🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation: 00:19 📚 The debate is about whether God is necessary for morality. The focus is not on whether belief in God is necessary for living morally. 00:47 🔄 Kagan acknowledges that morality has been discussed with and without appeal to God throughout history. 03:32 🌐 Kagan explains he will argue that belief in or existence of God is not necessary for morality. 07:12 💡 Kagan outlines his view of morality: right actions avoid harm and help others, even without invoking God. 15:12 🤔 Kagan explores whether moral commandments necessitate a commander or if requirements can exist independently. 21:53 🎯 Kagan asserts that moral philosophers inclined towards atheism can believe in a morality without God. 23:07 📢 Craig clarifies that the debate is about whether God is necessary for morality, not whether belief in God is necessary for moral living. 23:34 📍 Craig emphasizes that the question's answer depends on the definition of morality; some forms of moral behavior can exist without God. 23:47 🤔 Objective moral values are discussed - whether certain actions are intrinsically good or evil. 24:02 🤯 Both atheists and theists agree that God is necessary for morality to have objective significance. 25:50 🙅♂️ Without God, objective moral values would lack a foundation and might be seen as products of human evolution. 31:26 🦁 The absence of God questions the basis for distinguishing between right and wrong actions, as animals exhibit similar behaviors. 32:52 💡 Objective moral duties need an explanation without God's commandments as a basis. 36:30 ☠️ If there's no God, moral accountability seems to disappear, making actions ultimately insignificant. 38:48 🧐 The absence of moral accountability in atheism could lead to a cynical sense of futility in moral choices. 39:57 🤨 Atheists face a challenge in explaining the basis for objective moral values, duties, and accountability. 46:24 🤷♂️ Naturalism struggles to explain what makes human beings morally special and different from other creatures. 50:09 🤔 Dr. Kagan emphasizes that naturalism's explanation of moral significance may be subjective and based on personal beliefs. 52:15 😕 The definition of free will is complex and its compatibility with determinism is debated. 52:57 😮 If naturalism is true and determinism holds, free will might be lacking, which could impact moral value. 54:44 😶 Denying deeper meaning doesn't necessarily make ethics illusory; ethical significance exists on a human scale. 56:36 🤔 The significance of actions isn't just about cosmic impact, it's about personal, societal, and subjective value. 57:32 🤨 Disagreement about whether the lack of eternal significance renders actions entirely inconsequential. 58:39 😕 Objective moral values may exist, but on atheism, moral accountability might be lacking. 59:50 🧐 Moral viewpoint's adoption is questioned, especially in the absence of cosmic implications. 01:04:44 😕 The role of God in enabling free will is a point of contention. 01:05:55 😯 Objective moral values provide a basis for evaluating actions, even with human imperfections. 01:06:55 😮 Accountability in a theistic context and the potential tension between salvation and moral judgment. 01:13:10 🧐 Acknowledgment of human imperfections, sin, and the role of religious and moral education. 01:14:18 🤨 Examining theological aspects of salvation, punishment, and moral accountability in Christianity. 01:15:14 😕 Perspectives on the significance of actions within a temporal context and despite cosmic outcomes. 01:15:58 🐾 Theists argue that a Christian perspective provides a basis for ethical treatment of animals, seeing it as a divine responsibility to care for the Earth and its creatures. 01:17:36 🥩 Different perspectives on animal treatment: Theists emphasize responsible stewardship, while non-theists may argue against causing harm to animals and advocate for vegetarianism. 01:19:15 🌍 Discussion on cultural differences: Exploring how societies with various moral codes and treatment of marginalized groups can be evaluated based on transcendent moral standards or evolving moral truths. 01:20:53 👥 Moral assessment of societies: Theism allows making moral judgments about societies' actions, while non-theism might rely on gradual societal evolution in recognizing moral truths. 01:23:01 🕊️ Theism offers a foundation for objective moral values, duties, and accountability, with divine nature defining the good, while atheism might struggle to ground these concepts. 01:24:52 ⚖️ Atheistic perspectives on morality: Atheists propose that morality can exist as an objective reality through a moral contract formed over time, regardless of divine influence. 01:26:03 📚 Encouragement for exploration: Both sides encourage students to delve into moral philosophy and religion to better understand these complex issues and engage in informed discussions.
This is one of my favorite WLC debates, since Kagan really helps illuminate the question-begging coming from WLC (and his supposed "foundation" for morality). When Craig got to the part about, "What's so special about humans from a naturalistic perspective?", Kagan pointed out the incredibly obvious answer to that. Craig, however, refuses to accept it since he's defined human significance in terms of god from the beginning. This way, no matter what the naturalist points out, Craig just retorts with "so what"? Kagan saw this and brilliantly pointed out how we could do the same thing with god-prescribed morality, to which Craig just stubbornly refused and decided to stick to his preconceived notions. Even though Craig is wildly incorrect on many things, he usually outperforms his opponents due to him being a good debater/rhetorician. In this though, Kagan really outclassed him. This was almost as good as the Sean Carroll debate.
Kagan had some very good answers but on others it doesn't seem to make sense. Or at least it makes very little sense. Whats good for one person is often bad for another - why should a person care about the collective? And whose to decide what's better?
@@weeklydaily4775 A contractarian or a utilitarian can offer an easy answer to this question - it is about what is the most rational/beneficial decision for all parties involved. I grant that these frameworks have criticisms, but this is just an example that helps show that we can navigate the moral terrain and discover better pathways than others...OBJECTIVELY. You can be dead wrong in thinking that a certain action is good, because your beliefs and thought processes about certain things may be objectively untrue.
The “so what?” argument against God doesn’t work. Simply being that God is all powerful, all knowing, all wise, all good and all just. The universe is not. God created humans with morals & intent, therefore we were intentionally design by an intelligent mind with purpose and understand morals instinctively. What would feel more special? Finding a hundred dollars on your own, or someone giving you a hundred dollars? You’ll feel more valued if someone gave you a hundred dollars. God intentionally gave us life, therefore we value it more. With that value comes morals and eternal fate. In a godless universe it’s easy for me to say “so what?” when it comes to morals because my eternal life isn’t destined with consequence. My morals are determined by the biological mindless chemicals that make up my brain, therefore nobody’s at fault for their actions. As Richard Dawkins said “DNA neither cares nor knows. DNA just is. And we dance to its music” Now in a godly universe you can also say “so what?” when it comes to morals, but it wouldn’t be rational todo considering the outcome of your eternal fate. It would be self reckless. You’ll be taking the alternative route of Gods standard of good. Of course you can say “so what if it’s self reckless” but that would be your choice that determines your outcome.
@@HudClipz That's an interesting take on it, but it's hard to say whether there's an a priori basis for these "ought" statements in the first place. If you recall what Hume said on this, he made the distinction that you can't get an "ought" from an "is". So even if god is all-knowing, there is nothing you can say that can logically take you from "god knows X" to "god tells us we OUGHT to do X". This would still be a human intuition to lead from is --> ought which is not logically derivable from all-knowingness. Defining god in terms of "all-good" is quite a loaded term in the first place. The origin for where we get good and evil is from consciousness itself. All the theist ends up doing is inflating this notion infinitely when it comes to god. It's projection, and gives no insight on what the nature of "good" actually is. If you recall the old Euthyphro dilemma, this is the exact point that it is raising - is god commanding something because it is good, or is it good because god commands it? No matter what answer you give, there can never be a non-circular definition that answers this question. God's omnibenevolence is simply an extension of the human mind that we take for granted. This is akin to saying that god is all-knowing, all-powerful, and has the biggest biceps. Where did that come from? It was simply an extension of the experiences and attributes we give to ourselves as humans. If you want a sound definition of morality and you think naturalism can't give you an answer, then god certainly can't give you an answer either.
@@johnnylamaa2569 Let me address the all knowing part first and I’ll reply to the other statements since this will take up some space. That’s Theological fatalism, and it goes like this 1: God foreknows we will do X 2: if God foreknows we will do X, we will do X 3: We will necessarily do X The thought is that by this logic we will “necessarily” (or be forced to) do action X because of Gods foreknowledge. The first two premises are correct. However, the conclusion and point 3 does not follow from the prior points because of the injection of the additional word “necessarily”. In order for this logic to follow, we must remove “necessarily”. Since it does not appear in any of the original premises. We are left with this. 1: God foreknows we will do X 2: if God foreknows we will do X, we will do X 3: We will do X This is not logically coherent, but this argument no longer implies Gods foreknowledge forces action X, because action X is not necessary. The logic here only proves that there is a correlation between action X and Gods foreknowledge. Correlation does not imply causation. Then why is there a correlation? Because our future action X dictates what God foreknows. It turns out that our action X causes Gods foreknowledge, but not the only way around. This correct causation is the reason for the correlation.
I don’t think he was challenged at all. I think the challenge he was facing was that Kelly was being very slippery with rationalizing his worldview- even admitting that Determinism and Free Will can coexist (by some stretched philosophical argument). Kelly even misquoted Craig’s quote of Ruse and was basically asking Craig to explain why Ruse thought the way that he did. I felt Kelly was very defensive (naturally if you hold the belief the he holds) and that Craig was very patient with Kelly’s slippery logic.
@@hugomunoz9039 He can't be 'challenged,' he is a Christian. I've done Kagan's really excellent first year Yale course, and all I could think was how much Craig would benefit from that excellent dissection. Craig is no fool, he is an excellent thinker and fine speaker, but unfortunately for us all he is simply wrong. The last thing Shelly Kagan (there's no Kelly here) was is 'defensive,' that is pure fantasy on your part. Restrained, perhaps.
@@hugomunoz9039 "Man can will, but he cannot will what he wills" - Schopenhauer. Here, this, philosophy, as (not) opposed to theology: th-cam.com/play/PLEA18FAF1AD9047B0.html
@@hinteregions Christians cannot be challenged? I have no idea what that even means. Anywho…yeah I’m sure craig could learn from kagan….kagan could also learn from Craig….we could all learn from each other. Haha.
@@biggregg5 yeah I mean it would be fun to see Frank Turek Because I … I mean I’m genuinely convinced that Turek just doesn’t see another alternative other than God for the concept of morality WLC I think is too smart for that . He just lost
This is probably the best debate I've ever seen involving William Lane Craig. I'm very impressed with Shelly Kagan's thorough logic and rhetorical skills. These are both things that Craig's opponents too seldom demonstrate.
@HuckFinn I disagree, logic and skillful debating tactics can and are sufficient for corralling Craig's case for theism. Most of the sophisticated rebuttals to his arguments come from published written sources (a fair share from professional philosophers), the debates are mostly for the interest of the public and getting a message out with an apologetics twist that is deemed important (from Craig's standpoint). Most of his opponents from what I've seen aren't particularly proficient in countering Craig's case (like outlining his assumptions with explanations on why they may not hold up). Craig is a sophisticated debater/apologist so he shouldn't be taken lightly, especially in public forum circumstances.
@HuckFinn I'm not the one who got on the offensive with no specific arguments. I'm not here to debate Kagan's points. I'm here to see if you actually have something useful to say, since you're obviously very opinionated. You think you're oh so clever bringing up Kagan and calling Craig names but you prove over and over again that you can't debate the topic. How hard is it to point out one incorrect point of Craig's? You're probably some loser who's just filling your missing self esteem with the hatred of someone clearly very intelligent and accomplished. If that's true, I pity you. Whatever the case, you're a waste of my time, so I'm done responding to your insipid remarks.
@@manne8575 no, you can't. I'm not assured at all. Most likely you'll be unable to answer basic questions about how Christian belief even plausibly makes sense, much less is actually true
Morality has always been a huge problem for religion. A religious person can be moral, but they have no way to explain, through faith, why any act is right or wrong. See how badly apologists fail on this. Or can any apologist manage it? All true morality is humanistic.
This seems like a flawed criticism of religion. After all, people who follow the Bible (Jews/Christians) can easily say that stealing is wrong because God decrees it thusly. In doing so, the Bible followers will have explained, through faith, why that act (stealing) is wrong. So, it seems like the central point of the comment is demonstrably incorrect.
I'll answer this using the question WLC absurdly asked of Shelly Kagan during the back and forth portion. For WLC to say "well what if someone in society does not sign the contract" and then act as if that is the straw that breaks the camels back is a misunderstanding of social contract theory. It, in no way, threatens social contract theory. When talking about social contract theory, I often find that people misconstrue what the actually "contract" means. The contract is not some physical document that everyone HAS to sign and HAS to agree to at birth - and I'm not claiming that you in particular make this claim, but I've heard it made before - the social contract is, instead, an immaterial societal agreement that is encompassed in the form of our traditional norms, folkways and general traditions that make any particular group of people who they are, as distinguished by their culture. So now the question, what if someone doesn't sign the contract? Well, we have the same label for them that anyone else in society would have for them: we would call them criminals, and we would call them general deviants. Those types of people are unavoidable, every society of people has it's deviants. Everyone has a contract, whether you like it or not, if you are born into a society where people live socially then you are living in the terms that they have created. Now, whether or not you choose to deviate from the contract is up to said individual, keep in mind the definition I gave of what the "contract" represents. WLC argues that in order for their to be good, there has to be evil, for without the evil, we cannot possibly know that what is good is good. We can apply the exact same reasoning to social contract and, in fact, I could ask the same type of question and say "well what if someone doesn't obey god?" Does that destroy the god argument? Of course not, because all you have to say is that the said individual will face repercussions from God for not obeying. The social contract line of reasoning is the same, except instead of said individual appealing to God for disobedience, they appeal to the repercussions they will face from society for their disobedience which will take the form of social ostracism, time spent in prison, and other ways that we humans punish our own. I wish that Kagan would have really laid the wood to WLC here, because he certainly had the opportunity, as it was clear that WLC had a scant understanding of what the actual contract represents. But this is part of what makes theories like social contract, consequentialism, and utilitarianism so effective. They are common sense theories. It is not hard, nor a reach, to believe that human beings, through everyday social interaction over time, develop the foundations for the societies they live in. You almost want want to say, well duh. It doesn't require nearly as much mental gymnastics that WLC has to go through to justify his beliefs.
Kagan says “Let us all imagine a contract because we’re all perfectly rational” I suppose Kagan will be the perfectly rational human? Good luck maybe all of our politicians will sign it! What an a absurdity!😂
Carlos Danger Maybe I’m missing something, but it seems as if your explanation and Shelly’s explanation are different. The major difference is that Shelly did NOT include “societal norms” in his explanation. He said, this contract is what would be agreed upon by “perfectly rational” beings. This is a statement that seems to transcend societal norms, and presents a “sort of” objective foundation for morality. My problem is with “perfectly rational beings”. It’s a thought experiment that assumes the outcome. For instance, why would “harming someone” be bad? There are different reasons people can come up with, but there seems to also be reasons why people are perfectly fine to harm someone just because they want to (what WLC pointed out, even if you only consider it 1 reason as opposed the “the” reason). So why think that perfectly rational beings would agree on the outcome that he is expressing? It seems to be begging the question IMO. However, I am genuinely open to increasing my understanding of why you explained “social contract theory” differently than Shelly did IN THIS VIDEO. I’m open to you telling me the areas where I am wrong as well. Hope that makes sense.
This was much more informative than the standard debates that Craig appears in, and Kagan was a great interlocutor in terms of bringing out the nonsense in some of Craig's arguments. "Absent God, our moral choices don't matter because of the heat-death of the universe billions of years from now." Does anyone actually buy that argument?!
What exactly is the counter argument? Seems pretty self explanatory that in the long run, given the heat death of the universe, nothing matters in the long run as nothing is lasting. Things only have temporary value to creatures who are themselves only temporary
One of very few debates where Craig was outmatched. Now nothing Craig has ever said has convinced me, I think his arguments are many assertions and a lot of inference that he can't back up but he is a phenomenal debater and I have to give him all the credit in the world for that he has outmatched some of the best atheists on the planet. Here's the thing about debates, just because you lose doesn't mean the other person is right and that includes atheists. If an atheist wins a debate it doesn't mean that a God doesn't exist. Sometimes people are just better at debating and William Craig is a perfect example of that because his position is ridiculous but he could debate that 2 + 2 = 6 and when in most cases. Here he got out matched and there's only been a few times that has happened. I think it's funny how he always talks about Richard Dawkins being scared of debating him when he won't debate dillahunty. I think that William Lane Craig fans would love to see him have a discussion with matt and I know that dillahunty fans would love to see him have a debate with craig. If you're going to call someone scared you better not be running from someone else.
Kagan fails in his argument that morality depends upon your position in society, and "what kind of creature you are." It fails because that position is relative, not objective, and as such it applies individually and recklessly with no firm boundary. For instance, the Nazis thought their position in the social sphere was superior to all others. They then used that personal view of themselves to kill and do harm - and justified it. This is what Craig means by morality must be objective, and not based on some fanciful notion of position. Kagan hasn't really thought through his argument.
Kagan seems to be a very intelligent and thoughtful person…I would be less flippant about accusing a Yale professor of not "thinking through his argument." Kagan does not fail…yes the Nazi's used subjective reasons to commit atrocities…the rest of the "social sphere" i.e. the society as a role looked at the situation objectively and came to the correct moral conclusion. We don't need a God to be accountable to…it's enough to be accountable to each other.
jdplanas I'm not sure how stating that Kagan hasn't thought through his argument is "flippant", but oh well. Just because a person has a degree from a prestigious institution does little to impress me on subjects like this. That's because it's often the case that the person's emotional and personal views get in the way of their common sense or "smarts." Intellectual skills often take a back seat to personal worldview, and I think that's the case here for Kagan. In the case of the Nazis, you note that "the rest of the "social sphere" i.e. the society as a whole looked at the situation objectively and came to the correct moral conclusion." And...your point? The issue is that morals can and are just subjective points of order without an objective source to lay the moral framework. Using Kagan's point of view, there's no reason to believe that his morals are any better or more beneficial than mine are, or the Nazis were. Craig is correct - Kagan is not - in spite of his Yale degree.
dweezel theyounger "Using Kagan's point of view, there's no reason to believe that his morals are any better or more beneficial than mine are, or the Nazis were." Err, what? There's no reason not to think the Nazis morals was beneficial? You might want to reconsider that statement.
dweezel theyounger My first point wasn't an argument from authority. I don't agree or disagree with him because he has a Dr. in front of his name. Kagan's point is that we can be our own source of objective morality and he he laid out a good argument. My point is that a Yale University professor of philosophy (who has dedicated his life's work to the subject) has probably spent a good deal of time thinking through his position. You may have very valid points for disagreeing (or not), but accusing him of not thinking it through is insulting. So when someone disagrees with you it's because they haven't thought it through enough? And if you take some time to think it through, you'll see the real argument from authority comes from the religious. They claim their god is the only source of morality and then claim exclusive access to speak for that god. That is not objective morality, it's divine command authority. What was the excuse used by Nazi's during Nuremburg? It wasn't my fault, I was ordered to do it. The whole line of reasoning that without God the Nazi worldview is just as valid as anyone else's I find ridiculous and relies on a known logical fallacy reductio ad absurdum. It's not like the Jews were wandering around the desert and didn't figure out murder was objectively wrong until forty days after they reached Mt Sinai.
Let's grant for the moment that God has created absolute morals, and that these morals can be discovered. Even so, this definition of what we mean by "morals" is just one of many possible definitions that we can choose to use. For example, someone might disagree with God's set of absolute morals, and many indeed do (including people who think that it's ethical to punish someone for keeping a slave). Similarly, let's grant that an objectively rational social contract can be defined in only one possible correct way, and that it would produce only one possible set of correct morals, which would therefore be a set of absolute morals. Still, this is again only one of several possible definitions of what qualifies as a moral. What this illustrates is the true scope of moral relativism: it's the umbrella that covers all of the different possible ideas that give rise to so-called absolute morals.
when i look at this topic , i can t see past the argument of objective morality and a higher power. how can a universe, which came to be on it s own, along with it come an objective morality? i can t see past this...]
@@stevejames5863 The definition of morals is "a lesson, especially one about what is thoughtful toward the future, learned through stories or experience." That's a pretty ambiguous definition, but it's basically a question about what is best for the future. You can use these stories and experiences to build certain goals towards a purpose. For instance, if the purpose is to maximize human well being, then there are goals that should be met concerrning maximizing human well being. One goal towards such a purpose might be to not hurt each other, because hurting someone doesn't always maximize human well being. It just so happens that human well being is an excessively complex topic with billions of variables that change every day. If we could possibly know all of those variables though, then we'd have a clear path towards the objectively best method of maximizing human well being. It's already there in the universe, we just have to discover it. Similarly, the universe provided us with math, we just had to discover it. An apple plus an apple is objectively two apples. Thanks Universe!
No person in their right mind would appeal to absolute morality. Both of the panelists avoid such terms precisely because they won't be able to make such a case. Anyways, I could just NOT grant your conclusion. v:
BTW, if they're absolute morals, you do realise there'd be a contradiction if they don't perfectly overlap with each other, right? If there's a contradiction, then they're not absolute.
@@malolazap5377 do you mean objective morality? or is there a distinction? i think if there is objective morality, some things can be: relative. what i m trying to say, if there is objective morality,and i think there are morals we can agree upon. where does this come from? it is a simple question. i don t think all morals are relative. there being a universe that just happened to come about, does not create morals that are objective.also, if you have an explanation for objective morality without a higher power- ok. otherwise, if morality is relative, that is different. if morality is relative then i think anything goes, why would we have laws, courts, and so on?
00:02 Belief in God not necessary for morality 02:02 Is moral behavior dependent on belief in a deity? 06:07 Exploring justifications for harming or failing to help in moral philosophy. 07:57 Morality is objective and centered on reasons to help others and avoid harm. 12:09 Ethical rules originate from a hypothetical bargaining session behind a veil of ignorance. 14:13 Morality does not necessarily require a moral lawgiver 18:38 Morality can be grounded in a secular fashion without the need for God. 20:35 Morality does not require a divine enforcer 25:09 Without God, moral values are not objective 27:40 Human morality is viewed as a biological adaptation. 32:34 Without God, no basis for objective moral duties 34:54 Without God, there is no objective moral law or accountability. 39:35 God is vitally necessary to morality 42:16 Debate on why inflicting harm is considered wrong on a naturalistic worldview 46:16 Evolutionary process leads to moral behavior 48:08 Exploring the uniqueness of human beings and their inherent value 51:40 Debating the compatibility of determinism and free will 53:23 Discussion on ethics being illusory and deeper meaning 57:22 Objective moral values must have significance beyond the cosmic scale 59:15 On atheism, prudential value and moral value are often in conflict. 1:02:44 Prudential reasons are not necessarily superior to moral reasons under naturalism. 1:04:46 God is necessary for free will and genuine moral choices. 1:08:49 Objective moral values require a transcendent standard like God 1:10:55 Objective morality is not contingent on perfect rationality 1:14:39 Our moral lives matter and make a difference regardless of cosmic doom. 1:16:42 God's stewardship involves caring for animals and the environment. 1:20:52 Evolution plays a role in societal moral progress. 1:22:52 Importance of God's existence for morality 1:27:02 Theistic beliefs not essential for grounding morality. 1:29:11 Cosmic significance not necessary for morality
@@j2mfp78 It's a discussion about morality. We have moral duties by virtue of social contract, human reason, the ability to appreciate immorality and consequences, etc. Kagan addressed all these.
@@superdog797 But those are just assertions. Who decided this was the criteria and that anyone has any obligation to accept or follow it? Someone could come up with a completely different set of criteria. Why would 1 be more valid than the other?
@@j2mfp78 Those aren't assertions. They are statements of fact. Someone could choose to ignore them if they want but they still exist. An assertion is an unjustified statement about some fundamental truth of reality. Kagan talked about this in the debate - he pointed out that the moral community comes to consensuses on moral positions. You ask "well what if someone changed [some aspect of morality]?" Well so what if they changed it? What's your point? On a separate note what do you make of the Euthyphro Dilemma?
Shelly said morality is outside us, we don't just made it up, two minutes later, morality is something we create and give to one another (as a social contract)
Two different schools of thought that can seem contradictory but studied independently, I personally wouldn't come to this conclusion. It's no different from someone believing in the bible and then deciding that following the rules of law on roadways, was conducive to an overall moral good.
