A question for William Lane Craig
Every once in a while, I drop a question into the Q&A form over at Reasonablefaith.org. This is one I dropped today:
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My question pertains to the objective morality argument as you lay it out:
1. If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.
2. Objective moral values and duties do exist.
3. Therefore, God exists.
For the sake of discussion, I'll grant you this argument. There is a Moral Law, so there must be a Moral-Law-Giver.
But it seems to me that this argument, even it is true, runs into an inescapable problem: namely, how we can *objectively know* what the Moral Law actually is.
If objective morality indeed comes from God, that should raise an obvious dilemma – nobody has direct, objective access to the mind of God. It might be tempting to suggest the Bible is just that, but the Bible is subject to an endless litany of interpretations. Ask any ten Christians what God thinks about abortion (for example), and you'll likely hear ten different answers all asserted with the same confidence: "My interpretation of the Bible is the correct one!"
Claims of revealed knowledge are similarly problematic; people claim God has spoken to them or worked through them, but different Christians will claim contradictory things and attribute them to God.
Even worse for the Objective Morality argument is a study published in 2009 which indicated that believers ascribe, rather than derive, their moral values from God.
http://www.pnas.org/content/106/51/21533.abstract
Said the authors,
"People may use religious agents as a moral compass, forming impressions and making decisions based on what they presume God as the ultimate moral authority would believe or want. The central feature of a compass, however, is that it points north no matter what direction a person is facing. This research suggests that, unlike an actual compass, inferences about God's beliefs may instead point people further in whatever direction they are already facing."
This to me seems like an insurmountable dilemma. How is the objective moral law objectively known? Who decides how to properly interpret the Bible or the witness of the Holy Spirit? It seems to me that having an Objective Moral Law is pragmatically useless unless we can objectively know what it is.
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My question pertains to the objective morality argument as you lay it out:
1. If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.
2. Objective moral values and duties do exist.
3. Therefore, God exists.
For the sake of discussion, I'll grant you this argument. There is a Moral Law, so there must be a Moral-Law-Giver.
But it seems to me that this argument, even it is true, runs into an inescapable problem: namely, how we can *objectively know* what the Moral Law actually is.
If objective morality indeed comes from God, that should raise an obvious dilemma – nobody has direct, objective access to the mind of God. It might be tempting to suggest the Bible is just that, but the Bible is subject to an endless litany of interpretations. Ask any ten Christians what God thinks about abortion (for example), and you'll likely hear ten different answers all asserted with the same confidence: "My interpretation of the Bible is the correct one!"
Claims of revealed knowledge are similarly problematic; people claim God has spoken to them or worked through them, but different Christians will claim contradictory things and attribute them to God.
Even worse for the Objective Morality argument is a study published in 2009 which indicated that believers ascribe, rather than derive, their moral values from God.
http://www.pnas.org/content/106/51/21533.abstract
Said the authors,
"People may use religious agents as a moral compass, forming impressions and making decisions based on what they presume God as the ultimate moral authority would believe or want. The central feature of a compass, however, is that it points north no matter what direction a person is facing. This research suggests that, unlike an actual compass, inferences about God's beliefs may instead point people further in whatever direction they are already facing."
This to me seems like an insurmountable dilemma. How is the objective moral law objectively known? Who decides how to properly interpret the Bible or the witness of the Holy Spirit? It seems to me that having an Objective Moral Law is pragmatically useless unless we can objectively know what it is.
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