God is loving and holy
Greta Christina pointed out a little nightmare of a post by William Lane Craig at his wittily-named blog “Reasonable Faith,” saying that genocide is ok because God decided.
I haven’t properly read Greta’s article yet because I wanted to read Craig first. I’m doing that now.
He says about the genocide of the Canaanites.
These stories offend our moral sensibilities. Ironically, however, our moral sensibilities in the West have been largely, and for many people unconsciously, shaped by our Judaeo-Christian heritage, which has taught us the intrinsic value of human beings, the importance of dealing justly rather than capriciously, and the necessity of the punishment’s fitting the crime. The Bible itself inculcates the values which these stories seem to violate.
What? The story violates our moral sensibilities but oh, haha, those moral sensibilities come from the place that says the story is fine.
Oh no you don’t. None of that, bub. That’s called having it both ways, or eating your cake and having it, or a contradiction.
The story violates our moral sensibilities because we have better moral sensibilities than the people who wrote the bible. We have the benefit of many centuries of thinking and learning and cumulative wisdom. We did not get them from the bible.
According to the version of divine command ethics which I’ve defended, our moral duties are constituted by the commands of a holy and loving God. Since God doesn’t issue commands to Himself, He has no moral duties to fulfill. He is certainly not subject to the same moral obligations and prohibitions that we are. For example, I have no right to take an innocent life. For me to do so would be murder. But God has no such prohibition. He can give and take life as He chooses.
How does Craig know this god is “holy and loving”? He doesn’t. I don’t know that about Craig’s god, and I don’t know that Craig knows it either. I don’t want to be subject to Craig’s cosmic dictator who can kill anyone he damn well feels like killing. I’m not going to agree to Craig’s PR for the dictator.
Moreover, if we believe, as I do, that God’s grace is extended to those who die in infancy or as small children, the death of these children was actually their salvation. We are so wedded to an earthly, naturalistic perspective that we forget that those who die are happy to quit this earth for heaven’s incomparable joy. Therefore, God does these children no wrong in taking their lives.
So then all children should be murdered. It totally makes sense – that way they’re guaranteed god’s grace, while if they live to get older, they might lose it, by being gay or an atheist or an imbiber of spirits. Those who die are happy to quit this earth for heaven’s incomparable joy, so what possible reason could there be not to kill all children right now?
Anyway, the best news is, it turns out that Christianity is good while Islam is bad.
Christians believe that God is all-loving, while Muslims believe that God loves only Muslims. Allah has no love for unbelievers and sinners. Therefore, they can be killed indiscriminately. Moreover, in Islam God’s omnipotence trumps everything, even His own nature. He is therefore utterly arbitrary in His dealing with mankind. By contrast Christians hold that God’s holy and loving nature determines what He commands.
So if god kills you tomorrow it’s because of god’s holy and loving nature, even if you don’t go to heaven like the babies and children but instead go to the bad place. You’re pleased, right?
At times like this I remember the words of Doug Stanhope: “If you truly believe that death is followed by eternal bliss, then why are you wearing a seatbelt?”
How fucking convenient! I don’t know if Craig is genuinely sincere in his outlook or if he’s just a slimy huckster, but I cannot imagine anybody in their right minds willing to debate this travesty.
this is the best evidence of a sick mind i have ever heard. And the sickness don’t only lay in the fact that rules or laws doesn’t exist (it’s pure arbitrariness) but also in the fact that these perverted mind don’t have the courage loosening from his deluded fantasies. The hypocrisy is that they play god themselves. I think they know for a very long time that their imaginary helper in the sky didn’t exist, they saw it around them. So if you see perfectly that you telling yourself a lie and refuses the truth you mind get twisted and you get this what you read here in the article. It’s that these rotten minds rule the world that makes me angry.
So if Craig’s god kills innocent people at random, it’s because there can be no constraints on what god does. If the Muslim god does it, it’s because god’s omnipotence trumps its own nature. The only difference I can see there is that if Criag’s god wants to kill people, it doesn’t even have to fight an innate “don’t commit random murder” nature.
Why is this supposed to make his god the better of the two?