I think the biggest issue with this contract theory, is that in a world obsessed with materialism, and it's accumulation, it is those who seemingly throw them away that gain the biggest advantage. At least in gaining material. When was the accumulation of material unimportant in the history of man? Not in it's written history, outside of the Bible. The Bible in contrast emphasizes the immaterial as having more worth. Other "holy books", have attempted to emulate this. But if you look those that have shunned moral right, in their greed for material wealth, it would seem the advantage from a survival point of view to be "dog eat dog". The biggest material winners are those who have thrown away this supposed moral contract. There is a difference between legal right and wrong, and moral right and wrong. It may not be illegal for international bankers to fund despotic regimes, but it is profitable, and highly immoral. But why is it immoral? This is something WLC completely fails at. The why. Because the argument I heard, was we make this moral contract, so others will like us. Ultimately it is what it boils down to. Why is that advantageous? Do you "like" the Rothchilds, the Trumps of the world? If you do what do you like? That every dollar of advantage they have over you makes every dollar you have of a lower value? Or am into an area of economics you don't understand? Why would you "like" or think it is an advantage that they make your life harder? The question was asked, "can atheists be moral without God?". Sure, as long as there is another set of laws that say you will do 25 years to life for murder, or 5 years for stealing. As far as I know, in western cultures no one is going to jail for adultery, and it happens a lot. I will concede it also happens in the churches, but that is because they are not following the tenets of the book to do so. But in a society, following the Bible with the belief in an ultimate judge, these crimes will not happen as often as the conscience becomes the policeman. A higher moral standard. This will only happen with the fear of God, and judgement. While there has been a lot of bad done in the name of religion, it wasn't done because they were following what the Bible told them. Crusades is a perfect example, as are The Inquisition. I thought the Nazi example was too extreme and thus easy. A better example would be 2 atheists marooned on an island with limited resources, and no one to put you in jail. At some point the contract will break down as they get hungry, and the battle over the resources becomes more urgent. How many of you good little moral atheists would starve before killing the source of your hunger, the one taking up the resources you need to live, without the idea of eternal punishment for doing it? If there is no God, and no police to punish me, why wouldn't I kill you to gain advantage? Would I rather be dead, or alone? With no afterlife, my guess the desire to survive would tip the scales over loneliness. Or how about in the USA, you have kids who grow up gun nuts, hunting, with the flawed "American exceptional-ism", this idea of "take care of number one", "the individual is more important than the whole", mentality. Who then goes off to the army, who trains them to kill, gives them permission and even a moral reason to kill, along with a overal general purpose of saving the world, get so mentally damaged by the act of war? Vietnam killed more men by suicide, at a rate of 5 to one, at least, than died in combat. More than 250,000 have committed suicide while only 58,000 died in the conflict. Or better yet. Going back to Nazi Germany. In the Ukraine during it's scorched earth campaign, they were killing civilians. One high ranking Nazi, who's name escapes me right now, I see the face, can't remember the name, skinny weasel with round glasses, sent a note back to Berlin, that they had to come up with another method, as the shooting them all was demoralizing the troops. Nazi's demoralized by killing the "sub-species" as they put it, bothered their conscience. It hasn't been that long since homo sapien started walking this earth. How old are we now? You evolutionists keep changing it. You never admit you were wrong the last time, but I digress. But being so fresh from the jungle so to speak, we have apparently lost our will to survive, as when confronted with it, it causes such great anguish. A primate doesn't show remorse for killing his dinner. In fact killing their own family members seems to bring a celebration, rather than remorse. Why are we so backward to all of nature? We are the most aware, but it seems to take us out of sync with nature. Almost like we don't fit. Not sure if you have noticed, but we seem to be at odds with nature. If nature made us, we must be the Stewie Griffins of the world on a mission to kill what produced us. Look at the statements on this page. You claim to be moral, but look at what you say. The only thing the comments really show, is your morality. That and your absolute quaking in your boots at the idea that someone believes differently than you. I mean, so what? Why is it such a big deal that you need to aggressively attack the person who holds this different belief? Why the need to mock? The false sense of superiority you are attempting to create? It comes across as insecurity to me. If all you did was address the issues, debated the points, you wouldn't come across so weak. But the need to "shoot the messenger", is obvious proof of this insecurity. Besides, all you have this time on earth. Why would a YT debate matter at all? Shouldn't you be out doing something to make your existence worth something? Saving puppies or something? No, you have decided to spend your precious seconds here, doing this, amounting to what? Proselytizing? Attempting to save people? If you ever were to take an honest look at what drives you to do this, attack belief in God, it would, or at least should trigger a deeper question. Why does the thought of God, and someone believing in Him, drive you so nuts?
Interesting observations by William Lane, but the idea of God he is preaching is the Christian idea of God which unwittingly is seen promoting the evangelical idea of Christian morality, it would have been better if he had mentioned the non-Abrahamic perspectives of God too, particularly the Hindu idea of morality.
Craig’s first point is to define God into existence (God = good/good = God and God = morality giver, so since we have morality and “good” God must exist)
Craig keeps associating aspects like love, goodness, etc. to god, of which he knows nothing about. You can't say that god is unknowable, therefore here are his attributes, and only those attributes that I myself ascribe to. It's funny how god never once has any kind of conflict with and of his followers. his will is always 100% their will.
You have no idea what "dying to the self" or "taking up your cross" means. But yes, there are many wolf in sheep's clothing these days...(hypocrites). Also, God is not unknowable. He gave us the bible for a reason. His attributes are in His word.
@@squirreljester2 What was your point? The second half of your comment was wrong. The first half was also wrong. God is not completely unknowable because we have the bible to describe His attributes.
Hard to argue with you on that. It's at least problematic, and it could well be enough to prove that moral accountability is (in some strong sense) impossible. I think I agree with you, but just in case you're interested I'll share the other side's view. Compatibilists say that, even though all of our actions reduce to a bunch of chemical reactions (which we can't be responsible for), that doesn't prove that we're not accountable. You're accountable just in case you're able to use your reason.
at 1:14:12, Kagan asks a question about accountability and death bed conversion allowing an evil person to be absolved.. To which Craig answers at 1:14:35 .. "Well, I mean, no genuine Christian would think like that.. " I love the laughter as a lot of people caught it. EXCEPT Craig himself.. oblivious, I suppose. But Kagan got the silly Scotsman fallacy.. He obviously thought it was hilarious. I think so too.. Craig was ridiculously hilarious.
I'm not a Christian so your question would be irrelevant to me regarding a claimed holy text. I'm simply asking do we have faith in our reason, is there any way we can objectively give credibility to it?
Overall, the case for theism as the basis of morality seems to be the stronger one since there were many issues that atheism could not answer including determinism in human existence, the objectivity of morality in social contract theory, the origins and involuntary agreement in the social contract, the explanation why one cannot keep the moral law, and the significance of human life.
🤔 Hmm is your "opinion" with regards the "right" God subjective or objective?? Can we ground morality in "any" God or just the particular one YOU determined is the "right" one out of the many thousands man has invented ?? If your answer is the latter then in actuality its *YOU* and YOUR SUBJECTIVE OPINION that is determining morality dear. if your answer is the former, then asserting objectivity to any moral claim based upon a "God" becomes a completely vacuous useless concept 👍 The claim that theistic morality is somehow "objective" is ridiculous. Theists are merely substituting their own subjective moral standards with the morals standards of the god they subjectively determine represents the "correct objective" morality. 🙄🤔
It seems to me this contractarianism is simply, we make up a story about an event that never happened where perfectly rational people set down some moral rules and we try to make it as believable and realistic as possible. Even if you got that right, all you’d have is a very believable story, not an actual event where we all sat down and drew out a social contract. How can we have any moral duty to behave as if this myth were true? It never happened. Nobody discussed the matter and nobody agreed to anything. We made it up. There is no social contract. But we have a moral duty to behave as if there was one because it’s a very believable myth. I’m afraid I don’t find it believable and I think if everyone were perfectly rational and sat down to draw out a social contract, not only would the resulting contract look radically different from anything anyone might imagine, it probably would result in a war.
In a universe that is nothing more than matter and energy, then life itself is ultimately a Monte Carlo game. It has no purpose. It's just a collection of molecules. In fact, if we look at the words of genetics high priest, Richard Dawkins, then passing on your genes is the only truly moral imperative there is in the universe. Dawkins argues in his book The Selfish Gene that all life is programmed to do one thing… Pass on their genetic material. So in a universe of nothing more than matter and energy, rape is a highly moral thing to do! In fact, seems to be the only thing we can do that actually matters. That is until the sun expends the last of its nuclear fuel starts expanding and the earth evaporates like a drop of water on a hot skillet. Rendering everything that humanity ever did or thought utterly pointless.
You get the impression that Craig doesn't have a clue what is going on in half of these debates. He has had this permeant deer in the headlights look on his face for the last decade. I can only assume his pride or his wallet still compels him to go out to these things.
"When I first heard the message of the Gospel as a non-Christian high school student, that my sins could be forgiven by God, that God *loved me, he loved Bill Craig,* and that I could come to know him and experience *eternal life* with God, I thought to myself (and I'm not kidding) I thought if there is just one chance in a million that this is true it's worth believing. So my attitude toward this is just the opposite of Kyle's. Far from raising the bar or the epistemic standard that Christianity must meet to be believed, I lower it." - William Lane Craig
@@vejeke Lol I actually care truth of my beliefs dear and "truth" is not determined by what I WANT to be true or which belief sounds the most appealing and offers me the most. Truth is demonstrated not asserted its that which best conforms with the FACTS and EVIDENCE and "faith" plays no part in the equation. Knowledge of FACTS, also called "propositional knowledge", is defined as true belief that is distinct from opinion or guesswork by virtue of justification. A "FACT" is a point of data that is objectively verifiable ( demonstrable ) Absent "Facts" one has only the opinion or guesswork and no justification to claim such knowledge. Science has all the FACTS yet claims nothing as "absolute" truth. Christianity conversely claims absolute truth in everything yet has no FACTS 😜
@@trumpbellend6717 I have another one that is even better... "The way in which I know Christianity is true is *first and foremost on the basis of the witness of the Holy Spirit in my heart* and that this gives me a *self authenticating means of knowing* that Christianity is true wholly apart from the evidence and therefore if in some historically contingent circumstances the evidence that I have available to me should turn against Christianity I don't think that that controverts the witness of the Holy Spirit." - William Lane Craig Evidence, who needs that when you can say you have the Holy Spirit in your heart? Then it doesn't matter even if they go against your creed 🤣 As Sam Harris once put it "If someone doesn't value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide to prove that they should value it?"
@@vejeke // "a self authenticated way of knowing" // Lol truth is demonstrated dear not asserted, its that which best conforms with the FACTS and EVIDENCE and has nothing whatsoever to do with "faith" Knowledge of FACTS, also called "propositional knowledge", is defined as true belief that is distinct from opinion or guesswork by virtue of justification. A "FACT" is a point of data that is objectively verifiable ( demonstrable ) Absent "Facts" one has only the opinion or guesswork and no justification to claim such knowledge. Science has all the FACTS yet claims nothing as "absolute" truth. Christianity conversely claims absolute truth in everything yet has no FACTS 😜
Too much about personal opinions, and never elaborating enough. John Lennox is a good one to watch for now factual based arguments; though he tries to cover most parts of the religion and doesn't back down from a debate). *Lennox is a mathematician and scientist, and he went to college in Oxford in the same years as Stephen Hawking.*
What evidence of gods (or gods causing morality) do you think Lennox has? Don't get me wrong, the arguments do vary in quality between theists (just like atheists), but I've never seen a theist present strong, logical evidence of a god. Maybe that could've been excusable pre-internet when it was difficult for good ideas to spread rapidly, but we're in 2022 and apparently none of the elusive "good arguments for god(s)" are being spread? Nov 2012, the Oxford Union held a fantastic meeting of the most renowned atheists and theists, and Lennox's argument rambled on and on with irrelevant points until he started trying to present things he considered evidence of a god. A. Intelligent Design. He provides no evidence of ID or the source of ID being a god. (For example if Bob from Accounting runs a universe simulation on their computer, he could be the intelligent designer of a universe, but he's not a god.) That means this argument is baseless assertion; it's a claim without evidence; it's an idea we have no good reason to believe. But it's _the first thing he mentions!_ B. Our ability to understand things. Again he provides no evidence of a god being responsible, he just establishes a mystery and tells people (baseless assertion) a god was responsible. So again, this cannot be evidence of a god. A common pattern to these arguments is they _could_ potentially be evidence of a god. But what would it take? It would require evidence that a god (A) exists and (B) caused these traits of reality. See the problem? No theist would ever use these arguments, because the only time they'd be right is if the user _already had evidence a god exists!_ So just by using these arguments, theists imply they don't know a god exists. C. Morality. He says the existence of morality can't be explained without a god, but that's wrong. Morality is principles of right/wrong behavior, and that only requires a brain capable of having those behavior preferences. Well evolution gave us a brain like that! So he's simply wrong to say it can't be explained without a god. Just for a simple example to understand things: imagine Tribe A eats its babies and Tribe B doesn't. Now: which tribe's babies survive to the next generation to spread their genes (with the respective instincts towards baby-eating or no-baby-eating)? So evolution results in morality. Well these are just his first three arguments, and _none of them contains evidence of a god!_ It's just him taking things which are either wrong (ID) or unknown, and says a god was involved or is required. With no actual evidence. And that lack of any real foundation to arguments for god is why most non-believers are non-believers.
Because it was not a debate. Debates are not about evidence or being right or wrong. People like WLC loses every single time they have to argue for their beliefs outside of the debate-format.
I sometimes come back to this because of how stumped Craig was. While I believe he loses most of his debates against atheists, he does come out relatively unscathed compared to your average apologist. Simply because he's a skilled debater and orator. But here, he is utterly exposed. Check out his debates with Sean Carrol and Roger Penrose if you want to see Craig stumped again.
Agreed. WLC was totally destroyed by Carroll, and WLC knows this. He turned off the comments section in the video that he posted with the debate. . It was absurd watching God botherer WLC try to " correct" physics genius and Cal Tech professor, Carroll about quantum physics.
Dr. Craig asked,”Why do humans think loving others is significant?” Dr. Kagan said,” Because I think it is good. It is just a special property of human.”
@@JohnGrove310 What could you possibly say to someone who has a problem with it? Say I'm a good little atheist who thinks 'morality' is for fools; if I rationally perceive that I am benefitting by not caring about the welfare of other humans and that I can keep getting away with it without anyone noticing, why in the world should I want to stop?
@@danieltemelkovski9828 Just like any other moral theory, the social contract does not expect everyone (especially the psychopathic type in your hypothetical scenario) to agree in harmony, so you're really making an irrelevant point.
@@onionbelly_ A proponent of a moral theory may not expect every single person to be convinced by that theory, but all moral theories are required to respond to objections and challenges to them. If my objection can be dismissed as irrelevant simply because not all people can ever be expected to adhere to a single theory, then so can all objections to all moral theories be dismissed as irrelevant, which would bring moral debate to a standstill.
If a person "A" acts morally without any future reward for doing so, and person "T" acts morally for only the fear of the loss of some future reward. Who would a genius level God find more favorable? More importantly, who would a human find to be more moral? Could person "T" be considered moral at all? I've heard person "T" say in his own words that without the threat of eternal punishment that they would certainly not act morally. And that, is scary.
When God created rule "rape is bad", he either had reason for that or he hadn't have reason for that. If there was no reason, then all moral rules are arbitrary, there was nothing to stop God to decide rape is good. If there was reason why rape is bad, then those reasons are always valid, even without God, so you don't need God to realize that rape is bad.
This is by far the best argument to William Lane Craig I have seen. Hitchens and the rest always make strong arguments against Christianity, but sometimes fall short on the morality argument.
*"Hitchens and the rest always make strong arguments against Christianity,"* Really? What are those strong arguments? Are you aware of a video entitled, "The Sophistry of Christopher Hitchens" And, just in case it is important to you, the video is made by both an admirer of Hitch and an atheist.
I'm kind of disappointed Shelly didn't bring up Euthyphros Dilemma. Peronally I think both sides of the motion are wrong i.e, IMO, there are no 'objective' moral truths period. (Though Peter Singer claims to have an example of an moral truth i.e, 'My Own good is no more important than anyone elses from the point of view of the universe. But that's not what we have in mind by 'moral truths' anyway.). Shelly let go of the assumption that morality given by god is 'objective' unquestioned. When in-fact, this assumption doesn't hold up when one consider the euthyphros dillema . I.e, "Is something moral because God commanded it OR God commanded it because it is moral." If the former case is true, then morality is subjective and arbitrary to god's opinion. If the world was created by an all powerful demon instead, murder and rape could easily have been moral. It seems that morality boils down to 'Might makes right' in the former case of the dilemma. On the other hand if the latter is the case, then obviously the source of morality is something external to God and hence God is not a 'necessary' condition for the existence of moral truths. (Although it still might be the case that God is the only possible way for us humans to discover these truths.) I've seen craig's response to this dilemma and it is not convincing at all!
what if His nature, is moral. And that these moral laws stem from His nature. Also , to be moral in nature is different from then going ahead and commanding these laws onto other beings. This falls in the question of justice. Is it just to impose these laws onto mankind. Is it in His place. The biggest issue is not really logical i think. I honestly think humans have a general issue with God exercising His authority over our lives. They do not mind God, they just mind when He gets involved in a way that seems constricting to us. It is kind of like how we treat our parents sometimes. We expect them to provide and always love us yet we do not want to be limited by their household laws.
Proposing the social contract as the source of objective morality is a petitio principii, i.e. it begs the question, for an objective morality is required previously.
There is no anchor to ground objective moral duties with naturalistic atheism. If people or societies say that this is right or that is wrong then there isn’t really a right or wrong because once society says this and the other society says that but which society has the right to declare such higher standards than the other regardless of personal taste of feeling. ??? To love someone or to kill someone is absolutely equal if there is no standard beyond ourselves because without the highest standard then who is right? Was Joseph Stalin or Hitler absolutely right or was mother Theresa or any loving persons right? Person A says Joseph Stalin and Hitler was wrong for what they did but person B says Stalin and Hitler was right especially Stalin and Hitler themselves. Without a transcendent anchor objective moral values and duties are simply your word against the word of another person regardless of how you feel or how bitter you may be about it. 💯
David Hartzfield But if your anchor is the Abrahamic God who commited/commanded genocide and slavery, where do we draw the line of objectivity? Both standpoints actually ascribe to imagined constructs: atheism to reason, and theism to God (who isn't at all objective about the wrongness of not killing).
NEd Stormblessed where do we draw the line? First off, you claim the living God did something evil or bad but it seems you are stealing such an objective moral worldview to support your atheistic landscape to even be able to blame anyone for anything. Second, you would have to somehow show that God does not have sufficient moral reasons for permitting evil. God is free to create life as well as take it because He is the Locus, the absolute standard of good. If there is no God then to love a child or to abuse a child is equivalent. If there is no Causal Agent behind all creation then Hitler cannot be blamed for any wrong doing. It would be his Society’s view against another’s.
This is an excellent conversation. It's good to see a non- Christian be respectful to their opponent. Often they are quite aggressive and insulting when debating Christians and you see hate instead of objective debate.
Thanks Tara, it's good to see a Christian be respectful in the comment section. Often they are quite condescending, insulting and judgmental about atheists. Oh wait... never mind.
@@Roper122 I'm talking about neo- Atheist Debaters I've seen on livestream and pre-recorded podcasts- those seem to be the worst ( examples would be Dillahunty and Ra ) -maybe because they arent face-to -face, but there have been a few public venues as well. I'm not talking about your average non-believing person. Atheists often bring up the fact that they don't need a God in order to live morally, but then expect Christians to live up to some perfect standard. I guess if there is no God then everything is subjective, so maybe that's ok with them, but it's pretty hypocritical to bash someone personally for an entire debate instead of just laying your facts down and letting the Audience decide that way.
@@taramckinley7585 Oh.. so you're talking about a small minority? Didn't sound like that. I find christians can be just as insulting and aggressive, some of them even try to pretend that atheists just attack people personally and don't have any arguments. Speaking for myself, I've never seen a debate where the atheist side had no argument and just bashed someone. Ironically none of your posts have any argument, they're just judging people. Hmmmm.
@@taramckinley7585 Not offended, just pointing out the obvious problem with yours. Next time I'll just be aggressive and insulting... since that's how we are, as you point out... you know.. in your opinion.
It's so weird. For Craig it is so important to have moral accountability on the cosmic eternal scale. But many christians believe that one can be forgiven by simple accepting god in your life and have a personal relation with god (or something like that). So there isn't actually any real accountability. Furhermore: if you really believe there is this all powerfull god whatching over us all the time. You would expect all christians to be on there best behaviour all the time (since god is always watching and will hold you accountable on the eternal scale). But that is not what you see. Christians, like everybody else will behave badly if they are convinced they can get away with it ---> because they do not actually believe god is watching.
Yes i agree with your objection here and i think craigs view of moral accountability contradicts his christian view of salvation. Although other christians catholic or greek orthordox etc may have a different view from his to be fair. Hes protestant so purgatory doesnt exist and salvation by Jesus supercedes morality. This is where i think Islam has a more robust version of moral accountability and ultimate justice & perhaps catholics which dont find atonement enough
What is morality and where did it come from? I think the first part of the question is easy to answer.Where did it come from is the big question. When you find out where it came from or even better, who or what is the highest authority that dictates morality? My simple answer is that YES, God is necessary for morality because he put it into his living creatures. However man is in a fallen state and thereby man becomes aberrated in his thought process and actions. So even for atheists,they are operating through faith because they don't know how the universe came into existence.They are believing without proof that some other kind of force or condition other than God caused the universe to be.
A beautiful distinction indeed to make between defining morality and defining morality's origins, thank you! For anyone that presumes that discovering morals is equivilent to understanding its origins, they miss the common religious argument you refer to here that Athiests may know what is moral even though they fail to realize that those morals, indeed, came from God. To that, I would push you to consider the Athiests' argument for origins, that is, rationality and reason. If both reason and God can be explained to be the origins of precisely the same moral values, then we would need a different means of testing which is the true origin. That position, in fact, could acknowledge the victory of Kagan's argument without disbelief: it would say that one could have objective morality created by rationality, it just so happens that the real objective reality is created by God. Perhaps reason is a faculty given be God to allow individuals to discover morality even if they are not able to discover God?
Given what Kagan says between 48:27 and 48:51, aren't we left with moral nihilism? Kagan says at a certain point we just have to decide some things are meaningful, but he doesn't offer any justification for his values in particular or any account for how values could be justified objectively in general. So far as I can tell the principle of not being able to go from an "ought" to an "is", if true, leaves us unable to ground any values, moral or otherwise. We may still hold them, and indeed we inevitably will because they are an inescapable feature of our psychology, but we will do so without objective justification. Craig is equally vulnerable to this line of thinking and he seemed not to fully engage with it in the debate. I am sure this has been put better by many others in the past. What I am unsure of is whether there has been a powerful rebuttal to this argument. If anyone has come across a solution to the problem of objectively grounding values, please leave a reference.
He did offer an explanation, though, through his contractarian thesis. In the part you're highlighting he was trying to stop Craig from keep on using infinite regression... and he did that by showing Craig that he can play that game too.
@Tony Droid I care and for a good reason. So you are wrong about that. Moreover, people like craig, who strawman and misunderstand the other's position even after it being explained to them multiple times, are annoying at best and dishonest at worst.
Someone with a PhD should know saying "if atheism is true ..." is completely nonsensical. The right usage would be "if, in fact, there is no god ..." Atheism, per se, isn't true nor false, it is just a position that's all.
@@soulcage6228 WLC uses the philosophical definition of "atheism". It is archaic and is not used by the general population of atheists today and he is smart enough to know that. That doesn't make us wrong nor right, It simply means the usage has changed and the ancient definition has not caught up. Just like the usage of "gay" or other words have changed. What matters in conversation is about respect and addressing the usages of terms being used. I dont go around telling you that you believe in only the gods of the hindu because you claim the label of theist. Instead I let you define your usage of the term and address that instead. Because I'm not a rude snot goblin and because I care about the conversations being had. Being anal about definitions gets you no where with anyone. It's basically shooting yourself in the foot and then claiming you won a race.
@ Time 1:18 on the video… Shelly Kagan says… "My view is that what morality boils down to is… don't harm and do help" That is as deep as it gets for Shelly Kagan. On Naturalism -- There is No real meaning, value & purpose to human existence. So, just make it all up with a social contract and don't harm anyone. William Lane Craig was clearly the winner in this discussion
+TheMirabillis What's the problem? He's talking about what he believes is the foundation for ethics. It can't get any deeper than that, and it wouldn't be any better if it could.
UkiWoDao What's the problem ? Craig is talking about what he believes is the foundation for ethics. It can't get any deeper than that, and it wouldn't be any better if it could.
+TheMirabillis If you're saying "it boils down to..." you're stating your foundation, the bedrock upon which your theory or belief rests. So, by definition, it couldn't get deeper than that. The point of contention is that you take, as Craig, "deep" to mean "ultimately" or transcendentally meaningfull. But I think Kagan asked a good question to which Craig never responded appropriately. How does the fact of our inevitable death make the good things we do any less good? If you're hungry and I offer you food, will you reject it on the grounds that it's "ultimately" pointless? I believe not.
UkiWoDao Craig did respond appropriately but either Kagan never understood what Craig was saying or didn't want to understand. If there is No God and all of life ends at the grave, then nothing does really matter. There would be no basis to say that child abuse, rape, or murder were really wrong actions.
+TheMirabillis Kagan asked: how is it that we either have ultimate meaning, or no meaning at all. Craig answered that it just seemed to him strange that we would have any significance, which of course isn't an answer, he's just repeating himself. And Kagan did give a basis for morality. Bad things harm you, so you want to avoid them. Others are mostly like you, so you should avoid it for them too. Rape, abuse and murder clearly do harm. So we shouldn't do it. Imagine a life in constant, agonizing pain. You would agree that no one would want that, not even for a day, let alone days or years. No one would like that regardless of ANY belief they might hold. You wouldn't want a day of constant, agonizing pain, even if you were told you were going to die the next day. You wouldn't want such a day even if you believed in the afterlife. This shows that It matters perfectly to you (and everybody else), not to be in constant, agonizing pain, regardless of you dying or having an afterlife.
An apologist is a philosopher who is not in search of truth, but seeks to prove his foregone conclusions with philosophical arguments. It's painful to listen to WLC:n incredibly poor, illogical arguments. He should be ashamed of himself, that he does not know the first thing about contemporary ethics.
+sauniz1 While I will say this is WLC worst debates but his arguments are sound and are based in logic. This happened to be one night that WLC was not as well prepared as he usually is. He almost looked confused at the questions and points Shelly was attempting to make and was not sure what angle to take. Yet again Shelly was unable to justify his point either but was able to look somewhat better doing it. The bases for morals will always allude naturalist unless they except that life is predestined to the mechanisms of the physical world and choices on morality really do not exist to the individual but are just a product of physics. How does rational thoughts on morality really come from irrational physical states?
