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Questions on the Resurrection and the Moral Argument

December 29, 2009     Time: 00:21:22
Questions on the Resurrection and the Moral Argument

Summary

Conversation with William Lane Craig.

Transcript Questions on the Resurrection and the Moral Argument

 

Kevin Harris: We appreciate the questions that we get at ReasonableFaith.org and we’ve been taking some time, Dr. Craig, to go through and do some podcasts on questions that we get that we don’t get a chance to address on the website. We only address one question there. So we have some questions on the resurrection and the kalam cosmological argument. We are going to look at some questions on the moral argument. By the way, we probably get more questions on the moral argument than just about anything. It is right up there at the top. Before we get to that, there is one more question here on the resurrection that we got from Jonathon. He says,

Dear Dr. Craig, in some of your debates and articles you cite early sources that confirm the empty tomb, like 1 Corinthians 15, and a pre-Markan source in Mark’s passion narrative. In the book The Death of the Messiah compiled by Marianne L. Swords, it lists about 35 scholars who grade what is authentic or not about chapters 14 and 15 in the early Mark source. Scholar O’Collins asserts, “Chapter 16:1-8 were not directly graded but whereas many scholars accept in general that Mark drew on earlier written and/or oral sources for his passion and resurrection narratives, any particular reconstructions of these sources remain at best tentative and do not command wide scholarly agreement.” I am just wondering what are the reasons why you use the pre-Markan account as an early source for the empty tomb? I think I remember you saying it is within seven years of the crucifixion that this tradition formed. Thank you for all you do. Jonathon.

Dr. Craig: If you look at the quotation from Gerald O’Collins, I think that O’Collins is making the very point that I am trying to make in appealing to this pre-Markan passion story. The point is here that Mark didn’t just sit down at his writing desk and compose the passion story of Jesus. Rather, Mark had an integrative running narrative of the passion week which he used as a source in writing his story. And, as O’Collins notes, most scholars today agree with this. What the student missed is that what O’Collins said is any reconstruction of this source is controversial and not widely accepted. That is to say, did verse 5 of chapter 13 belong to the pre-Markan passion source? Did verses 8-9 of chapter 14 belong to the passion source? That is controversial. The attempts to reconstruct it in detail are controversial. But the fact that Mark was using and relied upon a pre-Markan passion story is one that is widely accepted by most scholars today. In fact, because it goes back so early, it is probably based upon eyewitness testimony and is therefore a very valuable source of information.

Now it is interesting that O’Collins says in that quotation that the empty tomb story – that is to say, Mark 16:1-8 – was not graded. It wasn’t assessed by these scholars in terms of its presence in the pre-Markan passion story. What I argue is that the empty tomb account clearly was part of that pre-Markan passion source because it really isn’t distinct from the burial narrative in chapter 15. They’re tied together by grammatical and linguistic links. Some of the antecedents for the pronouns in the empty tomb story are back in the burial story. So they are grammatically linked together and the vocabulary is the same. In fact it really is one smooth running narrative. So this pre-Markan passion source, I think, extends all the way through the end of verse 8 of chapter 16 so that we are on very good historical ground here in dealing with the crucifixion, the burial in the tomb by Joseph of Arimathea, and the discovery of the empty tomb by the women. That, by the way, is one reason that these literary construction theories offered by, for example, Richard Carrier and other internet infidel figures are simply untenable. They are impossible because Mark didn’t invent the narrative. It is not a Markan literary creation. It is something that Mark had before him that he used, and moreover that is found in sources that are independent in Luke and in Matthew and in John and other New Testament sources. So this isn’t just a literary creation of Mark. This represents a source that Mark used that goes right back to the very beginnings of the New Testament church. [1]

Kevin Harris: What do scholars call this source?

Dr. Craig: The pre-Markan passion source.

Kevin Harris: OK. Because I have heard of Q, M.

Dr. Craig: Right. Those are difference sources. Q would be a sayings source – the sayings of Jesus. The M source is Matthew’s special source. Matthew had material that he didn’t get from Mark. He used Mark but he also had some material he didn’t get from Mark. That is just arbitrarily called M. But the pre-Markan passion story is the story of the last week of Jesus’ life – his suffering and death and crucifixion and burial. This is a smooth, continuous running narrative which stands apart from the rest of the Gospel of Mark which tends to consist of disjointed anecdotal stories about Jesus that are strung together like pearls on a string rather than an integrated running narrative the way this final passion account is.

Kevin Harris: He says, again, “I think I remember you saying it is within seven years of the crucifixion that this tradition formed.” Is that right?