Ah, the whole “God owns you” theory. “Of course he can kill you as he pleases, he’s earned that right by creating you (something for which you were not in a position to ASK).”
I’ve heard this sentiment expressed before by some Christian radio show host named Todd Friel in an interview with Hitchens (it’s on youtube). Gratefully, Hitch didn’t budge an inch.
Because if the Christian God kills you, it’s out of love, even if it doesn’t seem like it. If the Islamic God kills you, it’s just on his whim. Huge difference, eh?
This is such a completely decisive response to what must be one of the most evil rationalisations in Christian apologetics. It’s hard to believe that this smug idiot can have the effrontery to claim, without wincing, that the commandments to kill Canaanites are just and good. How much more idiotic does a Christian apologist have to become before you say, “Well, whatever…!”? God, what a stupid fool. His smugness and self-satisfaction is really hard to believe when you see him in action, but to be reduced by sacred scripture to naked inhumanity is really to much to take! If Christians don’t start abandoning the idiot, then there’s not much to be said for Christianity, and what little might have been said is now clearly bankrupt. Why on earth couldn’t Hitler have made the same claim? In fact, he does? He thought of his extermination of the Jews as commanded by his god, Christ as a fighter demanded this of him! What more need be said?
Here, have a link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uefDgWq5aQc&feature=related
Its funny, and its topical. Odd how actual theology becomes comedy by saying it verbatim in a comedy-voice.
Wall to wall divine command theory bullshit. How is he not ashamed of this?
Right on, and perfectly said, Ms Benson.
And #9, Christians seem to HAVE no shame for anything to do with their religious beliefs.
Presumably by caring more about rationalizing his beliefs than about being moral.
Divine command theory, aka “My god may be a monster, but he’s my monster!”
Ah, “Dr.” Craig—my favorite apologist. What’s not to like? He’s got that creamy hucksterish persona, that pedantic faux erudition, that ability to be scary-good at scoring cheap points in a debate, and he looks like David Lee Roth if David Lee Roth hadn’t lived the life of David Lee Roth. If the theological community could create an ideal apologist robot that went out and debated atheists (call it the Theodicy 5000), they’d built a bot that looked a lot like WLC.
It always annoys me when Christians take the credit for our moral sensibilities. Socrates and Aristotle (to name two of many) seem to have had some reasonable thoughts on morality without benefit of Christ.
And this is the guy who some people think “won” the debate with Harris.
WLC is defending psychopathy, which Sam Harris actually pointed out in that debate as well.
This strikes me as “sophisticated theology” that if contested would simply lead to claims that it’s not being taken seriously (ie on its terms) or that we don’t know the background to this sophisticated view.
Dr Craig is apparently a highly regarded theologian and philosopher, not just some frothing-at-the-mouth fundamentalist. He obtained doctoral degrees in both philosophy and theology from respectable universities and he has published scholarly works through reputable publishing houses (many of these works apparently not polemical). He would seem to be an ideal strategic case study.
Could some of our accommodationist friends pop over to this thread and explain to us ignurant theologically unsofisticated types how to engage in respectful dialogue with Dr Craig? A quick overview of the “strategizing, the community rebuilding, the future imagining, and the alliance-making” would be good. Some examples of dialectics with “the added benefit of creating community, building intelligent synthesis out of seemingly intractable positions” would benefit us all. Perhaps someone could provide us with an example of a “substantial appeal for constructive change” in this context?
Perhaps even just a few suggested opening remarks to start a “respectful dialogue”?
If God is all-powerful, then doesn’t that make his commandments all-encompassing because wouldn’t anything less not be all-powerful. If those commands are all-encompassing, then God’s commandments should also apply to God.
This, of course, creates a logical paradox where an all-powerful can’t be all-powerful.
‘None of that, bub. That’s called having it both ways, or eating your cake and having it…’. My friend has a lovely variation of this expression: Covering your arse while trying to shine out of it.