+Casey Skipper What I'd like to hear from WLC is proofs for his christian premises: That Jesus was the Son of God, that Jesus died for our sins, that the Bible is the word of God etc. You never hear these proven, because to him they proven a priori, through inner experience. Well, WLC, so claims every religionist on this planet. How is YOUR inner experience "more real" than these others'? His arguments with regards to ethics fail also. A) While it may be true that objective moral values would be nice to have, that does not mean they exist. He uses a sort of abductive reasoning towards the most convenient. Just because something would be nice, if it were true, does not mean it is. B) Contemporary ethics can point to natural laws to give us an objective basis for morality. That does not mean that it would not need to have a human interpretative component, but C) so do theists. How is the Bible an objective moral guide? Who has the objective way to read this incredibly ambiguous and multifaceted library of ancient literature? There are tens of thousands of christian sects right now who base their identities on a certain way of reading the Bible. Every interpretation is different and has it's basis on the situation at hand and the interpreters own values and world view. Even if the Bible was objective, unerring and unambiguous, where would we get an objective and unerring interpreter for it?
+sauniz1 I don't really argue for biblical truths but I have read it cover to cover. Old testament is very tough reading. The argument for a creator seems to be reasonable from other angles as well but the moral argument seems very troubling to me if I accept the naturalistic view. It seems that most naturalistic moral arguments begin with the assumption that life has a reason to want to continue living and reproducing. Why is a complicated arrangements of elements have a desire to want to continue on and make more of them. This gives meaning in the same way as two atoms creating a bond. Irrational to me and I reject the idea that rational thought can come from irrational building blocks. It's like arguing something (time and space) came from nothing with no cause. We have never in human experience seen or accepted a result without a cause until atheist asked us to. This is why theist will say atheist have more faith then they do and build a logical argument from there.
Phelan Exactly. Christians don't get the morality from the Bible, but from the wisdom of the world, which the Bible condemns as foolishness in God's sight. They adapt their interpretation of the Bible to the surrounding culture, values, practices etc.
Casey Skipper Science has not given us a solution to the problem of the first cause. It hasn't "proven" that a quantum flux, gravity or a natural law has started the universe. Until it has, we should keep asking these questions - these are most important ones there are. But we also should not assume that this creator, if there is one, is a human-like personality who is actively and directly involved with his creation. Why would you assume that this creator creates a universe in a Big Bang, let's it develop billions of years, but then has to go back to it and supernaturally give man rationality and ethics, rather than creating a universe in which these develop naturally over time? I think this makes the creator irrational. It seems to think that the creator would have created an imperfect universe to begin with which "he" has to fix later.
Craig seems completely unable to respond to the question "why do our actions have to be ETERNALLY significant for them to be significant?" Also, at around 1:17:31 - Kagan's question to Craig, then the "I'm not sure you get the advantage". Smack down.
It's funny that WLC is just determined to shoehorn some mystical, magical, external source to basic human feelings. His inability to extract himself from his own preconceptions is just astonishing. He has no basis whatsoever for his beliefs but he is going to overlay them on reality no matter what.
@@samdgh9473 I have no idea what you are pointing to, here. Descriptive laws do not require a law-giver, social requirements do not require a requirer. Are you saying that WLC was right about something? If so, what?
@@dienekes4364 Did you listen from where the link opened for all of 2 seconds? If you'd have listened for 20 seconds you'd have heard Kagan say, "Indeed this very argument has been embraced by some atheistic philosophers, who say, 'yeah, you know, talk of moral requirements does presuppose a lawgiver. Now that I no longer believe in God, I believe there are no moral requirements'" Apparently, it is not just WLC who is, *"just determined to shoehorn some mystical, magical, external source to basic human feelings"* But of course, you demonstrate poor listening skills. Nowhere does Craig say that we need any, *"external source to basic human feelings."* 2:32, 22:49, 23:29 (listen for longer that 2 seconds) Kagan and Craig agree with each other that God is not necessary for anyone to act in any sort of way or to 'feel' any sort of thing.
49:28 If we agree that we all have these values, then why does the explanation for why we have them matter to morality itself? Would it change the fact that we have the same values by which we can objectively evaluate good and bad actions? No, we already agree that is the case. So I don't see how it would change anything about the way we do morality, therefore I don't see what it matters. Supposedly Craig wants them to come from God because then there would be an objective source we can point to by which to agree on them, but he starts his argument by saying that this is already done.
It matters infinitely. For morality to matter, people have to matter. But if we are just accidental collections of atoms, there is no reason to think people do matter because a 150-pound man is then of no more value than the collection of atoms that makes up 150 lbs of dead leaves. All these secular attempts to ground morality assume that human life has value but if there is no God, there us no reason to think it's true. They're forced to play make-believe and say, well we can create value and meaning inside our heads. But somehow this idea is suddenly out of bounds when someone makes up God inside his head. Make-believe is suddenly not only out of vogue but the target of ridicule. The grounds for a lasting moral code has to exist first outside of every human head because no matter what secular philosophers tell you, a bunch of people getting together and agreeing that human life has value is not the same as human life actually havung value.
@@davidplummer2619 Money doesn't have inherent value. Are you just making believe that whatever currency you use to buy things and accept as payment at your job is worth anything? Did God imbue the dollar with purchasing power or was that western society? "no matter what secular philosophers tell you, a bunch of people getting together and agreeing that human life has value is not the same as human life actually havung value." No matter what theists tell me, a bunch of priests getting together and agreeing that God wants us to value certain things isn't the same as people actually valuing those things. Value is relative by definition: water is the most valuable thing in the world to someone lost in a desert but nearly worthless to someone vacationing in an oasis. Philosophers don't arbitrate that, and neither does God. We either agree or disagree on the value of something based on our own subjective experiences and act accordingly, regardless of if it has any "actual" value; this is demonstrable reality. Value serves no purpose outside of influencing how people act in accordance with it, so the very idea of an objective "actual" value existing ethereally beyond us is nonsensical. The best you can do is point to God's subjective values and try to justify following those based on his actions, but you're gonna have to demonstrate his existence first. Can you show me ANYTHING in reality that doesn't reflect value as subjective?
@@davidplummer2619 Furthermore, on a purely naturalistic account, any existing moral inclinations we have would be better treated as obstacles to overcome rather than ideals to nurture. The sooner you stop feeling bad about committing an 'immoral' act, the sooner you can start taking advantage of opportunities to act immorally. Those bad feelings are just 'in your head' and have no meaning or significance beyond that.
In other words, incompatibilists might think that there are no norms whatsoever if determinism is true. This would erode the intuitive bases on which Rawls' theory is constructed. That said, Kagan probably isn't too worried, since compatibilism has been very well defended in the last 20 years. The defense goes like this: we think that people who are mentally ill or under coercion aren't morally responsible. But that's not because they lack free will; it's because they're unable to use reason.
A great debate all around, and in particular a great showing from Shelly. He's the only debater so far to prevail over WLC to such a degree ; even though Sam Harris held his own in his debate with Craig (unlike the late, great Hitch, who was sadly ripped to shreds), Shelly is literally in a class of his own here.
Not with his WE ground for morality because the soviet or the communist china party can as well do evil on that basis of WE grounding of morality. His worldview is subjective and are matter of opinion on atheist ground. He talked too many words saying just one or two.
What does WE mean? But, you're mixing moral ontology with moral epistemology. Theists also do evil out of a bad exegesis, for example. Kagan's view is not subjective. At least no more than math is. Mathematics are in... our minds. They're pretty much imagination, yet they inform us about the external world. When people who understand Math die, then Math will disappear. Yet we don't say Math are a popularity poll. Same with Kagan's social contract. It's not subjective just because it has individuals. (That's the reason why Craig didn't openly said it was subjective. Craig knows enough about philosophy of mind to avoid such assertion. Sorry, dude, you're not smarter than Craig.)
@Malola Zap evil out of bad exegesis is the danger of subjectivity, which I pointed out in the WE grounding. You can't skip ontology to epistemology. The question is about moral ontology. Not how we come to know them. Theists will say God already infused reason and conscience in us to accent to morality. So, there is no debate about that even with atheists. Where atheists differ is when claiming that the foundation is subjective and grounded in the WE consent. Thereby making it a popular vote. Morality is not mathematics. Math is indifferent to morality. Math is quantitative, not qualitative, and ethical. Maths doesn't tell me that greed is evil; rather, it tells that greed can multiply one's wealth, which can be good applying math. Morality addresses whether it is good or bad. Not math.
many will say that they are moral without God. This is not true. 1st morality does not exist unless God exist. 2nd ) God does exist thus we have all broken his laws, thus none of us are moral creatures without Jesus
He also endorses genocide, so this is far from the worse thing he's done. We destroy him in debate and everyone complains we pick on easy targets. Can theists just get together and decide who's a decent serious apologist so we can debate those.
@@Ozzyman200who cares if it violates your right What’s your justification for why it’s wrong , I don’t wanna bear your opinion. Why ought not I commit genocide
25:58 The problem here is that the Bible comes nowhere near to describing a God that is morally good...More often than not the Bibles God is morally repugnant...
@@flyingphoenix113 The faculties of reason and logic. Don't give them to us if we can't use them. Are you a parent? Would you divide your children by telling one of them it's chosen over and over for a lifetime? If you answer yes I can guarantee you your other siblings will hate both you as a parent and the chosen offspring. You've sown ineptitude and discord as a parent and this is inarguable! In the words of Trump, you should be fired from parenting!
@22alexraider Please go ply your unsubstantiated Jewish bullshit somewhere else...But If Yahweh/Yeshua brings back his preferred method of marriage: polygamy, then I guess I won't complain too much!
But what about Yaakov's situation? What about more than one wife? The clear halacha is that both min haTorah (on a Torah level) and mid'rabbanan (through rabbinical legislation) a man can have as many wives as are willing to marry him (as long as he can support them). No one implies that this is less than moral nor in the least bit abnormal.
When Shelly puts Craig on the spot and forces him to justify his view on the moral irrelevancy of torture without theism (about 57:00), Craig gets physically anxious and visibly unsure of his answer. His hand starts shaking. At least somewhere inside of himself he realized what he was saying was absurd. Of course torture matters whether god exists or not.
Shelly struggles to ground his "objective" morality. We recognize that hurting people is wrong so it is objectively wrong on his view. He gives us no reasons for why "hurting people" is wrong. Objective morals seem to float in the universe like stars, or like laws of nature waiting to be discovered. Suppose the Germans had won WWII. And that all dissenters of the Nazi philosophy had been exterminated. Everyone remaining would recognize that hurting people, especially non-Arian people was actually good. The moral "recognition test" is always subjective not objective. Unless one thinks the universe spits out morals the way it does quarks, and atoms, galaxies and planets, there are no such things as morals. Now Shelly is right to say he can live morally without belief in God. But he seems to join a long line of philosophers who want to bootstrap an objective account of morals without God and then spends over an hour discussing the issue without one reason for why we should believe it. He should give up and go the way of the existentialist who had the courage to say all morals are subjective and illusory.
Uber Genie The creatures we need to take under moral consideration are the sentient one. Sentience is the capacity to be affected positively or negatively. It is the capacity to have experiences. It is not the mere capacity to perceive stimuli or react to some by action, as in the case of a machine that performs certain functions when we press a button. Sentience, or the ability to feel, is something different, namely the ability to receive and react to such stimuli consciously, by experiencing them from the inside. If we take this as a criteria, we can easily set some objective requirements as to not undermine the autonomy of conscious beings , not to harm conscious beings , not to deprive them from potential happiness etc. With well being as the moral goal i think we can make a very distinct, non relative indicators that need to be met. Regardless of what you believe in , murder will not contribute to the recipient's well being nor will it respect his autonomy.
stefan klisarov Thanks for your reply. I agree with your perspective. And my cats are thankful I have that perspective. That said, my problem with Shelly and numerous other philosophers that hold this view of morality is no reason is given why we should hold this view. What does he ground his morality on? Is moral truth of the variety, "Sentience is the criterion for creation or moral codes," something we just discover, like the law of gravity? Why on Darwinian Evolution isn't the view of the Nazi's more appropriate as a criterion for moral codes, if cultures are to out-compete their neighbors for limited resources? Why is it wrong for a man not to rape as many women as possible in his fertile lifetime in order to maximize the propagation of his DNA? Especially given that a large number of my ape ancestors raped early and often in order for me to even be here. Why not continue the family tradition? Especially if sentience is the criterion, animals are sentient and yet a large portion of them are raped during the mating process. Why don't we call it rape? Why call it rape if two homo sapiens are involved? Isn't that speciesism? So we actually agree wholeheartedly on moral values, but the grounding of them is what I am interested in getting at? And if we don't anchor them properly we end up with the values of Nazi German with no idea how we got there.
***** Thanks for your thoughts. Consider my reply to Stefan. The Germans redefined the term "people" to be "superior people" and they eliminated chaos and discord in society. All dictatorship eliminate chaos and discord, often quite literally. And on Darwinian Evolution, why would I help a competitor for limited resources instead of striving to survive by out-competing. Often that means killing and eating competition in other species. I need a better explanation why that would all of a sudden not apply to me just because I have a more developed frontal lobe. "To Serve Man" is the new book on morality that I am writing. Don't tell anyone, but it is actually a cookbook!
+Uber “Genius” Genie The Golden rule is simple and straightforward and grounds our behavior objectively without recourse to an entity with cosmic significance. If you are doing something bad to another animal, typically causing pain, you know that is the case because if that was done to you then you know that would be painful and you wouldn't like it. In the latter case you would consider it wrong to have pain inflicted on yourself, and similarly a normal conscious and sentient person would accept, as an objective fact, that to inflict that pain on another living being would also be wrong. Those objective facts to not need further grounding by appeal to a deity. Yes there are sentient beings who do not consider it wrong to inflict harm on others. Some enjoy it, and some even have no feelings whatsoever. We identify such people as suffering from various levels of psychopathic and narcissistic personality disorders. It is possible for whole communities and societies to fall into destructive and psychopathic behaviours. Recourse to a deity is not needed to understand and identify that objective fact with regard to the Third Reich or to consider the specific causes of those particular events. Indeed there are destructive and psychopathic behaviours around much of western culture that again does not require recourse to a cosmic deity or overlord to understand. Nor, more importantly, to understand the objective truth of alternatives behaviours and outcomes that would be less destructive and psychopathic
+myroseaccount You said you were going to ground morality objectively and we got a restatement of golden rule and other moral codes. Plato and Aristotle ground it in God(s). Not the God of the Bible but something outside and above human. Why are the atheists from Hume on who reject objective moral values as unground able wrong.?
Poor Bill Craig. He really ought to avoid dialogues like this in the future and stick to amateur atheists. With a guy like Kagan, he's just being taken to school , in an almost embarrassing way.
It's pretty obvious who "won". I am talking about the Q&A part. For example, Shelly keep asking why Craig think that if our actions doesn't matter on an eternal cosmic scale then it doesn't matter on our scale, and what was the answer of Craig ? That if our actions doesn't matter on an eternal cosmic scale then it doesn't matter on our scale... Several time, Shelly ask, and several time Craig repeat what was already in the question...
Tyson Sprinter Craig think that if our actions don't have eternal cosmic significance, then they don't have any significance. Shelly asked why several time, why not having eternal cosmic significance would mean not having significance at all. And Craig keep repeating the same thing without any explanation.
What's embarrassing, for you I might add, is that nobody said, anywhere, that anybody gets objective morality from science anywhere in the debate, fool.
There was only one problem in this debate & it happens every time. WLC is talking ontologically. SK does not accept it goes that deep & kept talking epistemologically. In effect, without god, you cannot root this, regardless of robustness. SK kept to, this is how we know it is moral, not this is the source of those morals. There is a difference & source was the question. What was not on display here, but often is, is the slide from good, as in a good steak & good, as in superman does good. That is what Sam Harris does. Over all, I found this an enlightening experience. I liked the ideas that SK put forth. I still think they need a deeper grounding, but it was very solid. There was a lack of resolution. Why are the Nazis objectively wrong? He Never really cleared that up. WLC could have better linked back why a more short term good, might not be as useful. Still good either way.
Ok hold on a second. I'm not an atheist because I don't want to believe in God and I'm not an atheist because I don't want to go to heaven and I'm not an atheist because hell isn't a scary concept. I'm an atheist because the Christian worldview I don't see comports with reality. I listen to some of the best most educated Christians on the planet like in these debates, I read the bible, I go to church when I'm asked I've gone to many different churches to hear many different opinions and when I was younger I believed in God and I went to church with some issues and they tried to help me out and it didn't really help me. That's not why I don't believe but I just see no reason that convinces my mind that a God exists. I don't control that I don't choose to not believe. If it was a choice I would choose because it's nice that I can see my grandma or my mom again but quoting a Bible verse or telling me that I'm going to rot in hell is not going to convince me it's going to push me further away. People talk about their personal experiences well I haven't had that. I honestly sought out a God and I never got anything and if you say that I did I just didn't see it or I rejected it, number one you have no idea what I've experienced, and number two if I could possibly have ignored it or not recognized it then it's not something that would have convinced me. I would not be able to deny the evidence that it would take to convince me of a god. Now you can say that violates free will but I disagree and here's why. I could know that a God exists and I could still reject him. God supposedly has revealed himself to many many people as I've heard their testimonies I've read it in the Bible and I have not gotten that revelation. So I'm honestly seeking out truth and while I don't believe in a God and I think a lot of the positions are ridiculous, I would gladly change my mind if my mind was legitimately convinced and I can't force myself to be legitimately convinced. You could point a gun at my head and say you better love me right now or I'm going to blow your fucking brains out and I would tell you I love you but it would be a lie because I don't love you. Because I can't love you because you're pointing a gun at me. Well I can't force myself to love something I don't believe in so the best that I could do is say Jesus Christ is my savior and I repent for my sins but this isn't a human being we're talking about this is a God and that God would know that I'm lying. Not because I don't want God to be true but because I'm just not convinced and a lot of the things that people have tried to convince me have pushed me away and made me wonder about the goodness of this god. They talk about drowning the whole planet they talk about owning people as property they talk about beating slaves and not getting punished they talk about women being inferior to men they talk about homosexuals being an abomination when in fact most of the ones I know are some of the best people on the planet and I know that they don't choose who to love. I had my best friend cry on My shoulder because he didn't want to be gay and he tried to force himself to date girls and it made him miserable he had horrific depression he wanted to kill himself and once he just accepted who he was he never had depression again besides some bummed out times here and there and even then he didn't want to be gay. So now he's going to burn in hell for eternity because of something he doesn't want to be? You can't force yourself to be with someone that you don't love and it's unfair to tell someone that they have to be miserable their whole life because they were born liking the other sex and that's sickening. I can't love a God that supports that I simply can't there's nothing that I can do to force myself to agree with that. Now you can tell me I'm going to burn in hell and you can threaten me and you can try to scare me but that's not going to make me love that God the best that's going to make me do is lie just like I did to the person holding the gun to my head and I'm pretty sure God is going to know so I'm going to be punished for all of eternity for things I can't control? I don't control my beliefs I don't choose not to believe I don't turn my back I just don't believe. I cannot change that without evidence. So if I burn in hell for all of eternity if God is actually real, then I'm going to say I'm sorry but you didn't do your job to show me that you exist. You chose to take a book that appears to conflict with what we can demonstrate, you gave us anecdotal evidence and pretty much no contemporary writings, no originals a bunch of translations, I can look around at the world and I can see people today that I can go talk to that have claimed to be abducted by Aliens. I don't believe them and that's better evidence than the bible. I can talk to people who have seen Tupac and Elvis after they died and I don't believe them but I can actually go talk to them and that's better evidence. I don't understand how people can think it's okay for someone like me who donates money to charity who spends time at children's hospitals with kids that have cancer, who adopts dogs that are on death bed within a year so they don't have to die in a shelter, i employ homeless people around my house and I let them shower and shave and brush their teeth and I feed them and I pay them well and I give them blankets in the winter time, but I'm going to hell simply for not believing? I don't fucking choose that so how the hell am I supposed to get into heaven if I don't see anything that convinces me? And it's not just me. Almost 70% of the planet believes in a different God or the wrong God according to christianity. So if God is looking down and seeing those numbers how can he blame anyone but himself? If that was a teacher they would be fired. People make excuses for God in the Bible all the time and some of the stuff in there is just disgusting and some of the things that I've heard? If those types of people are getting into heaven, then why would I want to spend eternity in heaven with them? If John down the street can come and rape my child in front of me and rape my wife in front of me and then murder them in front of me and then rape me and murder me and then get arrested and confess to his sins and convert to Christianity and repent and then die a month later of a heart attack, I get to meet him in heaven if I'm a christian? That's disgusting. I can't think of a hell that could possibly be worse than spending eternity with the person who raped and murdered me and my family. That's not moral it doesn't matter if Jesus sacrificed himself to himself that is disgusting and the fact that good people go to hell simply because they did not see enough to believe is embarrassing and the fact that you people believe that makes me want to go to hell if it's real because no amount of torture could be worse than spending eternity with you. But if you truly want God to save me and you want me to believe then I want every single person to read this to pray to God to reveal himself in a way that I know he's real. I don't know how he would do that, but if he's real he knows and he should be able to do it no problem and if he's real I will gladly stop being an atheist. And if I can have a conversation with him and ask him some questions and he can say well this is why this happened this is why this happened I might even follow him and repent and all that stuff but I can't do that until I know that a god exists. I can't take it on faith because I could easily be believing in the wrong God based on faith so I need evidence and that's the only thing that's going to convince me and there's no Bible verse it's going to do that there's no threat of hell that's going to do that the only thing that's going to do that is a God that reveals himself to me like he did with Saul on the Damascus road experience
I would urge folks to listen to Kagan's closing comments. That on the question you need something of "cosmic significance" to ground morality, the cosmic significance being God, then the answer is no.
I'm 13 mins in, this guy is not a deep thinker, but scholar, and he seemly incapable to bring this subject one step deeper from the obvious conceptual impression.
Positive moral behaviour is observed in some animals, like examples of empathy and a sense of justice. Yet animals are obviously not God worshipers, nor did they receive a set of rules written on a tablet. Not surprisingly it's the social animals that more commonly exhibit these behaviours, so it very much looks like "being a good person" (or beast) is a biological advantage in a group. No God required, just knowing that what's good for the group is good for the individual who's part of the group.
Without God there is no justification or incentive for me to be good as long as I don't get caught or stay in power, I can keep being immoral as much as I like
Craig's problem is that he equates atheism with nihilism, an error so fundamentally inexcusable for a philosophy professor he certainly deserved to lose the debate.
@@superdog797 how else could someone think it doesn’t matter when someone is saving someone else’s life if the solar system will cease to exist in a few billion years smh.
@@oliverhug3 Teach us wise one! Everyone clings to their ideas out of fear; only you have arrived at the truth by freedom! You are morally superior not through any action to help others, but simply by having superior beliefs in your mind. If only we agreed with you then we too could be superior.
@@stevedoetsch you should keep your day job. Your telepathic abilities let much to desire. It is kinda fun when we can just define the positions of others and state what they do or do not know do we? Just toss respect and civil discourse right out the window and just build some strawmen to burn.🙂
As the end of the debate draws near, Shelly, you try to take the moral high ground by claiming that eating and wearing animals is wrong, yet early in the discussion you make the point that the higher significance of human morality versus the lack of morality in animals is that animals lack moral awareness and ability to distinguish any moral significance and therefore animals killing animals is not murder, and forced copulation is not rape amongst animals. Why, therefore is humans killing animals, especially for some benefit, (to keep me warm, or because they are yummy and nutritious) - yet wrong? If animals are indeed a lower species, without ability to ever conceive morality, and their actions among themselves we acknowledge are without moral significance, (we do not call their behavior rape or murder but simply copulation and survival of the fittest) why are we bound by some moral obligation to treat them differently than we acknowledge it is acceptable to us that they treat themselves?
+Kevin Middleton Because presumably, some of us know the difference. Please watch the debate again if this is your question. If you have the same moral development as a lion or dog, then I understand your confusion.
First, animals are not a species. Second, humans are animals too. Unless you think we are plants or fungi. Third, „lower species“ do not exist. There is no invisible ladder in the biological process of evolution where humans are on the top rung.
Kagan may be a better adversary to WLC in this debate as opposed to others…but again doesn’t explain why any “wrong” act is wrong. Kagan presupposes that harming people or anything of the sort is wrong without explaining why. His explanation is because we can reason, but that doesn’t make something right or wrong. If you take away presuppositions they have no argument. All of the atheists reasoning become circular at that point. WLC doesn’t press hard enough though, he shouldn’t have let him get away with dodging the actual question. Great debate overall
To me and like minded people "Good" and "Bad" are words used to describe movement or points on a reference standard or scale conceptualised by man that is based upon our shared values like human wellbeing, empathy and equality. Whilst "God" is also a man made concept, the percieved whims of this "God" do not reflect these shared values and thus are irrelevant in any discussion of morality.
@@trumpbellend6717 I see your point, but that would make Good and Evil subjective not Objective. Shelly Kagan argued that morality is Objective, not subjective
Sure! Rawls' theory is a kind of contractarianism; it states that we should follow the rules that we would agree to if we were (i) perfectly rational, (ii) totally selfish, and (iii) unaware of what our place in society would be. (The third condition is supposed to ensure that the rules are fair.) Notice that the social contract isn't written up out of thin air: it presupposes some basic norms of rationality, which are revealed by intuition. Incompatibilists might deny these basic intuitions.
