This is the second instalment of my series where I look at Richard Carrier’s case against the resurrection of Jesus. The first instalment was quite some time ago, in May 2011. There I examined Carrier’s comparison of the historical evidence for the empty tomb versus the historical evidence for Julius Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon. I attempted to explain why Carrier’s rejection of that analogy was inadequate. Part three will be the most important in the series, as it addresses the argument that Carrier continually uses to bear the main load of his case. That argument is the argument that Christianity did not need an empty tomb to avoid falsification when it first began, because the first Christians, Carrier alleges, didn’t really believe that Jesus’ body had been resurrected, believing instead that Jesus had left his old body lying dead and been raised to spiritual life in a new, non-physical body. But that argument can wait, for now. In this part I will look at Carrier’s second category of argument: General Case for Insufficiency. Let’s dive right in – As it’s Easter the timing seems most appropriate!
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In light of the millennia of the history of philosophy that we have behind us, it was only recently – setting the last few decades aside – that the moral argument slipped out of the mainstream. In the first half of the twentieth century C. S. Lewis could refer to the moral argument with some confidence, and it may well have been the most common of the major arguments for God’s existence at the time.

While today most Christians philosophers might look favourably on the moral argument (with the occasional noteworthy exception like Richard Swinburne), it has certainly fallen out of favour among the philosophical community – in spite of what I take to be its strength – bearing in mind of course that in the English-speaking world the general population outside of academia was once much more Christian than today. Where did it go? Why, in the mid twentieth century, did the moral argument slip out of sight?

Here it is, the last podcast episode for 2011. This time I’m looking at “the “evil god challenge” as posed by Stephen Law in a fairly recent article by that name. Isn’t the evidence for a good God really no better or worse than the evidence that an evil god? In short, no. Here I explain why I think (as I suspect many may think) that the evil god challenges has major philosophical shortcomings, in spite of being an argument worthy of our attention.

Episode 045: What if God Were Really Bad? [ 58:52 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The title of this blog entry is a little misleading, since I’m actually talking about a conditional premise of one formulation of the moral argument. It’s not the five-step formulation of the moral argument that I prefer to use, but it’s a common one nonetheless, and one that I do think is sound.

The common formulation that I have in mind is this:

1. If God did not exist, then there could not be any objective moral duties and values
2. There are objective moral duties and values
3. Therefore God exists

This formulation is the one that most have in mind when they think of the moral argument. In a recent radio discussion I outlined my own formulation of the argument (see the above link), only to have my argument immediately re-described back to me using the above formulation (not I that I minded too much, as the above formulation is simpler and probably more appropriate for the radio discussion format). Such is the familiarity of this form of the moral argument in the minds of many.

The logic is flawless, there’s no doubting that. This is a valid argument – the conclusion follows inevitably from the premises. The only way to show that the conclusion is false, therefore, is to show that one of the premises is false. Usually when this argument is presented, those who take issue with it reject the first premise, which is a conditional premise (as it takes the form of “If… then…”). Most often when the argument is presented in a public forum the objection comes in the form of a misunderstanding along the lines of “Wait, do you really think atheists aren’t moral – that we can’t do good?” This is an objection that came up when I last presented the moral argument to a group of Students at the University of Auckland. This objection clearly misses the mark, since the argument has little if anything to do with how moral or immoral specific groups of people might happen to be. It’s about how moral facts can exist at all – about whether any actions might be objectively morally right or wrong, whether they are carried out by Christians, Taoists, Muslims, Jews or atheists. But another common rebuff that I hear is “Oh come on, that old canard? Seriously? That claim is so common but nobody EVER gives any reasons for thinking that it’s true!” In nearly every case I just ask the person who said that how many philosophical defences of the moral argument they have read. Plenty, I’m told – they’ve discussed in on the internet quite a few times! One (but only one) person has actually told me that they’ve listened to Bill Craig’s presentation of the moral argument and also read his summary of that argument in Reasonable Faith and they still say that he actually didn’t offer any considerations, but that claim is fairly unique (I don’t think any fair reader can say that Bill has actually offered no serious considerations at all in any of his books or public debates).