Essentially what he’s arguing is that God has established an objective moral standard, but that God Himself is able to abrogate those morals at will because He’s the one who created them. Therefore if you’re following God’s commands, then you’re not behaving immorally:
I fail to understand how this is objective morality in any meaningful sense of the term if it can be abrogated with the excuse “God made me do it”.
A more consistent argument in my opinion is that Christian morality exists of exactly one Commandment: “Obey God”. Obeying God’s will is moral, disobeying it is immoral. End of story. It explains why God both does, and also commands others to do, all sorts of things in the Old Testament that seem to be immoral or even downright evil. Dashing the skulls of babies against rocks is moral because the soldiers are obeying God’s will to do so.
Acts are not themselves inherently moral or immoral. They are only granted that status by whether or not God has commanded you to do them.
That makes more “sense” to me than Craig’s circumlocution whereby there’s some sort of objective morality but that God, and anyone following God’s orders, can abrogate it at will and those acts are suddenly moral.
When I try to argue that simpler construction, though, I’m usually waved off indignantly, presumably because I’m doing away with the “objective morality” that many Christians (including Craig) seem to feel is an essential part of their moral superiority. Otherwise, their objective morality is just as subjective and subject to change as that of atheists or humanists. Although presumably Christian apologists would argue, as Craig does, that God in general is consistent. Except when He’s not.
It’s the only way I can make even a vague sort of sense out of most of the Old Testament, though. Eating from the Tree wasn’t either moral or immoral. It was disobeying God’s orders that was immoral. The Tree was incidental. And so on.
All of this is just by way of trying to understand the thought process of Christian moralists, of course — to me it’s all like trying to extrapolate a system of ethics by arguing about Star Trek.
In other words, “It’s not murder when God does it” — just like “It’s not fascism when we do it.”
And — @ SinSeeker — the terms “highly regarded theologian and philosopher” and ” frothing-at-the-mouth fundamentalist” often seem synonymous in practice.
It’s amazing that anyone seriously claims that human moral values can only have come from the Bible. Do they think the Chinese, Hindus, etc. had and have no moral sensibilities?
Infidel753:
Not to speak for the apologists, but my understanding is that they don’t claim moral values come from the Bible, they argue that they come from God and are just expressed most directly through the Bible.
God gave all humans — even atheists and other such undesirables — the same innate moral sense. Non-Christians are still following God, they just don’t know it.
What SinSeeker said – I would love to see a friendly dialogue among, say, Craig and Catholic self-appointed theologian Ronald Conte (remember him?), and a couple of accomos. That would be good.
Even if you granted that Divine Command Theory worked, there’s a fatal problem with the indispensable communication aspect. Between “command” and “obey” comes “hear and understand.” The command is worthless without that. And no matter how perfectly authoritative the commander, and how perfectly willing the obedient, the “hear and understand” simply cannot be more perfect than the person who hears and understand: the flawed human being.
Do they really think that the ‘voice of God’ is never, ever misheard or mis-attributed or misunderstood or mis-diagnosed? There’s nothing subjective about faith? And that a perfect God wouldn’t damn well know that the last tool you want to give sinful, fallen, flawed human beings is a mandate to be certain about mysterious voices you or someone else heard in their head?
This whole moral theory fails on so many levels, it’s hard to pick the worst part. But this problem always sticks out for me. Even a perfect command must be communicated. Can it be perfectly communicated if the receiver is admittedly imperfect?
Ah,theodicy, the defence of the indefensible,Craig’s arguments are morally bankrupt and just plain sinister.
How can ‘commands’ constitute a morality? “God”, apparently,is a divine dictator.
Right, that is why we (atheists) are always told we will burn in hell. Oh, I forgot, I’d burn out of love….
I have already read psycho Craig’s sicko article so now I’m off to read Greta tear him a new one:-)
The idea that human life is important comes from humanism, not the bible. Before humanism, human life was worth shit. And it still is in most of the world, even five centuries after humanism. We are for the most part oblivious privileged first world people.
And that a perfect God wouldn’t damn well know that the last tool you want to give sinful, fallen, flawed human beings is a mandate to be certain about mysterious voices you or someone else heard in their head? This whole moral theory fails on so many levels, it’s hard to pick the worst part. But this problem always sticks out for me. Even a perfect command must be communicated. Can it be perfectly communicated if the receiver is admittedly imperfect?