Kagan conceded the point that without God there might not be _cosmic_ meaning, but did not concede that there is no _ultimate_ meaning. There is a difference because "ultimate" just implies whatever the highest level is, while "cosmic" means on a scale that is relevant to every nook and cranny of the cosmos. You can still have ultimate moral meaning under secularism, so I would say this idea is not correct. The other point you asserted was that morality has to be made up, and is only utilitarian, on atheism. This would also be mistaken. When you say "made up" you're acting as if humans just make up all moral conclusions. The whole point Kagan made was that that's wrong - moral analysis has a sound and concrete basis that allows for moral conclusions to be objectively verified, and he clearly explained the criteria: don't harm, do help. If it meets that criteria, it's moral. The fact that some moral questions might be difficult to characterize exactly in this fashion doesn't mean that one cannot make _any_ objective moral conclusions - it's easy to see if something is harmful or helpful in general. What's difficult is in many details sometimes, but of course, theism has the exact same problem, which is why you have different moral answers on theism too. Theists and atheists share the exact same intellectual dilemma with regards to morality in this way, so again, I think you're mistaken. Even on theism, like on atheism, the basic moral premise "morality is what God says" is a simple one, but one could still ask "Well even if God exists why should I keep a morality that is based on what God says?" which is the *exact same dilemma* the secular person is in when they can ask "Well why should I keep a morality that is based on avoiding harm and doing help?" The two systems are in the same _logical_ footing in that regard. The difference, which Kagan conceded, is that there is a _cosmic enforcer_ in Craig's framework, and Kagan said he lacks that. So he conceded that point. But that does not bear a whit on the _analytical veracity_ of the moral systems, which is why Kagan placed greater value on education, the state, and critical thinking than Craig did (at least it seemed that way to me). The last point you made was morality on atheism is just about usefulness (utility). The thing is that that's true on theism too, if you insist that we talk about morals in this way. What is the *use* of morality on atheism? First of all it's just human nature, and second of all, it enriches the quality of most everybody's lives. What is the *use* of morality on theism? Well on Craig's theism, it's the exact same thing - it's our nature and it enriches the quality of our lives. It's literally the exact same thing. The only difference, again, is the notion of the cosmic enforcer. And that's a serious moral point that Kagan conceded - he just doesn't think it's the single determinative factor in assessing the two moral systems and doesn't bear on whether or not we can have morality without God.
@@superdog797 without God, there is no objective meaning friend. Ghengis Kahn's morality is as valid as any other. "we don't do harm, we help" is just as fabricated an simply based on the preferences of a deterministic stimulus response machine (AKA human). Any moral structures are a construction of a brain that was a result of unguided processes and therefore have no Ultimate or even higher meaning Ultimate vs cosmic is semantics. Yes, you can construct a subjectively useful morality by the will of the majority. You can construct morality based on "human flourishing" or whatever made up terms Sam Harris comes up with. It is all meaningless. All the mental gymnastics and the world won't change that. Sorry.
@@brycew2 I appreciate your comment but you seem to lack open-mindedness on the subject, and I think you should explore it some more in the interest of philosophy and growth. You may not agree or change your mind in the end and that's fine and goes for me and everyone else too, but I would avoid making the kind of absolutist statements that you seem to have made, as long as you aren't willing to qualify them. Can you explain why the views of morality of one specific agent - God - should be considered objective? In physics, there is a principle that there is no privileged reference frame. The reason for that is that under any reference frame measurements can be made that accurately predict measurable outcomes, and this is true in spite of the fact that it means that all time and space are relative to the observer - there is no true/privileged singular universal space or time. The technical points are not the relevant one here - the point is that there is no privileged reference frame because there is no _logical a priori reason_ that compels us to accept one. You can _always_ arbitrarily choose some reference frame, and in fact you must, if you want to solve physics problems. But that will never mean that the reference frame is privileged in an _absolute_ sense. All reference frames are equal This is analogous to morality in the relevant sense, based on the principle nobody can get an "ought" from an "is" (perhaps you've heard this famous Humean remark? Do you agree or disagree with it?) - there is no privileged reference frame of morality unless we _agree_ or _assert_ that there is, or if we _select_ one to solve a moral question. Why? Because _logic_ does not _compel_ us to accept one particular reference frame of moral statements to true. The fact that, according to some, it "is" the case that God says X, Y, and Z, are moral does not mean that we "ought" to _agree_ that those are, in fact, moral. The moral framework you are _asserting_ exists, asserting, not demonstrating, proving, or noticing is a universal feature, is logically fallacious in this exact sense - you are asserting there is a particular privileged reference frame, despite there being no a priori logic that compels us to accept that such a frame exists. Again, what compels anyone, even IF God exists, to accept the God's reference frame? The answer is that there is none, because categorically morality is not pure logic and is always based on values and perspectives, which are not shared universally. Again, there is no privileged reference frame. On theism, the only difference is that God is conceived of as the biggest, strongest guy on the block - you can't _demonstrate_ that God's moral perspective _must_ be privileged - you just, as a wise and self-interested agent, should realize that God may or may not have an opinion about YOUR actions on morality, and may take actions in response to your actions on the basis of his judgment on your moral actions. It just means that there is an enforcer of a specific moral framework on the basis of power, not that the perspective is _intrinsically_ privileged, again, because there is nothing in the fabric of reality that logically compels us to accept one particular moral perspective - even God's - over any other. You can always make the case that it might be _wise_ to act according to God's moral system, but that doesn't make that moral system _intellectually_ superior. So I'd be curious to hear your reasoning on why you might disagree with what I'm saying. I've given this considerable thought and nobody can ever explain with a priori logic why we should privilege one moral perspective - all recourses have always relied on values and self-interest and power considerations. Those are fine and relevant and wise to consider, but we cannot mix these vocabulary fallaciously in a discussion on whether or not theism can provide objective morality any more than atheism can. That just wouldn't be intellectually honest.
@@superdog797 you've given this a lot of thought and I read your comment and thank you. I don't have 30 mins that I want to reply. Sorry. Really you've used science, which has nothing to say about morality or how we should act. You've also brought up Hume's is ought problem which I am very familiar with but don't wish to adress for 5 paragraphs. To summarize it, scientific materialism and science facts tell us nothing about how we should act. If there is no god, and or no higher morality, no order, then morality is simply agreed upon by purposeless meat puppets who have no free will. It may be making useful for peace, but it is inevitably a razor thin superficial construction. You can count this as youve won the argument, because I am not wishing to engage further. Why? Well, Ive seen this conversation 1000 times. Philosophy is used to go on and on and on into an intolerable seemingly infinite regress, and it is nonsense. Philosophy is dead. Accept it and skip philosophy, which is another subjective construction of purpose contrived in a purposelessness brain. There is something higher, or there is nothing high at all.
@@brycew2 Well I appreciate that you read it at least. I get that it's hard to reply and it's exhausting not generally worth it depending on how you spend your time at different times. I'd say it's a no contest instead of a victory. Which again is fine. I would say though that I'd make a clarification. I can agree with you that science doesn't give us moral obligations, not really at least - it just describes factual elements in the world. But I noticed you dismissed my assessment on the grounds that you seemed to think it was based on science. The thing is, it isn't. I didn't make an argument that says implies any moral framework. I was using science as one example - of many one could choose from - to illustrate that, sometimes, there are situations in which there are no privileged points of view. I could have chosen a thousand different examples but I just happened to choose science out of personal preference and because it's an interesting and somewhat counter-intuitive example, but any other example would have done fine. So again, the point was not that science shows that morality of a particular kind is or isn't universal. That's not scientific. The point - the _logic_ I was demonstrating - was that morality can _never_ be "absolutely objective" in the way that people often want it to be, even IF there is a God. Why? Because there is no privileged reference frame, and there is nothing in logic or science that _compels_ us to accept one particular moral view. This is actually the _exact same intuitive point_ you _yourself_ are coming back to over and over again, but the _difference_ is that you are simply _assigning_ God's reference frame as "morally special" and then saying "There... I've solved the problem, and now morality is absolutely objective." That is _faulty_ logic because there _is_ no logic behind it at all. The same goes for literally whatever you want to name - and that includes _meaning_ itself. God's existence, even if he exists and created everything for a purpose, does not give _absolute objective meaning_ to your life or anybody else's, because _meaning itself_ does not work in this way. Meaning is something that is _inherently subjective_ - i.e. it is _subject_ to a _personal_ perspective (that's what subjective means right? personal views, whereas objective means not dependent upon personal views, right?). And in most western theologies, God is a *person* and *personal* and hence God is not _capable_ of instilling "absolutely objective meaning" in anyone or anything, _because God is a person_ and _being a person_ *precludes* the possibility that one's views on morality or meaning could even BE "absolutely objective." They can't, and all I was doing was pointing this self-evident fact out. One might still find a greater - a more satisfying - view of life in the idea of a God with a natural tendency and a plan for their lives and who has a moral code that he designed with us in mind and pronounces judgements on and the whole bit - and that's *fine* - it's perfectly fine if it is a _more satisfying_ perspective for people. I have no doubt it is, because it simplifies many things. But it *cannot solve the "problem" of objective vs. subjective morality* which SO many theists purport it does solve. And I merely wish to express and reiterate that point, since I find it so commonly asserted. I agree with you that philosophy is generally a sort of droning exercise, but I don't dismiss it outright and find it to be an inevitable element in life and any discussion. Even a dismissal of philosophy that is more than just a hand motion and requires analysis - as you provided yourself - is an _instance_ of philosophy. I think as a _field_ of historical knowledge and analysis philosophy may or may not be of intnerest to you or anyone else, but EVERYONE should care about the _ability_ to use good, sound reasoning and judgement, and come to firm conclusions. So even if philosophy is not one's preferred field for whatever reason (which really it isn't mine either), that's well and good, but I don't think it allows anybody to just dismiss philosophical analysis if that analysis really informs them that they should be taking a different view. I don't agree that meaning is vacuous either on secular naturalism but for brevity's sake won't go into it at this moment, as that would require a great deal more analysis.
(1/2) Were we much further advanced than the Nazis or Bolshevists? WW2 was 70 years ago. If you cannot judge people hundreds of years ago, why can you judge them 70 years ago? Or for that matter why can you judge different societies supposing they may be "evolving" at a different rate? But the crux of it is this: If morality is not objective than it is subjective or, in other words, up to the individual. And at that point why is your opinion on morality anymore correct than another?
Craig is completely right: without God humans are nothing but a coordinated set of chemical reactions. Even pain and suffering are nothing but chemical reactions. Chemical reactions are neither wrong nor right. Hence, life or death are neither right nor wrong. Only God can give men an intrinsic objective value.
Actually, if it takes God (a being with a mind and the conscious will to make the decision to do so) to give something value, that value is not objective, but subjective, as the value is subject to God and not within the object, itself. Objective: Owned by or residing within the object. Subjective: Owned by or residing within the mind with regards to the object. Oh, and who cares if pain and suffering are chemical reactions. They're still pain and suffering. The notion that a person needs a supernatural element in order to have any importance only suggests that you don't think people are important on their own.
God is outside of our realm of existence. Therefore, if God bestows meaning to something, that meaning is objective. This is further supported by the fact that God's nature and opinions are unchangeable, which makes any of his opinions objective, since they don't depend on any external evidence/circumstance.
Jesus Salva The difference between objective and subjective has nothing to do with where you are relative to our realm of existence or how changeable your nature or opinions may or may not be. It has entirely to do with whether or not the characteristic of an object is owned within the object or owned by the mind with regards to the object. Therefore, owned by God's mind, even if the opinion therein is unchangeable, with regards to any action, means morality is subjective. God's opinion, being an opinion, cannot, by definition of the word "opinion" and by definition of "subjective" be any more objectively right than my own. That means that, even where he commands genocide, I get to say it's still wrong by my own values, subjective as they might be.
God is not a dictator. Goodness and love are part of his nature, but also is justice. So, if he pronounces a judgement, he is right about it. Moreover, since God created the universe and endowed every creation with its intrinsic characteristics, all objective values come ultimately from him.
Oners82 I agree. I'm not adept at philosophy but if Craig is indeed a follower of an Abrahamic God, then the exact same thing can be said about him just as well - that we are morally required to perform any action, no matter what it is, IF God commanded it. So Craig and the rest of the adherents of an Abrahamic God will gladly stone to death their daughters if God wishes it or rejoice at the knowledge of so many children suffering from leukemia because God's ultimate purpose might be realized in the future due to their life of suffering.
@Miguel Cisneros There is no conceivable scenario in which torturing and raping a little girl would lead to the greater good. This is a completely absurd argument that people use against consequentialists.
But my fav of all time is " there is no absolute truth " ...... which if true is an absolute truth, which is contradictory. If false then what is the point of even saying. " there is no right and wrong " ..... oh really, is that statement right or is it wrong ? " There is nothing beyond the material world " Science can only test for natural causes, how then could science possibly test for anything outside of natural realm ? It cant, so such a thing cant be known, yet many say it as if fact
I find Shelly's views very simplistic, where in nature does say anyone is supposed to help people and not hurt them, why shouldnt someone exploit someone else to get what they want. Says who? Say that to stalin or Sadam Hussein, hey youre being immoral. Ya, by whose standards
I haven't watched the entire debate yet but nothing in "nature" says that anyone is supposed to help people and not hurt (exploit) them... even if it did what reason would we have to comply with it just because "nature" says it? Part of the reason we generally don't exploit people to get what we want is we realize that we don't want to be exploited. But the main reason is because we recognize that we benefit most (even as individuals) when society works towards the betterment of everyone and minimizes the exploitation of others. We don’t have to live with the benefit of the other 8 billion people on this planet but your life would be much more difficult if you didn’t. I’m not sure what argument you can make for a reason to be moral that couldn’t be met with the same question you asked about nature though? What would you propose we say to Stalin or Saddam? Should we appeal to a god or gods? Vishnu says you should be nice to each other? Allah says you should be moral? When they say they don’t believe in Vishnu or Allah, and/or that they see no reason they should give a s__ what they think, what then? Appealing to real world consequences to actions that are taken by someone is the only thing that can be demonstrated to actually be real.
@@00Bkhudson i would say that yes, we are created in the image of God, I think that is where our value actually comes from, otherwise why care about a bunch of evolved bacteria, especially on par with you own self interest. I see nothing irrational about the evil person if atheism is true. They actually are acting in many ways more rationally than the good person who gives himself to save others. We benefit most when society works together, I certainly wouldnt say thats true, many people get ahead and to the top by using power, and doing whatever they can to get ahead. Billionares, dictators, whoever, sometimes helping each other can be the worst for our particular interest. Pretty sure all the people who do evil, know the consequences of their actions, they just care about themselves, not the other person and that seems pretty rational to me. I think you are make Dr. Craigs point that morality is just sociobiological spinoffs and that there is nothing objectively binding by it, if naturalism is true.
@@trencher8715 Also lets say a guy wins alot of money at the casino, and someone else sees that, the guy sticks a gun at his head and says give me all your winnings and goes home. That is also beneficial for that guy. Look at Putin, do you think he got to be the czar of Russia being nice to everyone. He may be the richest one in the world, poisoned and killed anyone who stood up to him. Sorry nice and caring is one way, power and corruption is also a way.
so people suffering is something that we should have compassion on. however , he asks why should their be an objective moraity..we can still have compassion on people suffering. however, if it is not an objective moral duty, that means all kinds and numbers of people may not care of peoples suffering. to say there is objective morality, means there is a construct of moral thought. a universe that comes into being on it s own, can t create an objective moral thought.
Morality is NOT "objective under secular or theistic systems, nor does it need to be. Moral systems function just fine without the requirement for "objectivity"
Supernatural beliefs thrive in primitive communities, atheism thrives in advanced societies. Injustice is common among people who believe in invisible spirits, and concern for individual liberty is supported among those who think rationally. A map of poverty, sectarian violence, social instability and supernatural beliefs shows that they are strongly associated.
luca montermini Justice is fairness, tolerance and respect for the right of others to pursue happiness.. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is an ancient dictum which precedes Christianity by centuries-- and it is not a simple matter because human activity is very complex. That's why we have laws and courts, which don't function perfectly but we have no one but our own collective wisdom to decide what is best in each situation.
luca montermini QUOTE: "What if my only way of pursuing of happiness is to kill someone else?" Then you would be infringing on someone else's happiness, which is immoral. Killing someone won't make you happy, anyway-- why do you think it would? Because you believe you are basically perverse and selfish and without a mythical father figure threatening you with punishment you would go out of control? Religious believers have been among the worst killers in history, so claiming that without religion we would become killers is a phony argument.
Ok so i am a moral person as long as i don't interfere with happiness of others...but i have one more question...suppose my opinion being "i don't believe in God"...suppose this would offend a part of the society Who actually believes in god.Now i have offended them,i interfered with their happiness,therefore it was immoral to express my opinion.Is that right?
@Wayne Fisher There was no real crushing done here. I found it a really good debate. I didn't feel like Craig had the best responses in this debate, but Kagan's philosophy had holes that could've been more clearly exposed. Nothing was proven or disproven here, stating the contrary you exposed your bias. It was all pure philosophy and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Kagan is my favourite Atheist writer on morality that I've come across so far, but he has failed to prove objective morality within the Atheist worldview.
@@lancetschirhart7676 I agree that the topic of morality is extremely controversial. I did find that Craig's position in this debate was far more well defined, whilst Kagan's was much more vague.
@Oners82 Oh you got angered rather easily. My question is absolutely sincere. I'm not the one who's claiming that there was a winner in this debate. You justified my opinion already by saying that Kagan did not prove his position (that was not even his aim) but it seemed clear that his arguments were far better, and Craig's responses were somewhat lacking. My opinion was that Kagan was vague and that Craig didn't have the best responses. So whilst you yourself have justified my opinion, you have left your opinion of Craig being "badly beaten" completely unjustified. That is why I sincerely asked if you kept a score with arguments and responses, because I sincerely wanted to analyse how you determined that Craig got "badly beaten". I would love for you to highlight the points where you think Craig got beaten. I wouldn't mind watching the debate/open discussion again myself.
Watching William Lane Craig commit the "No True Scotsman Fallacy" at 1:14:35 is truly a sight to behold (or should I say "No Genuine Christian fallacy"). The No True Scotsman Fallacy is defined as an informal fallacy whereby an ad hoc attempt through rhetoric is made in order to modify an unreasoned universal claim in the face of a counter example instead of (i) abandoning the original universal statement or (ii) negating the counter example.
That would be the case if Craig argued that it was okay to live immorally just because Jesus died for our sins. But since Craig never argued that, and Christianity explicitly rejects that idea, it's not a "No true Scotsman". Kagan presented an incorrect description of the doctrine of Justification. See Matthew 7 where Jesus talks about judgment, false teachers, false disciples, and those who merely outwardly profess to be Christians during the Sermon on the Mount: 21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ 23 Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’ Jesus explicitly rejects the idea that all people who do works in the name of Christ, even extravagant ones like prophesying, performing exorcisms, or doing miracles, are in reality true believers. And James 2, where James talks about living a life of faith: 15 Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. 16 If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? 17 In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. 18 But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.” Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds. 19 You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that-and shudder. 20 You foolish person, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless? 21 Was not our father Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? 22 You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did. 23 And the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,” and he was called God’s friend. 24 You see that a person is considered righteous by what they do and not by faith alone. James rejects a mere attestation of faith or an intellectual faith. Knowing that Jesus died for your sins and that God exists isn't the same as being a true Christian, for even demons know that God exists yet they tremble. True faith is evidenced by how you live. You should want to do good works and those that still live a life of sin in actuality have rejected God and are lost.
3) I'm not saying we need a committee; Kagan's view is that such a committee/group/society of perfectly rational beings is the ontological ground of goodness. I was merely point out why he is wrong. 4) It is not tautological, it is definitional. You are simply trying to define the vague sense of morality that evolved in homo sapiens as "moral" without any rational justification. What if the morality of some alien race is the actual moral one? If there's a "fact of the matter" about moral...
40 minutes in, and all I've heard from Craig is essentially, "objective morality exists because otherwise it wouldn't be truly wrong to rape." This is nothing more than an argument from consequences. In other words, morality is objective because I think it would be bad if it weren't.
This makes no sense. The only way for something to be objectively (truly) wrong is if there is an objective (true) morality. It's precisely because atheistic moral codes have started with the assumption that human life is morally significant in the grand scheme of things, that there is no reason behind thinking it's objective, under atheism. Craig's argument is that theism gives a foundation to believe in an objective morality, because theism posits that morality itself is part of god and that was instilled in us on Earth.
Vic 2.0 " It's precisely because atheistic moral codes have started with the assumption that human life is morally significant in the grand scheme of things" This is not even false. Not only is there no such thing as an "atheistic moral code," atheists do not argue that anything has any ultimate objective significance.
Osmosis "This is not even false." I know, that's why I said it :P "Not only is there no such thing as an "atheistic moral code,"" Naturally, what I meant by this was moral codes that do not involve a god, or moral codes that are held by people who do not believe in a god. "atheists do not argue that anything has any ultimate objective significance." In the grand scheme of things, no. But many atheists obviously do believe in an objective morality. One need only turn to anti-theists for confirmation of this. They will readily tell you that if the Christian god existed, he would be evil, immoral, malevolent, etc. And of course, even without that, it isn't hard to catch someone making a statement about something being "wrong". And it's not like other subjective opinions, where they will freely admit it's just their subjective opinion. They will get increasingly passionate about their moral statement as you verbally disagree.
🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation:
00:19 📚 The debate is about whether God is necessary for morality. The focus is not on whether belief in God is necessary for living morally.
00:47 🔄 Kagan acknowledges that morality has been discussed with and without appeal to God throughout history.
03:32 🌐 Kagan explains he will argue that belief in or existence of God is not necessary for morality.
07:12 💡 Kagan outlines his view of morality: right actions avoid harm and help others, even without invoking God.
15:12 🤔 Kagan explores whether moral commandments necessitate a commander or if requirements can exist independently.
21:53 🎯 Kagan asserts that moral philosophers inclined towards atheism can believe in a morality without God.
23:07 📢 Craig clarifies that the debate is about whether God is necessary for morality, not whether belief in God is necessary for moral living.
23:34 📍 Craig emphasizes that the question's answer depends on the definition of morality; some forms of moral behavior can exist without God.
23:47 🤔 Objective moral values are discussed - whether certain actions are intrinsically good or evil.
24:02 🤯 Both atheists and theists agree that God is necessary for morality to have objective significance.
25:50 🙅♂️ Without God, objective moral values would lack a foundation and might be seen as products of human evolution.
31:26 🦁 The absence of God questions the basis for distinguishing between right and wrong actions, as animals exhibit similar behaviors.
32:52 💡 Objective moral duties need an explanation without God's commandments as a basis.
36:30 ☠️ If there's no God, moral accountability seems to disappear, making actions ultimately insignificant.
38:48 🧐 The absence of moral accountability in atheism could lead to a cynical sense of futility in moral choices.
39:57 🤨 Atheists face a challenge in explaining the basis for objective moral values, duties, and accountability.
46:24 🤷♂️ Naturalism struggles to explain what makes human beings morally special and different from other creatures.
50:09 🤔 Dr. Kagan emphasizes that naturalism's explanation of moral significance may be subjective and based on personal beliefs.
52:15 😕 The definition of free will is complex and its compatibility with determinism is debated.
52:57 😮 If naturalism is true and determinism holds, free will might be lacking, which could impact moral value.
54:44 😶 Denying deeper meaning doesn't necessarily make ethics illusory; ethical significance exists on a human scale.
56:36 🤔 The significance of actions isn't just about cosmic impact, it's about personal, societal, and subjective value.
57:32 🤨 Disagreement about whether the lack of eternal significance renders actions entirely inconsequential.
58:39 😕 Objective moral values may exist, but on atheism, moral accountability might be lacking.
59:50 🧐 Moral viewpoint's adoption is questioned, especially in the absence of cosmic implications.
01:04:44 😕 The role of God in enabling free will is a point of contention.
01:05:55 😯 Objective moral values provide a basis for evaluating actions, even with human imperfections.
01:06:55 😮 Accountability in a theistic context and the potential tension between salvation and moral judgment.
01:13:10 🧐 Acknowledgment of human imperfections, sin, and the role of religious and moral education.
01:14:18 🤨 Examining theological aspects of salvation, punishment, and moral accountability in Christianity.
01:15:14 😕 Perspectives on the significance of actions within a temporal context and despite cosmic outcomes.
01:15:58 🐾 Theists argue that a Christian perspective provides a basis for ethical treatment of animals, seeing it as a divine responsibility to care for the Earth and its creatures.
01:17:36 🥩 Different perspectives on animal treatment: Theists emphasize responsible stewardship, while non-theists may argue against causing harm to animals and advocate for vegetarianism.
01:19:15 🌍 Discussion on cultural differences: Exploring how societies with various moral codes and treatment of marginalized groups can be evaluated based on transcendent moral standards or evolving moral truths.
01:20:53 👥 Moral assessment of societies: Theism allows making moral judgments about societies' actions, while non-theism might rely on gradual societal evolution in recognizing moral truths.
01:23:01 🕊️ Theism offers a foundation for objective moral values, duties, and accountability, with divine nature defining the good, while atheism might struggle to ground these concepts.
01:24:52 ⚖️ Atheistic perspectives on morality: Atheists propose that morality can exist as an objective reality through a moral contract formed over time, regardless of divine influence.
01:26:03 📚 Encouragement for exploration: Both sides encourage students to delve into moral philosophy and religion to better understand these complex issues and engage in informed discussions.
thank you for this outline!
