Is God Necessary for Morality? | William Lane Craig & Shelly Kagan at Columbia University

Welcome to the Veritas Forum engaging University students and faculty in discussions about life's hardest questions and the relevance of Jesus Christ to all of life thank you very much it's a great pleasure to be here and I want to thank the Veritas forum for inviting me and I want to thank Bill Craig for green to this discussion this debate the topic uh for tonight's debate is whether God is Necessary for Morality is God necessary for Morality I'm going to be arguing that uh a belief in God or the existence of God is not necessary for

Morality I'm a bit of a handicap in doing this uh I spoke to one of my colleagues another moral philosopher gave him the topic is God necessary for Morality and his answer was well of course not now I don't think the issue is quite as open and shut in black and white is that but it it does suggest it Does reveal I suppose a common Outlook among moral philosophers that that I share that people have been doing moral philosophy without appeal to God for thousands of years at the same time that they've also been doing

moral philosophy that does appeal to God it's not at all obvious to those of us who take a secular approach to doing moral philosophy what the problem supposed to be so I'm going to try to anticipate What some of the difficulties that bill Craig will be raising and maybe that's unfair I don't mean to be saddling him with objections that he doesn't raise or of course maybe I will be raising objections that he will go on to raise and he'll do a better job of it so I may not get it quite right but what

I'll try to do is sketch a little bit about where I think uh a plausible account of morality might be that doesn't make use of the appeal to God and try to answer Some objections that one might raise against it second preliminary remark uh is I'll no doubt typically talk about slipping into talking about what the atheist might say or the atheist might believe or an atheist approach to moral philosophy and that's a bit of a misnomer because I'm describing a view that's completely available to theists as well and calling it an atheist view I

simply mean it's a view that does not make use of uh the appeal to God it's Not theistic it is atheistic in that in that sense uh and it's not necessarily limited to those who deny the existence of God let me start by uh putting aside a question that may be of interest to some of you uh and if it does come up in the question period happy to address it at greater length but one thing one might worry about in in asking whether or not uh morality requires existence of God is whether people could

act morally if uh There is no God or if they didn't believe in God whether moral motivation or moral Behavior presupposes Uh in some way belief in in a deity um I I certainly hope that it's apparent to every person in this audience that the answer to that question is certainly not that is to say atheists and here I do mean atheists in the more narrow sense people who deny the existence of God are just as capable of acting morally as anybody else they're just as capable of Acting immorally as anybody else theists at any

rate don't have any kind of Monopoly on uh moral behavior and I'm I'm completely confident that uh bill will agree about that it's I think such a non-issue that I have as I say I'm going to say nothing more about it the more interesting question uh there are several questions one my pursue but the one I'll be focusing on uh I take to be perhaps the most interesting question is whether or not we need God for there to Be uh morality for to be a genuine difference between right and wrong here we think of God

not as the the motivator for moral Behavior but rather God is the source or the author or the ground of morality its basis and so the question I'll be focusing on is whether or not there can be a secular non-theistic basis for Morality and I believe the answer to that is yes now I could get off at this point uh except of course again I don't think There's going to be any difference of opinion between uh Bill and me on the question do non-theists believe in Morality of course we all believe inm morality it's whether

or not there could really be something am I as a atheist entitled to uh talk about right and wrong as something that genuinely exists without having God so that's the question I'm going to focus focus on not whether you know people talk this way whether the atheists talk this way but Whether they there's some logical difficulty about their talking that way so what I'm going to do is very quickly sketch a outline of a view about ethics that I find congenial it's not at all original to me I don't in any way mean to suggest

it's the only kind of outline one could accept as an atheist trying to explain what morality is all about but it'll give you an illustration of I think a fairly plausible approach or so it seems to me and then I'll raise some Deeper questions about it so here's the basic idea right and wrong is a matter of whether or not your behavior hurts people or fails to help them so which is wrong action is action that hurts somebody um or fails to help them in the relevant circumstances and right action is basically a matter of

those behaviors that uh refrain from hurting people and do provide help so once we've got this basic idea in place it's pretty Natural to see how the more familiar rules of ordinary Common Sense morality fall out from that we have an explanation as to why it is that you shouldn't lie because lying hurts people why you shouldn't commit murder why you shouldn't rape because rape hurts the victims uh of rape why you have to Aid the needy uh why slavery is wrong uh why you need to clothe the naked and feed the hungry uh in

all these ways these behaviors are morally wrong or right uh Because of their con connection with harm and failure to help now there's a lot of details that would need to get worked out uh I think for tonight's purposes they're not likely to be all that important uh there are let me just mention that of course is it's important to get clear that there's a variety of ways that people can be hurt uh there's not just physical harm but there's emotional harm and there's uh assaults on somebody's autonomy uh and you can Fail to respect

them in a variety of ways uh I don't think I need to pursue that so unless it comes up I won't say more about that and the second point is that of course to say that you can't ever harm is a bit of a simplification there are going to be cases in which one would have an adequate justification for harming somebody else uh for example in cases of self-defense against a deliberate aggressor uh there's a great deal of work in contemporary moral Philosophy about what these exception cases are what are the adequate justifications for harming

or failing to help uh and again although I'm happy to go there I don't think we need to so I won't say more about it unless it comes up now what I that that's the nutshell of of the moral theory that I believe in clearly I didn't say anything about God and so it seems to me I'm entitled to say that uh I believe in Morality I'm entitled to believe in Morality and the Question I only want to ask at this point is why would anybody think otherwise well so here's a worry that one might

have we might ask not do do I believe in this sort of thing but are these things really wrong on the atheist view that I've just sketched or is it just a matter of opinion now that's tricky of course you know we're going to be arguing about whether or not God's necessary for Morality what shape morality has and so forth and so on and All of that in some sense is just a matter of opinion but I take it the the the deeper question is is there a fact of the matter as to who's right

just is there a fact of the matter as to whether or not there is a God and what that God is like I take it there's a fact of the matter uh with regard to whether or not it's wrong to harm people whether it's wrong to to rape for example I think it's wrong to rape I take this to not just be a matter of opinion it's not as Though if I thought otherwise rape would be okay or if everybody thought otherwise rape would be okay rape is wrong full stop so at least if you're

worried about whether there could be genuine morality where there are facts of the matter then on an atheist account I'm inclined to think well of course there can we might wonder what makes it wrong and the answer is well it's wrong because for example rape is wrong Because it harms the victim might ask instead what do we mean in saying that it's wrong to rape now this is a controversial matter and not all moral philosophers agree about the ingredients that we need to build into the basic definition of right and wrong but roughly I take

it that as a as at least a first past the thought is something like to believe immorality is a genuine objective uh uh state of Affairs is to believe that there are reasons to act Morally to help others and to avoid harming them uh and that these reasons don't depend on the particular desires or goals you happen to have it's not as though if you happen to care about truth justice in the American way then then you've got a reason to act morally no everybody has these reasons these reasons are overriding to use philosophers as

