implausible to suggest that the person who has had their doctoral research destroyed suffers more “discernible harm” than the person who awakes from surgery never knowing she has been raped and continues on with life oblivious to it.

What this shows is that the grave wrongness of rape does not depend on the extreme harm it causes, because even when there is no extreme harm present the act remains gravely wrong. Rape remains a very serious wrong, relative to other wrongs, even when the harms of these other wrongs outweigh it. For this reason, I am inclined to think that far from being “obviously correct” Armstrong’s harm-account of moral obligations is implausible.

[1] Ibid, 107.
[2] Robert Adams “Divine Command Meta-Ethics Modified Again” Journal of Religious Ethics 7:1(1979) 74.
[3] Ibid, 74.
[4] Ibid, 74.
[5] Ibid, 75.
[6] Ibid, 75.
[7] Robert Adams “Moral Arguments for Theistic Belief” 117-18.
[8] Robert Adams "Divine Commands and the Social Nature of Obligation" 262-63.
[9] C. Stephen Layman “God and the Moral Order” Faith and Philosophy 19 (2002) 304-16; “God and the moral order: replies to objections” Faith and Philosophy 23 (2006) 209-12; “A Moral Argument for The Existence of God” Is Goodness without God Good Enough: A Debate on Faith, Secularism and Ethics eds Robert K Garcia and Nathan L King (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2008) 49-66.
[10] I transcribed this from Plantinga’s paper to the American Philosophical Association, “Science and Religion: Where the Conflict Really Lies” http://www.mandm.org.nz/2009/04/alvin-plantinga-v-daniel-dennett.html.
[11] Walter Sinnott-Armstrong "Why Traditional Theism Cannot Provide an Adequate Foundation for Morality” 106.
[12] Ibid, 107.
[13] Robert Adams Finite and Infinite Goods 107.

Saturday, 18 April 2009

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, William Lane Craig and the Argument from Harm Part I

This is the first of a two-part series where I examine a recent argument criticising religious ethics by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong.

In many of his publications and debates William Lane Craig has defended the contention that if theism is true then there exists a sound foundation for moral duties. In a recent article, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong has criticised this contention. Armstrong has claimed that his criticisms do not just call into question Craig’s argument for a theistic based system of ethics, he contends that his arguments are conclusive against any theistic account of ethics which is compatible with Christianity. He states, “Other theists might try to give better arguments for a religious view of morality. I don’t see how they could avoid all the problems in Craig’s account without leaving traditional Christianity far behind.”[1]

Before discussing Armstrong’s critique it is important to define a few key terms; this will become important later on. First, by theism, Craig means, belief in a necessarily existent, all powerful, all knowing, perfectly virtuous, immaterial person who created the universe. By foundation, he means, an ontological or meta-physical foundation. The ontological grounding he has in mind is that of “informative identification;”[2] an example of this is the way “we explain the nature of water by identifying it with H20 or explain the nature of heat by identifying it with molecular motion.”[3] Craig argues that if theism is true then one can informatively identify moral obligations with divine commands; hence, providing a plausible and defensible foundation for moral obligations.

“his arguments display a conflation of epistemic and ontological questions”Armstrong’s critique begins by noting that Craig defends “traditional divine command theory.” Armstrong contends that such a position is “incredible”[4] and subject to a “cavalcade of devastating objections.”[5]

Two initial points are worth making. First, the position Craig defends is not a “traditional divine command theory” but rather a version of the modified divine command theory defended by Robert Adams,[6] more recently by William Alston[7] and Stephen Evans[8], also I have defended it here.

This theory affirms that the property of being wrong is identical with the property of being contrary to God’s commands in much the same way that water is identical with H20. Second, many of the “devastating objections” consist simply of a repetition of the tired old lines always used against divine command theories; most of these objections have been subjected to rigorous criticism in the literature on divine commands over the last 30 years by people such as Philip Quinn,[9] Edward Weirenga,[10] Robert Adams,[11] William Wrainwright[12] and again by me [13]. Armstrong does not address any of these criticisms; he merely repeats the standard arguments without even mentioning, much less, addressing the problems noted by these authors. In fact, in several places, his arguments display a conflation of epistemic and ontological questions which is a common error as I have argued here.

Armstrong’s Argument from Harm
Putting these niggles to one side, however, Armstrong's main line of argument is fairly novel.[14] He states,

There is a much more plausible foundation for morality. It seems obvious to me, and to everyone who does not start with peculiarly religious assumptions, that what makes rape morally wrong is the extreme harm that rape causes to rape victims.[15]

Armstrong suggests that Craig's conditional, if theism is true then there exists a sound foundation for moral duties, is mistaken because a more plausible foundation exists for our duties, one that is independent of God's commands. The wrongness of actions can be founded in the harm caused by immoral actions such as rape. Armstrong provides two arguments as to why this harm-based or secular account of the nature of wrongness is superior to a divine command theory.

(a) The harm account is more economical than a divine command theory;
(b) The harm account makes moral obligations more objective than a divine command theory does.

In my next post I will address arguments (a) and (b). I will leave you with the thought that it is worth noting that Armstrong’s conclusion misses the point. He contends that everyone who does not start with peculiarly religious assumptions will see that the harm-based foundation is more plausible than a divine command theory. Nothing in Craig’s contention contradicts this. Craig's contention is that if God exists then there is a sound basis for moral obligations. The sound basis he identifies is divine commands. Craig, then, was not arguing that a divine command theory was the most plausible theory in the absence of religious assumptions, Craig argues that in the absence of religious assumptions it is Nihilism, not divine command theory, which is the most plausible account of moral obligation. Craig’s contention is that a divine command theory is plausible if one grants such assumptions. Armstrong’s conclusion actually has no bearing on the contention he is attempting to refute.