Dr. Craig: That was the date that was given to it by Rudolf Pesch. James Crossley also dates this pre-Markan passion story extremely early. These are of course conjectural, but as Mark is the earliest of our Gospels we do know that it goes back even earlier than that and therefore represents, I think, a very primitive source.

Kevin Harris: Let’s jump into some questions about the moral argument for God’s existence. Bear with me. I am going to have to read these as they are written so that we can get the thrust of what is being asked.

Dr. Craig, first of all, let me say that I greatly admire you and I cannot tell you how much I value the resources and material that you make available. I am a college student. I hope also to have a future in practicing and promoting Christian apologetics in a day and age that so many desperately needs it. My question concerns the moral argument for the existence of God. I have read and heard you present this argument countless times in debates or in writing. But there has always been this nagging doubt concerning the second premise which is “Objective moral values do exist.” This nagging doubt never seems to go away. At least from what I’ve seen, the way you usually try to show that objective moral values exist is by appealing to phenomenon past or present that most people would agree on as being “wrong.” That is: rape, murder, the Holocaust, torture, etc. And then, based on the somewhat universal consensus of people that these are indeed wrong, conclude that these are moral absolutes. But I have always wondered what your argument would be if an atheist just conceded and said, “No, there is nothing wrong with any of those things. Furthermore, there is essentially no difference between Adolf Hitler and Mother Teresa in any moral sense. While it may make me and my position look bad, it simply is the unpleasant reality of living in a naturalistic universe.” Therefore, it almost seems as though your approach comes close to committing the fallacy of majority opinion makes right – argumentum ad populum. Moreover, even conceding that most agree that there are certain things that are absolutely wrong, what would that do to dispel the naturalistic notion that morality is merely a man-made convention that promotes the survival of the human race through its evolutionary development.

Dr. Craig: All right. There are really a couple of things going on there. First is the misimpression that unfortunately a number of people seem to have gotten from my debates that this is an argument based on universal consent or majority opinion. That is not at all the argument. What I am saying is that in our moral experience we apprehend a realm of objective moral values and duties that impose themselves upon us and that most people recognize this. The “most people recognize this” is simply meant to say this isn’t my peculiar experience but others recognize this as well. But it is the experience that is the appeal here. It is that we have a moral experience of objective values and duties. Then one gives examples to illicit this experience in the mind of the listener or the reader. For example, to think about someone who commits child molestation and torture and finally murder of a little child. It seems to me that anybody with a good moral sense recognizes that that is not a morally indifferent act. [2] This shows itself to us as being something that is evil.

If the atheist says that this is not evil then I simply say that that person’s moral perceptions are warped. He is like a blind person who can’t see. There is no reason to allow his impairment to cause me to doubt what I see very clearly and distinctly. Now, of course the atheist is right, I think, that on a naturalistic view there aren’t these moral values and duties. We agree on that, that is the first premise. The question is, for us and the atheist, is are there objective moral values and duties? And he can’t appeal to naturalism to say that there aren’t because we agree that if naturalism is true, there aren’t objective moral values and duties. But the appeal here is to our moral experience. In moral experience, we apprehend a realm of objective moral values and duties.

I further allege that any argument for moral skepticism that the nihilist might run, I can run a parallel argument as to why we should be skeptical of our sensory experience of the physical world – to think that we are just a body in the Matrix being stimulated to think we are in reality when in fact it is a virtual world. Or we are a brain in a vat being stimulated with electrodes to think there is an external world around us. The fact is that we have sensory experiences and moral experiences which we can’t get outside of in order to show their veridicality. You simply accept them as fundamental properly basic beliefs unless you are given some sort of a defeater for those beliefs. You are given some defeater to think that you are a brain in a vat or a body in the Matrix or that you are suffering some sort of a moral delusion. But there is no such defeater forthcoming. There is no good reason to think that my moral perceptions are so ineluctably warped that in fact I am inventing a world of moral values and duties when there is no such thing.

Kevin Harris: Are you saying that our apprehension of moral values and duties – our apprehension of that moral realm – is just as strong as our apprehension of physical objects and the external world?

Dr. Craig: I don’t need to make that claim, Kevin. I don’t need to say it is as strong. But what I am saying is that they share the same epistemological status of being properly basic beliefs about our perceptions or apprehensions which you cannot get outside of in order to verify through some independent source. There is no way to get outside of your sensory intuitions to show that they are veridical and that there is an external world out there rather than you are a brain in a vat. But you are rational and indeed warranted in thinking there is such a physical world out there in the absence of some sort of a defeater. I am saying the same epistemic status is shared by our moral beliefs. These impose themselves upon us. We don’t make them up. They impose themselves that it is good to be a loving and kind and caring person and that it is wrong to torture and kill another innocent human being. Anybody who fails to see that, as I say, is just a bad person. There is no reason to allow their handicap or impaired perception to call our perceptions into doubt.