This is one of my favorite WLC debates, since Kagan really helps illuminate the question-begging coming from WLC (and his supposed "foundation" for morality). When Craig got to the part about, "What's so special about humans from a naturalistic perspective?", Kagan pointed out the incredibly obvious answer to that. Craig, however, refuses to accept it since he's defined human significance in terms of god from the beginning. This way, no matter what the naturalist points out, Craig just retorts with "so what"? Kagan saw this and brilliantly pointed out how we could do the same thing with god-prescribed morality, to which Craig just stubbornly refused and decided to stick to his preconceived notions.
Even though Craig is wildly incorrect on many things, he usually outperforms his opponents due to him being a good debater/rhetorician. In this though, Kagan really outclassed him. This was almost as good as the Sean Carroll debate.
Kagan had some very good answers but on others it doesn't seem to make sense. Or at least it makes very little sense. Whats good for one person is often bad for another - why should a person care about the collective? And whose to decide what's better?
@@weeklydaily4775 A contractarian or a utilitarian can offer an easy answer to this question - it is about what is the most rational/beneficial decision for all parties involved. I grant that these frameworks have criticisms, but this is just an example that helps show that we can navigate the moral terrain and discover better pathways than others...OBJECTIVELY. You can be dead wrong in thinking that a certain action is good, because your beliefs and thought processes about certain things may be objectively untrue.
The “so what?” argument against God doesn’t work. Simply being that God is all powerful, all knowing, all wise, all good and all just. The universe is not. God created humans with morals & intent, therefore we were intentionally design by an intelligent mind with purpose and understand morals instinctively.
What would feel more special? Finding a hundred dollars on your own, or someone giving you a hundred dollars? You’ll feel more valued if someone gave you a hundred dollars. God intentionally gave us life, therefore we value it more. With that value comes morals and eternal fate.
In a godless universe it’s easy for me to say “so what?” when it comes to morals because my eternal life isn’t destined with consequence. My morals are determined by the biological mindless chemicals that make up my brain, therefore nobody’s at fault for their actions. As Richard Dawkins said “DNA neither cares nor knows. DNA just is. And we dance to its music”
Now in a godly universe you can also say “so what?” when it comes to morals, but it wouldn’t be rational todo considering the outcome of your eternal fate. It would be self reckless. You’ll be taking the alternative route of Gods standard of good. Of course you can say “so what if it’s self reckless” but that would be your choice that determines your outcome.
@@HudClipz That's an interesting take on it, but it's hard to say whether there's an a priori basis for these "ought" statements in the first place. If you recall what Hume said on this, he made the distinction that you can't get an "ought" from an "is". So even if god is all-knowing, there is nothing you can say that can logically take you from "god knows X" to "god tells us we OUGHT to do X". This would still be a human intuition to lead from is --> ought which is not logically derivable from all-knowingness.
Defining god in terms of "all-good" is quite a loaded term in the first place. The origin for where we get good and evil is from consciousness itself. All the theist ends up doing is inflating this notion infinitely when it comes to god. It's projection, and gives no insight on what the nature of "good" actually is. If you recall the old Euthyphro dilemma, this is the exact point that it is raising - is god commanding something because it is good, or is it good because god commands it? No matter what answer you give, there can never be a non-circular definition that answers this question.
God's omnibenevolence is simply an extension of the human mind that we take for granted. This is akin to saying that god is all-knowing, all-powerful, and has the biggest biceps. Where did that come from? It was simply an extension of the experiences and attributes we give to ourselves as humans. If you want a sound definition of morality and you think naturalism can't give you an answer, then god certainly can't give you an answer either.
@@johnnylamaa2569 Let me address the all knowing part first and I’ll reply to the other statements since this will take up some space.
That’s Theological fatalism, and it goes like this
1: God foreknows we will do X
2: if God foreknows we will do X, we will do X
3: We will necessarily do X
The thought is that by this logic we will “necessarily” (or be forced to) do action X because of Gods foreknowledge.
The first two premises are correct. However, the conclusion and point 3 does not follow from the prior points because of the injection of the additional word “necessarily”. In order for this logic to follow, we must remove “necessarily”. Since it does not appear in any of the original premises. We are left with this.
1: God foreknows we will do X
2: if God foreknows we will do X, we will do X
3: We will do X
This is not logically coherent, but this argument no longer implies Gods foreknowledge forces action X, because action X is not necessary. The logic here only proves that there is a correlation between action X and Gods foreknowledge. Correlation does not imply causation.
Then why is there a correlation? Because our future action X dictates what God foreknows. It turns out that our action X causes Gods foreknowledge, but not the only way around. This correct causation is the reason for the correlation.
Fantastic debate. It's great to see WLC challenged in this way. Thank you for sharing!
When was he ever not?
I don’t think he was challenged at all. I think the challenge he was facing was that Kelly was being very slippery with rationalizing his worldview- even admitting that Determinism and Free Will can coexist (by some stretched philosophical argument).
Kelly even misquoted Craig’s quote of Ruse and was basically asking Craig to explain why Ruse thought the way that he did.
I felt Kelly was very defensive (naturally if you hold the belief the he holds) and that Craig was very patient with Kelly’s slippery logic.
@@hugomunoz9039 He can't be 'challenged,' he is a Christian. I've done Kagan's really excellent first year Yale course, and all I could think was how much Craig would benefit from that excellent dissection. Craig is no fool, he is an excellent thinker and fine speaker, but unfortunately for us all he is simply wrong. The last thing Shelly Kagan (there's no Kelly here) was is 'defensive,' that is pure fantasy on your part. Restrained, perhaps.
@@hugomunoz9039 "Man can will, but he cannot will what he wills" - Schopenhauer. Here, this, philosophy, as (not) opposed to theology: th-cam.com/play/PLEA18FAF1AD9047B0.html
@@hinteregions Christians cannot be challenged? I have no idea what that even means.
Anywho…yeah I’m sure craig could learn from kagan….kagan could also learn from Craig….we could all learn from each other. Haha.
Open dialogue at 42:00
Thanks for this
How fun would it be to watch Frank Turek try to debate Shelly Kagan
Try....and fail.
@@biggregg5 yeah I mean it would be fun to see Frank Turek
Because I … I mean I’m genuinely convinced that Turek just doesn’t see another alternative other than God for the concept of morality
WLC I think is too smart for that . He just lost
@@azophi Obviously, without God, there is no objective morality. Shelly Kagan lost.
@@terminat1 obviously?
I can see how people argue that but by my lights it’s just not… obvious… to me 😅
@@azophi Perhaps because you're a committed atheist.
This is probably the best debate I've ever seen involving William Lane Craig. I'm very impressed with Shelly Kagan's thorough logic and rhetorical skills. These are both things that Craig's opponents too seldom demonstrate.
@HuckFinn I disagree, logic and skillful debating tactics can and are sufficient for corralling Craig's case for theism. Most of the sophisticated rebuttals to his arguments come from published written sources (a fair share from professional philosophers), the debates are mostly for the interest of the public and getting a message out with an apologetics twist that is deemed important (from Craig's standpoint). Most of his opponents from what I've seen aren't particularly proficient in countering Craig's case (like outlining his assumptions with explanations on why they may not hold up). Craig is a sophisticated debater/apologist so he shouldn't be taken lightly, especially in public forum circumstances.
HuckFinn That’s a lot of talk with no substance! Mind sharing which of Craig’s premises are wrong?
HuckFinn You again provide no substance! I’m starting to wonder if... hmm... maybe you have no objections! What a fool. Goodbye clown😂
HuckFinn Still haven’t heard any specific objections!
@HuckFinn I'm not the one who got on the offensive with no specific arguments. I'm not here to debate Kagan's points. I'm here to see if you actually have something useful to say, since you're obviously very opinionated. You think you're oh so clever bringing up Kagan and calling Craig names but you prove over and over again that you can't debate the topic. How hard is it to point out one incorrect point of Craig's? You're probably some loser who's just filling your missing self esteem with the hatred of someone clearly very intelligent and accomplished. If that's true, I pity you. Whatever the case, you're a waste of my time, so I'm done responding to your insipid remarks.
Why would a loving, generous, just, faithful, kind God commit the atrocities described in Leviticus?
Because it's not loving and is a creation of human imagination.
@@CesarClouds Wrong
@@manne8575no. He's correct
@@paulnejtek6588 I can assure you he's not
@@manne8575 no, you can't. I'm not assured at all. Most likely you'll be unable to answer basic questions about how Christian belief even plausibly makes sense, much less is actually true
Morality has always been a huge problem for religion. A religious person can be moral, but they have no way to explain, through faith, why any act is right or wrong. See how badly apologists fail on this. Or can any apologist manage it? All true morality is humanistic.
the Bible tells us why. what are you talking about you fool 🤦♂️
@@bunnypoop4508 why should I or anyone accept the bible as an authority on anything?
@@jameslay1489 Jesus Christ
@@bunnypoop4508 which doesn't tell me why.
This seems like a flawed criticism of religion. After all, people who follow the Bible (Jews/Christians) can easily say that stealing is wrong because God decrees it thusly. In doing so, the Bible followers will have explained, through faith, why that act (stealing) is wrong. So, it seems like the central point of the comment is demonstrably incorrect.
Kagan talks about the "contract". What contract? Who wrote it? Who signed it?
I'll answer this using the question WLC absurdly asked of Shelly Kagan during the back and forth portion. For WLC to say "well what if someone in society does not sign the contract" and then act as if that is the straw that breaks the camels back is a misunderstanding of social contract theory. It, in no way, threatens social contract theory. When talking about social contract theory, I often find that people misconstrue what the actually "contract" means. The contract is not some physical document that everyone HAS to sign and HAS to agree to at birth - and I'm not claiming that you in particular make this claim, but I've heard it made before - the social contract is, instead, an immaterial societal agreement that is encompassed in the form of our traditional norms, folkways and general traditions that make any particular group of people who they are, as distinguished by their culture. So now the question, what if someone doesn't sign the contract?
Well, we have the same label for them that anyone else in society would have for them: we would call them criminals, and we would call them general deviants. Those types of people are unavoidable, every society of people has it's deviants. Everyone has a contract, whether you like it or not, if you are born into a society where people live socially then you are living in the terms that they have created. Now, whether or not you choose to deviate from the contract is up to said individual, keep in mind the definition I gave of what the "contract" represents. WLC argues that in order for their to be good, there has to be evil, for without the evil, we cannot possibly know that what is good is good. We can apply the exact same reasoning to social contract and, in fact, I could ask the same type of question and say "well what if someone doesn't obey god?" Does that destroy the god argument? Of course not, because all you have to say is that the said individual will face repercussions from God for not obeying. The social contract line of reasoning is the same, except instead of said individual appealing to God for disobedience, they appeal to the repercussions they will face from society for their disobedience which will take the form of social ostracism, time spent in prison, and other ways that we humans punish our own.
I wish that Kagan would have really laid the wood to WLC here, because he certainly had the opportunity, as it was clear that WLC had a scant understanding of what the actual contract represents. But this is part of what makes theories like social contract, consequentialism, and utilitarianism so effective. They are common sense theories. It is not hard, nor a reach, to believe that human beings, through everyday social interaction over time, develop the foundations for the societies they live in. You almost want want to say, well duh. It doesn't require nearly as much mental gymnastics that WLC has to go through to justify his beliefs.
there is a clear common usage of contractarianism in philosophy. Look shit up.
Kagan says “Let us all imagine a contract because we’re all perfectly rational” I suppose Kagan will be the perfectly rational human? Good luck maybe all of our politicians will sign it! What an a absurdity!😂
Craig talked about his invisible non-existent friend.
Carlos Danger Maybe I’m missing something, but it seems as if your explanation and Shelly’s explanation are different. The major difference is that Shelly did NOT include “societal norms” in his explanation. He said, this contract is what would be agreed upon by “perfectly rational” beings. This is a statement that seems to transcend societal norms, and presents a “sort of” objective foundation for morality.
My problem is with “perfectly rational beings”. It’s a thought experiment that assumes the outcome. For instance, why would “harming someone” be bad? There are different reasons people can come up with, but there seems to also be reasons why people are perfectly fine to harm someone just because they want to (what WLC pointed out, even if you only consider it 1 reason as opposed the “the” reason). So why think that perfectly rational beings would agree on the outcome that he is expressing? It seems to be begging the question IMO.
However, I am genuinely open to increasing my understanding of why you explained “social contract theory” differently than Shelly did IN THIS VIDEO. I’m open to you telling me the areas where I am wrong as well. Hope that makes sense.
Kagan's closing summary was superb and practically wins the debate by itself.
WLC argument is so full of logical fallacies that he loses even before Kagan responds. :-)
Determinism & Free Will is a clear contradiction
Compatibility is an excuse to use any of them when needed.
This was much more informative than the standard debates that Craig appears in, and Kagan was a great interlocutor in terms of bringing out the nonsense in some of Craig's arguments. "Absent God, our moral choices don't matter because of the heat-death of the universe billions of years from now." Does anyone actually buy that argument?!
unfortunetly many WLC fanboys.
yes
yes, those who stand with truth
Tacking on the heat death bit is irrelevant to Craig. He would be perfectly happy saying “Absent God, our moral choices don’t matter”.
What exactly is the counter argument? Seems pretty self explanatory that in the long run, given the heat death of the universe, nothing matters in the long run as nothing is lasting. Things only have temporary value to creatures who are themselves only temporary
One of very few debates where Craig was outmatched. Now nothing Craig has ever said has convinced me, I think his arguments are many assertions and a lot of inference that he can't back up but he is a phenomenal debater and I have to give him all the credit in the world for that he has outmatched some of the best atheists on the planet. Here's the thing about debates, just because you lose doesn't mean the other person is right and that includes atheists. If an atheist wins a debate it doesn't mean that a God doesn't exist. Sometimes people are just better at debating and William Craig is a perfect example of that because his position is ridiculous but he could debate that 2 + 2 = 6 and when in most cases. Here he got out matched and there's only been a few times that has happened. I think it's funny how he always talks about Richard Dawkins being scared of debating him when he won't debate dillahunty. I think that William Lane Craig fans would love to see him have a discussion with matt and I know that dillahunty fans would love to see him have a debate with craig. If you're going to call someone scared you better not be running from someone else.
Kagan fails in his argument that morality depends upon your position in society, and "what kind of creature you are." It fails because that position is relative, not objective, and as such it applies individually and recklessly with no firm boundary. For instance, the Nazis thought their position in the social sphere was superior to all others. They then used that personal view of themselves to kill and do harm - and justified it. This is what Craig means by morality must be objective, and not based on some fanciful notion of position. Kagan hasn't really thought through his argument.
Kagan seems to be a very intelligent and thoughtful person…I would be less flippant about accusing a Yale professor of not "thinking through his argument." Kagan does not fail…yes the Nazi's used subjective reasons to commit atrocities…the rest of the "social sphere" i.e. the society as a role looked at the situation objectively and came to the correct moral conclusion.
We don't need a God to be accountable to…it's enough to be accountable to each other.
jdplanas I'm not sure how stating that Kagan hasn't thought through his argument is "flippant", but oh well. Just because a person has a degree from a prestigious institution does little to impress me on subjects like this. That's because it's often the case that the person's emotional and personal views get in the way of their common sense or "smarts." Intellectual skills often take a back seat to personal worldview, and I think that's the case here for Kagan.
In the case of the Nazis, you note that "the rest of the "social sphere" i.e. the society as a whole looked at the situation objectively and came to the correct moral conclusion."
And...your point?
The issue is that morals can and are just subjective points of order without an objective source to lay the moral framework. Using Kagan's point of view, there's no reason to believe that his morals are any better or more beneficial than mine are, or the Nazis were. Craig is correct - Kagan is not - in spite of his Yale degree.
dweezel theyounger "Using Kagan's point of view, there's no reason to believe that his morals are any better or more beneficial than mine are, or the Nazis were."
Err, what? There's no reason not to think the Nazis morals was beneficial? You might want to reconsider that statement.
dweezel theyounger My first point wasn't an argument from authority. I don't agree or disagree with him because he has a Dr. in front of his name. Kagan's point is that we can be our own source of objective morality and he he laid out a good argument. My point is that a Yale University professor of philosophy (who has dedicated his life's work to the subject) has probably spent a good deal of time thinking through his position. You may have very valid points for disagreeing (or not), but accusing him of not thinking it through is insulting. So when someone disagrees with you it's because they haven't thought it through enough?
And if you take some time to think it through, you'll see the real argument from authority comes from the religious. They claim their god is the only source of morality and then claim exclusive access to speak for that god. That is not objective morality, it's divine command authority. What was the excuse used by Nazi's during Nuremburg? It wasn't my fault, I was ordered to do it. The whole line of reasoning that without God the Nazi worldview is just as valid as anyone else's I find ridiculous and relies on a known logical fallacy reductio ad absurdum. It's not like the Jews were wandering around the desert and didn't figure out murder was objectively wrong until forty days after they reached Mt Sinai.
jdplanas If there is no single point of morality, then what morality do you choose, and why would one choice be better than the other?
Let's grant for the moment that God has created absolute morals, and that these morals can be discovered. Even so, this definition of what we mean by "morals" is just one of many possible definitions that we can choose to use. For example, someone might disagree with God's set of absolute morals, and many indeed do (including people who think that it's ethical to punish someone for keeping a slave). Similarly, let's grant that an objectively rational social contract can be defined in only one possible correct way, and that it would produce only one possible set of correct morals, which would therefore be a set of absolute morals. Still, this is again only one of several possible definitions of what qualifies as a moral. What this illustrates is the true scope of moral relativism: it's the umbrella that covers all of the different possible ideas that give rise to so-called absolute morals.
when i look at this topic , i can t see past the argument of objective morality and a higher power. how can a universe, which came to be on it s own, along with it come an objective morality? i can t see past this...]
@@stevejames5863 The definition of morals is "a lesson, especially one about what is thoughtful toward the future, learned through stories or experience." That's a pretty ambiguous definition, but it's basically a question about what is best for the future.
You can use these stories and experiences to build certain goals towards a purpose. For instance, if the purpose is to maximize human well being, then there are goals that should be met concerrning maximizing human well being. One goal towards such a purpose might be to not hurt each other, because hurting someone doesn't always maximize human well being.
It just so happens that human well being is an excessively complex topic with billions of variables that change every day. If we could possibly know all of those variables though, then we'd have a clear path towards the objectively best method of maximizing human well being.
It's already there in the universe, we just have to discover it. Similarly, the universe provided us with math, we just had to discover it. An apple plus an apple is objectively two apples. Thanks Universe!
No person in their right mind would appeal to absolute morality.
Both of the panelists avoid such terms precisely because they won't be able to make such a case.
Anyways, I could just NOT grant your conclusion. v:
BTW, if they're absolute morals, you do realise there'd be a contradiction if they don't perfectly overlap with each other, right?
If there's a contradiction, then they're not absolute.
@@malolazap5377 do you mean objective morality? or is there a distinction? i think if there is objective morality, some things can be: relative. what i m trying to say, if there is objective morality,and i think there are morals we can agree upon. where does this come from? it is a simple question. i don t think all morals are relative. there being a universe that just happened to come about, does not create morals that are objective.also, if you have an explanation for objective morality without a higher power- ok. otherwise, if morality is relative, that is different. if morality is relative then i think anything goes, why would we have laws, courts, and so on?
00:02 Belief in God not necessary for morality
02:02 Is moral behavior dependent on belief in a deity?
06:07 Exploring justifications for harming or failing to help in moral philosophy.
07:57 Morality is objective and centered on reasons to help others and avoid harm.
12:09 Ethical rules originate from a hypothetical bargaining session behind a veil of ignorance.
14:13 Morality does not necessarily require a moral lawgiver
18:38 Morality can be grounded in a secular fashion without the need for God.
20:35 Morality does not require a divine enforcer
25:09 Without God, moral values are not objective
27:40 Human morality is viewed as a biological adaptation.
32:34 Without God, no basis for objective moral duties
34:54 Without God, there is no objective moral law or accountability.
39:35 God is vitally necessary to morality
42:16 Debate on why inflicting harm is considered wrong on a naturalistic worldview
46:16 Evolutionary process leads to moral behavior
48:08 Exploring the uniqueness of human beings and their inherent value
51:40 Debating the compatibility of determinism and free will
53:23 Discussion on ethics being illusory and deeper meaning
57:22 Objective moral values must have significance beyond the cosmic scale
59:15 On atheism, prudential value and moral value are often in conflict.
1:02:44 Prudential reasons are not necessarily superior to moral reasons under naturalism.
1:04:46 God is necessary for free will and genuine moral choices.
1:08:49 Objective moral values require a transcendent standard like God
1:10:55 Objective morality is not contingent on perfect rationality
1:14:39 Our moral lives matter and make a difference regardless of cosmic doom.
1:16:42 God's stewardship involves caring for animals and the environment.
1:20:52 Evolution plays a role in societal moral progress.
1:22:52 Importance of God's existence for morality
1:27:02 Theistic beliefs not essential for grounding morality.
1:29:11 Cosmic significance not necessary for morality
all i have to say is this: Shelly Kagan is a philosophical beast
It's amazing to hear him instantly eviscerate the heart out of any moral argument Craig makes as if he's pondered the exact point many times before
@@superdog797 But he never actually justified why anyone has any moral duty or obligation to behave in any certain way.
@@j2mfp78 It's a discussion about morality. We have moral duties by virtue of social contract, human reason, the ability to appreciate immorality and consequences, etc. Kagan addressed all these.
@@superdog797 But those are just assertions. Who decided this was the criteria and that anyone has any obligation to accept or follow it? Someone could come up with a completely different set of criteria. Why would 1 be more valid than the other?
@@j2mfp78 Those aren't assertions. They are statements of fact. Someone could choose to ignore them if they want but they still exist. An assertion is an unjustified statement about some fundamental truth of reality. Kagan talked about this in the debate - he pointed out that the moral community comes to consensuses on moral positions. You ask "well what if someone changed [some aspect of morality]?" Well so what if they changed it? What's your point? On a separate note what do you make of the Euthyphro Dilemma?
Shelly said morality is outside us, we don't just made it up, two minutes later, morality is something we create and give to one another (as a social contract)
moral rules
Two different schools of thought that can seem contradictory but studied independently, I personally wouldn't come to this conclusion. It's no different from someone believing in the bible and then deciding that following the rules of law on roadways, was conducive to an overall moral good.
I think the biggest issue with this contract theory, is that in a world obsessed with materialism, and it's accumulation, it is those who seemingly throw them away that gain the biggest advantage. At least in gaining material.
When was the accumulation of material unimportant in the history of man?
Not in it's written history, outside of the Bible. The Bible in contrast emphasizes the immaterial as having more worth. Other "holy books", have attempted to emulate this.
But if you look those that have shunned moral right, in their greed for material wealth, it would seem the advantage from a survival point of view to be "dog eat dog".
The biggest material winners are those who have thrown away this supposed moral contract. There is a difference between legal right and wrong, and moral right and wrong.
It may not be illegal for international bankers to fund despotic regimes, but it is profitable, and highly immoral.
But why is it immoral? This is something WLC completely fails at. The why.
Because the argument I heard, was we make this moral contract, so others will like us. Ultimately it is what it boils down to. Why is that advantageous?
Do you "like" the Rothchilds, the Trumps of the world? If you do what do you like? That every dollar of advantage they have over you makes every dollar you have of a lower value? Or am into an area of economics you don't understand?
Why would you "like" or think it is an advantage that they make your life harder?
The question was asked, "can atheists be moral without God?". Sure, as long as there is another set of laws that say you will do 25 years to life for murder, or 5 years for stealing.
As far as I know, in western cultures no one is going to jail for adultery, and it happens a lot. I will concede it also happens in the churches, but that is because they are not following the tenets of the book to do so.
But in a society, following the Bible with the belief in an ultimate judge, these crimes will not happen as often as the conscience becomes the policeman. A higher moral standard. This will only happen with the fear of God, and judgement. While there has been a lot of bad done in the name of religion, it wasn't done because they were following what the Bible told them. Crusades is a perfect example, as are The Inquisition.
I thought the Nazi example was too extreme and thus easy. A better example would be 2 atheists marooned on an island with limited resources, and no one to put you in jail.
At some point the contract will break down as they get hungry, and the battle over the resources becomes more urgent.
How many of you good little moral atheists would starve before killing the source of your hunger, the one taking up the resources you need to live, without the idea of eternal punishment for doing it?
If there is no God, and no police to punish me, why wouldn't I kill you to gain advantage? Would I rather be dead, or alone? With no afterlife, my guess the desire to survive would tip the scales over loneliness.
Or how about in the USA, you have kids who grow up gun nuts, hunting, with the flawed "American exceptional-ism", this idea of "take care of number one", "the individual is more important than the whole", mentality. Who then goes off to the army, who trains them to kill, gives them permission and even a moral reason to kill, along with a overal general purpose of saving the world, get so mentally damaged by the act of war? Vietnam killed more men by suicide, at a rate of 5 to one, at least, than died in combat. More than 250,000 have committed suicide while only 58,000 died in the conflict.
Or better yet. Going back to Nazi Germany. In the Ukraine during it's scorched earth campaign, they were killing civilians. One high ranking Nazi, who's name escapes me right now, I see the face, can't remember the name, skinny weasel with round glasses, sent a note back to Berlin, that they had to come up with another method, as the shooting them all was demoralizing the troops. Nazi's demoralized by killing the "sub-species" as they put it, bothered their conscience.
It hasn't been that long since homo sapien started walking this earth. How old are we now? You evolutionists keep changing it. You never admit you were wrong the last time, but I digress. But being so fresh from the jungle so to speak, we have apparently lost our will to survive, as when confronted with it, it causes such great anguish.