Ah! You hit the nail on the head there. It’s why it’s so easy to dismiss spiritual and transcendent experiences as a reasonable form of evidence. Why would God use a tool which is impenetrable to independent inquiry and prone to self-deception to relay life and death (eternal life, that is) messages? You would think he would want to use something a little more credible and less easily corrupted.
Same thing with using a text written over the course of many centuries by fallible and opinionated humans as a basis for civilization. He might as well leave me secret messages in my Cheerios!
Didn’t the founding fathers ( or was it the Frenchies? ) come up with the then novel idea that all men ( sexist pigs ) were created equal and had inalienable rights? Thus, it was an Enlightenment ideal, not something floating in the cesspool of amoral passages that is the favoured haunt of the biblical god.
Ultimately, all of these “morality is meaningless unless it comes from God” arguments boil down to “might makes right.” It is at least refreshing to see someone acknowledge this directly — although inevitably with some backtracking and hedging too.
There should be an accreditation board for theologians. If you flunk Euthyphro, you can’t join the club. (But I guess the club would then consist mainly of incompetent theologians such as Richard Dawkins.)
Yeah, how is obeying an imoral request acting moral?
Then again, how can one persons self-sacrifice remove the negative residue of immoral acts from another?
I just can’t see it. Guess I’m not made out to believe such stuff.
Eric beat me to the Godwin punch, I’m afraid…but I’ll say it anyway.
Dr. Craig would have gladly volunteered to drop the Zyklon B pellets into the “showers” — because he would be doing “the Lord’s work.”
There is nothing — and I mean precisely and absolutely nothing — that stands as a difference between Craig’s stand here and the defense the Nazi’s used when they were tried for death camp atrocities. Other than the fact that one claims an even higher authority whose orders are being followed.
Andrew B. #27 wrote:
He’s been trying. You eat too fast.
Seriously, how would Craig (aka ‘Slick Willy’) answer this question: “If a person hears what they’re certain is the voice of God telling them to kill sinners, should they obey?” Would he say “Well, it depends. How certain are they?” Or would his response have to be “Only if it really is the voice of God: otherwise, absolutely not.”
We all know darn well his answer would almost certainly involve some variant of “no — because God doesn’t do that any more.” And he knows this — how? And people should trust him over the Voice of God — why?
Stories which involve the reader in background information (“and then God revealed to him …”) are not like real life, where we don’t have helpful narrators and soundtracks following us around to clue us in on what’s really going on, and what we’re all supposed to do.
Though damn, now that I think about it, that sure would be useful (clash of cymbals and the music swells triumphantly…)
If you think about it, saying it was God’s command and I had to obey is just the Nueremberg defence.
I have a modest proposal…based on this absolutely vile position espoused by Dr. Craig. I challenge every single atheist, secularist, humanist, scientist who is invited to “debate” with Dr. to refuse such a challenge on the grounds that they are afraid that Dr. Craig will decide that his god is telling him to kill his rhetorical opponent.
Until Dr. Craig repudiates his statements, cut him off from these theaters of the absurd.
And if you’re listening Dr. Craig — stay away from my kids. I’m dead-ass serious about this. You come near my kids and we’re going to have problem.
Understand?
Andrew B. wrote:
Hang on – [reads message in Cheerios] – ‘Oooooooooooooooooooooo’. Hmm, I’m not quite sure but I think it means ‘smite the Amalekites’…
Dude, it so obviously means “[Smite R]ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo[se]”.
[…] Update: Ophelia Benson has a take on it, too. […]
One of the reasons for gassing rather than shooting Jews etc was the strain on SS soldiers of personally killing so many people. Himmler was apparently quite shocked when he observed mass executions. Craig might contemplate the company he keeps.
It has long been apparent that everything is permitted when your god is on your side. I expect WLC is a decent human being in other respects, but here we have a classic demonstration of the the corrupting effect of religion.
When King David carried out a census of his military against God’s instructions God punished David by killing 70 000 of his subjects. I wonder how Craig explains that away.