So what kind of considerations do philosophers offer for the first premise? Here’s where I get a bit preachy and vent a concern that I have with the way some blog readers (mostly not readers of this blog, of course) approach the acquisition of understanding. If you want a full, satisfying answer to this (or any other complex) question, you shouldn’t be reading a popular level blog entry to get it. A number of philosophers of religion have defended the first premise. Indeed nearly all Christian philosophers I am aware of who have commented on that premise maintain that it is true, so there is no shortage of places to look. You could start with the fairly popular level treatments by philosopher William Lane Craig (who touches fairly briefly on the issue in his book Reasonable Faith (or perhaps the somewhat simpler On Guard and has discussed the issue at more length with Richard Taylor in their debate “Is the basis of Morality natural or Supernatural?” Other popular level works that offer some considerations in favour of this premise include C. Stephen Evans, Philosophy of Religion: Thinking About Faith or (getting more detailed) Paul Copan’s chapter on the moral argument in the book he edited with Paul Moser, The Rationality of Theism. If you’re interested in really delving into the moral argument and the relationship between God and morality in more depth in a book length treatment, something like John Hare’s God and Morality: A Philosophical History, John Rist’s Real Ethics: Reconsidering the Foundations of Morality or Robert Adams’ magisterial work Finite and Infinite Goods: A Framework for Ethics may be more your cup of tea. The point is just that if you’re someone who rolls their eyes at the conditional premise here as though it’s a nonsensical alien idea for which you’ve just never heard any serious arguments before, then here’s some advice: the comment section of a blog is not the place to obtain an education in meta-ethics or philosophy of religion. I mean sure, via blogs and podcasts you can access some really useful reading and listening material and learn a lot, but there is no substitute for your own earnest research, and nothing can lift the burden of the responsibility of putting in the hours, days, weeks (etc) of learning the subject for yourself if you are someone who really wants to be able to speak as an insider on the subject. I spent a couple of lengthy chapters in a doctoral dissertation laying some of the groundwork for and defending a moral argument for theism, but even then there was plenty more that could have been said. So when I see someone say that they’ve just never seen any serious reasons (even reasons that they have considered and ultimately rejected) offered for the conditional premise of the moral argument, my answer is just that they need to do some reading. I have never encountered a good argument for why I should hold any particular belief about microscopic creatures that live on the sea floor, but that’s just because I’ve never bothered to spend much time reading about deep sea marine biology. It’s my own fault!

But let’s imagine that the following scenario is true: You don’t have time to do a lot of reading of academic books (or maybe you just don’t like it). You haven’t done a lot of reading in philosophy of religion or meta-ethics, and as a result, you (naturally) have no intentions of presenting yourself as someone who presumes to speak on God and morality with any kind of authority. You’re realistic about this. You’re just curious as to what kind of considerations philosophers have given for something like the conditional premise given here, and although you realise that a blog may not be the place to get the full story, you’re happy with a condensed version.

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Next week it will be my pleasure to have my third discussion on the Unbelievable radio show with host Justin Brierley. My partner in conversation will be Stephen Law, who teaches philosophy at Heythrop College, University of London.

Although the only public comments I have made about Stephen at this blog have been for the sake of disagreeing with him, the fact is that I like reading what he has to say – however mistaken I might think he is. Yes he has creativity and style, something lacked by plenty of  academics, but unlike other vocal critics of religion like P Z Meyers, Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris, Stephen Law usually knows what he’s talking about as far as philosophy goes (I say usually because it does seem to me that philosophy of religion is not his strength, and this is the subject area of his “Evil-God Challenge.”). Law’s “Evil-God Challenge” should be read by anyone who wants to philosophically defend the Christian faith. That being said, the central point of the article, that theistic arguments are just as compatible with a malevolent deity as they are with the God of Christianity, is false. I think first year students in philosophy of religion who want to defend the Christian faith should – before being allowed to progress to the second year – be able to explain why the evil God challenge fails. If they’re not sure how they would do it, they should make sure they listen to the discussion on Unbelievable!

Glenn Peoples

In a podcast on presuppositional apologetics, I noted that it does in fact contain the kernel of a significant type of argument for theism. But what I have never appreciated is the combative “all or nothing” approach that many presuppositionalists take. Unfortunately, some of them see all arguments for God’s existence – all arguments apart from their own transcendental argument – as intellectual treachery, as selling out, and as borderline sinful. This has a couple of harmful consequences: It creates needless squabbling between Christians who are really serving the same end, and it frankly makes Christian apologists look crazy in the eyes of onlookers.