jargon they're categorical reasons so when I say that it's an objective fact that rape is Wrong what I'm saying is there's this kind of overriding strong categorical reason not to harm people in this way and that's not up to me to make it so it's just so now we might ask is there a deeper account that can be offered about where where these reasons come from or or what makes them so or what or the or the basic rules of morality what their ultimate Foundation or basis is and I want to say that secular atheist

philosop opers disagree about that point Some are as we might call them nonf foundationalists they say well we can State the various moral rules keep your promises tell the truth uh don't tell lies uh uh don't hurt People Help the needy and if we want we can boil these rules down into a simpler set of rules I've suggested don't harm do help but there may be nothing at all deeper to be said about what makes those rules the rule what makes makes those rules the valid rules it's just an Objective fact about reality that there

are these categorical reasons there are reasons to behave in certain ways versus other so that's not just a matter of opinion there are facts about what there are reasons to do and these may be among the reasons that are there's nothing deeper to say but there are also philosophers who believe there is something more to say and again unsurprisingly different philosophers will disagree about what that deeper Story looks like let me give a very quick sketch of one such story I think it's not bad as far as it goes ultimately I think there's even more

to say but that would take us a rather long time to say that more so let me just give you the quick sketch it's a view that it's a version of The View that's uh known as contractarianism the thought is that the moral rules are the rules that we would give to one another to govern our Interactions with one another the rules that we would agree to if we were to set about trying to settle on a bunch of rules rules to govern our interactions under the assumption that we were perfectly rational nobody wants to

follow rules that people accept because of mistakes in their reasoning so imagine us but soup ourselves up to be reasoning perfectly perfectly rational beings would agree to various rules to govern their interactions and the the Rules that they agree to are the terms of morality now there's different ways of running this contractarian thought uh one version of it which I have some sympathies to adds an extra twist the reasoning needs to take place behind a so-called veil of ignorance the thought is I'm not going to know while I'm engaged in this hypothetical bargaining session what

my actual position in society is I won't be able to try to rig things in favor of white males because I Won't know that I'm a white male so I argue from behind this veil of ignorance about my actual identity so that's the that's the basic thought so here we have a kind of deeper story where do the moral rules Come From they are the rules we would give to ourselves to govern our Behavior with one another in so far as we were perfectly rational is this does this capture a notion of objectivity for ethics

seems to be the answer is yes there's a fact of the matter about what It would be rational for us to agree to in terms of these rules one might wonder are is is the output of this uh hypothetical imaginary bargaining session are the moral rules necessary maybe that's another feature we're looking for in trying to genuinely get morality as opposed to mirely the illusion or appearance of morality and the answer to that is yes I I I believe they they are necessary now if you're a Non-foundationalist if you don't think there is a deeper

story of the contractarian sort that I sketched or some other deeper story that other moral philosophers have sketched if you're a non-foundationalist you might just stop it right here you might say to say that murder is wrong wrong is to say that there's a categorical reason not to murder and this isn't a contingent truth it's a necessary truth it's a truth that obtains as philosophers like to put it In all possible worlds that murder would be wrong if we do go the contractarian route then we instead might put our necessity a little bit deeper we

might say something like the moral truths are necessary but their truth is itself explained in terms of the social contract and that in turn is explained in terms of the fact that there are certain truths about reasoning and these are necessary truths it's a necessary Fact that perfectly rational beings would reason about what kinds of rules they wanted to give to one another in such and such a way so I think we can get the necessity of morality as well here's a rather different objection that might get raised we have the thought that morality involves

Commandments we have the thought that morality involves requirements we talk about moral laws so sometimes it's Suggested that where there's a commandment there's got to be a commander where there's a law there's got to be a lawgiver where there's a requirement there's got to be a requir who plays the role of Commander lawgiver requir well it's got to be God and so turns out if we're really going to have the notion not just of moral reason to behave in this way or that way but rather moral requirements to behave in one way rather than another

Way then we need uh to appeal to God after all to be the lawgiver this is an argument that's been proposed by various theistic philosophers indeed this this very argument's been embraced by some atheistic philosophers who said yeah you know uh talk of moral requirements does presuppose a lawgiver now that I no longer believe in God uh I believe there are no moral requirements now I'm not myself inclined to go that way I'm Perfectly prepared to talk about moral requirements I think it's a completely appropriate thing to do in fact it would be inappropriate it'

be just simply mistaken full stop to give up talk about moral requirements so the question I want to push a little bit is is it really true that requirements require a requir as a and I'm inclined to believe the answer to that is actually no let's take an example of a requirement outside the Moral domain I suppose that when we are engaged in reasoning on about belief matters theoretical reasoning uh it's a requirement of appropriate reasoning uh that you not contradict yourself people sometimes talk about the law of non-contradiction I take this to be a

requirement of rationality that you not contradict yourself now should we similarly conclude that since there's a requirement there's a law of non-contradiction there must be a Lawgiver there must be some Cosmic logician uh who commands us not to contradict ourselves doesn't seem to me to be so I mean I can imagine that somebody does say that but I don't myself feel the force of thinking if there's a law of non-contradiction that is just to say this a claim that it's just fundamentally irrational to contradict yourself I don't see any reason to conclude from that that

there must be some Cosmic logician laying down That law as we might put it the logic of the word requirement does not actually entail the existence of a requir that's at least seems to me the most natural thing to say about the law of non-contradiction if we want we can say I don't think any harm in saying that reason itself requires that you not contradict yourself and that's fine I don't have any problem talking that way that just of course doesn't I mean it's it's talking about reason in a somewhat Personified fashion but no harm

done as long as we understand there doesn't actually have to be a person who laid down the law of non-contradiction well similarly then I want to say that with regard to the various moral requirements uh we don't need a lawgiver for them to be genuine requirements if we want we can can say in fact it seems to be a perfectly legitimate thing to say that reason requires that we act in accordance with Reasons there it lays down these various categorical reasons not to harm people to Aid them uh and so uh we can personify reason

in that way but all we just mean I think is that there are these compelling decisive objective categorical reasons to behave in certain ways and not behave uh in other ways or to reason in various ways so I myself am skeptical of the claim that Commandments require a commander or requirements require a requir or that Law requires a lawgiver still some of you may be more sympathetic to that suggestion than I am indeed some of my colleagues are more sympathetic to that suggestion uh than I am it's important to bear in mind that although I

have the particular views I'm laying uh down here it's not as though all non-theistic philosophers think about these issues in exactly the same way if you brought up four of us you'd probably get four different stories About how to ground Morality In A secular fashion some of my colleagues are more sympathetic to the thought that moral talk of moral requirement really does entail that there be somebody who's commanding us to behave accordingly and then we might ask well if that's so who could could it be besides God and the answer I want to give on