[1] Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, “Why Traditional Theism Cannot Provide an Adequate Foundation for Morality” in Is Goodness without God Good Enough: A Debate on Faith, Secularism and Ethics, eds. Robert K Garcia and Nathan L King (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2008) 114.
[2] Mark C Murphy “Theism, Atheism and the Explanation of Moral Value” in Is Goodness without God Good Enough: A Debate on Faith, Secularism and Ethics, eds. Robert K Garcia and Nathan L King (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2008) 127.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Walter Sinnott-Armstrong “Why Traditional Theism Cannot Provide an Adequate Foundation for Morality” 106.
[5]Ibid, 108.
[6] Robert Adams Finite and Infinite Goods (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); “Divine Command Meta-Ethics Modified Again” Journal of Religious Ethics 7:1 (1979) 66-79; "Divine Commands and the Social Nature of Obligation" Faith and Philosophy 4 (1987) 262-275. [7] William Alston “Some Suggestions for Divine Command Theorists” in Christian Theism and the Problems of Philosophy ed. Michael Beaty ( Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990) 303-26.
[8] C. Stephen Evans Kierkegaard’s Ethic of Love: Divine Commands and Moral Obligations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
[9] Philip L Quinn Divine Commands and Moral Requirements (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1978); “Divine Command Theory” in The Blackwell Guide to Ethical Theory ed Hugh LaFollette (Malden MA: Blackwell Publishing Co, 1999) 53-73; “Theological Voluntarism” in The Oxford Handbook to Ethical Theory Ed David Copp (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006) 63-90.
[10] Edward Weirenga, The Nature of God: An Inquiry into the Divine Attributes (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989) 215-27. See also, “Utilitarianism and the Divine Command Theory,” American Philosophical Quarterly 21 (1984) 311-318; and “A Defensible Divine Command Theory” Nous 17 (1983) 387-408.
[11] Robert Adams “A Modified Divine Command Theory of Ethical Wrongness” in Divine Commands and Morality ed Paul Helm (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981) 83-108; “Divine Command Meta-Ethics Modified Again” Journal of Religious Ethics 7:1 (1979) 66-79; Moral Arguments for Theistic Belief” in Rationality and Religious Belief ed C F Delaney (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979) 116-140.
[12] William Wrainwright Religion and Morality (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd, 2005).
[13] Matthew Flannagan “The Premature Dismissal of Voluntarism” in Colloquium: The Australasian Theological Review (forthcoming).
[14] I say “fairly novel” because a very similar objection was raised in Don Marquis's seminal essay, “Why Abortion is Immoral” The Abortion Controversy: 25 Years after Roe v Wade, A Reader eds Louis Pojman and Francis Beckwith (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1998) 345.
[15] Walter Sinnott-Armstrong “Why Traditional Theism Cannot Provide an Adequate Foundation for Morality” 106.

RELATED POSTS:
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, William Lane Craig and the Argument from Harm Part II
Tooley, The Euthyphro Objection and Divine Commands: Part I
Tooley, The Euthyphro Objection and Divine Commands: Part II
Maverick Philosopher on the Historical Atrocities Argument

Saturday, 11 April 2009

Maverick Philosopher on the Historical Atrocities Argument

In making their case against theism many of the "new atheists" (indeed many of the old) commonly appeal to historical atrocities allegedly committed by believers in God. I was discussing this phenomena recently with Doug Geivett in the aftermath of the Craig v Hitchens debate. I cited the need for Christian apologists to rebut not only the contention that theism is false but also the contention that it is oppressive and dangerous. I proposed that someone of the calibre of Rodney Stark should address the sociological claims about the effect of religion on society to supplement the defences of its truth by scholars such as Bill Craig, Alvin Plantinga, etc. The full (ongoing) discussion can be found within the comments thread here.

Yesterday I discovered this gem on the same topic on one of my favourite blogs of all time, Bill Vallicella's Maverick Philosopher, (in fact the inspiration for MandM). I have reproduced a little below to whet your appetite and have furnished the necessary link to finish the meal. Enjoy.

Extract Taken From:

Is Religion the Problem? Why Isn't Belief As Such the Problem? The Special Pleading of Some Atheists

One of the arguments against religion in the contemporary atheist arsenal is the argument that religious beliefs fuel war and terrorism. Rather than pull quotations from such well-known authors as Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, I will quote a couple of passages from one of the contributors to Philosophers Without Gods, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong. His piece is entitled "Overcoming Christianity." After describing his movement from his evangelical Christian upbringing to a quietistic rejection of Christianity, Sinnott-Armstrong tells us how he became an evangelical atheist:

My quietism ended when current events taught me the dangers of religion. I had always known how religions, including Christianity, led to wars in the Middle East, Ireland, and so on. Many wars, of course, are not based on religion. Even religious wars result from non-religious forces as well. Nonetheless, it is hard to deny that many wars have been and continue to be fueled in large part by religious beliefs. It is no coincidence that terrorists are so often motivated by religion, since it is hard to get non-religious people to volunteer as suicide bombers. (76)

It is true that people holding religious beliefs have used, and are using, their religious beliefs to justify war, terrorism, and such other evils as forced conversions and inquisitions. No reasonable person can deny this. But what Sinnott-Armstrong (S-A) says above in the second sentence is that religions lead to wars. Does he really want to say that religions lead to wars? All religions? Buddhism? I understand that there are some Buddhist terrorists. But surely a professional philosopher such as S-A can see the difference between (i) Some Buddhists are terrorists and (ii) Buddhism causes war and terrorism. If a Buddhist is a terrorist, this is an accidental fact about him; there is nothing in the essence of Buddhism that enjoins terrorism. No Buddhist qua Buddhist is a terrorist. It escapes me how the doctrines, precepts and practices of Buddhism cause war, terrorism and kindred evils. Similarly for Christianity. Plenty of atrocities have been committed by people who identify themselves as Christians. But that is not to say that the characteristic doctrines, precepts and practices of Christianity cause war, terrorism and the like. It is rather the opposite: when the doctrines and precepts of Buddhism and Christianity are acted upon they tend to mitigate human savagery.

And then there is the case of Gandhi whose principle of ahimsa (no-harm) derives from his Hinduism. Hinduism as understood and practiced by him surely did not lead to war and terroism. Did he perhaps not understand the principles of his religion? So it cannot be religion as such that causes war and terrorism. The central teachings of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity are anti-war and anti-terrorism.

So one of the mistakes that people like Sinnot-Armstrong make is that they confuse the doctrinal content of a religion with the behavior of some of the religion's adherents. … read the rest here [the comments are worth looking at too]

Monday, 6 April 2009

Craig v Hitchens: Dissecting the Debate UPDATE 2

The debate between atheist journalist Christopher Hitchens and Christian Philosopher and Theologian Dr William Lane Craig has finished.

There is an, albeit very brief, summary of the debate here and a more comprehensive one from a Philosopher here. One point of interest is that Hitchens appears to have given up towards the end and “yields his entire closing speech”. It will be interesting to see the video and read a more detailed transcript to see exactly what transpired.