Kevin Harris: We talked about this a lot and I want to refer our friend who has written this question to look on ReasonableFaith.org because you have addressed this notion that morals are just man-made conventions that promote the survival of the human race throughout its evolutionary development. In other words, it can be reduced to survival mechanisms. He, again, wants to know what your moral argument does to dispel that notion that they are only merely survival mechanisms given to us by evolution.

Dr. Craig: My response is that if the naturalist is correct that there is no God then that is exactly what they are. They are just the spinoffs of socio-biological evolution if naturalism is true. But of course that’s the whole question – is naturalism true? If God exists then even if our moral values and duties are instilled into us by socio-biological evolution, that would only show that moral values are gradually discovered, not that they are gradually invented. [3] Our gradual and fallible apprehension of the moral realm would no more undermine the objectivity of that realm than our gradual, fallible apprehension of the natural world undermines the objectivity of the physical realm.

Kevin Harris: He concludes his question by saying,

It just appears to me in my limited understanding as though when I hear the moral argument for God’s existence used, it is really more of an attempt to put the atheist in a tough spot forcing him to try to come up with a system for determining what’s right and wrong so as not to become someone who doesn’t condemn the acts of Joseph Stalin or Adolf Hitler. I certainly agree with the first and third premise, but is there any other way to show that absolute moral values exist other than saying that certain things just seem wrong?

Now, we have addressed that. But it does kind of put the atheist in a tough spot.

Dr. Craig: It certainly does. It is hard to bite the bullet and say Joseph Stalin’s starving to death 11 millions Ukrainians to build his industrial military machine was not an evil act. You’ve got to swallow pretty hard to say that things like that, and Auschwitz and the Gulag, are not evil actions. I think the atheist deserves to be put in that position because that is the implication of a naturalistic worldview. But this isn’t a weakness of the argument anymore than somebody who believes in the external world is in a weak position because he says, “I can see and hear and feel and touch things; therefore I believe that the external world exists.” That is hardly a weak argument. In fact, Louis Antony whom I debated on this question of morality and God, put it very nicely. She said, “Any argument against the objective reality of moral values will be based on premises which are less obvious than the existence of objective moral values themselves.” So if the objectivity of moral values is more obvious and evident than any skeptical argument against them, you’ll always just reject one of the premises in the arguments for moral nihilism rather than reject objective values themselves. That is why, frankly, most philosophers and ethicists do believe in the reality of objective moral values and duties. It may be a surprise to this reader that the vast majority of ethicists that I’ve debated on these topics don’t dispute the second premise that objective moral values and duties exist. They for the most part almost all agree with that. What they try to do is to salvage objective moral values and duties on a naturalistic worldview and show how they could exist without God. But as Louis Antony said, the objective reality of moral values is more obvious than any skeptical argument against them and therefore you are going to go with the objective moral values rather than nihilism.

Kevin Harris: We will conclude with a final question along these same lines. It is short and sweet:

Dr. Craig, I believe that absolute truths exist. But do relative truths exist, too? In other words, is the statement “sex is morally good” a relative truth since “sex is morally good if and only if it is between a husband and wife.” What about the statement “The time is 3:30 am” since it is only true in the Eastern Standard timezone? Thanks.

Dr. Craig: I think there certainly are both objective truths and relative truths. When we talk about relative truths we mean a truth which is person-relative so that it is true for that person but it may not be true for some other person. I don’t think the example he gave about sex is a good one. That statement is simply an ambiguous statement. It is not a relative statement. But the statement “It is now 3:00 am” would be a good example of a relative truth. That is going to be true for people in that timezone but it won’t be true relative to someone somewhere else on the earth’s surface. Probably the most famous or well-known examples of relative truths would be truths about statements of taste. For example, “Vanilla tastes better than chocolate.” Most folks would instinctively recognize that that is a person-relative judgment. For some other person, chocolate tastes better than vanilla. These are simply relative truths that are related to the person who is making the utterance, rather than objective statements of fact. [4] But the vast majority of truths that we deal with, I think Kevin, are objective truths. Things like the Cubs did not win the 2006 World Series. Or that President Bush was the President of the United States in 2001. Or Bill Clinton was impeached while President. These are objective truths. They are not person relative. They are true for anybody if they are true at all. [5]