Here’s an example. Sye Ten Bruggencate is a presuppositionalist apologist with no time for any method of defending Christianity other than by using presuppositional apologetics. In his brief blog post called “Pascal’s wager is a bad bet,” he takes a line used by a number of other presuppositionalists, charging that any conventional (i.e. non-presuppositional) argument for God’s existence takes the stance that God is only probable, and not certain. This time he has Pascal’s wager in his sights:

Is God a probable God or a certain God? In church we know the answer: “The Heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands” (Psalm 14:1) It’s not “The Heavens might declare the glory of God–if he exists, and the skies might proclaim the work of his hands–if he exists.” Could we really say that nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:39) if we worshipped a probable God? Of course not! In Church, we worship a certain God, yet what do we do? – We go out into the world and tell unbelievers that we could be wrong! We give them “Pascal’s Wager.”

….

Brothers and sisters God is not a good bet, God is not even the best bet, God is the certain God that has revealed Himself to us, such that we are certain of His existence (Romans 1: 18-21). Blaise Pascal said some wonderful things, but his wager is a terrible bet.
I looked up Pascal’s Wager on a search engine, and could not find one thing written negatively about it by Christians. What are we doing?!? We worship a certain God, yet defend a probable ‘god!’ Folks, a probable “god” is not God–a probable ‘god’ does not exist.

Unfortunately, in his zeal for presuppositional apologetics, Sye has misconstrued Pascal’s wager. Pascal’s wager does not amount to the claim that Christianity might be false, nor does it make the claim that God’s existence is merely probable. In fact, the argument contains no premises or conclusions about whether or not God exists! Presuppositionists of this ilk (and I have to say, not all presuppositionalists do this) need to lift their game and realise that we are actually on the same team.

I left this comment at the above blog:

Sye, Pascal’s wager does not claim that God’s existence is probable or improbable. That is not the point. It is not an argument about whether or not God exists, or about how likely God’s existence is. It is an argument that you definitely should live as though God exists.

It is not fair to accuse it of being an argument for a “probable God,” no matter how catchy that phrase might be.

At the moment my comment is still awaiting moderation over at that blog.

Glenn Peoples

Episode 42 presents the “minimal facts” approach to the resurrection of Jesus.

This episode doesn’t just present the argument in order to persuade you, it’s also meant to show you what the argument is like so that you can use it yourself (if you find it persuasive of course). It starts out with four facts granted by the majority of New Testament critics, and then works towards an explanation of those facts.

In this episode I refer to other blog posts and podcast episodes, and as promised here are links to those:

Merry Mithras!
Episode 19: Osiris and Jesus
Is there No Evidence that Jesus Even Existed?
Is there No Evidence that Jesus Even Exited? Part 2
Is there No Evidence that Jesus Even Exited? Part 3

Episode 042: The Minimal Facts Approach to the Resurrection of Jesus [ 1:04:14 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This week I’m in Auckland taking part in a couple of speaking events as part of Jesus Week at the University of Auckland. On Wednesday the 4th of August I really enjoyed taking part in a panel discussion with Matt and Madeleine Flannagan, called “A Godless Public Square”? The broad subject area was the legitimate role of religious convictions in public life, law and politics – certainly a topical area of discussion today. Pat Brittenden did a great job as moderator/ facilitator of discussion, providing a relaxed and really open forum for conversation.
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A conversation I had the other day reminded me of what is now a rather old argument in relation to the question of belief in God (old in terms of twentieth century arguments anyway). Essentially, the issue was this: If my purported experience of knowing God / knowing that God exists via some sort of intuition or any other sort of experience should count as a reason for me to believe in God, then why can’t somebody else’s atheist experience (or at least their testimony of it) count as a reason for me to not believe in God? I say that I have a direct knowledge of God’s existence (let’s say I do). But what about someone who has direct, intuitive knowledge of something like “there is nothing out there, there is no purpose at all to life”? Surely, it was suggested to me, what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
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Recently I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Brain Auten of Apologetics 315. The main theme of the discussion was the relationship between God (or a lack thereof) and ethics.

Check it out over at Apologetics 315.

Today’s interview is with Dr. Glenn Peoples. Glenn is a New Zealand based Christian philosopher, podcaster, and blogger. He runs the Beretta blog and hosts the Say Hello to My Little Friend podcast. In this interview, Glenn explores moral terminology, objective morality, the difference between ontology and epistemology, the moral argument, the Craig/Harris debate, advice for apologists, and more.