Dawkins speaks: Why he won’t debate William Lane Craig … Craig advocates genocide

_{Denyse O'Leary

October 20, 2011

Atheism, Culture, Darwinism, News}

Share: Facebook; Twitter; LinkedIn; Flipboard; Print; Email

Here (The Guardian, October 20, 2011). Craig, he says, advocates genocide. Referencing the Hebrew wars recounted in the Old Testament, he quotes Craig,

You might say that such a call to genocide could never have come from a good and loving God. Any decent bishop, priest, vicar or rabbi would agree. But listen to Craig. He begins by arguing that the Canaanites were debauched and sinful and therefore deserved to be slaughtered. He then notices the plight of the Canaanite children.

[See also: Historian: Fool or coward? For Dawkins, that is not an easy choice]

But why take the lives of innocent children? The terrible totality of the destruction was undoubtedly related to the prohibition of assimilation to pagan nations on Israel’s part. In commanding complete destruction of the Canaanites, the Lord says, ‘You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons, or taking their daughters for your sons, for they would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods’ (Deut 7.3-4). […] God knew that if these Canaanite children were allowed to live, they would spell the undoing of Israel. […] 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.

Do not plead that I have taken these revolting words out of context. What context could possibly justify them?

Hey, wait a minute. If Dawkins did not want to debate Craig because he purportedly advocates genocide, why didn’t he say that up front many months ago?Are we to believe that Dawkins kept this serious accusation under his hat until now?

Surely, it is more likely that he never intended to debate Craig, because he is more used to receiving adulation than critical analysis. And then conveniently someone forwarded him a useful excuse.

Let’s hope Craig’s team offers to debate him on the points he raises, as long as Craig is allowed to raise others later, like the widely doubted plausibility of ultra-Darwinism.

Comments

Thank you KF. I liked the way this was worded:
...the inherently good Creator of the cosmos made a world that -- in accordance with his unchangeably good character -- not only is replete with reliable, compelling signs pointing to his eternal power and Deity as the root of our being, but also builds in a real, reasonable, intelligible moral principle into that world.
The very rationality of the universe allows us to perceive, necessarily, aspects of the nature of our creator. This itself is an indicator of goodness, IMO, proceeding from a Nature that necessitates rational correspondence between that which exists, and that which is perceived. This is a highly contingent and very specific state of affairs, which IMO precludes a chaotic God -- and is a positive indicator of Intelligent Design.material.infantacy_{October 24, 2011
October
10
Oct
24
24
2011
04:12 PM
4
04
12
PM
PST}