behalf of those of you and my colleagues who are sympathetic to the suggestion the answer should be all of us we the members of The moral Community are the ones who are laying down these requirements that that ideas especially I think a natural fit if we accept the contractarian theory that I was sketching I'll be it too quickly sketching in my earlier remarks if we think of the rules of morality as emerging from this hypothetical session in which we ask ourselves how shall we behave towards one another except we face this question hypothetically in in

the mode of perfect rationality what Would perfectly rational beings uh uh lay down as these rules but these are rules that nonetheless we are giving to one another then when somebody and and we enter into these rules freely because we see that it makes sense for us to reach these agreements you can see why would be rational for us to agree to rules requiring telling the truth laying out uh you forbidding lying forbidding murder and so forth then these are rules that we give to one another and Consequently if somebody breaks those rules they're not

upholding their part of the social contract and as such the rest of us who are indeed limiting our behavior in keeping with this agreement we can appropriately and with due Authority turn to the person who's acting immorally and saying you shouldn't behave that way you're not keeping up your end of the bargain so if you think there needs to be somebody who demanding of us that we act morally the Answer could be well there is each one of us is demanding of everybody else and indeed demanding of ourselves as well that we act morally so

if you think requirements need a requirereset about all these subjects but I've used up my a lotted 20 minutes but but I hope you can at least see the the outlines of an approach there are alternatives an approach which offers us a a fairly plausible I think account of what Morality is all about under which the rules of morality are not an illusion they're not a mere matter of opinion they are indeed a matter of objective fact uh and consequently I'm inclined to think that moral philosophers are of an atheistic inclination are completely entitled to

believe that we can have morality without God thank you thank you very much I didn't realize it had been that many Veritas Forum events over these Years uh good evening and thank you very much I am delighted to have the invitation from the Veritas Forum to participate in the dialogue tonight and I want to say it's a tremendous privilege to be sharing the podium with so eminent uh an ethicist as Shelley Kagan the question before us this evening is is God necessary for Morality notice what the question is not asking we are not asking whether

belief in God is necessary for morality no one In tonight's discussion is arguing that in order to live a moral life you need to believe in God rather the question as Shelley emphasized is whether God is necessary for Morality and the answer to that question I think obviously depends on what you mean by morality if by morality you mean simply a certain pattern of social behavior prevalent among human beings then obviously this sort of behavior could Still go on even if it turned out that God does not exist God isn't necessary in order for human

beings to exhibit certain patterns of social behavior which they call acting morally but if by morality you mean that certain things are really good or evil that certain actions are unconditional obligatory or impermissible then many atheists and theists alike agree that God is indeed necessary for Morality In the absence of God morality turns out to be just a human convention or Illusion the same patterns of social behavior might go on without God but it would be a delusion to think that such Behavior has any objective moral significance accordingly I'm going to argue that God is

necessary for Morality In at least three distinct ways without God objective moral values moral duties and moral accountability would not Exist let's look at the first point if God does not exist objective moral values do not exist now when we talk about moral values we're talking about whether something is good or evil to say that there are objective moral values is to say that something is good or evil independently of whether anybody believes it to be so to say for example that the Holocaust was objectively evil is to say that it was evil even though

The Nazis who carried it out thought that it was good and it would still have been evil even if the Nazis had won World War II and succeeded in brainwashing or Exterminating everybody who disagreed with them so that everyone believed the Holocaust was good my first claim is that if there is no God then moral values are not objective in that sense traditionally objective moral values have been based in God who is the Highest good he is the Locust and Paradigm of moral value God's Own holy and loving nature supplies the absolute standard against which

all actions are measured he is by nature loving generous just faithful kind and so forth and thus if God exists objective moral values exist but if God does not exist what basis remains for objective moral values in particular why think that human beings would have moral worth on the atheistic view human beings are just Accidental byproducts of nature which have evolved relatively recently on an infinitesimal Speck of dust called the planet Earth lost somewhere in a hosle and Mindless Universe in which are doomed to perish individually and collectively in a relatively short time on atheism

I can't see any reason to think that human well-being is objectively good any more than insect well-being or dog well-being or monkey well-being on a naturalistic view moral Values are just the byproduct of biological evolution and social conditioning just as a troop of baboons exhibit cooperative and even altruistic Behavior because natural selection has determined it to be advantageous in the struggle for survival so their primate cousins Homo sapiens have similarly evolved uh behavior for the same reason as a result of sociobiological pressures there has evolved among Homo sapiens a sort of herd morality which functions

Well in the perpetuation of our species but on an atheistic view there doesn't seem to be anything that makes this morality objectively true the philosopher of science Michael Roose reports the position of the modern evolutionist is that humans have an awareness of morality because such an awareness is of biological worth morality is a biological adaptation no less than our hands and feet and teeth considered as a rationally justifiable Set of claims about an objective something ethics is illusory I appreciate that when somebody says love thy neighbor as thyself they think they are referring above and

beyond themselves nevertheless such reference is truly without Foundation morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction and any deeper meaning is illusory end quote if we were to rewind the film of human evolution back to the beginning and start a new people with a very Different set of moral values might well have evolved as Darwin himself wrote In The Descent of Man if men were raised under precisely the same conditions as Hive bees there can hardly be a doubt that our unmarried females would like the worker be think it a sacred duty to kill

their brothers uh and mothers would strive to kill their fertile daughters and no one would think of interfering for us to think that human Beings are special and our morality objectively true is to succumb to the temptation of speciesism that is to say an unjustified bias toward one's own species the objective worthlessness of human beings on a naturalistic worldview is underscored by two implications of that worldview materialism and determinism naturalists are typically materialists or physicalists who regard man as a purely animal organism but if there is no mind Distinct from the brain then everything we

think and do is determined by the input of our five senses and our genetic makeup there is no personal agent who freely decides to do something but without Freedom none of our choices is morally significant they're like the jerks of a puppet's limbs controlled by the strings of sensory input and physical Constitution and what moral value does a puppet or Its movements have Richard Dawkins assessment of human worth may be depressing but but why on atheism is he mistaken when he says there is at bottom no design no purpose no evil no good nothing but

pointless indifference we are machines for propagating DNA it is every living object's sole reason for being if there is no God then any basis for regarding the herd morality evolved by Homo sapiens as OB objectively true seems to have been removed take God out Of the picture and all you seem to be left with is an aplike creature on a tiny Speck of dust beset with delusions of moral Grandeur secondly if God does not exist objective moral duties do not exist duties have to do with whether something is right or wrong now you might think

first that the distinction between right and wrong is the same as the distinction between good and evil but if you think about it you can see That this is not the case Duty has to do with moral obligation with what I ought or ought not to do but obviously you're not morally obligated to do something just because it would be good for you to do it for example it would be good for you to become a doctor but you're not morally obligated to become a doctor after all it would also be good for you to

become a firefighter or a homemaker or a diplomat but you can't do them all so there's a difference between moral Values and moral duties now my claim is that if God does not exist then it seems we have no objective moral duties to say that we have objective moral duties is again to say that we have certain moral obligations regardless of whether we think that we do traditionally our moral duties were thought to Spring from God's Commandments such as the Ten Commandments far from being arbitrary these commands flow necessarily from his Moral nature on this

