#643 The Moral Argument and the Slaughter of the Canaanites

Dr. craig’s response

I’m glad that you’ve read my answer to QoW#16, Tim, but your response contains more bluster than analysis. I think you err at every step.

1. I am baffled how you and Turek think that YOU are in the position to challenge the secular community that we have no basis for understanding "right" or "good" apart from the posited existence of god.

(i) The claim is not that secularists cannot understand the terms “right” and “good” apart from God’s existence. I’ve emphasized that the moral argument is not an argument about moral semantics (the meaning of moral terms) but about moral ontology (the basis in reality for objective moral values and duties). To review, the argument goes like this:

1. If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.

2. Objective moral values and duties do exist.

3. Therefore God exists.

(ii) The question you need to face is not how WE can challenge the secular community concerning its lack of a basis for objective moral values and duties, but how to answer members of the secular community itself like Friedrich Nietzsche, Bertrand Russell, and Jean Paul Sartre who hold that on atheism there are no objective moral values and duties. How do you ground objective moral values and duties (just askin’!)? Actually, I notice that in your question, you don’t actually affirm the objectivity of moral values and duties! You don’t say that you would deem every conceivable example of genocide “immoral” or “evil.” Rather you say that you can’t conceive of an example of genocide that you would deem “moral” or “good.”  But that’s what Nietzsche, Russell, and Sartre would say!  Since there are no objective moral values and duties, nothing can be truly said to be “moral” or “good” except in a subjective sense.

(iii) Your assertion seems to rely on a fallacious argument ad hominem: Since Turek and I are such bad men, what we say about moral values and duties must be false. Surely you can see the fallacy of such reasoning. Even if Turek and I were moral reprobates, that would have no relevance to the soundness of the above argument, which could have been generated by a machine or a moral saint. 

2. You are the one who is deceived and misappropriating your foundation of morality, leading to explicit confounding and inconsistency on your part.

(i) Well, I certainly could be mistaken, but that needs to be shown, Tim. It’s not enough simply to denounce your opponent. I’ve really thought hard about the difficult question of the Canaanite slaughter and think that my response is perfectly consistent with my postulated foundation for morality. You need to interact with my argument, not just react to it. Even so hostile a critic as Lawrence Krauss admitted in our dialogue in Australia that I had successfully shown that it’s possible for God to be all-good and yet to command the Canaanite slaughter. Why do you disagree with Krauss?

3. As an atheist, you can present to me not one historical or fictional narrative of a genocide or the murder of civilians (and domesticated animals) that I would deem "moral" or "good".

(i) That’s just a fact about your personal psychology, Tim. It’s like the person who says, “There’s nothing you can say that would convince me!” That may be true, but it is philosophically irrelevant.

(ii) The slaughter of the Canaanites was not genocide. The God-given command was to drive them out of the land (QoW#225). They were being divested of the land and so being destroyed as nation states. If they had simply retreated in the face of the Israeli army, no one would have been killed. Indeed, the many who did flee were never hunted down or exterminated. There was no such command.

(iii) The slaughter of the Canaanites was not murder. It was capital punishment for a people who were so wicked that after 400 years of waiting God finally decided that they were ripe for justice.

(iv) I have given an example of a narrative of the killing of civilians that was moral and just, namely, the killing of the Canaanites. It doesn’t matter that you won’t accept it. I have presented an argument for its being just, and you need to address the argument. 

4. Write a story of atrocities that would embarrass a Hitler and a Stalin, and insert Yahweh as the perpetrator, and voila', you and your ilk call this "good."

(i) You evidently have no idea of the evils perpetrated by Hitler and Stalin if you think either of them would blush at the slaughter of the Canaanites.

(ii) The insertion of a divine command makes all the difference. Since our moral duties are constituted by God’s commands, what He commands is just and right. Of course, His commands must be compatible with His all-loving and all-good character. That’s why I argued that there is no incompatibility between God’s being all-loving and all-good and His command to kill the Canaanites. If you disagree, then expose the fallacy in the argument.