Elizabeth, I read your comments @29, and I thought you might be interested in my response. Rightly and wisely, you recognize the universal nature of the moral code when you describe the four-year old child who realizes intuitively that it is wrong to beat up on his sister. In keeping with that point, you also recognize that most people in most cultures perceive this same universal standard that defines the difference between right and wrong. One could ask, therefore, what it is, how we come to understand it, and is it is sufficient to guide and instruct us in all areas of life.
Yes indeed. Good that we start off in agreement!
For you, the moral code is derived, for me, it is apprehended. You identify its source as the mind of man and I identify its source as the mind of God. With your scenario, we survey the world and draw inferences about which behaviors will benefit us and our neighbor. With my scenario, we sense the activity of our conscience, which teaches us about our obligation to follow the natural moral law.
Actually I think we “sense the activity of our conscience” too. We do learn about which behaviours will benefit us and our neighbours, the development of empathy is part of the human developmental trajectory. But you are right that I don’t identify its source as the mind of God (except in so attenuated a form that you wouldn’t recognise it).
The local question, it seems to me, is this: How do we advance in virtue and how do we avoid the trap of deluding ourselves into believing that we are better than we really are? What about the abortionist, for example, who says, “Oh yes, I love my neighbor as myself, but the babies that I kill are not really my neighbors.” Is he really a good person?
Well, that references one of the points I was making. It is relatively easy to derive the maxim: “treat others as you would be treated” but that leaves open the question of who constitutes “others”. Which of course is why Jesus specifically addressed that question, and made it clear that the boundary included non Jews as well as children. All too often people draw the boundary too narrowly, and include only members of their own community. However, there are real ethical issues here – do we include members of other species? Do we include our descendents? Do we include a conceptus? Do we conclude an embryo? I don’t think the answers are obvious, and I certainly wouldn’t condemn gynaecologist for drawing the line between conception and birth, for reasons I gave in my other post. More importantly, I’m far less interested in who is a good person than in what is a good act. A good person can commit a bad act, because s/he does not understand the harm s/he is causing; conversely a beneficial act can be performed with malign intentions. It seems to me there are two separable issues here: Why should we try to do the right thing? And what is the right thing to do? I think it’s important not to muddle them.
Or what about the college professor, addicted to pornography, who says, “Hey, I gave to the Red Cross and I paid for my daughter’s college education. What else do you want?” Is he moral?
Well, assuming for the sake of argument that we agree that watching pornography is immoral, then my response is: watching pornography is doing the wrong thing, giving to the Red Cross is a good thing (I’ll leave the jury out on paying for your daughter’s college education), and the two don’t cancel out. It doesn’t help the people you injured by watching pornography (if you injured any) that you helped the clients of the Red Cross. I don’t think this is difficult.
What about the more subtle elements of morality which deal with unobserved realities, such as personal intentions and motivations. Quite often, people do the right things for the wrong reasons. If I help someone across the street in order to impress onlookers, am I being a good person? According to the Sermon on the Mount, perfect morality goes beyond actions and addresses the problem of the human heart.
Exactly. But, as I said, I’m not concerned with whether people are good or bad, but whether they do good or bad things. If someone does good things by accident, regardless of malign, or at least selfish, intentions, then maybe they don’t deserve much credit, but with a bit of luck, the good consequences may be a good influence on their future behaviour. If not, well, at least the old lady got helped across the road. I think this is a very important distinction between camps here, actually. One thing that perennially crops up in these discussions is two very different concepts of “justice”. In my conception, justice means fairness – things is unjust if someone systematically gets a worse deal than someone else. But for many people justice is about “deserts” - making sure that people who behave badly are punished (even if by proxy). That’s where I really part company with a lot of theists (though by now means all – not with Peter Abelard, for instance).
Though not easy to do, it is easy enough to say that we ought to love our neighbor as ourselves. But what about applying that same rule to our bitter enemies? Did Bentham, Mill, or even Aristotle ever attach such a high standard to morality? No. That challenge comes exclusively from Jesus Christ.
Yes indeed. It’s why I was a Christian for most of my life, and why I still regard myself as an atheist with a Christian flavour. But we don’t need to be persuaded that Jesus was divine to feel its force. And, in any case, it’s the part of Christ’s teaching that is most frequently ignored in my experience. And it certainly is not consistent with the genocide-commanding deity of much of the OT.