Foundation we can affirm the objective rightness of Love generosity self-sacrifice and equality and condemn as objectively wrong selfishness hatred abuse discrimination and oppression but if there is no God what basis remains for objective moral duties on the atheistic view human beings are just animals and animals have no moral obligations to one another when a lion kills a zebra it kills the zebra but it Doesn't murder the zebra when a great white shark forcibly copulates with a female it forcibly copulates with her but it does not rape her for there is no moral Dimension to these

actions they are neither prohibited nor obligatory so if God does not exist why think that we have any moral obligations to do anything who or what imposes the these moral duties upon us where did they come from it's very hard to see why they would be anything more than a Subjective impression ingrained into us by societal and parental conditioning on the atheistic view certain actions such as incest or rape may not be biologically and socially advantageous and so in the course of human development have become taboo they they go against the social contract that uh

Shelly has imagined but that does absolutely nothing to show that rape and incest is really wrong such Behavior goes on all the time in the Animal kingdom on the atheistic view the rapist who flouts the herd morality or the social contract is doing nothing more serious than acting unfashionably like the man who flouts etiquette uh by belching loudly at the dinner table if there is no moral lawgiver then there is no objective moral law which we must obey it's all a matter of social convention On a par with rules of etiquette thirdly if God does

not exist then there is no basis for moral Accountability traditionally it's been held that god holds all persons morally accountable for their actions despite the inequities of this life in the end the scales of God's justice will be balanced and thus the moral choices that we make in this life uh have an eternal significance but if God does not exist what basis remains for moral accountability even if there were objective duties and values under atheism they seem to be irrelevant Because there's no moral accountability if life ends at the grave then ultimately it makes no

difference whether you live as a Stalin or as a Mother Teresa as the Russian writer fota dooi rightly said if there is no immortality then all things are permitted given the finality of death it really does not matter how you live the state torturers in Soviet prisons this all too well rishard vbr reports the cruelty of atheism is hard To believe when man has no faith in the reward of good or the punishment of evil there is no reason to be human there is no restraint from the depths of evil which is in man the

Communist torturers often said there is no God no Hereafter no punishment for evil we can do what we wish I have heard one torturer or even say I thank God in whom I don't believe that I have lived to this hour when I can express all the evil in my heart he expressed it in unbelievable brutality And torture inflicted on prisoners given the finality of death it really doesn't matter how you live so what do you say to someone who concludes that we may as well just live as we please out of pure your self-interest

you might say it's in your best self-interest to adopt a moral lifestyle but clearly that's not always true we all know situations where self-interest runs smack dab in the face of morality moreover if you're Sufficiently powerful like a Ferdinand Marcos or a papa do duvalier or even a Donald Trump then one can pretty much ignore the dictates of conscience and safely live in self-indulgence historian Stuart C Easton sums it up well when he writes there is no objective reason why man should be moral unless morality pays off in his social life or makes him feel

good there is no objective reason why man should do anything save for the Pleasure it affords him to believe then that God does not exist and that there is thus no moral accountability would be quite literally demoralizing for then we'd have to accept that our moral choices are ultimately insignificant since both our fate and that of the universe will be the same regardless of what we do by demoralization I mean a deterioration of moral motivation it's hard to do the right thing when that Means sacrificing your self-interest or to resist temptation when desire is strong

and the belief that ultimately it doesn't matter what you choose or what you do is apt to sap one's moral strength and so undermine one's moral life as Robert Adams observes having to regard it as very likely that the history of the universe will not be good on the whole no matter what one does seems apt to induce a cynical sense of futility about the moral life Undermining one's moral resolve and one's interest in moral considerations the absence of moral accountability from the philosophy of atheism thus makes an ethic of compassion and self- sacrifice a

hollow abstraction in some I think it's plausible that without God there are no objective moral values moral duties or moral accountability God is is therefore vitally necessary to morality now as I said this is a Conclusion which is accepted by a great many atheist philosophers such as nche Russell and sart though the conclusion is a painful one these thinkers believe that Honesty compels them to face it squarely the challenge confronting the atheist philosopher who continues to cling to objective moral values and duties after after letting go of God is I think threefold first to explain

what is the basis for objective moral values on Atheism in particular what is the basis for the intrinsic value of human beings second to explain what is the source of objective moral duties on atheism what makes certain acts obligatory or or forbidden if there is no moral lawgiver to command or prohibit them why is it wrong to harm other members of our species to inflict harm upon others thirdly to explain how on atheism ultimate moral accountability exists or alternatively to explain why It is not necessary to morality these questions must I think be addressed if

one is to maintain that God is not necessary to [Applause] morality we'll now have 10 minutes of questioning uh between Dr Craig asking Dr uh Kagan about his thoughts well obviously a number of questions came up in my talk that would be pertinent to what you shared Shelly in your opening uh address you Said right or wrong depends upon the uh whether you hurt other people without justification um and when asked uh are these really wrong you answered yes why because it harms the victim now I guess my difficulty is that on a I certainly

agree that it's wrong to harm people obviously but it's hard for me to understand on a naturalistic worldview such as I described why on the worldview of naturalism inflicting harm Upon other members of our species is really wrong it seems to me that this happens all the time among other animals and so why is it wrong peculiarly for human beings to inflict harm on each other all right so let's start with that suppose that uh my three-year-old nephew walks into your house takes some book off your shelf and tears the pages out he hasn't done

anything wrong or three-year-old probably old enough he has done something wrong make a year and A half he hasn't done anything wrong if I go into your house tear some pages out of your book I've done something wrong what's the difference well I'm capable of appreciating reasons for respecting your property that my one and 1/2-year-old this is hypothetical one and a halfy old nephew doesn't doesn't have the capacity right there are differences between people that allow me and you to think about our behaviors to evaluate our behaviors to see whether or Not there are legitimate

reasons for behaving as we do creatures that don't have that capacity don't have that capacity it's precisely because they lack that capacity that makes no sense that the notion of right and wrong Behavior gets no purchase Lions can't reflect upon their behavior so when they do it it's not wrong if you or I were engage in that behavior we can reflect upon that we can recognize the reasons for not behaving that way so I think the Distinction is a fairly straightforward one not not a deep mystery or a hard challenge for the naturalist to to

respond to okay I think that's a good answer for why we wouldn't regard animals as moral agents who would be culpable for their acts um but it seems to me that at best that answer would go to show that rationality or the ability to reflect rationally on things is a necessary condition for moral Behavior but I don't see that that's a sufficient Condition for moral Behavior it's still not clear to me why uh it would be wrong for creatures who have considerably complex neurological systems uh to inflict harm on each other on a naturalistic worldview

