Atheist Questions William Lane Craig About God's Morality

William Lane Craig is a top notch debater. I've enjoyed many chuckles while watching him destroy (figuratively) atheists on YouTube. The big disagreement I normally have with Craig is his compromise on creation but that is the subject of another post. What impresses me most about him is his command of logical arguments. Usually Craig's arguments are so unassailable that even the renown Richard Dawkins has refused to debate him again. Anyone who has followed my blog for a while has probably seen a little of Craig's influence in my posts because I've learned a lot from listening to him. You can imagine my disappointment, then, when he seemed to stumble over a rather ordinary question from an atheist (at least I assume he's an atheist from the headline because he doesn't identify himself as such in the video). As usual, I've included the video here for your review. It's only 2:57 long so you will probably want to take a moment to review before we continue. Go ahead. I'll wait...

If you've never watched Dr. Craig before, one argument he frequently uses for the existence of God is the existence of absolute morality. If there is no God, then there is no objective morality. Things like right and wrong would be subjective and relative to what is expedient. A cat, for example, might kill a mouse for sport. If nature is all there is, then a human killing another human would be no more wrong than any animal killing another. One can call an atrocity like the Holocaust objectively evil only by assuming there is an ultimate standard of good and evil. In a universe without God, such a standard does not exist. If someone believes there is a such thing as absolute right and wrong, he must admit there is an ultimate Law-Giver whose judgment supersedes every other person's opinion.  That's Craig's point and I believe it's a compelling argument.

The argument for the existence of objective morality must have been one of the topics Craig had discussed the night of this video. The atheist in this video challenges Craig on the “morality of God” by citing several verses where, he believes, the Bible endorses immoral practices. He starts with a reference to Exodus 21:20-21 but then rattles off a long lists of “questionable” verses. As I've said, this is a fairly common criticism raised of Christianity – one I'm sure Craig must have heard before so I would think he'd be practiced in answering it. In this video, he acted like he was winging it.

First, I'm not sure why Craig asked why the questioner seemed so angry. This smacks of the logical fallacy of “appeal to motive”; that is, he seems to say “you are only asking this question because you are angry with God.” He even suggests that the questioner was too wound up emotionally to understand his argument. Maybe Craig was genuinely curious about the questioner and wasn't trying to accomplish anything by raising this point. It just struck me as odd he would even go there.

However, what disappointed me most about Craig's response was how he immediately abandoned the God of Christianity and the Bible. He said that his point was only a generic argument for theism and the existence of a personal supreme being thus his argument is consistent with Christianity, Judaism, Islam, some Hindu beliefs, and deism. Really, Craig? Is that how you want to defend Christianity? You seem to actually retreat from the Bible.

Now, it would be terribly presumptuous of me to tell Dr. Craig, who holds a PhD in Philosophy and is a veteran debater, how he should have answered the question but I'm going to anyway. It would have been a mistake to begin to try to address every verse the critic cited so I can understand why Craig didn't do that. It's seems obvious to me, though, that he should have used the opportunity of the critic's question to double down on his argument. Instead of saying (I'm paraphrasing), “I was only trying to prove theism and not the Bible,” Craig should have said, “If there is no God, then on what grounds do you consider these verses from the Bible to be morally objectionable?” By putting the burden back onto the critic, Craig would have accomplished at least two things: 1) he would have reinforced his argument and put the critic in the position of having to address the real point of Craig's argument instead of raising red herrings and 2) Craig would not have made those “questionable” verses in the Bible seem indefensible.

The verses cited by this critic are certainly worth discussing and I may use them as the subjects of future posts. But, as they say, we must make first things first. If someone believes some passage from the Bible is morally “wrong,” from where does he derive his objective standard of right and wrong? The “Supreme Personal Being” Craig alludes to in his lectures/debates is not some generic god of any religion. He is the only God – the God of the Bible. He is the ultimate Judge of what is right and wrong. There is no objective morality apart from Him and so no one can question His morality (or the morality of the Bible) without first realizing He exists.

Oh, The Irony!!

How many times have you heard creationists compared to “flat-earthers”? In their Creation/Evolution Continuum, the National Center for Science Education, places flat-earthers at one end of the spectrum, just behind geocentrists and young-earth creationists, while theistic and atheistic evolutionists occupy the other end. It's a blatant attempt at guilt-by-association because those very few people who actually believe in a flat earth, are supposedly Christians.

That the earth is flat is not taught anywhere in the Bible. The passages usually cited in support of this claim are obvious literary devices but to say the Bible teaches “flat-earthism” would be akin to me saying that weathermen are geocentrists for using terms like “sunrise” and “sunset.” Besides, the idea of a flat earth was never solely in the realm of Christianity since many other cultures also believed in a flat earth. Even ideas like geocentrism endured from Ptolemy until Galilei as the prevailing “scientific” model. The church should have learned then not to wed their interpretation of Scriptures to flawed “scientific” opinion.

Today, the Flat Earth Society, which boasts a (likely inflated) membership of hundreds, is currently led by a man named, Daniel Shenton. Let me ask you, the reader: what do you think Shenton's views on creation are? Do you think he's a creationist? Here's what Live Science had to say about the issue:

“Though Shenton believes in evolution and global warming, he and his hundreds, if not thousands, of followers worldwide also believe that the Earth is a disc that you can fall off of.” [bold added]

Isn't that a hoot? After all these years of hearing from evolutionists that “creationists” is synonymous with “flat-earthers” we find out that the chief flat-earther is one of their own! Oh, the irony!