Theories of mind are designed to avoid hard sayings. It is easy enough to say that we should not do evil to another person, but what about the command that forbids is to even wish evil on another person. This is another hard saying. Theories of mind tend to produce convenient recommendations that allow us the luxury of avoiding change.
I was talking about Theory of Mind capacity. We may be at cross-purposes here.
It is easy enough to say that we should not murder, but what about the more perfect version of that command that forbids cruelty of language? True morality requires exertion. Yet, man made moralities gravitate toward the soft virtues, such as compassion and kindness, while avoiding the hard virtues, such as chastity and humility.
I don’t think so. “Treat others as you would be treated” may well mandate chastity, and certainly humility. Indeed it’s the maxim that deprioritises the self – bids us see ourselves as only one of many, with only one of many possible points of view.
Further, advanced morality tests and challenges our character because we can grow in one virtue even as we regress in another. Theories of mind cannot provide us with a model that we can use to test our progress. Only the examples provided by Jesus Christ or the saints that followed Him can do that.
Well, I’m not quite sure what you mean by “theories of mind”, but sure we can “test our progress”. What is stopping us?
Indeed, this raises the most important question of all. To what end is virtue supposed to take us. Everything turns on what we are, where we came from, and where we are going. Are we risen beasts or fallen angels. It makes a difference. If we were created for a specific purpose, and if that purpose is to achieve union with God in the next life, then anything that facilitates that journey, both for ourselves and others, is a moral act and anything that impedes it is an immoral act.
Well, I can see that that is one way of constructing an effective normative model (and at its best it probably works pretty well – it has undoubted pitfalls though, IMO).
If, on the other hand, we have no purpose, then it really doesn’t matter what we do because no relationship lasts and no act has any eternal significance.
And this is the assertion that makes atheists so cross! Of course it “matters what we do”! OK, our relationships may not last for eternity, but they last for a lifetime, if we nurture them, which is the timespan that matters to us! And, indeed, if we care for those who will outlive us, and indeed for those that we love my love in their turn (my child’s as yet unborn children, for instance) then of course our concerns extend into the future, well beyond our own demise. The idea that if people don’t have eternity to look forward to (or fear) that they will have no reason to live, or love their fellow beings, seems extraordinarily odd to those of us who neither expect nor dread eternity, yet still hold our fellow beings dear! Likewise the idea that if we allow the possibility that we were created without a purpose that we can have no purpose. That makes no sense to me. I have plenty of purpose in my life, and so do the vast majority of people. Indeed, we often regard people who seem to lack any sense that their lives have meaning as mentally ill, and in need of help. We are purpose-making beings, with an extraordinary capacity and drive to devise and seek goals.
In the final analysis, though, I still think, in spite of your protests to the contrary, it is fair to say that you have no consistent standard for making moral judgments. On the hottest topic of the day, abortion, you stand with the pro-choice contingent on the grounds that it just seems right to you.
Not in the least. I gave the grounds, and argued them fairly carefully. Again, while people can disagree, as with any ethical dilemma, we have good philosophical (and, I’d argue, scientific) tools for weighing up the choices.
I know that abotion is wrong because it violates the natural moral law, the Ten Comandments, The Sermon on the Mount, and the Beatitudes. There is a difference beteween feeling and knowing.
I neither know nor feel whether abortion is wrong or not. I think it’s an ethical dilemma, in which two sets of interests must be balanced. This is true of many ethical dilemmas. Sometimes the right answer is not clear. That does not absolve us of the duty of trying to make the best decision. But I would argue that your claim to “know” that abortion is wrong, is no such thing. For a start, your choice of moral text is subjective – you could have chosen differently. You could have chosen, for example, the replacement tablets that God gave Moses when he broke the first set. For a second, you have interpreted those texts by “feel” – none of them mention abortion. The Ten Commandments tell us that we must not kill [people], but most Christians condone killing [people] in some circumstances. Many condone it in more circumstances than I would, for example. But I do not think, for example, that a 12 week foetus is a person. You almost certainly disagree, but the matter is not, AFAICT, resolved by looking at the texts you cite. BTW, at my school, which was called “The Mount”, there was a standing prize for learning The Sermon on the Mount by heart, which I did. I can still do most of it, including “judge not, that ye be not judged”. That may be why I am more interested in whether an act is good or bad, than whether a person is :)
On the subject of God’s actions with respect to the Canaanites, see my post at 35
OK. Anyway, nice to talk to you, and thanks for your response! Cheers LizzieElizabeth Liddle_{October 24, 2011
October
10
Oct
24
24
2011
03:19 PM
3
03
19
PM
PST}