and the struggle for survival Okay so the question you asked initially was how can I explain why it's wrong for me to murder when it's not wrong for Lions to murder and to answer that question all it takes is for me to point out a relevant Difference between us and you've just I think said yeah all right so I managed to do that if we now shift to the question so what does it take for wrongness to enter the world above and beyond rationality I think the answer might well be actually once we achieve a

certain level of rationality nothing more is taken nothing more is needed what the reason it's objectively wrong for me to engage in Murder is precisely because there is a reason for me not to Do it a reason that I'm capable of recognizing and if you ask what more does it take the answer is well that those are the basic ingredients right there we can we can refine it I mean we can we can put a little icing on it if we'd like to make it but in terms of the Essentials that's it what there's reason

for me to do depends on what kind of creature I am once I become the kind of creature in the evolutionary you know process on once Creatures evolve that are capable of stepping back from their actions capable of reflecting about whether or not their behavior makes sense whether it conforms to standards that they are themselves prepared to endorse at that point the Machinery is in place and at that point there are reasons for me to behave in certain ways and to avoid other kinds of behavior and if you ask but what makes that wrong you

know I'm still not clear as to why these Beings suddenly achieve moral intrinsic moral worth in virtue of having these complex nervous systems that enables them to have self-reflection and so forth if you put it as complex nervous systems that sounds pretty deflationary what's so special about having a complex nervous system but of course that complex nervous system allows you to do calculus it allows you to do astrophysics it allows you to write poetry it allows you to fall in love put Under that description you ask what's so special about humans from a naturalis perspective

I'm at a loss to know how to answer that question if you don't see why we'd be special and different from everything else uh in creation that because we can do poetry we can write a novel we can think philosophical thought we can do calculus and we can think about the morality of our Behavior I don't know what kind of answer could possibly satisfy you at that point well Obviously the kind of answer that I offered but uh um but can can can I ask just to follow up on that because I mean I could

I don't want I'm tempted to say I could play this game and that's unfair because of course it's not a game but I I could pose the same kinds of questions to you perhaps I will you know in 10 I could say look all right so God says you know you guys are really really special right what did That how how does his saying it make us really special but you see he gave us a soul how does our having a soul make us special whatever answer you give you could always say with regard to

that what's so special about that at a certain point you're just going to have to say you know what these features really do seem to me to be special in so far as it seems to me that our ability to communicate to reflect to love to be creative and consequently to shape our Behavior with an eye towards how we're interacting with one another these things strike me as remarkable ways in which we're special I I think that they strike all of us that way and that's the difficulty perhaps I think in um in uh showing

what I'm attempting to show is that we all do I think intuitively value one another we value persons we value poetry creativity and all of these things I think we all agree that these are Goods I the question is though on a naturalistic view uh why uh think that these things are Goods it seems to me that there you you you emphasize in your own book on the limits of morality the importance of having explanations and not cutting off the search for explanations too soon and I wonder if you're not cutting off the search for

explanations Too Soon by simply saying well I'm just going to regard uh persons as intrinsically Valuable but without any kind of further grounding for that well of course I haven't claimed there is no further grounding for that I I gave you a sketch of the contractarian thought your attitude was I don't find that a very compelling story it doesn't seem to me to be the kind of thing that constitutes an adequate grounding I suppose these things are in the eyes of the beholder and everybody here has got is entitled to decide for themselves what kind

of Answers uh will will be satisfactory or not let me let me ask a different question one more oh okay are are you a determinist yes and yet you still think that love is significant and human choices are morally significant even though they're determined so so to so to give a piece of jargon to the philosop to the audience uh that that that bill will be familiar with I'm a compatibilist that is to say I believe that one can combine determinism and Free will uh so absent free will humans would lack the significance that we

clearly have but I believe that's compatible with determinism actually am I a determinist who knows what quantum mechanics teaches us about whether or not determinism is true but at least I believe that determinism could be true without in any way threatening my conviction that humans are special okay did you have a followup on that one well I think you did only to say that it it It just seems to me to Rob moral choices of any sort of significance if we if we're determined to do it by the antecedent physical causes that lead up to

the point of choosing and then then cause our brains to react One Way rather than another it I can't see how that could have any more moral significance than a tree growing a branch at a certain point in its development because you're a non incompatibilist you don't believe determinism and Free Will so This is a debate for another night I mean it's not that I think the truth of compatibilism is at all self-evident can you just explain what that term means compatibilism is the view that there's no logical inconsistency between belief in determinism on the

one hand and the existence of free will on the other they're compatible well so that's a little bit misleading though I mean you need to explain what you mean by Free Will in that case if everything's determined it well what I was trying to do is simply give a quick definition what I remember I said that this is a very very as you know it's a very very complicated question we would basically hijack the entire rest of the evening to start trying unclear on the terms myself so so my thought was just that the plausibility

of the compatibl view that I hold I don't take to be self-evident I believe it takes philosophical Argumentation for it I I I completely agree that those drawn to incompatibilism those drawn to the view that you can't have both deterministic physical laws and robust free will we'll think if naturalism is true and the best science teaches us that determinism is true itself you know a controversial question whether that's the best interpretation of our best science then we'll lack Free Will and then if Free Will is is necessary for Having special value then we'll lack Special

Value but there's a there's a lot of premises before we get to the conclusion that naturalism doesn't uh have space for this special value and I reject several of those premises which is I'm not feeling uncomfortable uh by The Challenge uh that Bill's raising well let's turn the table and now you'll ask Bill some questions all Right so so one of the things that you said in in your opening remarks well you quoted uh several people I think there was a long quote from Michael Roose saying something like um if naturalism is true if theism

is false then ethics is a luery uh deeper meaning is a lucer that's not an exact quote but but but I think those phrases were there and I found that an interesting slide or so it seemed to me um the move from ethics is a luery to deeper meaning is a lucer I I Think I want to concede that in the way you mean deeper meaning I don't believe in deeper meaning because I think when you talk that way you think for there to not that I have any trouble talking about meaning or even deep

meaning but when you talk that way I think you're ask you're thinking it's got to be meaning on a cosmic scale that's where some of the points about accountability come in as well yes so I fine I believe that uh humans are just creatures that Evolved on this tiny little speck of dust but I don't see how the denial of deeper meaning should give me any reason to think therefore I'm committed to ethics as elcer so perhaps you could explain that um where that came in I think was with respect to moral accountability um and

the yes and also with regard to the significance of human beings it it seemed to me that on a naturalistic Worldview everything is ultimately destined to destruction and the heat death of the universe as the universe expands it grows colder and colder as its energy is used up sorry and eventually all the stars will burn out all matter will collapse into dead stars and black holes there will be no life no heat no light only the corpses of dead stars and galaxies expanding into endless Darkness uh and in light of that end it's it's hard

for me to understand how our moral choices have any sort of significance there's no moral accountability the universe is neither better nor worse for what we do um that ultimately there isn't our moral lives become vacuous there because they don't have that kind of cosmic significance I I I I still need to have you explain that for me better because again it seems to me it's One thing to say it lacks Eternal Cosmic Everlasting significance it's another thing to say it lacks significance in fact to give one of your examples you you talked about U