I find this debate particularly interesting as when, along with the New Zealand Association of Rationalist Humanists, Madeleine and I organised Dr Craig's debate with Dr Bill Cooke in Auckland last year, the most common claim we heard from amongst our rationalist co-organisers was "the debate would go very differently if Craig was up against Hitchens" (after conceding that Dr Cooke got slaughtered).

I strongly had my doubts, so I look forward to seeing the video and comparing it with my thoughts on the Craig v Cooke debate.

[We are thinking of having Thinking Matters Auckland, our Apologetics group, purchase a copy and then we will screen it at one of our seminars so stay posted].

UPDATE:
When Debunking Christianity puts up a post entitled William Lane Craig "Won by a Landslide" Against Hitchens I think it is safe for all to say Craig bested Hitchens.

UPDATE 2:
Common Sense Atheism states "Craig was flawless and unstoppable. Hitchens was rambling and incoherent, with the occasional rhetorical jab. Frankly, Craig spanked Hitchens like a foolish child."

Saturday, 4 April 2009

Does God Exist? Christopher Hitchens v William Lane Craig

A live blog debate will be held between atheist journalist Christopher Hitchens author of the best-selling God is Not Great and Christian Philosopher and Theologian Dr William Lane Craig author of too many things to list here.

They will debate the topic: Does God Exist? Catch the live blog debate here on Sunday 5 April 2009 at 3.30pm NZ time [4 April 2009 at 7:30 pm (PST)];

Dr Craig debated Dr Bill Cooke at Auckland University in 2008 on the topic "Is God a Delusion?" Video footage of that debate here.

Monday, 12 January 2009

On a Common Equivocation

Recently I did a post on relativism and in earlier posts I have defended a divine command theory of ethics against various objections. In the comments section Mark V raised an interesting and thoughtful response. I hope Mark does not mind if I pick up on his points because the themes he raises are well worth discussing. Mark writes

You have earlier stated that if God exists we are obliged to obey him, presumably you mean we are obliged to obey his commandments. There are many commandments in the Bible, particularly in Deuteronomy that no theist today would ever dream of obeying. So even theists today use their reason and the facts to decide what is ethical and what is not. In doing so they appeal to a standard of ethics that is outside the Bible.

I think that Mark’s interpretation of the Deuteronomy is probably mistaken. However, putting his exegesis of the Torah to one side, Mark’s central point here, if I understand him correctly, is that we often know what is right and wrong independently of our beliefs about what God commands, in fact often we use our beliefs about what is right and wrong to help us decide what God’s commands are hence ethics is not dependent on God’s commands. This line of argument is common in the literature. In Morality Religious and Secular Patrick Nowell-Smith refers to an argument that is “familiar to philosophers but of which the force is not always appreciated”

[W]e must be persuaded independently of his goodness before we admit his right to command. We must judge for ourselves whether the Bible is the inspired word of a ind and benevolent God or a curious amalgam of profound wisdom and gross uperstition. To judge this is to make a moral decision, so that in the end, so far from morality being based upon religion, religion is based upon morality[1]

In Philosophical Problems and Arguments. James Cornman and Keith Lehrer express the same point.

Consider what we would do if we read that Moses had returned with such commandments as ‘make love to thy neighbor’s wife,’ ‘steal thy neighbor’s
goods,’ and ‘take advantage of thy parents.’ We would decide that what-ever was revealed to Moses, it was not the will of God, because these are immoral commandments. We do not justify that something is moral by showing it is God’s will, because the only available way to evaluate conflicting claims about what God wills is by finding which one is in accordance with what is moral.[2]

Several of the essays in Is Goodness without God good enough: A debate on Secularism, Faith and Ethics also make this point. In this book Paul Kurtz gives numerous arguments to the effect we can know right and wrong and live a moral life even if we do not believe that God exists.[3] The fact that ones knowledge of right and wrong is independent of and in some instances prior to ones knowledge of what God commands also figures prominently in the essays of Walter Sinnott-Armstrong[4] and Lousie Anthony[5]. In fact atheist populariser Christopher Hitchens frequently makes this point.

Despite its pervasive appeal I think this inference is flawed. I think it’s based on a failure to make an important distinction. Take the claim that right and wrong is independent of God’s commands. This claim is ambiguous: it could mean (a) that ones knowledge of right and wrong is independent of ones knowledge of what God commands or it could mean (b) that right and wrong exist independently of Gods commands. The first claim states that beliefs about right and wrong are epistemologically independent of beliefs about divine commands. The second is that the existence of moral properties such as right and wrong are ontologically independent of God’s commands.

Now the divine command theory denies (b) Divine command theorists claim that wrongness is (i.e. is identical with) the property of being contrary to God’s commands. Something cannot exist independently of itself. Hence it postulates an ontological dependence between divine commands and moral properties such as wrongness. The arguments above however do not refute this claim, what they show is not that (b) is the case but that (a) is the case. The arguments of Cornman, Lehrer, and Nowell-Smith, Anthony and Armstrong show that we can know what is right and wrong independently of knowing or believing in the existence of divine commands. Hence they show at most an epistemological independence.

Showing that beliefs about right and wrong are epistemologically independent of beliefs about God’s commands does not show that right and wrong are ontologically independent of God’s commands unless epistemological independence entails ontological independence. In other words, the objector here assumes that if my knowledge of something’s does not depend upon is my knowledge of something else then the two things can exist independently of each other.

This assumption however is false. Take a straightforward example of identity; the property of being water is identical with the property of being H20 as such H20 and water are not ontologically independent. Yet people for thousands of years could perceive water, drink it, detect it, use it etc without knowing anything about atomic theory. Hence, our knowledge of water is independent of our knowledge of H20. Yet this fact does not mean that water is not identical with H20. Two things can be identical without people knowing that they are identical.

As Mark Murphy[6] and William Lane Craig[7] point out those theists who defend divine command theories and or maintain that morality cannot exist independently of religion almost always have ontological dependence in mind. The same is typically true of atheists and nihilists who argue that the “death of God” entails nihilism. John Mackie for example argued that the kind of entities that exist in a naturalistic universe. A universe where the only things that exist are the things postulated by our best scientific theories is a universe where properties like rightness and wrongness do not exist.[8] As Craig notes these people are raising the question of the “ontological foundation for ethics not its epistemological foundations”[9] Pointing out that our knowledge of ethics is independent of theological claims people know or believe avoids rather than addresses this issue.