Have you had a chance to read through this comment?DrBot_{October 24, 2011
October
10
Oct
24
24
2011
05:30 AM
5
05
30
AM
PST}

And BTW, a priori evolutionary materialism -- a la Lewontin, US NAS, NSTA etc -- has everything to do with the rise of Amorality in our day.kairosfocus_{October 24, 2011
October
10
Oct
24
24
2011
05:18 AM
5
05
18
AM
PST}

Drs ES & EL: The above little exchange captures the unfortunate breakdown that is happening in not only the thread but the wider culture, sadly but aptly. And, Dr Liddle, you still have not gone beyond borrowing one of a cluster of key principles from another system of morality. The GR is an OUGHT, not an IS that grounds OUGHT. (For instance, the rationale behind abortion, precisely, pivots on imagined superiority and ownership of the adult over the unborn child. The only safe grounds for the equality that is the hinge of the GR, is that we are equally made in God's image and have duties set for us by our moral Governor, so that to play at being "god" is an offence not only against our fellow man but his or her maker.) Your assertion that you have an IS in your worldview foundation that can ground OUGHT is, pardon the pun, groundless. I am also increasingly seeing the sort of loaded, poisonous rhetorical work that is being done by a key term injected by Dawkins: genocide. Genocide is of course a coinage to deal with the Nazi slaughter of the Poles, Jews, Gypsies, Russians etc that they -- under Hitler playing god [more exactly, Nietzschean superman playing will to power [a]morality] -- attacked without provocation. The very concept of drawing such a parallel to the general subject under discussion is highly questionable, first to Craig and other responsible Christian leaders and participants in this blog. If you would not be able to stand up in our faces and -- with concrete evidence to back it up -- call us "Nazis," or the like, then please back off on highly poisonous and loaded terms. (And, it is clear that Dawkins knows or should easily know better than this. Christians root their morality in the wide pattern of scripture, and struggle with this case precisely because the sort of destruction of a nation being described seems at first glance to be at odds with the general principles of Biblical morality. If responsible Christian thinkers DID support genocide, they would not have that as a challenge, any more than say al Qaeda had any qualms about launching the 9/11 attacks in the name of God as they misunderstood him.) When we turn to God in the Bible, we must reckon with the wider context, in which for instance the prophets tell us how Israel suffered defeat, mass slaughter in that defeat, conquest and exile for its defiant sins -- at the hands of pagan armies seen as instruments of God's judgement of his own covenant people; this is far from the idea of a superior race not subject to the same requirements of righteousness in the nation that "genocide" is about. So, the principle of accountable tenancy under God applies to Israel too. I again invite a more balanced reading. GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{October 24, 2011
October
10
Oct
24
24
2011
05:13 AM
5
05
13
AM
PST}

SB: Actually, I think we start to run into trouble long before we get to God. Start with how the Civil Authority bears the sword as God's agent of wrath to restrain and punish the wrongdoer. (Which starts with the policeman on the corner, with an upgrade from the literal sword in our day: a 9 mm semiauto pistol or the like.) One of the big temptations for Christians thinking on ethics is to absolutise, e.g. turn the other cheek [in response to an insulting slap]. We forget there is a problem of the bully or the wolf on two legs, who has to be restrained by governmental force. Otherwise, civil society collapses into anarchy and a bloody war of all against all. All of this being compounded by the wolf pack then hitting on the bright idea to dress up in shepherd's clothing, so we now have a gangster government that becomes a menace to other societies. If it goes far enough, we have a wolfish culture to deal with. So, we see war to deal with a pirate culture. The proper non-waspish response to a slap on the face, is not the same as the necessary governmental response to the wolf packs. Which brings us to the question of forted-up hard-core wolf-packs with a culture of irreconcilable blood feud. Which is what this thread is really having to deal with. (Cf discussion here.) GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{October 24, 2011
October
10
Oct
24
24
2011
04:01 AM
4
04
01
AM
PST}

MI you are quite correct and in line with not only classical theology but the scriptures, e.g. when it talks about how God cannot lie.kairosfocus_{October 24, 2011
October
10
Oct
24
24
2011
03:41 AM
3
03
41
AM
PST}