again I remember the source of this quote but the the torturers was it Nazi tortur yeah you say you know if if theism isn't true then it doesn't really matter this strikes me as I'm sorry it's I'm sure it's going to sound rude but strik me it's an outrageous thing to suggest it Doesn't really matter surely it matters to the torture victims whether they're being tortured it it it it doesn't require that this make some Cosmic difference to the Eternal significance of the universe for to matter whether a human being is tortured it matters to

them it matters to their family it matters to us so again how do you move from the lack of Eternal significance to the thought that if it doesn't have eternal significance it can't have any Significance because that the victim it obviously matters to him in the sense that he's in pain and and and Agony But ultimately it doesn't matter that he was ever in pain and an Agony the the whole thing just degenerates into utter meaninglessness and insignificance I don't mean to suggest that the torture didn't do a bad thing to this person but ultimately

it doesn't matter it all ends up the same yes but it all ending up the same isn't the same thing as and so it Doesn't matter what happens until we get there and I when I say and it matters what the path is before we get to the end point I don't merely mean subjectively it matters it appears to matter it matters to them but it doesn't really matter well that's what it seems to be it just matters subjectively but again I just want to say I don't understand how we get from if it doesn't

objectively matter to the universe or doesn't objectively matter on a cosmic Scale how do we get from that too so it doesn't objectively matter at all well remember so so so it's not a point about the nature of objective it's the question is why should we think objective value must be on the cosmic scale or not there at all okay now now let's remember the argument this concern arose in the third point about moral accountability this wasn't in the first two points about objective moral values and duties what I said was with regard To the

third Point even if objective moral values and duties exist they become irrelevant because they're inconsequential so my third point about moral accountability was simply to say on atheism even if there are objective right and wrong and good and evil there's no moral accountability and so one might as well just live as he pleases and uh might might as well if but might as well means there's no Reon to live one way versus the other unless It makes a difference on the cosmic scale it just seems to me that the same questions being to to my

ears begged yet again it matters perfectly there is an objective categorical reason not a matter of opinion there's a a fact of the matter about the compelling overriding reason that you are irrational to disregard even though in terms of the heat death of the universe it won't stop it but for all that there's an objective reason not to Behave this way that would be to say you have an objective moral duty and I for the third point I was willing to grant that but the question here is the deeper question about why adopt the moral

point of view and that can't be a moral answer because you're asking the question why adopt the moral point of view I think the concern that I have in this third point is that on what's the answer that you believe you got let me let me explain I think on the third point that What I'm trying to say there is that on atheism or naturalism that Prudential value and moral value are on a collision course with each other that what it's prudent for me to do is often in contast or in conflict with what's moral

for me to do and Prudence would seem to Trump Morality In terms of one's self-interest in virtue of the fact that it makes no difference how you choose but on theism where there is moral accountability you can consistently make choices that go Against your self-interest and sacrifice self-interest and Prudence in in the for the sake of the moral value and moral duty because precisely you'll get it back in the end and so it's not really in the long term a self-sacrifice at all that that's the thought yes well that that wasn't what I would that

wouldn't be the way i' put it it's not that but but that that is the reason that that you think you can resolve the conflict between prudence and self and morality Because God makes it be the case that unless you act morally you're self interest won't actually be furthered that's how the solution yes that's right it that they'll they'll be in harmony with each other ultimately so so so you're completely right I don't believe they're in harmony yeah but that doesn't mean I believe the only rational thing to do is to act prudently on the

contrary I believe there's greater reason this I'm sorry this should be a Form of like Jeopardy put this in a form of question sh it why why not believe uh that moral reasons outweigh credential reasons the the the the mere fact that there's a conflict doesn't doesn't commit the naturalist to the claim that the credential ones are the weightier ones all right but there is there is that conflict and for many people I I think as I said this can have a demoralizing effect upon a person because um ultimately his moral choices Make no difference

either for himself or for the the good of the universe and I I suspect that this will be demoralizing in the way that Adam suggested it would no doubt for some people it will be but of course for some people there's a different kind of demoralizing that takes place with the belief in theism isn't there I mean if we're just going to talk about what are some possible psychological effects some people will act morally not out of the recognition Of the objective values but merely in hopes of getting into heaven and avoiding hell there's something

morally off about that as well and so so so both sides face certain empirical questions about you know certain people may misread the implications of the view uh that strikes me as a as a as a standoff at best I don't know I I'm not sure that the person who acts in self-interest has misread the implications of the atheistic world view because you've yet Again assumed that if we're naturalists we must assume that Prudence you know either there are no moral reasons at all or if there are they're inferior in strength to credential reasons that

doesn't seem to be the follow from naturalism what at all if we had more time obviously we can only begin to scratch the surface of this of this debate if we had more time I'd lay upon you my elaborate theory of the nature of practical reasoning According to which Credential reasons are less significant than moral reasons this is a view that I think uh is completely compatible with naturalism we can get little imaginary dictator I suppose has acted wrongly and such deserves punishment so how can we justify the punishment in terms of the rules of

the social contract what do we do you know we agree in the contract that if people break the contract they'll be subject to penalty what what if he doesn't want to sign the Contract so look no he's outside the contract so he's not bound by it well the question is not what does what does any given person in fact agree to that's why I Al about what we would agree to in so far as we're imagining ourselves as being perfectly rational as a perfectly rational being that is to say if you imagined a kind of

souped up cleaned up version of the dictator it would be just as reasonable for him to sign the contract as for the rest of us It's it's it's neither here nor there that he doesn't accept morality he still Bound by it we're all bound by it precisely because it would be reasonable for all of us to agree to its terms um Dr Kagan you say that human reason leads toor Dr Craig uh Dr Craig I'm sorry um oh wrong pile uh okay I'm confused okay um Dr Craig do you think that without God there is

no free Will yes I gu I would say that because it would seem to me that if God doesn't exist then human beings are just um material objects um and that what we call free choices are just the results of electrochemical reactions in our nervous system uh and that therefore they're not genuinely free so that was why I said one of the implications of naturalism is physicalism and as a result determinism and this seems to me to be Just a um a clear reason for thinking that our moral choices are ultimately illusory and and insignificant

because they're like having a toothache uh or like um having hair grow uh there there there is no sense in which a personal agent freely chooses between a and not a and making a moral decision so I guess I would say that um Shelly it seems like there are a lot of people are hung up on the Nazis Yeah uh they're bad objectively bad let's be clear about that but it's it's hard for them to it seems like just based on the questions it's hard for people to understand how we can objectively say they're bad

when um if they won would they still be bad if they were the ones kind of running the world and dictating morality could would they still be objectively bad in your view yes the suggestion is not that it's a matter of a popularity poll or who wins The second world war or Which Way history goes it's it's it's a thought experiment the social contract is a thought experiment and you ask yourself what are reasonable terms to govern our behaviors with one another and in trying to set up that thought experiment you want to set certain

background conditions one background condition I mentioned was the veil of ignorance you want to make sure You don't know whether you're one of the people who are in fact the winners in society or the losers in society one of the conditions as you want to imagine the bargainers are rational because you don't want the rules that emerge to be an artifact of some mistake in reasoning it's neither here nor there what the Nazis thought was acceptable the question is just what in fact would be the terms of a contract agreed upon by perfectly rational bargainers