[1] Patrick H. Nowell-Smith, “Morality: Religious and Secular,” in Christian Ethics and Contemporary Philosophy, ed. Ian T. Ramsey (London: SCM Press, 1966) 97.
[2] James W. Cornman & Keith Lehrer, Philosophical Problems and Arguments (New York: MacMillan, 1979), 429.
[3] Paul Kurtz “The Kurtz/Craig Debate: Is Goodness Without God Good Enough” in Is Goodness without God Good Enough: A Debate on Faith, Secularism and Ethics, Eds. Robert K Garcia and Nathan L King (Lanham: Rowan & Littlefield Publishers, 2008), 25-49.
[4] Walter Sinnott-Armstrong “Why Traditional Theism Cannot Provide an Adequate Foundation for Morality” in Is Goodness without God Good Enough: A Debate on Faith, Secularism and Ethics, Eds. Robert K Garcia and Nathan L King (Lanham: Rowan & Littlefield Publishers, 2008),101-116.
[5] Louise Anthony “Atheism as Perfect Piety” in Is Goodness without God Good Enough: A Debate on Faith, Secularism and Ethics, Eds. Robert K Garcia and Nathan L King (Lanham: Rowan & Littlefield Publishers, 2008),67-84
[6] Mark Murphy “Theism, Atheism, and the Explanation of Moral Value” in Is Goodness without God Good Enough: A Debate on Faith, Secularism and Ethics, Eds. Robert K Garcia and Nathan L King (Lanham: Rowan & Littlefield Publishers, 2008)117-118.
[7] See his comments in William Lane Craig “The Kurtz/Craig Debate: Is Goodness Without God Good Enough” in Is Goodness without God Good Enough: A Debate on Faith, Secularism and Ethics Eds. Robert K Garcia and Nathan L King (Lanham: Rowan & Littlefield Publishers, 2008), 25-49 and also “This Most Gruesome of Guests” in “The Kurtz/Craig Debate: Is Goodness Without God Good Enough” in Is Goodness without God Good Enough: A Debate on Faith, Secularism and Ethics Eds. Robert K Garcia and Nathan L King (Lanham: Rowan & Littlefield Publishers, 2008), 168 and also n 5
[8] John Mackie Inventing Right and Wrong (New York: Penguin Books, 1977 )
[9] Craig “This Most Gruesome of Guests”, 168-167

Monday, 23 June 2008

William Lane Craig, Raymond Bradley and the Problem of Hell. Part Two.

In a previous post I mentioned Professor Raymond Bradley’s (Bradley) contention that,

[3] The bible teaches that God will torture people endlessly for their beliefs.

In his article he cites several scriptural passages in support of this contention. I think his exegesis is problematic; I cannot go into huge detail in a blog post but I will endeavour to address the main arguments he offers.

In essence, Bradley cites from three sections of the New Testament: Matthew, Acts and the Epistles, and Revelation. I will examine each in turn.

Matthew
Bradley writes:

In the Gospel of Matthew alone he characterizes it in terms which evangelists adore: "unquenchable fire," "fiery hell" (twice), "torment," "burned with fire," "furnace of fire" (twice), "weeping and gnashing of teeth" (five times), "eternal fire," and "eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels. [Emphasis Original]

Bradley refers to references to “fire,” “torment” and “weeping and gnashing of teeth.” He assumes, without argument, that each of these phrases refer to torturing people. However, an examination of the relevant passages shows this to be false.

Unquenchable Fire
The phrase “unquenchable fire” occurs Matt 5:12 and does not refer to torture.

His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire. [Emphasis Added]

The phrase originates in the Old Testament. There it refers not to a fire that tortures but one that consumes what it devours, because it is never put out. (see Isa 1:311, 34:10, 11; Jer 4:4, 7:20, 17:27, 21:12; Ezek 20:47, 48; Amos 5:6). The context bears this out; Matt 5:12 states “burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire” [emphasis added]. The metaphor here is a farmer burning chaff. Now when burned, chaff is consumed and destroyed by fire and not tortured (unless Bradley is asserting that Chaff has consciousness). The picture then is of separation and annihilation, not everlasting torture.

It is worth noting that not only does this passage not support Bradley’s contention (a), it does not support (b) either. In v 10-11 the reason people might be subject to judgement is not because of what they believe, but because of unrepentant wrongdoing. Moreover, the earlier context alludes to “lack of fruit,” an Old Testament idiom for lack of virtuous conduct.

Fiery Hell
The references to “hell fire” do not bear Bradley’s point out either. The Greek word for hell is Ge-Hinnom. Ge-Hinnom was a valley outside of Jerusalem. In the time of Manasseh, this valley was used for human sacrifices to the Canaanite God Molech. For this reason the area became a euphemism for disgrace, shame and contempt. Later after the Assyrian invasion, it was a place where dead bodies were piled up and cremated. Isaiah used metaphors of mass cremation as a metaphor for future judgement. This imagery became a metaphor for final judgment in Jewish Apocalyptic writings.

The term “fiery hell” does not necessitate a picture of everlasting torture; again the references to hell in Matthew bear this out. In 5:29-30 the contrast is drawn between cutting off your hand and throwing it into hell or throwing your whole body into hell. This again is not an allusion to torture (unless severed hands have consciousness?). In Matt 10:28, the contrast is between a person who kills a body and God who kills body and soul in hell. The picture is, again, not of torture but of being discarded and destroyed. Moreover, in all these references things are thrown into hell not because of what they believe but because of what they do.

Burned with Fire
Again when one looks at the actual passages in context, one sees they do not say what Bradley alleges. The repeated picture is of a tree being cut down and burned due to its lack of fruit (Matt 3:11 and Matt 7:19). The imagery is again of throwing something away and destroying it and not of torture (trees are not conscious). Moreover, fruitlessness is standard apocalyptic imagery for unjust conduct, not for mistaken belief.

Furnace of Fire
The references to a “furnace of fire” in Matt 13 do not convey endless torture. In 13:40 the explicit metaphor is of weeds which are pulled out and burned. Moreover in v 47, the furnace stands in a Semitic parallel to fish that are already dead but are thrown away as rubbish. Moreover, in both passages it is clear that judgement is inflicted upon people because they “do evil” or are “wicked”; it is again actions not beliefs.