A primate doesn't show remorse for killing his dinner. In fact killing their own family members seems to bring a celebration, rather than remorse.
Why are we so backward to all of nature? We are the most aware, but it seems to take us out of sync with nature. Almost like we don't fit.
Not sure if you have noticed, but we seem to be at odds with nature.
If nature made us, we must be the Stewie Griffins of the world on a mission to kill what produced us.
Look at the statements on this page. You claim to be moral, but look at what you say.
The only thing the comments really show, is your morality. That and your absolute quaking in your boots at the idea that someone believes differently than you.
I mean, so what? Why is it such a big deal that you need to aggressively attack the person who holds this different belief? Why the need to mock? The false sense of superiority you are attempting to create?
It comes across as insecurity to me.
If all you did was address the issues, debated the points, you wouldn't come across so weak.
But the need to "shoot the messenger", is obvious proof of this insecurity.
Besides, all you have this time on earth. Why would a YT debate matter at all?
Shouldn't you be out doing something to make your existence worth something? Saving puppies or something?
No, you have decided to spend your precious seconds here, doing this, amounting to what? Proselytizing?
Attempting to save people?
If you ever were to take an honest look at what drives you to do this, attack belief in God, it would, or at least should trigger a deeper question.
Why does the thought of God, and someone believing in Him, drive you so nuts?
Could you try again, I'm not sure I'm following you.
😀
biggregg5 it's hard to follow mentally challenged person who thinks that legal system is synonymous with morality.
"The primate doesn't show remorse for killing his dinner."
Well, do you show remorse afer eating your burger?
Interesting observations by William Lane, but the idea of God he is preaching is the Christian idea of God which unwittingly is seen promoting the evangelical idea of Christian morality, it would have been better if he had mentioned the non-Abrahamic perspectives of God too, particularly the Hindu idea of morality.
WLC by the end: "I don't agree because it doesn't make me feel good, I'm going to use scary words to play at the heart strings!" (aka 'demoralizing').
Craig’s first point is to define God into existence (God = good/good = God and God = morality giver, so since we have morality and “good” God must exist)
Which is why it is up to the atheist to explain how Morality and Goodness can be justified without God.
Because Craig's equation seems to be correct.
Craig keeps associating aspects like love, goodness, etc. to god, of which he knows nothing about. You can't say that god is unknowable, therefore here are his attributes, and only those attributes that I myself ascribe to.
It's funny how god never once has any kind of conflict with and of his followers. his will is always 100% their will.
precisely
You have no idea what "dying to the self" or "taking up your cross" means. But yes, there are many wolf in sheep's clothing these days...(hypocrites). Also, God is not unknowable. He gave us the bible for a reason. His attributes are in His word.
@@K1370 you missed my point.
@@squirreljester2 What was your point? The second half of your comment was wrong. The first half was also wrong. God is not completely unknowable because we have the bible to describe His attributes.
@@K1370 Craig and most of Christianity would disagree with you.
Hard to argue with you on that. It's at least problematic, and it could well be enough to prove that moral accountability is (in some strong sense) impossible.
I think I agree with you, but just in case you're interested I'll share the other side's view. Compatibilists say that, even though all of our actions reduce to a bunch of chemical reactions (which we can't be responsible for), that doesn't prove that we're not accountable. You're accountable just in case you're able to use your reason.
at 1:14:12, Kagan asks a question about accountability and death bed conversion allowing an evil person to be absolved..
To which Craig answers at 1:14:35 .. "Well, I mean, no genuine Christian would think like that.. "
I love the laughter as a lot of people caught it. EXCEPT Craig himself.. oblivious, I suppose.
But Kagan got the silly Scotsman fallacy.. He obviously thought it was hilarious. I think so too.. Craig was ridiculously hilarious.
I'm not a Christian so your question would be irrelevant to me regarding a claimed holy text.
I'm simply asking do we have faith in our reason, is there any way we can objectively give credibility to it?
Overall, the case for theism as the basis of morality seems to be the stronger one since there were many issues that atheism could not answer including determinism in human existence, the objectivity of morality in social contract theory, the origins and involuntary agreement in the social contract, the explanation why one cannot keep the moral law, and the significance of human life.
🤔 Hmm is your "opinion" with regards the "right" God subjective or objective?? Can we ground morality in "any" God or just the particular one YOU determined is the "right" one out of the many thousands man has invented ??
If your answer is the latter then in actuality its *YOU* and YOUR SUBJECTIVE OPINION that is determining morality dear. if your answer is the former, then asserting objectivity to any moral claim based upon a "God" becomes a completely vacuous useless concept 👍
The claim that theistic morality is somehow "objective" is ridiculous. Theists are merely substituting their own subjective moral standards with the morals standards of the god they subjectively determine represents the "correct objective" morality. 🙄🤔
So many comments and nobody mentions arthur schopenhauer?
I always giggle when I hear Craig say doodies.
It seems to me this contractarianism is simply, we make up a story about an event that never happened where perfectly rational people set down some moral rules and we try to make it as believable and realistic as possible. Even if you got that right, all you’d have is a very believable story, not an actual event where we all sat down and drew out a social contract. How can we have any moral duty to behave as if this myth were true? It never happened. Nobody discussed the matter and nobody agreed to anything. We made it up. There is no social contract. But we have a moral duty to behave as if there was one because it’s a very believable myth. I’m afraid I don’t find it believable and I think if everyone were perfectly rational and sat down to draw out a social contract, not only would the resulting contract look radically different from anything anyone might imagine, it probably would result in a war.
I don't think that "rape is wrong" can be objectively true if truth is completely dead. In that sense, God is necessary for moral facts.
In a universe that is nothing more than matter and energy, then life itself is ultimately a Monte Carlo game. It has no purpose. It's just a collection of molecules. In fact, if we look at the words of genetics high priest, Richard Dawkins, then passing on your genes is the only truly moral imperative there is in the universe.
Dawkins argues in his book The Selfish Gene that all life is programmed to do one thing… Pass on their genetic material. So in a universe of nothing more than matter and energy, rape is a highly moral thing to do! In fact, seems to be the only thing we can do that actually matters.
That is until the sun expends the last of its nuclear fuel starts expanding and the earth evaporates like a drop of water on a hot skillet. Rendering everything that humanity ever did or thought utterly pointless.
You get the impression that Craig doesn't have a clue what is going on in half of these debates. He has had this permeant deer in the headlights look on his face for the last decade. I can only assume his pride or his wallet still compels him to go out to these things.
Craig: Reality without god seems very depressing. Therefore a god must exist.
Me: same with Santa Claus.
Room level iq
If that’s all you could articulate after watching debate you’re literally brain dead
"When I first heard the message of the Gospel as a non-Christian high school student, that my sins could be forgiven by God, that God *loved me, he loved Bill Craig,* and that I could come to know him and experience *eternal life* with God, I thought to myself (and I'm not kidding) I thought if there is just one chance in a million that this is true it's worth believing. So my attitude toward this is just the opposite of Kyle's. Far from raising the bar or the epistemic standard that Christianity must meet to be believed, I lower it." - William Lane Craig
@@vejeke
Lol I actually care truth of my beliefs dear and "truth" is not determined by what I WANT to be true or which belief sounds the most appealing and offers me the most.
Truth is demonstrated not asserted its that which best conforms with the FACTS and EVIDENCE and "faith" plays no part in the equation.
Knowledge of FACTS, also called "propositional knowledge", is defined as true belief that is distinct from opinion or guesswork by virtue of justification. A "FACT" is a point of data that is objectively verifiable ( demonstrable ) Absent "Facts" one has only the opinion or guesswork and no justification to claim such knowledge.
Science has all the FACTS yet claims nothing as "absolute" truth. Christianity conversely claims absolute truth in everything yet has no FACTS 😜
@@trumpbellend6717 I have another one that is even better...
"The way in which I know Christianity is true is *first and foremost on the basis of the witness of the Holy Spirit in my heart* and that this gives me a *self authenticating means of knowing* that Christianity is true wholly apart from the evidence and therefore if in some historically contingent circumstances the evidence that I have available to me should turn against Christianity I don't think that that controverts the witness of the Holy Spirit." - William Lane Craig
Evidence, who needs that when you can say you have the Holy Spirit in your heart? Then it doesn't matter even if they go against your creed 🤣
As Sam Harris once put it "If someone doesn't value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide to prove that they should value it?"
@@vejeke
// "a self authenticated way of knowing" //
Lol truth is demonstrated dear not asserted, its that which best conforms with the FACTS and EVIDENCE and has nothing whatsoever to do with "faith"
Knowledge of FACTS, also called "propositional knowledge", is defined as true belief that is distinct from opinion or guesswork by virtue of justification. A "FACT" is a point of data that is objectively verifiable ( demonstrable ) Absent "Facts" one has only the opinion or guesswork and no justification to claim such knowledge.
Science has all the FACTS yet claims nothing as "absolute" truth. Christianity conversely claims absolute truth in everything yet has no FACTS 😜
Too much about personal opinions, and never elaborating enough.
John Lennox is a good one to watch for now factual based arguments; though he tries to cover most parts of the religion and doesn't back down from a debate).
*Lennox is a mathematician and scientist, and he went to college in Oxford in the same years as Stephen Hawking.*
What evidence of gods (or gods causing morality) do you think Lennox has? Don't get me wrong, the arguments do vary in quality between theists (just like atheists), but I've never seen a theist present strong, logical evidence of a god. Maybe that could've been excusable pre-internet when it was difficult for good ideas to spread rapidly, but we're in 2022 and apparently none of the elusive "good arguments for god(s)" are being spread?
Nov 2012, the Oxford Union held a fantastic meeting of the most renowned atheists and theists, and Lennox's argument rambled on and on with irrelevant points until he started trying to present things he considered evidence of a god.
A. Intelligent Design. He provides no evidence of ID or the source of ID being a god. (For example if Bob from Accounting runs a universe simulation on their computer, he could be the intelligent designer of a universe, but he's not a god.) That means this argument is baseless assertion; it's a claim without evidence; it's an idea we have no good reason to believe. But it's _the first thing he mentions!_
B. Our ability to understand things. Again he provides no evidence of a god being responsible, he just establishes a mystery and tells people (baseless assertion) a god was responsible. So again, this cannot be evidence of a god.
A common pattern to these arguments is they _could_ potentially be evidence of a god. But what would it take? It would require evidence that a god (A) exists and (B) caused these traits of reality. See the problem? No theist would ever use these arguments, because the only time they'd be right is if the user _already had evidence a god exists!_ So just by using these arguments, theists imply they don't know a god exists.
C. Morality. He says the existence of morality can't be explained without a god, but that's wrong. Morality is principles of right/wrong behavior, and that only requires a brain capable of having those behavior preferences. Well evolution gave us a brain like that! So he's simply wrong to say it can't be explained without a god. Just for a simple example to understand things: imagine Tribe A eats its babies and Tribe B doesn't. Now: which tribe's babies survive to the next generation to spread their genes (with the respective instincts towards baby-eating or no-baby-eating)? So evolution results in morality.
Well these are just his first three arguments, and _none of them contains evidence of a god!_ It's just him taking things which are either wrong (ID) or unknown, and says a god was involved or is required. With no actual evidence.
And that lack of any real foundation to arguments for god is why most non-believers are non-believers.
One of the few debates where WLC gets his ass kicked.
Because it was not a debate. Debates are not about evidence or being right or wrong. People like WLC loses every single time they have to argue for their beliefs outside of the debate-format.
I noticed that. When WLC has to do a discussion format it is usually a trainwreck.
I sometimes come back to this because of how stumped Craig was. While I believe he loses most of his debates against atheists, he does come out relatively unscathed compared to your average apologist. Simply because he's a skilled debater and orator. But here, he is utterly exposed.
Check out his debates with Sean Carrol and Roger Penrose if you want to see Craig stumped again.
Agreed. WLC was totally destroyed by Carroll, and WLC knows this. He turned off the comments section in the video that he posted with the debate. . It was absurd watching God botherer WLC try to " correct" physics genius and Cal Tech professor, Carroll about quantum physics.
@@robertmiller5789 He at least used to turn off the comments in each of his debates
I think that Dr. Craig blew his point on determinism and free will... basically, that's the end of the discussion.
god sacrrified himself to himself to save us from himself?!
It's a metaphor.
You must go deeper into the laws and sacrificial rules of Judaism to get a full grip of why it was necessary and in fact makes sense.
Dr. Craig asked,”Why do humans think loving others is significant?” Dr. Kagan said,” Because I think it is good. It is just a special property of human.”
and you have a problem with that why?
@@JohnGrove310 Come ooon, you know! You know!
@@JohnGrove310 What could you possibly say to someone who has a problem with it? Say I'm a good little atheist who thinks 'morality' is for fools; if I rationally perceive that I am benefitting by not caring about the welfare of other humans and that I can keep getting away with it without anyone noticing, why in the world should I want to stop?
@@danieltemelkovski9828 Just like any other moral theory, the social contract does not expect everyone (especially the psychopathic type in your hypothetical scenario) to agree in harmony, so you're really making an irrelevant point.
@@onionbelly_ A proponent of a moral theory may not expect every single person to be convinced by that theory, but all moral theories are required to respond to objections and challenges to them. If my objection can be dismissed as irrelevant simply because not all people can ever be expected to adhere to a single theory, then so can all objections to all moral theories be dismissed as irrelevant, which would bring moral debate to a standstill.
If a person "A" acts morally without any future reward for doing so, and person "T" acts morally for only the fear of the loss of some future reward. Who would a genius level God find more favorable? More importantly, who would a human find to be more moral? Could person "T" be considered moral at all? I've heard person "T" say in his own words that without the threat of eternal punishment that they would certainly not act morally. And that, is scary.
1:13:26 gotcha, Bill!!!
1:14:48 gotcha, Bill!!! Again!!
1:14:48 gotcha, Bill!!! Again!!
WLC 100% right to me.
When God created rule "rape is bad", he either had reason for that or he hadn't have reason for that. If there was no reason, then all moral rules are arbitrary, there was nothing to stop God to decide rape is good. If there was reason why rape is bad, then those reasons are always valid, even without God, so you don't need God to realize that rape is bad.
Struggling to see why people find Shelly convincing.
@@curious_thinker LOL here we go. Please enlighten me on why you think he made a good case here. Go on.
@@curious_thinker okay so you're gonna pretend that it takes a lot of effort to briefly explain his argument. Good job
Same
Because Craig only made appeals to emotion and personal incredulity as well as no true scotsmans
This is by far the best argument to William Lane Craig I have seen. Hitchens and the rest always make strong arguments against Christianity, but sometimes fall short on the morality argument.
*"Hitchens and the rest always make strong arguments against Christianity,"*
Really? What are those strong arguments?
Are you aware of a video entitled,
"The Sophistry of Christopher Hitchens"
And, just in case it is important to you, the video is made by both an admirer of Hitch and an atheist.
I'm kind of disappointed Shelly didn't bring up Euthyphros Dilemma. Peronally I think both sides of the motion are wrong i.e, IMO, there are no 'objective' moral truths period. (Though Peter Singer claims to have an example of an moral truth i.e, 'My Own good is no more important than anyone elses from the point of view of the universe. But that's not what we have in mind by 'moral truths' anyway.). Shelly let go of the assumption that morality given by god is 'objective' unquestioned. When in-fact, this assumption doesn't hold up when one consider the euthyphros dillema . I.e, "Is something moral because God commanded it OR God commanded it because it is moral."
If the former case is true, then morality is subjective and arbitrary to god's opinion. If the world was created by an all powerful demon instead, murder and rape could easily have been moral. It seems that morality boils down to 'Might makes right' in the former case of the dilemma.
On the other hand if the latter is the case, then obviously the source of morality is something external to God and hence God is not a 'necessary' condition for the existence of moral truths. (Although it still might be the case that God is the only possible way for us humans to discover these truths.)
I've seen craig's response to this dilemma and it is not convincing at all!
th-cam.com/video/me21or9T7vI/w-d-xo.html
what if His nature, is moral. And that these moral laws stem from His nature. Also , to be moral in nature is different from then going ahead and commanding these laws onto other beings. This falls in the question of justice. Is it just to impose these laws onto mankind. Is it in His place. The biggest issue is not really logical i think. I honestly think humans have a general issue with God exercising His authority over our lives. They do not mind God, they just mind when He gets involved in a way that seems constricting to us. It is kind of like how we treat our parents sometimes. We expect them to provide and always love us yet we do not want to be limited by their household laws.
Proposing the social contract as the source of objective morality is a petitio principii, i.e. it begs the question, for an objective morality is required previously.
There is no anchor to ground objective moral duties with naturalistic atheism. If people or societies say that this is right or that is wrong then there isn’t really a right or wrong because once society says this and the other society says that but which society has the right to declare such higher standards than the other regardless of personal taste of feeling. ??? To love someone or to kill someone is absolutely equal if there is no standard beyond ourselves because without the highest standard then who is right? Was Joseph Stalin or Hitler absolutely right or was mother Theresa or any loving persons right? Person A says Joseph Stalin and Hitler was wrong for what they did but person B says Stalin and Hitler was right especially Stalin and Hitler themselves. Without a transcendent anchor objective moral values and duties are simply your word against the word of another person regardless of how you feel or how bitter you may be about it. 💯
David Hartzfield But if your anchor is the Abrahamic God who commited/commanded genocide and slavery, where do we draw the line of objectivity?
Both standpoints actually ascribe to imagined constructs: atheism to reason, and theism to God (who isn't at all objective about the wrongness of not killing).
NEd Stormblessed where do we draw the line? First off, you claim the living God did something evil or bad but it seems you are stealing such an objective moral worldview to support your atheistic landscape to even be able to blame anyone for anything.
Second, you would have to somehow show that God does not have sufficient moral reasons for permitting evil. God is free to create life as well as take it because He is the Locus, the absolute standard of good. If there is no God then to love a child or to abuse a child is equivalent. If there is no Causal Agent behind all creation then Hitler cannot be blamed for any wrong doing. It would be his Society’s view against another’s.
This is an excellent conversation. It's good to see a non- Christian be respectful to their opponent. Often they are quite aggressive and insulting when debating Christians and you see hate instead of objective debate.
Thanks Tara, it's good to see a Christian be respectful in the comment section. Often they are quite condescending, insulting and judgmental about atheists.
Oh wait... never mind.
@@Roper122 I'm talking about neo- Atheist Debaters I've seen on livestream and pre-recorded podcasts- those seem to be the worst ( examples would be Dillahunty and Ra ) -maybe because they arent face-to -face, but there have been a few public venues as well. I'm not talking about your average non-believing person. Atheists often bring up the fact that they don't need a God in order to live morally, but then expect Christians to live up to some perfect standard. I guess if there is no God then everything is subjective, so maybe that's ok with them, but it's pretty hypocritical to bash someone personally for an entire debate instead of just laying your facts down and letting the Audience decide that way.
@@taramckinley7585 Oh.. so you're talking about a small minority?
Didn't sound like that.
I find christians can be just as insulting and aggressive, some of them even try to pretend that atheists just attack people personally and don't have any arguments.
Speaking for myself, I've never seen a debate where the atheist side had no argument and just bashed someone.
Ironically none of your posts have any argument, they're just judging people.
Hmmmm.
@@Roper122 You're certainly welcome to your opinion. It is ironic though that you have no problem asserting yours, but are offended by mine.
@@taramckinley7585 Not offended, just pointing out the obvious problem with yours. Next time I'll just be aggressive and insulting... since that's how we are, as you point out... you know.. in your opinion.
@Samuel Bennett I think you defined "thinking" wrong.
It's so weird. For Craig it is so important to have moral accountability on the cosmic eternal scale. But many christians believe that one can be forgiven by simple accepting god in your life and have a personal relation with god (or something like that). So there isn't actually any real accountability. Furhermore: if you really believe there is this all powerfull god whatching over us all the time. You would expect all christians to be on there best behaviour all the time (since god is always watching and will hold you accountable on the eternal scale). But that is not what you see. Christians, like everybody else will behave badly if they are convinced they can get away with it ---> because they do not actually believe god is watching.
Yes i agree with your objection here and i think craigs view of moral accountability contradicts his christian view of salvation. Although other christians catholic or greek orthordox etc may have a different view from his to be fair. Hes protestant so purgatory doesnt exist and salvation by Jesus supercedes morality. This is where i think Islam has a more robust version of moral accountability and ultimate justice & perhaps catholics which dont find atonement enough
What is morality and where did it come from?
I think the first part of the question is easy to answer.Where did it come from is the big question.
When you find out where it came from or even better, who or what is the highest authority that dictates morality?
My simple answer is that YES, God is necessary for morality because he put it into his living creatures.
However man is in a fallen state and thereby man becomes aberrated in his thought process and actions.
So even for atheists,they are operating through faith because they don't know how the universe came into existence.They are believing without proof that some other kind of force or condition other than God caused the universe to be.
A beautiful distinction indeed to make between defining morality and defining morality's origins, thank you! For anyone that presumes that discovering morals is equivilent to understanding its origins, they miss the common religious argument you refer to here that Athiests may know what is moral even though they fail to realize that those morals, indeed, came from God.
To that, I would push you to consider the Athiests' argument for origins, that is, rationality and reason. If both reason and God can be explained to be the origins of precisely the same moral values, then we would need a different means of testing which is the true origin. That position, in fact, could acknowledge the victory of Kagan's argument without disbelief: it would say that one could have objective morality created by rationality, it just so happens that the real objective reality is created by God. Perhaps reason is a faculty given be God to allow individuals to discover morality even if they are not able to discover God?
Need sentience to make sentience, it is what it id
So every sentience is made? God is made?
Given what Kagan says between 48:27 and 48:51, aren't we left with moral nihilism? Kagan says at a certain point we just have to decide some things are meaningful, but he doesn't offer any justification for his values in particular or any account for how values could be justified objectively in general. So far as I can tell the principle of not being able to go from an "ought" to an "is", if true, leaves us unable to ground any values, moral or otherwise. We may still hold them, and indeed we inevitably will because they are an inescapable feature of our psychology, but we will do so without objective justification. Craig is equally vulnerable to this line of thinking and he seemed not to fully engage with it in the debate. I am sure this has been put better by many others in the past. What I am unsure of is whether there has been a powerful rebuttal to this argument. If anyone has come across a solution to the problem of objectively grounding values, please leave a reference.
He did offer an explanation, though, through his contractarian thesis.
In the part you're highlighting he was trying to stop Craig from keep on using infinite regression... and he did that by showing Craig that he can play that game too.
craig's use of scary words and arguments from consequence sure have me convinced! I will now believe that hinduism is true!
Apart from rational reason for morality there is aesthetic reason too. Irrational is ugly.
WLC would write some dope death metal lyrics 55:10
Oh wow, I just noticed you spotted that 2 years before me. Almost identical comment.
I wonder if he thinks going on vacation is useless as it will end in a couple of weeks.
the way he phrases "on atheism" alone puts me on edge and is a clear misunderstanding of the people who disagree with him.
@Tony Droid
I care and for a good reason. So you are wrong about that. Moreover, people like craig, who strawman and misunderstand the other's position even after it being explained to them multiple times, are annoying at best and dishonest at worst.
Exactly, he talks about Atheism as if it’s a religion, which it clearly isn’t.
Someone with a PhD should know saying "if atheism is true ..." is completely nonsensical. The right usage would be "if, in fact, there is no god ..." Atheism, per se, isn't true nor false, it is just a position that's all.
@@oliverhug3 How do you define atheism?
@@soulcage6228 WLC uses the philosophical definition of "atheism". It is archaic and is not used by the general population of atheists today and he is smart enough to know that. That doesn't make us wrong nor right, It simply means the usage has changed and the ancient definition has not caught up. Just like the usage of "gay" or other words have changed. What matters in conversation is about respect and addressing the usages of terms being used.
I dont go around telling you that you believe in only the gods of the hindu because you claim the label of theist. Instead I let you define your usage of the term and address that instead. Because I'm not a rude snot goblin and because I care about the conversations being had. Being anal about definitions gets you no where with anyone. It's basically shooting yourself in the foot and then claiming you won a race.
Amen.
WLC (1:01:50): ".. for the good of the universe."!!
Seriously?? Whats that even supposed to mean?
@ Time 1:18 on the video… Shelly Kagan says…
"My view is that what morality boils down to is… don't harm and do help"
That is as deep as it gets for Shelly Kagan.
On Naturalism -- There is No real meaning, value & purpose to human existence. So, just make it all up with a social contract and don't harm anyone.
William Lane Craig was clearly the winner in this discussion
+TheMirabillis What's the problem? He's talking about what he believes is the foundation for ethics. It can't get any deeper than that, and it wouldn't be any better if it could.
UkiWoDao
What's the problem ? Craig is talking about what he believes is the foundation for ethics. It can't get any deeper than that, and it wouldn't be any better if it could.
+TheMirabillis If you're saying "it boils down to..." you're stating your foundation, the bedrock upon which your theory or belief rests. So, by definition, it couldn't get deeper than that. The point of contention is that you take, as Craig, "deep" to mean "ultimately" or transcendentally meaningfull. But I think Kagan asked a good question to which Craig never responded appropriately. How does the fact of our inevitable death make the good things we do any less good? If you're hungry and I offer you food, will you reject it on the grounds that it's "ultimately" pointless? I believe not.
UkiWoDao
Craig did respond appropriately but either Kagan never understood what Craig was saying or didn't want to understand.
If there is No God and all of life ends at the grave, then nothing does really matter.