Unlike Kevin (#34), I think atheists should debate WLC, and bring to the debate his post to read from anytime he mentions morality.
First, why does God get a pass on morality?
Second,
I’ve idly wondered recently whether the “there is no afterlife” view makes life worth more than the “after death, we keep on existing” view. Does believing that when you die, you utterly cease to exist as a conscious being lead to a greater valuation of life than believing in an afterlife? If the person you kill will continue to exist, perhaps in a better place, than surely the harm is not as great as if the person ceases to exist.
Like I said, just idle thoughts.
If following God’s instructions, as stated in the holy book, is following the moral path, then Osama Bin Laden is moral.
#38 – Ahhh yes, the lovely Himmler……
“What happens to a Russian, to a Czech, does not interest me in the slightest. What the
nations can offer in the way of good blood of our type, we will take, if necessary by
kidnapping their children and raising them here with us. Whether nations live in
prosperity or starve to death like cattle interests me only in so far as we need them as
slaves to our Kultur; otherwise it is of no interest to me. Whether 10,000 Russian females fall down from exhaustion while digging an antitank ditch interests me only in so far as the antitank ditch for Germany is finished……… . . I also want to talk to you quite frankly on a very grave matter. . . I mean. . . the extermination of the Jewish race. . . . Most of you must know what it means when 100 corpses are lying side by side, or 500, or 1,000. To have stuck it out and at the same time – apart from exceptions caused by human weakness – to have remained decent fellows, that is what has made us hard. This is a page of glory in our history which has never been written and is never to be written.
A year later……..”without our leaders and their men suffering any damage in their minds and souls. The danger was considerable, for there was only a narrow path between the Scylla of their becoming heartless ruffians unable any longer to treasure life, and the Charybdis of their becoming soft and suffering nervous breakdowns.”
And when his physician Kersten protested at the intention to destroy the Jews, saying that the suffering involved was ‘not to be contemplated’, Kersten reports that Himmler replied: He knew that it would mean much suffering for the Jews. . . . ‘It is the curse of greatness that it must step over dead bodies to create new life. Yet we must . . . cleanse the soil or it will never bear fruit. It will be a great burden for me to bear.’
All this taken from the excellent 1974 Paper by Jonathan Bennett “The Conscience of Huckleberry Finn” wherein he compares the moralities of Heinrich Himmler, Huckleberry Finn and Calvinist theologian Jonathan Edwards.
http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/jfb/huckfinn.pdf
I hope WLC never gets ‘cursed with greatness’ or we’re all in deep shit. Such people that act in conformity to ‘bad morality’ against all sympathy or humaneness are basically sociopaths, are they not? The world is cursed with them for they so love power.
The first response to Tangled Up in Blue Guy is a support for the logical conclusion WLC draws without examining why he (the commenter) picks an absolute measure for good (whether Platonic or supernatural).
Logic is a wonderful tool but if you don’t examine the pre-suppositions then it doesn’t matter that logic supports your position. This is why theology is as good as Star Trek-ology or Tolkienology. It can be intellectually challenging and compelling to argue based on the idea that there is a supernatural (or otherwise external/absolute) source of good. It can’t be particularly insightful though – not when you want insight into how things really work and you have actual evidence that “good is a human construct” and such things.
Am I being too dismissive of “sophisticated theology”? I hope so, it deserves to be dismissed.
Craig interprets the Christian Bible like Nixon interpreted the US Constitution: when the President does it, that means that it is not illegal.
This justification for the worst horrors imaginable turns my stomach. I’m sorry, but there is NOTHING defensible about bashing in the heads of infants. I am not educated in philosophy and when these threads get heavy with philosophical jargon, it’s often over my head. However, there is no fancy language that can ever resolve this Problem of Evil. Craig should be embarrassed. Worse yet, it’s terrifying that the majority of adults (at least here in the US) think their God worth defending, that it doesn’t even plant a seed of concern for those that might end up on the receiving end of God’s wrath. It’s truly unacceptable and it’s our job to unwaveringly point that out.