Gnashing of Teeth
Similarly Bradley appears to interpret the phrase “weeping and gnashing of teeth” as referring to the agony of torture. This again is unlikely. The phrase occurs many times in the Old Testament (Job 16:9; Ps 35:16, 36:16, 37:12; Lam. 2:16) and in the New Testament, and in almost every instance signifies hatred or rage at God or the righteous. Not the agony of pain and torture.

Eternal Fire
It is equally doubtful that the phrase “eternal fire” means eternal torture. Jude v7, for example, uses the term “eternal fire” to describe the judgment that befell Sodom and Gomorrah, towns that were reduced to rubble and not tortured forever.

The passages in Matthew referred to are firstly symbolic, and secondly, do not support Bradley’s contention that they teach that God will torture people forever because of their beliefs. Its also worth noting Bradley’s citations from Matthew are selective. He cites the “fire” metaphor but ignores the metaphors for judgement of being incarcerated or of being expelled from a party which also occur in Matthew, etc and in each case it is the person’s deeds and not their beliefs, which are the basis for judgment.

Epistles and Acts
Bradley’s citations from Acts and the Epistles similarly do not back up his point. He notes,

According to Luke, the reputed author of The Acts, there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men, by which we must be saved." (Acts 4:12). And St. Paul makes it clearer still when he tells us that "the Lord Jesus Christ shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, dealing out retribution to those who do not know God [my emphasis]and to those who do not obey the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. And these will pay the penalty of eternal destruction" (II Thess. 1:7-9). [Emphasis Original]

The problem is that neither passage affirms that people are tortured for ever because of what they believe. The passage in Acts asserts that people are saved in Jesus’ name and does not state that people will be tortured because of their beliefs. Similarly, the passage in Paul does not state that people will be tortured but that they will be destroyed and the basis is not that they do not have certain beliefs but that they “do not know God” and “do not obey the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Revelation
At the Auckland Craig v Cooke debate Bradley cited a further passage from the Book of Revelation,

If anyone worships the beast and his image and receives his mark on the forehead or on the hand, 10 he, too, will drink of the wine of God's fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath. He will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb. 11 And the smoke of their torment rises for ever and ever. There is no rest day or night for those who worship the beast and his image, or for anyone who receives the mark of his name." 12 This calls for patient endurance on the part of the saints who obey God's commandments and remain faithful to Jesus.

There are several metaphors in this passage, a reference to the “wine of God’s fury” the picture of torment in burning sulphur and the picture of rising smoke. Bradley appears to have attached on to the latter two and interpreted them rather literally. The problem here is that the genre of Revelation is Apocalyptic literature. Such literature is highly metaphorical and uses stock symbols (common symbols repeatedly used in this type of literature). Careful note should be taken when reading Revelation of the metaphors in it and also the Old Testament background of these metaphors. The position is far more nuanced than Bradley appears to think.

The picture of fire and sulphur followed by rising smoke is drawn from the account of Sodom and Gomorrah’s destruction by “burning sulphur.” Gen 19 adds,

27 Early the next morning Abraham got up and returned to the place where he had stood before the LORD. 28 He looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah, toward all the land of the plain, and he saw dense smoke rising from the land,

This imagery of sulphur being poured upon people and smoke rising was later used in the Old Testament to symbolise the destruction of various nations. (Deut 29:23; Job 18:15-17; Ps 11:6; Isa 30:33). Perhaps one of the clearest uses of this imagery is seen in Isaiah 34

9 Edom's streams will be turned into pitch, her dust into burning sulfur; her land will become blazing pitch! 10 It will not be quenched night and day; its smoke will rise forever. From generation to generation it will lie desolate; no one will ever pass through it again.

Now Edom did not literally burn forever in sulphur. In fact, taken literally, the differing metaphors in Isa 34 for Edom’s destruction would contradict each other. But Apocalyptic literature is not supposed to be taken this literally (just as many of the phrases we use today are not meant to be taken literally). What Apocalyptic literature does in this instance is use various differing, dramatic, visual images to describe total the destruction of Edom. Similar imagery to this passage is used thought the book of Revelation. In fact, in Rev 18 when the destruction of a city, named Babylon but probably a reference to Rome or Jerusalem, the city is said to be tormented by fire and onlookers watch the rising smoke. The message is that Babylon has been judged and destroyed.

***

In essence, then, [3] is mistaken. It is based on an excessively literalistic reading of Apocalyptic literature. Bradley’s argument is not an argument for atheism. It can only succeed as an argument for atheism if one accepts both the infallibility of scripture and an excessively literalistic reading of the text, one that fails to take into account the genre of Jewish Apocalyptic writings. The correct response to this objection is not to become an atheist but to reject poor hermeneutics.

Matt

RELATED POSTS:
William Lane Craig, Raymond Bradley and the Problem of Hell Part Two
The Battle of the Bill’s: A Review of the Craig - Cooke Debate

Saturday, 21 June 2008

Is God a Delusion? The Auckland Craig v Cooke Debate Online

Dr William Lane Craig and Dr Bill Cooke debated the moot “Is God a Delusion?” at Auckland University on 17 June 2008. The debate was chaired by Professor John Bishop and was organised by New Zealand Association of Rationalists and Humanists (NZRAH) and Tertiary Students Christian Fellowship (TSCF) with MandM.

High quality DVD copies of the debate are available from John Welch for $39.95 NZD + P&P.

Our review of the debate is here. Enjoy :-)

William Lane Craig, Raymond Bradley and the Problem of Hell. Part One.

During the Q & A at the recent Auckland Cooke - Craig debate, Professor Raymond Bradley (Bradley), Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Auckland University, offered an argument, which he has laid out in more detail in his article A Moral Argument for Atheism, as follows:

Christians accept that:

[1] Any act that God commits, causes, commands or condones is morally permissible;
[2] It is morally wrong to torture people endlessly for their beliefs;
[3] The bible teaches that God will torture people endlessly for their beliefs;

From this he inferred that:

[4] God does not exist.

Dr William Lane Craig (Craig) responded that the conclusion does not follow from the premises unless one assumes that the Bible is infallible. [1] and [2] entail that God will not endlessly torture people for their beliefs. However, [3] entails the negation of this only if one adds the further premise, that whatever the bible teaches about God is true. If one does not grant this assumption, the fact that the bible records that God will do something does not entail that he actually will do this. Hence, even if Bradley’s argument is sound it is really an argument against theism conjoined with biblical infallibility, not against theism per se.