There would be no basis to say that child abuse, rape, or murder were really wrong actions.
+TheMirabillis Kagan asked: how is it that we either have ultimate meaning, or no meaning at all. Craig answered that it just seemed to him strange that we would have any significance, which of course isn't an answer, he's just repeating himself. And Kagan did give a basis for morality. Bad things harm you, so you want to avoid them. Others are mostly like you, so you should avoid it for them too. Rape, abuse and murder clearly do harm. So we shouldn't do it.
Imagine a life in constant, agonizing pain. You would agree that no one would want that, not even for a day, let alone days or years. No one would like that regardless of ANY belief they might hold. You wouldn't want a day of constant, agonizing pain, even if you were told you were going to die the next day. You wouldn't want such a day even if you believed in the afterlife. This shows that It matters perfectly to you (and everybody else), not to be in constant, agonizing pain, regardless of you dying or having an afterlife.
An apologist is a philosopher who is not in search of truth, but seeks to prove his foregone conclusions with philosophical arguments. It's painful to listen to WLC:n incredibly poor, illogical arguments. He should be ashamed of himself, that he does not know the first thing about contemporary ethics.
+sauniz1 While I will say this is WLC worst debates but his arguments are sound and are based in logic. This happened to be one night that WLC was not as well prepared as he usually is. He almost looked confused at the questions and points Shelly was attempting to make and was not sure what angle to take. Yet again Shelly was unable to justify his point either but was able to look somewhat better doing it. The bases for morals will always allude naturalist unless they except that life is predestined to the mechanisms of the physical world and choices on morality really do not exist to the individual but are just a product of physics. How does rational thoughts on morality really come from irrational physical states?
+Casey Skipper What I'd like to hear from WLC is proofs for his christian premises: That Jesus was the Son of God, that Jesus died for our sins, that the Bible is the word of God etc. You never hear these proven, because to him they proven a priori, through inner experience. Well, WLC, so claims every religionist on this planet. How is YOUR inner experience "more real" than these others'?
His arguments with regards to ethics fail also.
A) While it may be true that objective moral values would be nice to have, that does not mean they exist.
He uses a sort of abductive reasoning towards the most convenient. Just because something would be nice, if it were true, does not mean it is.
B) Contemporary ethics can point to natural laws to give us an objective basis for morality. That does not mean that it would not need to have a human interpretative component, but
C) so do theists. How is the Bible an objective moral guide? Who has the objective way to read this incredibly ambiguous and multifaceted library of ancient literature? There are tens of thousands of christian sects right now who base their identities on a certain way of reading the Bible. Every interpretation is different and has it's basis on the situation at hand and the interpreters own values and world view. Even if the Bible was objective, unerring and unambiguous, where would we get an objective and unerring interpreter for it?
+sauniz1 I don't really argue for biblical truths but I have read it cover to cover. Old testament is very tough reading. The argument for a creator seems to be reasonable from other angles as well but the moral argument seems very troubling to me if I accept the naturalistic view. It seems that most naturalistic moral arguments begin with the assumption that life has a reason to want to continue living and reproducing. Why is a complicated arrangements of elements have a desire to want to continue on and make more of them. This gives meaning in the same way as two atoms creating a bond. Irrational to me and I reject the idea that rational thought can come from irrational building blocks. It's like arguing something (time and space) came from nothing with no cause. We have never in human experience seen or accepted a result without a cause until atheist asked us to. This is why theist will say atheist have more faith then they do and build a logical argument from there.
Phelan Exactly. Christians don't get the morality from the Bible, but from the wisdom of the world, which the Bible condemns as foolishness in God's sight. They adapt their interpretation of the Bible to the surrounding culture, values, practices etc.
Casey Skipper Science has not given us a solution to the problem of the first cause. It hasn't "proven" that a quantum flux, gravity or a natural law has started the universe. Until it has, we should keep asking these questions - these are most important ones there are. But we also should not assume that this creator, if there is one, is a human-like personality who is actively and directly involved with his creation. Why would you assume that this creator creates a universe in a Big Bang, let's it develop billions of years, but then has to go back to it and supernaturally give man rationality and ethics, rather than creating a universe in which these develop naturally over time? I think this makes the creator irrational. It seems to think that the creator would have created an imperfect universe to begin with which "he" has to fix later.
Es la primera vez que veo en mi vida un DEBATE.
Craig seems completely unable to respond to the question "why do our actions have to be ETERNALLY significant for them to be significant?"
Also, at around 1:17:31 - Kagan's question to Craig, then the "I'm not sure you get the advantage". Smack down.
It's funny that WLC is just determined to shoehorn some mystical, magical, external source to basic human feelings. His inability to extract himself from his own preconceptions is just astonishing. He has no basis whatsoever for his beliefs but he is going to overlay them on reality no matter what.
15:07
@@samdgh9473 I have no idea what you are pointing to, here. Descriptive laws do not require a law-giver, social requirements do not require a requirer. Are you saying that WLC was right about something? If so, what?
@@dienekes4364
Did you listen from where the link opened for all of 2 seconds?
If you'd have listened for 20 seconds you'd have heard Kagan say, "Indeed this very argument has been embraced by some atheistic philosophers, who say, 'yeah, you know, talk of moral requirements does presuppose a lawgiver. Now that I no longer believe in God, I believe there are no moral requirements'"
Apparently, it is not just WLC who is, *"just determined to shoehorn some mystical, magical, external source to basic human feelings"*
But of course, you demonstrate poor listening skills. Nowhere does Craig say that we need any, *"external source to basic human feelings."* 2:32, 22:49, 23:29 (listen for longer that 2 seconds)
Kagan and Craig agree with each other that God is not necessary for anyone to act in any sort of way or to 'feel' any sort of thing.
We know there are blind people all over the world.
We know that Jesus often cured the blind.
He must feel morally obliged to act.
49:28 If we agree that we all have these values, then why does the explanation for why we have them matter to morality itself? Would it change the fact that we have the same values by which we can objectively evaluate good and bad actions? No, we already agree that is the case. So I don't see how it would change anything about the way we do morality, therefore I don't see what it matters. Supposedly Craig wants them to come from God because then there would be an objective source we can point to by which to agree on them, but he starts his argument by saying that this is already done.
It matters infinitely. For morality to matter, people have to matter. But if we are just accidental collections of atoms, there is no reason to think people do matter because a 150-pound man is then of no more value than the collection of atoms that makes up 150 lbs of dead leaves.
All these secular attempts to ground morality assume that human life has value but if there is no God, there us no reason to think it's true. They're forced to play make-believe and say, well we can create value and meaning inside our heads. But somehow this idea is suddenly out of bounds when someone makes up God inside his head. Make-believe is suddenly not only out of vogue but the target of ridicule.
The grounds for a lasting moral code has to exist first outside of every human head because no matter what secular philosophers tell you, a bunch of people getting together and agreeing that human life has value is not the same as human life actually havung value.
@@davidplummer2619 Money doesn't have inherent value. Are you just making believe that whatever currency you use to buy things and accept as payment at your job is worth anything? Did God imbue the dollar with purchasing power or was that western society?
"no matter what secular philosophers tell you, a bunch of people getting together and agreeing that human life has value is not the same as human life actually havung value."
No matter what theists tell me, a bunch of priests getting together and agreeing that God wants us to value certain things isn't the same as people actually valuing those things.
Value is relative by definition: water is the most valuable thing in the world to someone lost in a desert but nearly worthless to someone vacationing in an oasis. Philosophers don't arbitrate that, and neither does God. We either agree or disagree on the value of something based on our own subjective experiences and act accordingly, regardless of if it has any "actual" value; this is demonstrable reality. Value serves no purpose outside of influencing how people act in accordance with it, so the very idea of an objective "actual" value existing ethereally beyond us is nonsensical. The best you can do is point to God's subjective values and try to justify following those based on his actions, but you're gonna have to demonstrate his existence first.
Can you show me ANYTHING in reality that doesn't reflect value as subjective?
@@davidplummer2619 Furthermore, on a purely naturalistic account, any existing moral inclinations we have would be better treated as obstacles to overcome rather than ideals to nurture. The sooner you stop feeling bad about committing an 'immoral' act, the sooner you can start taking advantage of opportunities to act immorally. Those bad feelings are just 'in your head' and have no meaning or significance beyond that.
hmm Craig implied incest is common in the animal kingdom. I wonder if that's true, time for some research
How did that research go?
@@rustyshackelford3590 unsurprisingly incest is not common in the animal kingdom :)
@@mehi8145 well listen to 34:55 to like 35:30 please pay attention next time, its not my job to reiterate the speakers statements
Incest is not common in the animal kingdom but was common among human animals in the Bible.😅
In other words, incompatibilists might think that there are no norms whatsoever if determinism is true. This would erode the intuitive bases on which Rawls' theory is constructed.
That said, Kagan probably isn't too worried, since compatibilism has been very well defended in the last 20 years. The defense goes like this: we think that people who are mentally ill or under coercion aren't morally responsible. But that's not because they lack free will; it's because they're unable to use reason.
A great debate all around, and in particular a great showing from Shelly. He's the only debater so far to prevail over WLC to such a degree ; even though Sam Harris held his own in his debate with Craig (unlike the late, great Hitch, who was sadly ripped to shreds), Shelly is literally in a class of his own here.
i dont think so, i found lots of flaws in kagan
Against Robert Price, Eddie Tabbash, Lewis Wolpert were also good.
PhD. Sean Carroll managed to impose himself as well.
Not with his WE ground for morality because the soviet or the communist china party can as well do evil on that basis of WE grounding of morality. His worldview is subjective and are matter of opinion on atheist ground. He talked too many words saying just one or two.
What does WE mean?
But, you're mixing moral ontology with moral epistemology.
Theists also do evil out of a bad exegesis, for example.
Kagan's view is not subjective. At least no more than math is.
Mathematics are in... our minds. They're pretty much imagination, yet they inform us about the external world. When people who understand Math die, then Math will disappear.
Yet we don't say Math are a popularity poll. Same with Kagan's social contract. It's not subjective just because it has individuals.
(That's the reason why Craig didn't openly said it was subjective. Craig knows enough about philosophy of mind to avoid such assertion. Sorry, dude, you're not smarter than Craig.)
@Malola Zap evil out of bad exegesis is the danger of subjectivity, which I pointed out in the WE grounding. You can't skip ontology to epistemology. The question is about moral ontology. Not how we come to know them. Theists will say God already infused reason and conscience in us to accent to morality. So, there is no debate about that even with atheists. Where atheists differ is when claiming that the foundation is subjective and grounded in the WE consent. Thereby making it a popular vote.
Morality is not mathematics. Math is indifferent to morality. Math is quantitative, not qualitative, and ethical. Maths doesn't tell me that greed is evil; rather, it tells that greed can multiply one's wealth, which can be good applying math. Morality addresses whether it is good or bad. Not math.
many will say that they are moral without God. This is not true. 1st morality does not exist unless God exist.
2nd ) God does exist thus we have all broken his laws, thus none of us are moral creatures without Jesus
He also endorses genocide, so this is far from the worse thing he's done. We destroy him in debate and everyone complains we pick on easy targets. Can theists just get together and decide who's a decent serious apologist so we can debate those.
Under your view, what's wrong with genocide?
@@austinmorris3422 Easy. It causes suffering, it robs conscious beings of potential future happiness. It violates rights. How about under yours?
And silence...
@@Ozzyman200who cares if it violates your right
What’s your justification for why it’s wrong , I don’t wanna bear your opinion. Why ought not I commit genocide
@@DA-og5pj I love when theists end up having to ask those types of questions.
25:58 The problem here is that the Bible comes nowhere near to describing a God that is morally good...More often than not the Bibles God is morally repugnant...
What makes God morally evil/repugnant/maleficent? And, what gives mankind the ability to say this if such a being exists?
@@flyingphoenix113 The faculties of reason and logic. Don't give them to us if we can't use them.
Are you a parent? Would you divide your children by telling one of them it's chosen over and over for a lifetime? If you answer yes I can guarantee you your other siblings will hate both you as a parent and the chosen offspring. You've sown ineptitude and discord as a parent and this is inarguable! In the words of Trump, you should be fired from parenting!
@22alexraider Please go ply your unsubstantiated Jewish bullshit somewhere else...But If Yahweh/Yeshua brings back his preferred method of marriage: polygamy, then I guess I won't complain too much!
But what about Yaakov's situation? What about more than one wife? The clear halacha is that both min haTorah (on a Torah level) and mid'rabbanan (through rabbinical legislation) a man can have as many wives as are willing to marry him (as long as he can support them). No one implies that this is less than moral nor in the least bit abnormal.
And don't forget good ole Yahweh never changes so we know the laws on polygamy never change! Who needs a fickle God!
When Shelly puts Craig on the spot and forces him to justify his view on the moral irrelevancy of torture without theism (about 57:00), Craig gets physically anxious and visibly unsure of his answer. His hand starts shaking. At least somewhere inside of himself he realized what he was saying was absurd. Of course torture matters whether god exists or not.
About hand shaking, Craig has neuromuscular degeneration, his hands are always shaking
Shelly struggles to ground his "objective" morality. We recognize that hurting people is wrong so it is objectively wrong on his view. He gives us no reasons for why "hurting people" is wrong. Objective morals seem to float in the universe like stars, or like laws of nature waiting to be discovered.
Suppose the Germans had won WWII. And that all dissenters of the Nazi philosophy had been exterminated. Everyone remaining would recognize that hurting people, especially non-Arian people was actually good. The moral "recognition test" is always subjective not objective. Unless one thinks the universe spits out morals the way it does quarks, and atoms, galaxies and planets, there are no such things as morals.
Now Shelly is right to say he can live morally without belief in God. But he seems to join a long line of philosophers who want to bootstrap an objective account of morals without God and then spends over an hour discussing the issue without one reason for why we should believe it. He should give up and go the way of the existentialist who had the courage to say all morals are subjective and illusory.
Uber Genie
The creatures we need to take under moral consideration are the sentient one.
Sentience is the capacity to be affected positively or negatively. It is the capacity to have experiences. It is not the mere capacity to perceive stimuli or react to some by action, as in the case of a machine that performs certain functions when we press a button. Sentience, or the ability to feel, is something different, namely the ability to receive and react to such stimuli consciously, by experiencing them from the inside.
If we take this as a criteria, we can easily set some objective requirements as to not undermine the autonomy of conscious beings , not to harm conscious beings , not to deprive them from potential happiness etc.
With well being as the moral goal i think we can make a very distinct, non relative indicators that need to be met.
Regardless of what you believe in , murder will not contribute to the recipient's well being nor will it respect his autonomy.
stefan klisarov Thanks for your reply. I agree with your perspective. And my cats are thankful I have that perspective. That said, my problem with Shelly and numerous other philosophers that hold this view of morality is no reason is given why we should hold this view. What does he ground his morality on? Is moral truth of the variety, "Sentience is the criterion for creation or moral codes," something we just discover, like the law of gravity?
Why on Darwinian Evolution isn't the view of the Nazi's more appropriate as a criterion for moral codes, if cultures are to out-compete their neighbors for limited resources?
Why is it wrong for a man not to rape as many women as possible in his fertile lifetime in order to maximize the propagation of his DNA? Especially given that a large number of my ape ancestors raped early and often in order for me to even be here. Why not continue the family tradition? Especially if sentience is the criterion, animals are sentient and yet a large portion of them are raped during the mating process. Why don't we call it rape? Why call it rape if two homo sapiens are involved? Isn't that speciesism?
So we actually agree wholeheartedly on moral values, but the grounding of them is what I am interested in getting at? And if we don't anchor them properly we end up with the values of Nazi German with no idea how we got there.
***** Thanks for your thoughts. Consider my reply to Stefan. The Germans redefined the term "people" to be "superior people" and they eliminated chaos and discord in society. All dictatorship eliminate chaos and discord, often quite literally. And on Darwinian Evolution, why would I help a competitor for limited resources instead of striving to survive by out-competing. Often that means killing and eating competition in other species. I need a better explanation why that would all of a sudden not apply to me just because I have a more developed frontal lobe.
"To Serve Man" is the new book on morality that I am writing. Don't tell anyone, but it is actually a cookbook!
+Uber “Genius” Genie The Golden rule is simple and straightforward and grounds our behavior objectively without recourse to an entity with cosmic significance. If you are doing something bad to another animal, typically causing pain, you know that is the case because if that was done to you then you know that would be painful and you wouldn't like it. In the latter case you would consider it wrong to have pain inflicted on yourself, and similarly a normal conscious and sentient person would accept, as an objective fact, that to inflict that pain on another living being would also be wrong. Those objective facts to not need further grounding by appeal to a deity.
Yes there are sentient beings who do not consider it wrong to inflict harm on others. Some enjoy it, and some even have no feelings whatsoever. We identify such people as suffering from various levels of psychopathic and narcissistic personality disorders. It is possible for whole communities and societies to fall into destructive and psychopathic behaviours. Recourse to a deity is not needed to understand and identify that objective fact with regard to the Third Reich or to consider the specific causes of those particular events.
Indeed there are destructive and psychopathic behaviours around much of western culture that again does not require recourse to a cosmic deity or overlord to understand. Nor, more importantly, to understand the objective truth of alternatives behaviours and outcomes that would be less destructive and psychopathic
+myroseaccount You said you were going to ground morality objectively and we got a restatement of golden rule and other moral codes. Plato and Aristotle ground it in God(s). Not the God of the Bible but something outside and above human. Why are the atheists from Hume on who reject objective moral values as unground able wrong.?
Kagan was amazing. I'm conflicted, because I love steak.
I wonder if god thought it was moral to create humanity
Poor Bill Craig. He really ought to avoid dialogues like this in the future and stick to amateur atheists. With a guy like Kagan, he's just being taken to school , in an almost embarrassing way.
It's pretty obvious who "won". I am talking about the Q&A part. For example, Shelly keep asking why Craig think that if our actions doesn't matter on an eternal cosmic scale then it doesn't matter on our scale, and what was the answer of Craig ? That if our actions doesn't matter on an eternal cosmic scale then it doesn't matter on our scale... Several time, Shelly ask, and several time Craig repeat what was already in the question...
You are refering to the first sentence i wrote. There are others after, that answer your question.
Tyson Sprinter
Craig think that if our actions don't have eternal cosmic significance, then they don't have any significance. Shelly asked why several time, why not having eternal cosmic significance would mean not having significance at all. And Craig keep repeating the same thing without any explanation.
What's embarrassing, for you I might add, is that nobody said, anywhere, that anybody gets objective morality from science anywhere in the debate, fool.
There was only one problem in this debate & it happens every time. WLC is talking ontologically. SK does not accept it goes that deep & kept talking epistemologically. In effect, without god, you cannot root this, regardless of robustness. SK kept to, this is how we know it is moral, not this is the source of those morals. There is a difference & source was the question.
What was not on display here, but often is, is the slide from good, as in a good steak & good, as in superman does good. That is what Sam Harris does.
Over all, I found this an enlightening experience. I liked the ideas that SK put forth. I still think they need a deeper grounding, but it was very solid.
There was a lack of resolution. Why are the Nazis objectively wrong? He Never really cleared that up. WLC could have better linked back why a more short term good, might not be as useful.
Still good either way.
Ok hold on a second. I'm not an atheist because I don't want to believe in God and I'm not an atheist because I don't want to go to heaven and I'm not an atheist because hell isn't a scary concept. I'm an atheist because the Christian worldview I don't see comports with reality. I listen to some of the best most educated Christians on the planet like in these debates, I read the bible, I go to church when I'm asked I've gone to many different churches to hear many different opinions and when I was younger I believed in God and I went to church with some issues and they tried to help me out and it didn't really help me. That's not why I don't believe but I just see no reason that convinces my mind that a God exists. I don't control that I don't choose to not believe. If it was a choice I would choose because it's nice that I can see my grandma or my mom again but quoting a Bible verse or telling me that I'm going to rot in hell is not going to convince me it's going to push me further away. People talk about their personal experiences well I haven't had that. I honestly sought out a God and I never got anything and if you say that I did I just didn't see it or I rejected it, number one you have no idea what I've experienced, and number two if I could possibly have ignored it or not recognized it then it's not something that would have convinced me. I would not be able to deny the evidence that it would take to convince me of a god. Now you can say that violates free will but I disagree and here's why. I could know that a God exists and I could still reject him. God supposedly has revealed himself to many many people as I've heard their testimonies I've read it in the Bible and I have not gotten that revelation. So I'm honestly seeking out truth and while I don't believe in a God and I think a lot of the positions are ridiculous, I would gladly change my mind if my mind was legitimately convinced and I can't force myself to be legitimately convinced. You could point a gun at my head and say you better love me right now or I'm going to blow your fucking brains out and I would tell you I love you but it would be a lie because I don't love you. Because I can't love you because you're pointing a gun at me. Well I can't force myself to love something I don't believe in so the best that I could do is say Jesus Christ is my savior and I repent for my sins but this isn't a human being we're talking about this is a God and that God would know that I'm lying. Not because I don't want God to be true but because I'm just not convinced and a lot of the things that people have tried to convince me have pushed me away and made me wonder about the goodness of this god. They talk about drowning the whole planet they talk about owning people as property they talk about beating slaves and not getting punished they talk about women being inferior to men they talk about homosexuals being an abomination when in fact most of the ones I know are some of the best people on the planet and I know that they don't choose who to love. I had my best friend cry on My shoulder because he didn't want to be gay and he tried to force himself to date girls and it made him miserable he had horrific depression he wanted to kill himself and once he just accepted who he was he never had depression again besides some bummed out times here and there and even then he didn't want to be gay. So now he's going to burn in hell for eternity because of something he doesn't want to be? You can't force yourself to be with someone that you don't love and it's unfair to tell someone that they have to be miserable their whole life because they were born liking the other sex and that's sickening. I can't love a God that supports that I simply can't there's nothing that I can do to force myself to agree with that. Now you can tell me I'm going to burn in hell and you can threaten me and you can try to scare me but that's not going to make me love that God the best that's going to make me do is lie just like I did to the person holding the gun to my head and I'm pretty sure God is going to know so I'm going to be punished for all of eternity for things I can't control? I don't control my beliefs I don't choose not to believe I don't turn my back I just don't believe. I cannot change that without evidence. So if I burn in hell for all of eternity if God is actually real, then I'm going to say I'm sorry but you didn't do your job to show me that you exist. You chose to take a book that appears to conflict with what we can demonstrate, you gave us anecdotal evidence and pretty much no contemporary writings, no originals a bunch of translations, I can look around at the world and I can see people today that I can go talk to that have claimed to be abducted by Aliens. I don't believe them and that's better evidence than the bible. I can talk to people who have seen Tupac and Elvis after they died and I don't believe them but I can actually go talk to them and that's better evidence. I don't understand how people can think it's okay for someone like me who donates money to charity who spends time at children's hospitals with kids that have cancer, who adopts dogs that are on death bed within a year so they don't have to die in a shelter, i employ homeless people around my house and I let them shower and shave and brush their teeth and I feed them and I pay them well and I give them blankets in the winter time, but I'm going to hell simply for not believing? I don't fucking choose that so how the hell am I supposed to get into heaven if I don't see anything that convinces me? And it's not just me. Almost 70% of the planet believes in a different God or the wrong God according to christianity. So if God is looking down and seeing those numbers how can he blame anyone but himself? If that was a teacher they would be fired. People make excuses for God in the Bible all the time and some of the stuff in there is just disgusting and some of the things that I've heard? If those types of people are getting into heaven, then why would I want to spend eternity in heaven with them? If John down the street can come and rape my child in front of me and rape my wife in front of me and then murder them in front of me and then rape me and murder me and then get arrested and confess to his sins and convert to Christianity and repent and then die a month later of a heart attack, I get to meet him in heaven if I'm a christian? That's disgusting. I can't think of a hell that could possibly be worse than spending eternity with the person who raped and murdered me and my family. That's not moral it doesn't matter if Jesus sacrificed himself to himself that is disgusting and the fact that good people go to hell simply because they did not see enough to believe is embarrassing and the fact that you people believe that makes me want to go to hell if it's real because no amount of torture could be worse than spending eternity with you. But if you truly want God to save me and you want me to believe then I want every single person to read this to pray to God to reveal himself in a way that I know he's real. I don't know how he would do that, but if he's real he knows and he should be able to do it no problem and if he's real I will gladly stop being an atheist. And if I can have a conversation with him and ask him some questions and he can say well this is why this happened this is why this happened I might even follow him and repent and all that stuff but I can't do that until I know that a god exists. I can't take it on faith because I could easily be believing in the wrong God based on faith so I need evidence and that's the only thing that's going to convince me and there's no Bible verse it's going to do that there's no threat of hell that's going to do that the only thing that's going to do that is a God that reveals himself to me like he did with Saul on the Damascus road experience
I would urge folks to listen to Kagan's closing comments. That on the question you need something of "cosmic significance" to ground morality, the cosmic significance being God, then the answer is no.
I'm 13 mins in, this guy is not a deep thinker, but scholar, and he seemly incapable to bring this subject one step deeper from the obvious conceptual impression.
Positive moral behaviour is observed in some animals, like examples of empathy and a sense of justice. Yet animals are obviously not God worshipers, nor did they receive a set of rules written on a tablet. Not surprisingly it's the social animals that more commonly exhibit these behaviours, so it very much looks like "being a good person" (or beast) is a biological advantage in a group. No God required, just knowing that what's good for the group is good for the individual who's part of the group.
You missed the point it isn't "can you be moral without beleiving in god" it's "can you be moral without a god"
Without God there is no justification or incentive for me to be good as long as I don't get caught or stay in power, I can keep being immoral as much as I like
Craig's problem is that he equates atheism with nihilism, an error so fundamentally inexcusable for a philosophy professor he certainly deserved to lose the debate.
