In this article, Craig presents his moral argument for God’s existence. Craig shows that if there is an objective morality (which does not depend on man), then God is the only basis for such existence.
The book? In Guarda? It presents this argument and many others in a simple and didactic way, we recommend it to anyone who wants to start on the subject.
- Dr.
- William Lane Craig holds a Ph.
- D.
- De the University of Birmingham.
- England.
- And the University of Munich.
- Germany.
A group of ethics specialists such as Robert Adams, William Alston, Mark Linville, Paul Copan, John Hare, Stephen Evans and others defended various forms of moral arguments in favor of God’s existence. in my own work, we must understand two important distinctions.
First, we must distinguish moral values from moral duties. Values have to do with something good or bad. The task has to do with something right or wrong. You might think now that this distinction makes no difference: “Right?Is it right, does it mean the same thing, and the same goes?Is it wrong?. But if you think about it, you’ll see it’s not. A duty has to do with a moral obligation, what you must or should not do. But, of course, you don’t have to do something morally just because it’s going to be good for you. For example, it would be nice if you became a doctor, but you are not morally obliged to become a doctor. Besides, it would also be nice if you were a firefighter or housewife or a diplomat, but you can’t be all that. In this way, there is a difference between good/bad and good/false. Good/evil has to do with value, while good/bad has to do with obligation.
Second, there is a difference between being objective and subjective. Objective? I mean, whatever people think.
With these distinctions in mind, here is a simple moral argument in favor of God’s existence:
1. Si does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist
2. There are objective values and moral duties.
3. Therefore, God exists.
What makes this argument so persuasive is not only because it’s logically rigid, but because people generally believe in both premises. In a pluralistic age, people are afraid to impose their values on others, so premise 1 seems to be right for them. Moral values and duties are not objective realities (i. e. valid and obligatory regardless of human opinion), but simply subjective opinions imbued in us with biological evolution and social conditions.
At the same time, however, people deeply believe that certain moral values and duties such as tolerance, openness of sight and love are objectively valid and obligatory They think it is objectively wrong to impose their values on others!also deeply attached to premise 2.
In fact, Dawkins himself seems to accept both premises! Regarding Premise 1, Dawkins informs us that “There is basically no design, no goal, no harm, no good, nothing but mindless indifference. [?] We are DNA propagation machines. [?] Is this the only reason for all living objects? But even though he says there is no harm, no good, nothing more than mindless indifference, the point is that Dawkins is an uncompromising moralist. You say he was mortified? to learn that Jeff Skilling, CEO of Enron Corporation, considered The Dawkins Selfish Gene as his favorite book because of his perception of Social Darwinism. Characterizes “Darwinian errors. ” Like compassion for someone who can’t pay us or sexual attraction to a sterile person of the opposite sex as “precious and blessed mistakes”? and calls compassion and generosity “noble emotions. ” It denounces the doctrine of original sin as “morally repulsive. ” It strongly condemns actions such as the persecution and abuse of homosexuals, the indoctrination of children, the Inca practice of human sacrifice, and prizes cultural diversity over the interests of Amish children. He goes a step further and offers his own Ten Commandments as a guide to moral behavior, while being wonderfully oblivious to contradicting his ethical subjectivism!
In his study of arguments for God’s existence, Dawkins addresses a kind of moral argument he calls the “argument of the degree. “But that doesn’t look much like the argument presented here. We are not arguing by degrees of kindness towards the greater good, but from the objective reality of moral values and duties to their fundamental principles in reality. It’s hard to believe that all of Dawkins’ warm denunciations and moral affirmations actually tend to be nothing more than his subjective opinion, as if he were whispering with a wink: “Of course not. I don’t think child abuse, homophobia and religious intolerance are really bad things!There’s no moral difference!?. But the affirmation of objective values and duties is incompatible with their atheism, because according to naturalism we are only animals, primates and relatively advanced animals are not moral agents. Affirming the two premises of moral argument, Dawkins is therefore in the pain of irrationality, attached to the conclusion of the argument, namely that God exists.
Although Dawkins does not raise the following objection, people often hear it from non-believers in response to the moral argument. This objection is called Eutifron’s dilemma, by one of the characters in Plato’s dialogue. It’s basically like that: it’s a good thing because God wants it that way?Or does God want it because it’s good? If you say something is good because God wants it, then what is it?It becomes arbitrary. God might have wanted hate to be good, so we would be morally obliged to hate ourselves. That sounds crazy. At least some moral values seem necessary, but if you say that God wants something because it is good, then good or evil is independent of God, in this case moral values and duties would exist regardless of God, which contradicts the premise. 1.
The weakness of Eutifron’s dilemma is that the dilemma he presents is incorrect because there is a third unattended alternative, namely God wants something because it is good. God’s very nature is the norm of goodness, and His orders to us are an expression. In short, our moral duties are determined by the orders of a just and loving God.
In this way, moral values are not independent of God because God’s own character defines what is good. God is essentially compassionate, just, good, impartial, etc. Its nature is the moral norm that determines what is right or wrong. His orders necessarily reflect his moral nature. Therefore, there is no arbitrariness. Moral good/evil is determined by the nature of God, and moral good/evil is determined by his will. God wants something because He is good, and something is only because God wants it.
This vision of morality was eloquently defended in our time by renowned philosophers such as Robert Adams, William Alston and Philip Quinn, although the atheists continue to attack the scarecrow erected through the Eutifron dilemma, in the recent Cambridge Companion to Atheism (2007), for example, does the article on God and morality, written by an eminent ethics, present and criticize only the view that God arbitrarily created moral values?A scarecrow that hardly anyone defends. Atheists should do better than that if they try to overcome contemporary moral arguments for God’s existence.