In his article, Bradley argues that this option is unavailable to the Christian theist. He writes:

this would be to be to abandon the chief foundation of religious and moral epistemology (ways of obtaining religious and moral knowledge) … the question arises as to how we are supposed to know of God's existence let alone look to him for moral guidance. After all, it is a distinguishing feature of theism, as opposed to deism, to hold that God reveals himself to us and, from time to time, intervenes in human history. And the Bible, according to theists, is the principal record of his revelatory interventions. If the Bible, with its stories of Moses and Jesus, is not his revealed and presumptively true word, then how are we to know of him? If God doesn't reveal himself through the Old Testament Moses and the New Testament Jesus, then through whom does he reveal himself? To be sure, a theist could well claim that God also reveals himself through other channels in addition to the Bible: reason, tradition, and religious experience all being cases in point. But to deny that the Bible is his main mode of communication would be to deny that the principal figures in Judaism and Christianity can really be known at all. Apart from the scriptural records, we would know little, if anything, of Moses or Jesus, it being doubtful that secular history has anything reliable to say about either. Apart from the scriptural records we would know nothing of the so-called Ten Commandments that God supposedly delivered to Moses, or of the ethical principles that Jesus supposedly delivered in his sermons and parables.

Bradley is mistaken. He confuses the claim (i) that scripture is reliable, with the claim (ii) that scripture is infallible. In order for the Bible to give us reliable, trust-worthy information about God, (i) needs to be the case. However, (i) is compatible with admitting that on some issues scripture is mistaken.

Therefore, Bradley’s argument does not have the bite he (and some members of the audience on Tuesday) thought it did. Nether-the-less as an evangelical, Craig is committed to some form of scriptural infallibility and I share this commitment with him. So it is best to see if another line of attack is available.

Craig’s second point alluded to an ambiguity in [2]. [2] states it is wrong to endlessly torture people for their beliefs. However, this could be interpreted two possible ways, it could be interpreted as:

[2a] It is wrong for human persons to endlessly torture people for their beliefs;
[2b] It is wrong for any person including God to endlessly torture people for their beliefs.

Now in order for Bradley’s argument to follow, [2b] needs to be the case. It needs to be the case that God is engaging in wrongdoing if he tortures people for their beliefs. However, in the article Bradley cites in support of this argument, he provides reasons only for [2a]. He argues that to deny principles such as do not torture people endlessly for their beliefs,

... would be to ally oneself with moral monsters like Ghenghis Khan, Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot. It would be to abandon all pretense to a belief in objective moral values. Indeed, if it is permissible to violate the above principles, then it isn't easy to see what sorts of acts would not be permissible. .. [It] would be tantamount to an embrace of moral nihilism. And no theist who believes in the Ten Commandments or the Sermon on the Mount could assent to that.

What Bradley fails to appreciate is that these absurd consequences follow from the rejection of (2a) and not from the rejection of (2b). Moreover, as Craig noted there are good reasons for thinking that it is (2a) and not (2b) that is true. This is because (2b) assumes that God has duties. Both, Craig and I believe in a meta-ethical view known as the Divine Command Theory (DCT). According to this position, it is wrong for a person to perform an action, if and only if, God commands them to not perform this action. It follows from a DCT that God has duties only if he issues commands to himself. Given he does not issue commands to himself, it follows that God cannot have duties.

God does issue commands to human beings. One command is to not torture people for their beliefs. It follows that (2a) is true and (2a) prevents us allying ourselves with moral monsters such as Pol Pot, Stalin, Hitler, etc.

Craig’s response, then, is correct. I am inclined to think, however, that Bradley’s argument can be recast without presupposing that God has duties. It is essential to theism and to the defensibility of a divine command theory to maintain that:

[1’] God is good (where good is referred to in terms of virtues as opposed to (duties).

And a person, following Bradley’s lead, could argue that:

[2’] A good person does not torture people for their beliefs.
[3] The bible teaches that God will torture people endlessly for their beliefs.

And [1’], [2’] and [3’], when conjoined to a commitment to biblical infallibility, entail a contradiction.

The best response to Bradley is to attack [3]. Now note that [3] asserts at least two things; first: (a) scripture states that God will torture people forever; second, (b) God does so because of what such people believe. The crucial question then is what reasons Bradley offers for the truth of (a) and (b)? In my next post I will examine some of these reasons and argue that they are mistaken.

Matt

RELATED POSTS:
William Lane Craig, Raymond Bradley and the Problem of Hell Part Two
The Battle of the Bill’s: A Review of the Craig - Cooke Debate

Friday, 20 June 2008

Just in - the Palmy Debate

I have an initial report from the Palmerston North Bill Craig v Bill Cooke debate held last night:

There was a massive turnout of 1399 exactly in attendance. The word is that Cooke stepped it up and performed better than in Auckland but that Craig still won. Feedback from those in attendance was that it was a fantastic evening, thoroughly enjoyed by all.

I have been promised a more thorough report later today so will update this post accordingly.

Madeleine

UPDATE:

Author of Confusion wrote this review, reproduced in part below:

William Lane Craig & Bill Cooke Public Debate (Palmy)

Last night (19th June, 2008) I attended the debate which I talked about in a previous post.
I was astounded at the attendance - the Regent Theatre in Palmerston North has a capacity of about 1,400 and it was easily 90% full for most of the night. There was an impressive diversity of age, gender, and race evident in the audience and I would say it was a fairly accurate cross-section of adult society (it certainly wasn’t an old white men’s club!). From responses to the speakers the audience was polite but predominantly Christian and this reinforces my impression is that there is a growing religious movement pushed by several of fairly active church groups in Palmerston North and it is something I am going to start keeping a closer eye on.