I think deep down he is a pessimistic nihilist. This might be the reason for him to cling on on an afterlife.
@@oliverhug3 That may be true. I've wondered the same thing.
@@superdog797 how else could someone think it doesn’t matter when someone is saving someone else’s life if the solar system will cease to exist in a few billion years smh.
@@oliverhug3 Teach us wise one! Everyone clings to their ideas out of fear; only you have arrived at the truth by freedom! You are morally superior not through any action to help others, but simply by having superior beliefs in your mind. If only we agreed with you then we too could be superior.
@@stevedoetsch you should keep your day job. Your telepathic abilities let much to desire.
It is kinda fun when we can just define the positions of others and state what they do or do not know do we? Just toss respect and civil discourse right out the window and just build some strawmen to burn.🙂
As the end of the debate draws near, Shelly, you try to take the moral high ground by claiming that eating and wearing animals is wrong, yet early in the discussion you make the point that the higher significance of human morality versus the lack of morality in animals is that animals lack moral awareness and ability to distinguish any moral significance and therefore animals killing animals is not murder, and forced copulation is not rape amongst animals. Why, therefore is humans killing animals, especially for some benefit, (to keep me warm, or because they are yummy and nutritious) - yet wrong?
If animals are indeed a lower species, without ability to ever conceive morality, and their actions among themselves we acknowledge are without moral significance, (we do not call their behavior rape or murder but simply copulation and survival of the fittest) why are we bound by some moral obligation to treat them differently than we acknowledge it is acceptable to us that they treat themselves?
+Kevin Middleton Because presumably, some of us know the difference. Please watch the debate again if this is your question. If you have the same moral development as a lion or dog, then I understand your confusion.
First, animals are not a species.
Second, humans are animals too. Unless you think we are plants or fungi.
Third, „lower species“ do not exist. There is no invisible ladder in the biological process of evolution where humans are on the top rung.
Hear hear..
Kagan may be a better adversary to WLC in this debate as opposed to others…but again doesn’t explain why any “wrong” act is wrong. Kagan presupposes that harming people or anything of the sort is wrong without explaining why. His explanation is because we can reason, but that doesn’t make something right or wrong. If you take away presuppositions they have no argument. All of the atheists reasoning become circular at that point. WLC doesn’t press hard enough though, he shouldn’t have let him get away with dodging the actual question. Great debate overall
To me and like minded people "Good" and "Bad" are words used to describe movement or points on a reference standard or scale conceptualised by man that is based upon our shared values like human wellbeing, empathy and equality. Whilst "God" is also a man made concept, the percieved whims of this "God" do not reflect these shared values and thus are irrelevant in any discussion of morality.
@@trumpbellend6717 I see your point, but that would make Good and Evil subjective not Objective. Shelly Kagan argued that morality is Objective, not subjective
Sure!
Rawls' theory is a kind of contractarianism; it states that we should follow the rules that we would agree to if we were (i) perfectly rational, (ii) totally selfish, and (iii) unaware of what our place in society would be. (The third condition is supposed to ensure that the rules are fair.)
Notice that the social contract isn't written up out of thin air: it presupposes some basic norms of rationality, which are revealed by intuition. Incompatibilists might deny these basic intuitions.
Short answer: yes, you can have morality Without God. But without God morality has to made up and is only useful and not ultimately meaningful.
Kagan conceded the point that without God there might not be _cosmic_ meaning, but did not concede that there is no _ultimate_ meaning. There is a difference because "ultimate" just implies whatever the highest level is, while "cosmic" means on a scale that is relevant to every nook and cranny of the cosmos. You can still have ultimate moral meaning under secularism, so I would say this idea is not correct. The other point you asserted was that morality has to be made up, and is only utilitarian, on atheism. This would also be mistaken. When you say "made up" you're acting as if humans just make up all moral conclusions. The whole point Kagan made was that that's wrong - moral analysis has a sound and concrete basis that allows for moral conclusions to be objectively verified, and he clearly explained the criteria: don't harm, do help. If it meets that criteria, it's moral. The fact that some moral questions might be difficult to characterize exactly in this fashion doesn't mean that one cannot make _any_ objective moral conclusions - it's easy to see if something is harmful or helpful in general. What's difficult is in many details sometimes, but of course, theism has the exact same problem, which is why you have different moral answers on theism too. Theists and atheists share the exact same intellectual dilemma with regards to morality in this way, so again, I think you're mistaken. Even on theism, like on atheism, the basic moral premise "morality is what God says" is a simple one, but one could still ask "Well even if God exists why should I keep a morality that is based on what God says?" which is the *exact same dilemma* the secular person is in when they can ask "Well why should I keep a morality that is based on avoiding harm and doing help?" The two systems are in the same _logical_ footing in that regard. The difference, which Kagan conceded, is that there is a _cosmic enforcer_ in Craig's framework, and Kagan said he lacks that. So he conceded that point. But that does not bear a whit on the _analytical veracity_ of the moral systems, which is why Kagan placed greater value on education, the state, and critical thinking than Craig did (at least it seemed that way to me). The last point you made was morality on atheism is just about usefulness (utility). The thing is that that's true on theism too, if you insist that we talk about morals in this way. What is the *use* of morality on atheism? First of all it's just human nature, and second of all, it enriches the quality of most everybody's lives. What is the *use* of morality on theism? Well on Craig's theism, it's the exact same thing - it's our nature and it enriches the quality of our lives. It's literally the exact same thing. The only difference, again, is the notion of the cosmic enforcer. And that's a serious moral point that Kagan conceded - he just doesn't think it's the single determinative factor in assessing the two moral systems and doesn't bear on whether or not we can have morality without God.
@@superdog797 without God, there is no objective meaning friend. Ghengis Kahn's morality is as valid as any other. "we don't do harm, we help" is just as fabricated an simply based on the preferences of a deterministic stimulus response machine (AKA human). Any moral structures are a construction of a brain that was a result of unguided processes and therefore have no Ultimate or even higher meaning Ultimate vs cosmic is semantics.
Yes, you can construct a subjectively useful morality by the will of the majority. You can construct morality based on "human flourishing" or whatever made up terms Sam Harris comes up with. It is all meaningless. All the mental gymnastics and the world won't change that. Sorry.
@@brycew2 I appreciate your comment but you seem to lack open-mindedness on the subject, and I think you should explore it some more in the interest of philosophy and growth. You may not agree or change your mind in the end and that's fine and goes for me and everyone else too, but I would avoid making the kind of absolutist statements that you seem to have made, as long as you aren't willing to qualify them. Can you explain why the views of morality of one specific agent - God - should be considered objective?
In physics, there is a principle that there is no privileged reference frame. The reason for that is that under any reference frame measurements can be made that accurately predict measurable outcomes, and this is true in spite of the fact that it means that all time and space are relative to the observer - there is no true/privileged singular universal space or time. The technical points are not the relevant one here - the point is that there is no privileged reference frame because there is no _logical a priori reason_ that compels us to accept one. You can _always_ arbitrarily choose some reference frame, and in fact you must, if you want to solve physics problems. But that will never mean that the reference frame is privileged in an _absolute_ sense. All reference frames are equal
This is analogous to morality in the relevant sense, based on the principle nobody can get an "ought" from an "is" (perhaps you've heard this famous Humean remark? Do you agree or disagree with it?) - there is no privileged reference frame of morality unless we _agree_ or _assert_ that there is, or if we _select_ one to solve a moral question. Why? Because _logic_ does not _compel_ us to accept one particular reference frame of moral statements to true. The fact that, according to some, it "is" the case that God says X, Y, and Z, are moral does not mean that we "ought" to _agree_ that those are, in fact, moral.
The moral framework you are _asserting_ exists, asserting, not demonstrating, proving, or noticing is a universal feature, is logically fallacious in this exact sense - you are asserting there is a particular privileged reference frame, despite there being no a priori logic that compels us to accept that such a frame exists. Again, what compels anyone, even IF God exists, to accept the God's reference frame?
The answer is that there is none, because categorically morality is not pure logic and is always based on values and perspectives, which are not shared universally. Again, there is no privileged reference frame.
On theism, the only difference is that God is conceived of as the biggest, strongest guy on the block - you can't _demonstrate_ that God's moral perspective _must_ be privileged - you just, as a wise and self-interested agent, should realize that God may or may not have an opinion about YOUR actions on morality, and may take actions in response to your actions on the basis of his judgment on your moral actions. It just means that there is an enforcer of a specific moral framework on the basis of power, not that the perspective is _intrinsically_ privileged, again, because there is nothing in the fabric of reality that logically compels us to accept one particular moral perspective - even God's - over any other. You can always make the case that it might be _wise_ to act according to God's moral system, but that doesn't make that moral system _intellectually_ superior.
So I'd be curious to hear your reasoning on why you might disagree with what I'm saying. I've given this considerable thought and nobody can ever explain with a priori logic why we should privilege one moral perspective - all recourses have always relied on values and self-interest and power considerations. Those are fine and relevant and wise to consider, but we cannot mix these vocabulary fallaciously in a discussion on whether or not theism can provide objective morality any more than atheism can. That just wouldn't be intellectually honest.
@@superdog797 you've given this a lot of thought and I read your comment and thank you. I don't have 30 mins that I want to reply. Sorry. Really you've used science, which has nothing to say about morality or how we should act. You've also brought up Hume's is ought problem which I am very familiar with but don't wish to adress for 5 paragraphs.
To summarize it, scientific materialism and science facts tell us nothing about how we should act. If there is no god, and or no higher morality, no order, then morality is simply agreed upon by purposeless meat puppets who have no free will. It may be making useful for peace, but it is inevitably a razor thin superficial construction.
You can count this as youve won the argument, because I am not wishing to engage further. Why? Well, Ive seen this conversation 1000 times. Philosophy is used to go on and on and on into an intolerable seemingly infinite regress, and it is nonsense. Philosophy is dead. Accept it and skip philosophy, which is another subjective construction of purpose contrived in a purposelessness brain. There is something higher, or there is nothing high at all.
@@brycew2 Well I appreciate that you read it at least. I get that it's hard to reply and it's exhausting not generally worth it depending on how you spend your time at different times. I'd say it's a no contest instead of a victory. Which again is fine.
I would say though that I'd make a clarification. I can agree with you that science doesn't give us moral obligations, not really at least - it just describes factual elements in the world. But I noticed you dismissed my assessment on the grounds that you seemed to think it was based on science. The thing is, it isn't. I didn't make an argument that says implies any moral framework. I was using science as one example - of many one could choose from - to illustrate that, sometimes, there are situations in which there are no privileged points of view. I could have chosen a thousand different examples but I just happened to choose science out of personal preference and because it's an interesting and somewhat counter-intuitive example, but any other example would have done fine.
So again, the point was not that science shows that morality of a particular kind is or isn't universal. That's not scientific. The point - the _logic_ I was demonstrating - was that morality can _never_ be "absolutely objective" in the way that people often want it to be, even IF there is a God. Why? Because there is no privileged reference frame, and there is nothing in logic or science that _compels_ us to accept one particular moral view. This is actually the _exact same intuitive point_ you _yourself_ are coming back to over and over again, but the _difference_ is that you are simply _assigning_ God's reference frame as "morally special" and then saying "There... I've solved the problem, and now morality is absolutely objective." That is _faulty_ logic because there _is_ no logic behind it at all. The same goes for literally whatever you want to name - and that includes _meaning_ itself. God's existence, even if he exists and created everything for a purpose, does not give _absolute objective meaning_ to your life or anybody else's, because _meaning itself_ does not work in this way. Meaning is something that is _inherently subjective_ - i.e. it is _subject_ to a _personal_ perspective (that's what subjective means right? personal views, whereas objective means not dependent upon personal views, right?). And in most western theologies, God is a *person* and *personal* and hence God is not _capable_ of instilling "absolutely objective meaning" in anyone or anything, _because God is a person_ and _being a person_ *precludes* the possibility that one's views on morality or meaning could even BE "absolutely objective." They can't, and all I was doing was pointing this self-evident fact out.
One might still find a greater - a more satisfying - view of life in the idea of a God with a natural tendency and a plan for their lives and who has a moral code that he designed with us in mind and pronounces judgements on and the whole bit - and that's *fine* - it's perfectly fine if it is a _more satisfying_ perspective for people. I have no doubt it is, because it simplifies many things. But it *cannot solve the "problem" of objective vs. subjective morality* which SO many theists purport it does solve. And I merely wish to express and reiterate that point, since I find it so commonly asserted.
I agree with you that philosophy is generally a sort of droning exercise, but I don't dismiss it outright and find it to be an inevitable element in life and any discussion. Even a dismissal of philosophy that is more than just a hand motion and requires analysis - as you provided yourself - is an _instance_ of philosophy. I think as a _field_ of historical knowledge and analysis philosophy may or may not be of intnerest to you or anyone else, but EVERYONE should care about the _ability_ to use good, sound reasoning and judgement, and come to firm conclusions. So even if philosophy is not one's preferred field for whatever reason (which really it isn't mine either), that's well and good, but I don't think it allows anybody to just dismiss philosophical analysis if that analysis really informs them that they should be taking a different view. I don't agree that meaning is vacuous either on secular naturalism but for brevity's sake won't go into it at this moment, as that would require a great deal more analysis.
(1/2) Were we much further advanced than the Nazis or Bolshevists? WW2 was 70 years ago. If you cannot judge people hundreds of years ago, why can you judge them 70 years ago? Or for that matter why can you judge different societies supposing they may be "evolving" at a different rate? But the crux of it is this: If morality is not objective than it is subjective or, in other words, up to the individual. And at that point why is your opinion on morality anymore correct than another?
Craig is completely right: without God humans are nothing but a coordinated set of chemical reactions. Even pain and suffering are nothing but chemical reactions. Chemical reactions are neither wrong nor right. Hence, life or death are neither right nor wrong. Only God can give men an intrinsic objective value.
Jesus Salva Did you even listen to Kagan at all?
Actually, if it takes God (a being with a mind and the conscious will to make the decision to do so) to give something value, that value is not objective, but subjective, as the value is subject to God and not within the object, itself.
Objective: Owned by or residing within the object.
Subjective: Owned by or residing within the mind with regards to the object.
Oh, and who cares if pain and suffering are chemical reactions. They're still pain and suffering. The notion that a person needs a supernatural element in order to have any importance only suggests that you don't think people are important on their own.
God is outside of our realm of existence. Therefore, if God bestows meaning to something, that meaning is objective. This is further supported by the fact that God's nature and opinions are unchangeable, which makes any of his opinions objective, since they don't depend on any external evidence/circumstance.
Jesus Salva The difference between objective and subjective has nothing to do with where you are relative to our realm of existence or how changeable your nature or opinions may or may not be.
It has entirely to do with whether or not the characteristic of an object is owned within the object or owned by the mind with regards to the object. Therefore, owned by God's mind, even if the opinion therein is unchangeable, with regards to any action, means morality is subjective.
God's opinion, being an opinion, cannot, by definition of the word "opinion" and by definition of "subjective" be any more objectively right than my own. That means that, even where he commands genocide, I get to say it's still wrong by my own values, subjective as they might be.
God is not a dictator. Goodness and love are part of his nature, but also is justice. So, if he pronounces a judgement, he is right about it. Moreover, since God created the universe and endowed every creation with its intrinsic characteristics, all objective values come ultimately from him.
And if the contract is to behaved in accordance with Gods law ?
Oners82 I agree.
I'm not adept at philosophy but if Craig is indeed a follower of an Abrahamic God, then the exact same thing can be said about him just as well - that we are morally required to perform any action, no matter what it is, IF God commanded it. So Craig and the rest of the adherents of an Abrahamic God will gladly stone to death their daughters if God wishes it or rejoice at the knowledge of so many children suffering from leukemia because God's ultimate purpose might be realized in the future due to their life of suffering.
@Miguel Cisneros There is no conceivable scenario in which torturing and raping a little girl would lead to the greater good. This is a completely absurd argument that people use against consequentialists.
But my fav of all time is " there is no absolute truth " ...... which if true is an absolute truth, which is contradictory. If false then what is the point of even saying. " there is no right and wrong " ..... oh really, is that statement right or is it wrong ? " There is nothing beyond the material world " Science can only test for natural causes, how then could science possibly test for anything outside of natural realm ? It cant, so such a thing cant be known, yet many say it as if fact
I find Shelly's views very simplistic, where in nature does say anyone is supposed to help people and not hurt them, why shouldnt someone exploit someone else to get what they want. Says who? Say that to stalin or Sadam Hussein, hey youre being immoral. Ya, by whose standards
I haven't watched the entire debate yet but nothing in "nature" says that anyone is supposed to help people and not hurt (exploit) them... even if it did what reason would we have to comply with it just because "nature" says it?
Part of the reason we generally don't exploit people to get what we want is we realize that we don't want to be exploited. But the main reason is because we recognize that we benefit most (even as individuals) when society works towards the betterment of everyone and minimizes the exploitation of others. We don’t have to live with the benefit of the other 8 billion people on this planet but your life would be much more difficult if you didn’t.
I’m not sure what argument you can make for a reason to be moral that couldn’t be met with the same question you asked about nature though? What would you propose we say to Stalin or Saddam? Should we appeal to a god or gods? Vishnu says you should be nice to each other? Allah says you should be moral? When they say they don’t believe in Vishnu or Allah, and/or that they see no reason they should give a s__ what they think, what then? Appealing to real world consequences to actions that are taken by someone is the only thing that can be demonstrated to actually be real.
@@00Bkhudson i would say that yes, we are created in the image of God, I think that is where our value actually comes from, otherwise why care about a bunch of evolved bacteria, especially on par with you own self interest. I see nothing irrational about the evil person if atheism is true. They actually are acting in many ways more rationally than the good person who gives himself to save others. We benefit most when society works together, I certainly wouldnt say thats true, many people get ahead and to the top by using power, and doing whatever they can to get ahead. Billionares, dictators, whoever, sometimes helping each other can be the worst for our particular interest. Pretty sure all the people who do evil, know the consequences of their actions, they just care about themselves, not the other person and that seems pretty rational to me. I think you are make Dr. Craigs point that morality is just sociobiological spinoffs and that there is nothing objectively binding by it, if naturalism is true.
In nature it’s beneficial to help one another. If you’re stuck in a tree and I help you, perhaps one day you’ll help me out of a tree.
@@trencher8715 Also lets say a guy wins alot of money at the casino, and someone else sees that, the guy sticks a gun at his head and says give me all your winnings and goes home. That is also beneficial for that guy. Look at Putin, do you think he got to be the czar of Russia being nice to everyone. He may be the richest one in the world, poisoned and killed anyone who stood up to him. Sorry nice and caring is one way, power and corruption is also a way.
so people suffering is something that we should have compassion on. however , he asks why should their be an objective moraity..we can still have compassion on people suffering. however, if it is not an objective moral duty, that means all kinds and numbers of people may not care of peoples suffering. to say there is objective morality, means there is a construct of moral thought. a universe that comes into being on it s own, can t create an objective moral thought.
Morality is NOT "objective under secular or theistic systems, nor does it need to be. Moral systems function just fine without the requirement for "objectivity"
Supernatural beliefs thrive in primitive communities, atheism thrives in advanced societies. Injustice is common among people who believe in invisible spirits, and concern for individual liberty is supported among those who think rationally. A map of poverty, sectarian violence, social instability and supernatural beliefs shows that they are strongly associated.
What Is justice?
luca montermini Justice is fairness, tolerance and respect for the right of others to pursue happiness.. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is an ancient dictum which precedes Christianity by centuries-- and it is not a simple matter because human activity is very complex. That's why we have laws and courts, which don't function perfectly but we have no one but our own collective wisdom to decide what is best in each situation.
What if my only way of pursuing of happiness is to kill someone else?
luca montermini QUOTE: "What if my only way of pursuing of happiness is to kill someone else?"
Then you would be infringing on someone else's happiness, which is immoral. Killing someone won't make you happy, anyway-- why do you think it would? Because you believe you are basically perverse and selfish and without a mythical father figure threatening you with punishment you would go out of control? Religious believers have been among the worst killers in history, so claiming that without religion we would become killers is a phony argument.
Ok so i am a moral person as long as i don't interfere with happiness of others...but i have one more question...suppose my opinion being "i don't believe in God"...suppose this would offend a part of the society Who actually believes in god.Now i have offended them,i interfered with their happiness,therefore it was immoral to express my opinion.Is that right?
Once William lane craig enters the battle, it's a rap.
Lol...Really?...Please explain
@Wayne Fisher There was no real crushing done here. I found it a really good debate. I didn't feel like Craig had the best responses in this debate, but Kagan's philosophy had holes that could've been more clearly exposed. Nothing was proven or disproven here, stating the contrary you exposed your bias. It was all pure philosophy and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Kagan is my favourite Atheist writer on morality that I've come across so far, but he has failed to prove objective morality within the Atheist worldview.
@@lancetschirhart7676 I agree that the topic of morality is extremely controversial. I did find that Craig's position in this debate was far more well defined, whilst Kagan's was much more vague.
@Oners82 I understand what you're saying. Did you keep a score tally of each argument and response? If you did I'd love to read it.
@Oners82 Oh you got angered rather easily. My question is absolutely sincere. I'm not the one who's claiming that there was a winner in this debate. You justified my opinion already by saying that Kagan did not prove his position (that was not even his aim) but it seemed clear that his arguments were far better, and Craig's responses were somewhat lacking. My opinion was that Kagan was vague and that Craig didn't have the best responses. So whilst you yourself have justified my opinion, you have left your opinion of Craig being "badly beaten" completely unjustified. That is why I sincerely asked if you kept a score with arguments and responses, because I sincerely wanted to analyse how you determined that Craig got "badly beaten".
I would love for you to highlight the points where you think Craig got beaten. I wouldn't mind watching the debate/open discussion again myself.
Watching William Lane Craig commit the "No True Scotsman Fallacy" at 1:14:35 is truly a sight to behold (or should I say "No Genuine Christian fallacy"). The No True Scotsman Fallacy is defined as an informal fallacy whereby an ad hoc attempt through rhetoric is made in order to modify an unreasoned universal claim in the face of a counter example instead of (i) abandoning the original universal statement or (ii) negating the counter example.
That would be the case if Craig argued that it was okay to live immorally just because Jesus died for our sins. But since Craig never argued that, and Christianity explicitly rejects that idea, it's not a "No true Scotsman". Kagan presented an incorrect description of the doctrine of Justification.
See Matthew 7 where Jesus talks about judgment, false teachers, false disciples, and those who merely outwardly profess to be Christians during the Sermon on the Mount:
21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ 23 Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’
Jesus explicitly rejects the idea that all people who do works in the name of Christ, even extravagant ones like prophesying, performing exorcisms, or doing miracles, are in reality true believers.
And James 2, where James talks about living a life of faith:
15 Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. 16 If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? 17 In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.
18 But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.”
Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds. 19 You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that-and shudder.
20 You foolish person, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless? 21 Was not our father Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? 22 You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did. 23 And the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,” and he was called God’s friend. 24 You see that a person is considered righteous by what they do and not by faith alone.
James rejects a mere attestation of faith or an intellectual faith. Knowing that Jesus died for your sins and that God exists isn't the same as being a true Christian, for even demons know that God exists yet they tremble. True faith is evidenced by how you live. You should want to do good works and those that still live a life of sin in actuality have rejected God and are lost.
For the average person NO. The avg person can be moral without there being any god. For the US congress, god is not enough.
Moral values are highly relativistic. Period.
The application of moral values may be relative. They are however absolute to the intrinsic nature of things
3) I'm not saying we need a committee; Kagan's view is that such a committee/group/society of perfectly rational beings is the ontological ground of goodness. I was merely point out why he is wrong.
4) It is not tautological, it is definitional. You are simply trying to define the vague sense of morality that evolved in homo sapiens as "moral" without any rational justification. What if the morality of some alien race is the actual moral one? If there's a "fact of the matter" about moral...
40 minutes in, and all I've heard from Craig is essentially, "objective morality exists because otherwise it wouldn't be truly wrong to rape."
This is nothing more than an argument from consequences. In other words, morality is objective because I think it would be bad if it weren't.
This makes no sense. The only way for something to be objectively (truly) wrong is if there is an objective (true) morality. It's precisely because atheistic moral codes have started with the assumption that human life is morally significant in the grand scheme of things, that there is no reason behind thinking it's objective, under atheism. Craig's argument is that theism gives a foundation to believe in an objective morality, because theism posits that morality itself is part of god and that was instilled in us on Earth.
Vic 2.0
" It's precisely because atheistic moral codes have started with the assumption that human life is morally significant in the grand scheme of things"
This is not even false. Not only is there no such thing as an "atheistic moral code," atheists do not argue that anything has any ultimate objective significance.
Osmosis "This is not even false."
I know, that's why I said it :P
"Not only is there no such thing as an "atheistic moral code,""
Naturally, what I meant by this was moral codes that do not involve a god, or moral codes that are held by people who do not believe in a god.
"atheists do not argue that anything has any ultimate objective significance."
In the grand scheme of things, no. But many atheists obviously do believe in an objective morality. One need only turn to anti-theists for confirmation of this. They will readily tell you that if the Christian god existed, he would be evil, immoral, malevolent, etc. And of course, even without that, it isn't hard to catch someone making a statement about something being "wrong". And it's not like other subjective opinions, where they will freely admit it's just their subjective opinion. They will get increasingly passionate about their moral statement as you verbally disagree.
@@Vic2point0 Why would we need to believe in objective morality?