And the terms of those contract I think if we had more time we could proceed to to lay out the argument are such that there'd be a Prohibition against killing innocent people which of course exactly what the Nazis did so what the Nazis did was violate the terms of the contract and so in fact they were immoral whether or not they see it um Dr Craig there seems to be an issue with um this idea of objective good that That uh there have been numerous crimes in the history of humanity uh perpetrated on you know

in the name of religion right right how do you grapple with that I I'd like to use religious examples of atrocities to help communicate to students the difference between objective um good and objective evil um if you say that there is no objective moral value or moral duties then you have to say things like like this that The Spanish Inquisition which sent thousands of Jews to their deaths was really morally indiffer that the Crusades uh which enlisted children to send off to war and then were ultimately sold into slavery was a morally indifferent act that

religious intolerance is morally fine so I think that these examples help to uh underscore the fact that there really are objective moral values and duties that we Recognize when we uh think about uh these kinds of situations so remember the argument isn't that you have to believe in God in order to be moral that's not the argument the argument is that you need to have God as an objective Transcendent standard for moral value that moves Beyond uh simple human conventions or societal mores but why do stray so much what why do these things happen so

often often in the name of God right if you if you Would ask me that as a Christian philosopher I would begin to talk about Christian doctrine of sin uh that were morally Fallen persons that were corrupted uh and therefore in desperate need of God's moral cleansing and forgiveness and Rehabilitation in our lives and that these moral issues bring to the the four our desperate need of God as a moral healer and and forgive her and Dr Kagan why why do we violate the social contract so much whether it's On Wall Street or whether it's

in Nazi Germany I would talk about Sin as well I mean the the vocabulary of sin though it finds its natural home in religion isn't limited I mean we need a vocabulary to talk about we need to face the fact that people are not perfectly moral and it's no doubt some deep truth about our nature that we fail to live up to our moral obligations you you can put this fact in some metaphysical Terms in terms of original sin you can put this fact in in in naturalistic terms in terms of something about our evolutionary

Heritage and how we were evolved to uh favor our kin and our friends uh there's got to be some explanation of it anybody who pretends that everything is well with the world is naive the the claim that there's objective morality is not and that perfectly rational beings would agree to its terms And thereby ground from the basis of objective reality is not any kind of claim that we are perfectly rational that we behave perfectly rationally well in in Trivial terms this is a completely familiar fact you're on a diet and uh uh the the piece

of chocolate cake calls you from the from the refrigerator right so so you know you shouldn't do it you do it anyway that's what people are like interesting question why that's so but I take it There's no disagreement at all that it's so and the naturalist I think is no more at a handicap in terms of offering explanations of that fact what about ways of preventing it do you have any thoughts on that I mean are there ways of controlling it sort of instilling the social contract a little bit better well look there are a

variety of things that uh people need in order to become moral beings one is moral education a topic of tremendous significance though again Other than just gesturing its direction it would take us way too long to say anything helpful about it how children are brought up so as to have a regard for one another and to recognize that it isn't just a matter of whether you get caught it isn't just a matter of whether you're going to get punished but that this is another human being you're dealing with uh and as such you have to

have respect for their interests you know moral education is is Crucially important moral Community is crucially important and not to be naive at all the the state is is crucially important I mean there's certainly one thing that that Craig's theism provides him that I lack he has a cosmic enforcer which provides a kind of motivation that I can't appeal to so I've got a hope I can assemble materials here on Earth although I I can't resist taking one little I'm not sure if it's a pot shot but at least it's a question uh about The

accountability which I take it as the thought that evildoers get punished and good doers get a Heavenly reward and so you don't get the bad guys getting into heaven I'm not quite sure how to reconcile that with the belief that Jesus can provide you know Salvation it seems to me that that is in tension with the notion of accountability you were trying to put forward yeah actually this gets into really important questions of theology because on the Christian view It isn't the bad guys that that go to hell the bad guys get into heaven the

bad guys are the ones who recognize their sin who turn to God in Contrition and repentance and say God be merciful to me a sinner it's the self-righteous phes who wind up in hell because they fancy they're so good they don't need God's forgiveness and and cleansing so uh on the Christian view Christ actually is the one who Bears the penalty and the payment for sin the the wrath of God From God's holy Justice is poured out upon Christ so that I don't have to pay the penalty for my sins that I deserve and I

can be a beneficiary of his grace but that does seem that intention with the notion of accountability that you were laying forward where the thought was unless my doing good has Cosmic significance if it turns out that I can do evil and as long as I manage to recognize the saving power of Jesus you know in time That you know this accountability stuff's not really not really there well I mean no genuine Christian would think like that what what I was trying to communicate there uh what I was trying to communicate there is that our

moral lives really matter that they make a difference for me the thought that everything perishes in the heat death of the universe like Russell's kedo you know is so depressing so awful but um that it it it just seems to put a Question mark behind everything we do all our accomplishments all our Deeds just seem so trivial in light of this Cosmic Doom that awaits us all but but not for me yeah it it seems to me it seems to me that I just don't if I've saved somebody's life I've done something significant I've done

something important I've done something whose significance is not in any way threatened diminished reduced one iota by the fact that whatever it is 40 Billion years from now you know the sun will explode it's it's neither here nor there I've saved a human life that's what matters and the fact it doesn't have Cosmic significance doesn't seem to me to undermine its significance mhm um I'd like to talk about animals animals yes what about our relationship with animals do we have a moral obligation to treat animals well or are they just totally separate from us uh

in the grand scheme of things now is that a Question for me for both of you you want to go first yeah well I think that here the the Christian the theist has a a tremendous advantage in terms of developing an environmental ethic and an ethic for the stewardship and care of animals and it would be based not upon the fact that animals themselves are moral agents who have rights because as we've said not being rational beings they aren't moral agent so it's not as though the antelope has the right to to Live or something

of that sort but rather on a Christian view God has given a stewardship of this beautiful uh planet to care for it and not to pollute it and ravage it and destroy it and so I think we have responsibilities toward the animals that would involve um uh not just slaughtering them aimlessly polluting the Seas and destroying their environments and so forth but that we would be like gardeners in a sense tending a garden uh in which there are Not only vegetable life but also there would be animal life as well so I would I would

see this is rooted in the Divine responsibilities and mandates given to us uh to be good stewards of the Earth are you a vegetarian no I'm not so the our stewardship towards animals only goes so far right we can eat them we can we can chop them up and wear them yes yes I but but that would be done in ways that would be I think compatible with Certain kinds of of rules that so I'm not sure you you get the advantage as you put it in in that case so well but I mean our