My overall impressions of the debate were disappointing, and pretty much match Damian’s initial impressions. Craig had a definite game plan in the debate, and it was clearly a game plan from a skilled formal debater. Set up premises and then defend them. Sadly Cooke’s game plan was to dismiss the moot, largely ignore Craig’s premises (begrudgingly discussing them, almost as after thoughts) and mostly talking to three points almost despite whatever Craig said. I will raise these first and then go on to discuss Craig’s arguments:

Cooke’s Approach

Atheists do not assert there is no god but that they do not see the case for god as compelling or even a coherent claim (based on weak definitions). Unfortunately, while an interesting point, Craig never really tried to pin this on Cooke so it was really not a point worth making in the debate.
He used Lloyd Geering’s idea that the notion of “God” is a barrier to understanding the world around us, and that focusing too much on god gets in the way of rational discourse and promotes undue authority amongst those who claim to understand it. This was an interesting tactic but it failed against the so-called “logic” of Craig because most people (including Craig) missed the connection.
Cooke’s final point was that we should stop arguing about our differences and instead focus on our similarities and on solving real problems. This sort of argument, while noble, is not the way to win debates. He talked about how he was happy that Craig was a Christian and that he encouraged diversity of opinion. Again very noble, but in debates it is about point scoring not nobility (one reason I dislike the format) and this counted against Cooke especially in an audience of largely opposing views.

So overall it didn’t really seem like Cooke came to debate. The only life really came from him during the Q&A when some quick witted answers did score some points, but by then it was far too late. If the debate was scored he would have clearly lost.

Big Thankyou

We really want to send out a big thanks to some of the people who helped us to pull off the Auckland leg of Dr William Lane Craig's tour.

First of all to Tertiary Students Christian Fellowship (TSCF) for bringing Bill Craig out to New Zealand in the first place and overseeing his tour and making time in his itinerary for him to travel to Auckland. Particular thanks go to Nigel, Mark and Liz.

Bible College of New Zealand gave us free use of their lecture rooms, accommodation and advertising space in their Guff Sheet. Jenny was particularly awesome in ensuring the finer details were sorted.

Auckland University Philosophy Department came to the party with hotel accommodation, lunch and hosting a departmental seminar where Bill Craig spoke. Their HoD Professor John Bishop did a great job over making sure the Craigs were looked after and of course chairing the debate.

The New Zealand Association of Rationalist Humanists (NZARH) booked the lecture theatre, engaged the videoing services of the talented John Welch and helped with promotions and logistics and we understand it was one of their members who came to the rescue when we got overcrowded and hooked up the live video feeds. Liz & Helen and many others put lots of work into this and were a pleasure to deal with.

Finally to the main attractions, Dr Bill Cooke for stepping up for the debate and presenting the Atheist case and Dr William Lane Craig for agreeing to all these speaking engagements and for showcasing Christian Philosophy in such a positive light.

M & M

Wednesday, 18 June 2008

The Battle of the Bill’s: A Review of the Craig - Cooke Debate

My small idea of getting Dr William Lane Craig to have a debate at Auckland University ended up being an event that far exceeded my expectations. Despite the New Zealand Association of Rationalists and Humanists (NZARH) booking a larger lecture theatre at the last minute we still had to open up three additional lecture theatres with live video feeds and we still had people sitting on the floor! Question time had to be extended because of the interest. The range of people in attendance was excellent; hardened skeptics, evangelical Christians and everyone in between, young and old, high school students through to tertiary faculty.

My experience within the tertiary sector and NZ Christiandom has lead me to believe that despite the secular and popular veneer one sees in New Zealand culture and often in the church, there is a real interest in questions about God, religion and morality. The reaction last night to a civil, rational, intellectual exchange over these issues confirms my suspicion that not only are people hungry for articulate and well thought out answers to these questions but that they can handle these answers coming in a sophisticated and academic manner; the trend of dumbing down these issues in order to be seeker friendly or to have lay appeal is misguided.

Anyway to the debate; the moot was “Is God a Delusion?” Bill Craig opened by defining a delusion, in accord with the dictionary, as a false belief. He then contended (A) there are no good reasons for thinking atheism is true; and, (B) there are good arguments or reasons for believing in God.

In support of (B), he summarised five arguments which he has defended in more detail in the Philosophical literature, very briefly they were: (i) the Kalam Cosmological argument (God is the best explanation for the origin of the Universe); (ii) The New Teleological argument (God is the best explanation for the fine-tuning of the Universe); (iii) The Meta-Ethical Moral argument for theism (God is the best explanation for the existence of objective moral norms); (iv) God is entailed by the best explanation of certain facts about the historical Jesus and his resurrection; and, finally, (v) a brief summary of Plantinga’s thesis that immediate experiences about God provide prima facie grounds for affirming that God exists.

Cooke’s opening was disappointing. I am not saying this because I am a theist and he is not, I have read many skeptical Philosophers who provide brilliant and powerful arguments for atheism (Paul Draper and Michael Tooley are obvious examples) and although I disagree with them I think they provide challenging cases that I can respect. However, Cooke did not follow their lead. Instead Cooke opened by defining atheism as the claim that “we do not know what the word God means.” Cooke then went on to state he does not think Thiesm is false but is rather a distraction. His argument then appeared to consist of claims that the concept of God has evolved throughout history, that this belief has been used by some to commit atrocities and to not follow important social and political reforms. He stated that there are numerous other accounts of God and there are non-cognitive forms of Liberal Christianity which are more helpful to the humanistic aims he shares.

Cooke also stated his distaste for a debate format where there were rebuttals. He alluded briefly to the problem of evil; however, he did not offer or defend any of the rigorous probabilistic arguments from evil proposed in the literature by people such as Tooley, Draper and Rowe. A crucial premise of many probabilistic arguments from evil is that God has no adequate reasons for allowing the evils which exist in the world. Craig (along with many Philosophers of Religion such as Wykstra, Plantinga, Van Inwagen, Tooley, Alston) has argued this premise is unwarranted as no reasons have been given for thinking the premise is true. The arguments on this topic are fairly detailed but not complex. Cooke did not offer a rebuttal but simply declared Craig’s position as distasteful.

In rebuttal, Craig noted that Cooke’s definition of atheism was incorrect. He quoted from a standard philosophical encyclopedia a definition of atheism as the belief that God does not exist which is quite different to Cooke’s definition which is actually something more like verificationism. Craig also offered a definition of what he means by God so Cooke could be clear on the meaning of God for the purpose of the debate. Craig then pointed out that Cooke had not offered any arguments for atheism in his speech. He had dismissed a response to the problem of evil but had not argued for it.

Much of the rest of Cooke’s speech was irrelevant as the question was not whether God had good political consequences but whether theism was true. Even if a belief is the result of social evolution over time, it does not entail that it is false (people’s understanding of democracy has evolved over time, it does not follow that democracy is mistaken because it has evolved and developed over time). Craig also noted that the truth or falsity of a belief is a separate issue from the conduct of those who hold to the belief. Similarly, the fact that a belief distracts some people from certain causes does not necessitate that it is false.