And another thing, I'm not too familiar with the flat-earth movement – I've always suspected the society of being a rather elaborate attempt to troll – but what is the official position of the group concerning evolution? It seems to me that if the leader of the group is an evolutionist, then evolution is probably the group's official position as well.

This puts things in an entirely different light. So, will the evo-establishment continue engaging in this intellectually lazy argument? Probably. They have resorted to this tactic for so long that I doubt they are able to change. If they are going to continue making that bed, they'd better be prepared to lie in it. Believe me, from now on, whenever I hear insult that creationists are like flat-eathers, I'm going to immediately link the ignorant soul to the quote above.

Oh, by the way, I've taken the liberty to correct NCSE's graph. Now, please excuse me while I laugh my head off!

Photo Gaffe or Major Porn Humiliation?

I really don't follow sports so I don't know who Felipe Baloy is but I read about him on Yahoo! Apparently, he's a soccer player and I know enough about sports to know that soccer is a big deal in a lot of countries outside the US. Pro soccer players there are viewed much the same way as pro basketball players are viewed here. Frankly, I've always thought the hero worship of sports figures went a little too far but it is what it is.

Anyway, Baloy is one such sports figure who has a lot of fans. According to the Yahoo! article, Baloy seems like a nice enough guy who is usually happy to take a moment and pose for a picture with his fans. Recently, he posed with a young fan who looked about 3-4 years old and was decked out in his team's colors. Using popular, internet terminology, the photo turned out to be a “fail.” In a semi-transparent shopping bag that Baloy happened to be holding right in front of the kid, we can clearly see the cover of the Playboy magazine Baloy had just purchased.

Yahoo!, being the liberal organization that it is, made light of the incident:

“Of course, there was no harm done and it was very nice of Baloy to make a young fan's day by stopping and smiling for the shot, but the child will probably appreciate this picture even more when he's a little older.”

Yahoo! obviously doesn't see a problem with a photo like this. There's “no harm done,” they say.  Never mind that this little boy might grow up thinking it's OK to read pornography because his hero reads it too. He will probably even learn to “appreciate” this moment! Is Yahoo! serious?

This is still another reason why idolizing sports celebrities is a bad idea. Simply being a good athlete does not equate with being worthy of emulation. Being physically exceptional is not the same as having a good character. Just ask Tiger Woods.

It's been a few years but I'll be honest – when I was younger, I sometimes purchased Playboy magazines. Whenever I bought one, I suspected I was doing something wrong (of course, not strongly enough to not do it) and I felt a little embarrassed about it. What if the cashier was a female? What would she think about me? And heaven forbid that she might know me!! If a picture like this came out of me (though I know that none exist), I would feel humiliated. I guess the times have changed.

Bill Bennett once coined the term, “the death of outrage.” We now “tolerate” things that were once taboo. Pornography is no longer an embarrassment. Out of wedlock sex is now the punchline in TV sitcoms. Hugh Hefner got his own “reality” series where a 70 year old man got to show off his three hot girlfriends. Of course, illegitimacy rates are also sky rocketing and the children of these single parents will likely face a life of poverty. True reality isn't quite as glamorous as the Playboy Mansion.

Pictures like this are sad. The parents of this young boy should be outraged. Baloy should be apologizing. Instead, it's all a big joke. Playboy is out of the brown bag. I don't think it's funny.

Russell Crowe as Noah

Hollywood is making a new film with a biblical theme. This time, it's an adaptation of the biblical the account of Noah with Russell Crowe being cast in the leading role. After the wildly successful, The Passion of the Christ, I would have thought Hollywood would have caught on that people want to see these kinds of films and studios would start producing more of them. I guess it's not always about money for liberals. They have their standards too. Some just can't bring themselves to make a movie portraying the Bible in a favorable light no matter how successful the movie might be.

Some Christian movies made over the last several years have suffered from small budgets. This new endeavor, on the other hand, will have an estimated budget of $130 million. That sounds like plenty of money for special effects and all the other things that might make an epic adventure successful. I wonder if any critics are going to protest the cost of the movie the same way they have protested the Ark Encounter. $130 million could feed a lot of starving children in third world countries. These same critics who berate AiG for spending millions on the Ark Encounter seldom lament the millions Hollywood spends each year on movies that seem to glorify sex and violence.

One report describes this as an “edgy Biblical re-telling of Noah’s Ark.” It's the word “edgy” that makes me suspicious. If the film's director, Darren Aronofsky, wants this to be a smash hit, I would recommend he stick faithfully to the narrative of Genesis. There's certainly enough in the real account to make the movie thrilling. I'm worried, though, that Aronofsky will fall into the sometimes practice of Hollywood elitists who feel they need to add “depth” to the characters and story. That was the killing blow to Richard Greer's portrayal of David in the movie, King David. What? Was David not an interesting enough character without embellishing him?

I'm also curious how the movie will treat the extent of the Flood and the animals on board. Will they portray a global flood? It would be entirely possible for the movie to not commit to a global or local flood so perhaps they'll go the easy route and not say either way. It would be difficult for them, though, to hide which animals are on-board. Will they make the simple mistake of Noah bringing all “species” of animals onto the Ark? I half expect to see lions and tigers rather than a single “cat-kind.”

Finally, will the movie bring out the real message behind Noah? Will it be about a righteous God Who judges sin? Will people know that God has provided salvation to those who believe in Him? Will they see the Ark as a picture of Jesus? Somehow, I doubt it.

Most of what I know about the movie at this point is speculation. We'll have to wait and see the finished product before giving it a thumbs up or down. I'm somewhat encouraged that movie makers are looking to the Bible as the inspiration for great movies. Still, Hollywood has seldom treated Christians with the same respect they show for AIDS victims or drug users.