naturalism what can the naturalist say in the struggle for survival of the fittest how how is there any kind of ethic toward Behavior toward animals my view wasn't survival of the fittest my view was that what morality boils down to is don't harm and do help and now the question is can creatures like chickens and cows be harmed and the Answer is of course they can consequently I think it's immoral to harm them and that seems to me to provide a very strong moral reason to be a vegetarian to not wear leather and the like

so I I I certainly will concede that your view allows for a space for a certain kind of limited responsibility towards the animals but I but I beg to differ with the claim that you've got a better handle on that situation than I do it seems to me that Our treatment of animals is morally appalling it's morally completely unacceptable and that we ought to radically revise the way we live precisely because they feel pain they can be hurt and we're constantly hurting these creatures let's talk about the difference between various societies uh how do we

explain differences in culture the treatment of women the treatment of uh different races um gender sexualities In various societies if there is a single god with a single morality or if there is a social contract standard now here I don't think there would be any significant difference between us in the sense that this is a question about moral epistemology that is to say how we come to a knowledge of the good in the right rather than a question of moral ontology which is a question about the objective reality of the good and the right and

I Think we would both agree that the objective existence of moral values and duties doesn't imply that these are always easy to grasp or that people infallibly do grasp them given our human proclivity to selfishness and so certain societies haven't caught up yeah I have absolutely no qualms about being Politically Incorrect and saying that certain societies like National socialist Germany were morally corrupt or African or South Africa or uh what About Saudi Arabia yeah in its treatment of women I think it's it's appalling uh yeah I don't I think that once you have a Transcendent

moral standard that transcends culture and Society you're in a position to make the kind of judgments that the court did at nberg in saying that these Nazi leaders were were war criminals and were justly condemned for what they did if you lack that Transcendent standard then I think you Are faced with the problem of sociocultural relativism well as Craig says this is I think actually point in which we are in in large agreement I might not use the word Transcendent uh here uh but I think I agree otherwise with virtually everything he said so if

the question is what's the explanation of the fact that so many societies have had morally appalling Moral codes the answer in part is it takes a while for civilization to work its way up to recognize moral truth just as it takes a while for civilization to work its way up to recognize truths in any other domain uh so I believe in evolution I believe for for familiar I was making a remark like this over dinner that for familiar evolutionary reasons we were built to uh think the world moved along roughly Aristotelian lines with regard to

physics it's bad Physics but it's understandable why Evolution would select us to think that something like Aristotelian physics was so happily Evolution also implanted in US reasoning capacity to step back from the beliefs that it gave us at the ground level and to challenge them and to to test them uh and so we've worked our way up from from Arista tilian physics and similarly it takes centuries to work our way up to the point at which we recognize that all people are equal It takes centuries until we work our way up to the point which

recognize that women count as much as men blacks count as much as whites and that animals count too know very nice uh we'd like you to give some closing statements just a few words wow to the stud who's going to go first who goes first uh who went first went first why don't you go first okay um h i I didn't prepare a closing statement so this is just I'm going to just wing it Um I've argued tonight that if God exists then you do have an objective basis for moral values moral duties and moral

accountability and I don't think that that's ever been disputed tonight the debate has been more about whether naturalism can give you these things but we haven't really contested that if God exists then you will have a sound foundation for Morality God's Own holy and just nature will be the good and will Define the good uh in uh as all Things relate to it his Commandments to love him and to love our neighbor as ourselves will furnish grounds for our moral duties and obligations that will be objective and transcultural and and then our lives will have

a Paramount significance because the moral choices we make really do make a difference they have eternal consequences so I think theism is tremendously attractive and would invite you to consider it for yourselves by Contrast on naturalism it's hard to see why these creatures we call Homo sapiens have intrinsic moral value this moral contract seems to me to be just a fiction and not really uh anything more than a social convention that homosapiens conspire among themselves to fancy themselves valuable and this is especially evident I think on materialism and determinism whereas I say making a moral

decision is no Different than a tree growing a branch it's hard to see how a puppet and its movements can have moral significance in terms of moral duties again without someone to prohibit something or to command something it's very hard to see how things can be prohibited or commanded that's very different than the law of contradiction I think because the law of contradiction doesn't prescribe Behavior it doesn't say to you don't contradict Yourself you're free to do that if you want to it just says if you do so you're you're irrational but the the moral

Duties are giving you prescriptions for behavior for ways you out to behave and it seems to me on atheism that they are just like rules of etiquette and then finally moral accountability I've already talked about that that um it it's hard to see why uh we should always adopt the moral point of view rather than just act in our own self-interest On atheism since it really doesn't make any difference in the long run so I would just invite you as students to think deeply about whether or not uh theism um isn't the better foundation for

building your own moral life and uh and uh career that lies ahead of you well let me start on a note of agreement uh I would want to invite all of you to think as well um I don't think the issues that we've been talking about this evening are at all easy uh or Simple uh I I suppose it's probably obvious that we haven't settled anything here uh but in it's important to also point out that we've we've only begun to address any number of relevant issues this is not the kind of topic that you

can do justice to in an hour and a half at best it can wet your appetite for for learning more so on the one hand I want to encourage all of you uh who haven't taken a class in moral philosophy to take a class uh in moral philosophy and And see how some of the great minds uh through history of Western Civilization have have dealt with some of these issues uh and similarly I would encourage all of you theists or not to um take classes in religion uh I I hope I've said nothing this evening

to suggest any kind of hostility uh to religion uh far from it I think it's a a view worth taking very very seriously um though I happen to believe that uh theistic beliefs don't play any Essential role uh in grounding morality now I I sketched a view uh According to which there is morality it's an objective fact in as as robust a sense uh as it seems to me one might like uh that morality is real and genuine and I Tred to lay out uh the at least the rough outline of how that view might

go it seems to me that one essential point of disagreement uh between Craig and me is is is uh something that uh I I asked about several times It's it's this move what to my mind is the move from the thought that uh without theism then our actions don't have eternal Cosmic significance to the conclusion that therefore without theism our actions don't have significance objective moral significance that just seems to me to be a mistake uh it seems to me that uh if I love somebody the the the the reality of that loving relationship is

valuable of real value of genuine objective value and It's not in any way threatened by the fact that I will die my wife will die my children will die and eventually the universe will come to an end uh the fact that billions and billions of years from now it's all going to be the same doesn't mean it's all the same now I certainly want to concede that if you're looking for this kind of cosmic significance atheism is not going to provide it for you but that wasn't the subject of tonight's debate the subject Of tonight's

debate was whether you needed that kind of cosmic significance to have morality and on that issue I'm quite confident the answer is no thank you you all very much thank you good [Applause] good for more information about the Veritas Forum including additional recordings and a calendar of upcoming events please visit our website at Veritas.com