Craig also pointed out contradictions in Cooke’s speech. Cooke had stated that he did not contend that theism is false but later on he had stated that God was a human invention. Craig also noted that merely pointing out that other theologians disagree with Craig’s cognitive theism and offer alternative accounts of God does not show Craig’s position is false. The existence of differing opinion on a matter does not render the matter false, the reasons offered are what must come under scrutiny.

Cooke’s rebuttal of Craig was weak. Cooke responded briefly to the meta-ethical moral argument noting that theists and atheists are both aware of certain moral truths and should work together on certain worthy projects. This response, as Craig pointed out, confuses the question of whether an atheist can know moral truths with the question of whether atheism can provide an adequate meta-physical foundation for these truths. Cooke’s position that human beings have no real significance, that morality was simply an evolved convention of some sort, was, in essence, a concession of the meta-ethical argument.

Cooke addressed the Kalam Cosmological argument and New Teleological argument by stating that he was not a cosmologist and neither was Craig. He also suggested Craig’s knowledge of the historical facts surrounding Christ were mistaken, that scholars disputed the alleged facts Craig appealed to. He suggested that Craig was not familiar enough with Gerd Ludemann whose later works Cooke himself had read.

Unfortunately for Cooke, Craig was able to counter these claims. First, as noted Craig has studied contemporary cosmology; he did his doctoral work on the theological implications of big bang cosmology and has authored a book on it as well as several published articles. In addition, he has debated Gerd Ludemann and co-written a book with him and so could point out that Ludemann in fact did accept the facts he appealed to. Moreover, Craig could produce published review articles that surveyed the voluminous literature on the subject and the results showed that the consensus was as Craig had suggested. Craig also produced a fairly amusing illustration from Kai Neilson (perhaps more ironic given that Cooke frequently cites Kai Neilson in his debates) which illustrated the counter-intuitive nature of asserting that something could come out of nothing by nothing.

Cooke did make another claim that Craig did not counter, which was that scientific discoveries are subject to change and so it is questionable to base theological claims on such an unstable foundation. This may be a valid point, the problem is it would appear to uncut a key motif of Cooke’s rationalism. After all, don’t rationalists promote science as a source of knowledge and often attack Christian belief because it allegedly conflicts with science?

So in my opinion Craig was the clear winner. He offered five arguments, Cooke offered weak responses to which Craig adequately responded. Cooke at times refused to argue at all and kept trying to address side issues and did not really offer a case for atheism.

Of course it needs to be noted in fairness, that in many respects this was a mismatch. Craig is one of the best Philosophers of Religion in the world. He has published hundreds of articles defending arguments for God’s existence in the philosophical literature and is an extremely experienced debater. Cooke is a historian of the history of free thought with little or no publications in this area. Some of Craig’s previous debate with philosophical heavyweights like Michael Tooley and Quentin Smith were less one-sided.

I thought some of the real interesting issues and arguments came out in the Q&A. Robert Nola from the Philosophy department made an important point about the New Teleological argument noting that the fact that something is highly improbable does not mean it is irrational to hold to. Craig’s response was probably not as clear as it could be, he noted that the fine-tuning argument is not based merely on the claim that fine-tuning is improbable but rather that fine-tuning constitutes an improbable sequence of patterns. (Craig has made this point more thoroughly in the literature.)

Ray Bradley, a retired Philosophy Professor, raised a version of the deontological problem of evil noting that God seems to violate certain moral duties such as do not kill. Craig’s response was that if one holds to a divine command (DCT) theory of ethics then right and wrong are constituted by God’s commands. From this, it follows that because God does not issue commands to himself, he does not have duties. If God has no duties then God cannot violate any.

However, this is not the full story; one powerful objection to a DCT is to note that God could command abhorrent things like torture and hence a DCT would entail the counter-intuitive conclusion that torture is morally required. Divine Command theorists (like Craig and myself) typically avoid this objection by noting that God is perfectly virtuous and hence there are certain things he would not command. Bradley’s question could be rephrased in terms of whether a virtuous person would command or do these things and Craig’s initial response would not settle this but there are plenty of lines of thought in the literature which could.

In another exchange Bradley raised the issue of Hell noting that the book of revelation portrays this as a place of eternal torment in fire. Craig pointed out that such passages are in fact highly metaphorical and do not in fact say what Bradley thinks they do. Cooke responded by stating that Craig was being inconsistent he sometimes takes the bible literally and sometimes figuratively and Craig (who has a DTheol in New Testament studies) does not understand that the genre of the new testament is myth.

In fact Cooke is wrong and Craig is right. Revelation has a particular genre, it is Jewish Apocalyptic and this genre is known to use special types of recognisable symbolism. Burridge has shown the gospels are written in the genre of greek biography and not myth. Moreover, the implicit assumption on Cooke’s part that when reading a piece of writing with multiple genres (such as the bible) one should either reads everything literally or everything figuratively is absurd. Even in every-day conversation one uses a mixture of both literal and metaphorical phrases and things like context and genre determine which reading one engages in. As Madeleine pointed out to me, one of her favourite books is a sci-fi fantasy novel that contains an index of characters and terms at the back. Despite the fact the index and the story are contained in one book, she would be in error to read the index figuratively or the story literally; it is not uncommon for one book to have more than one genre. Unfortunately in the short exchange, before an audience untrained in biblical hermeneutics, these points may not have been grasped. As a result I think Cooke came across the better in this exchange despite the fact he was wrong.

Critical questions were raised about Craig’s theodicy as well. Craig’s position is that God allows certain evils because they are the best way to bring about greater good that otherwise would not be achieved. Some members of the audience found this counter-intuitive. Craig responded that the goods he envisaged infinitesimally outweigh the evil permitted. Craig’s position is utilitarian; one can allow (or cause) evil in order to bring about greater good. Of course utilitarianism is a sophisticated ethical theory and there have been numerous sophisticated defenses of a utilitarian framework in the literature but of course Craig was not able to go into it in sufficient depth last night.

Overall the night was excellent, a huge turnout and a stimulating discussion of some really deep and important issues. As we left we heard people all around us discussing the ideas offered by both sides and lots of positive feedback about how much they had enjoyed the evening. NZARH arranged to have the event filmed and a copy should be online over the weekend.

Matt

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