Onlookers: In one of the follow up threads, from here on, we can see how the underlying polarising rhetoric issue comes out, and why it needs to be taken seriously as a red warning flag on what is happening with our civilisation's public square. GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{October 24, 2011
October
10
Oct
24
24
2011
03:38 AM
3
03
38
AM
PST}

Onlookers: MF is here discussing the destruction of the equivalent of a Panzer army in hot pursuit, in the Red Sea; i.e. the defeat of an armed force prosecuting an act of war: a 600-chariot force. It is maximally unlikely that there were any pregnant women in that force, and it is not a "massacre." Let this serve to help us understand the way in which issues are being presented rhetorically by champions of the "genocide" talking point. Please, it is time to treat the text and issues with a lot more responsibility. GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{October 24, 2011
October
10
Oct
24
24
2011
03:34 AM
3
03
34
AM
PST}

MI: Have a look at the discussion of the Euthyphro dilemma here. GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{October 24, 2011
October
10
Oct
24
24
2011
03:29 AM
3
03
29
AM
PST}

Agreed, as long as goodness is not understood as external to God's nature. That is to say, goodness cannot be juxtaposed with God's inherent nature because they are one in the same -- for, "He cannot deny himself." I hope I'm not splitting any unwarranted hairs. Thanks for your patience.material.infantacy_{October 23, 2011
October
10
Oct
23
23
2011
11:37 PM
11
11
37
PM
PST}

More to the point, when Moses participated in the destruction of the Egyptians in the Red Sea, it may have appeared as an immoral act, but it wasn’t; it was the only way God’s people could have been saved. What mattered was his (and God’s) reason for performing the act. This was not a case of something being good because God commanded it; it was a case of God commanding it because it was good. Granted, some acts, like abortion, are intrinsically evil; no good intention can change that fact.
Why is abortion an exception? Are you saying that if God massacres a large number of Egyptians (some of whom may well have been pregnant women) that is OK because of the larger consequences. But killing insentient foetuses is never OK whatever the larger picture and however early in the pregnancy?markf_{October 23, 2011
October
10
Oct
23
23
2011
10:54 PM
10
10
54
PM
PST}

Waynekent00: I agree that there are situations in real life in which we might have to withhold judgment due to lack of information. In the Biblical case, however, we have an "omniscient narrator" who frequently tells us God's thoughts, God's speeches, and so on -- things which an observer at the time would usually not know. And if we assume that the text is meant to teach us something, then, given the power of the omniscient narrator, it is prima facie unlikely that the narrator would withhold an explanation from the reader that was necessary to avoid misunderstanding. Presumably the narrator would have thought of the fact that to many readers, these actions would seem brutal, and would have included all that is necessary to justify them. (This would be even more the case if one believes, as some do, that the narrator not merely a human influenced by God, but God himself, who would certainly know how people centuries afterward would understand the teaching of Jesus, and would know that they would compare the divine actions in the OT story to the teaching of Jesus.) The problem, then, is that what is there does not appear to be enough to vindicate God's action. Why would the narrator not apprise us of the extenuating circumstances, if there were any? The larger question behind this, of course, is what the historical status of the story is. If one is committed to the view that the events happened exactly as described, and that God said exactly what he is said to have said, then one has only two choices: (1) Denounce God as behaving wickedly; (2) Take your position, which is that God must have a good reason, even if we may never know it on this side of mortality. On the other hand, if one is not committed to the view that the events happened exactly as given in the story, then one has the option of hypothesizing that the story as we have it is distorted in some way, or possibly even invented. But the debate between these two possibilities -- did it happen that way or is the story at least partly fictional -- is not a debate that is appropriate for this forum, which is not a Biblical theology forum but an ID forum. All that can be said is that some ID-Christians read the Bible in the former way, and others in the latter way, and that ID per se has no way of addressing the question and cannot endorse either view. T.Timaeus_{October 23, 2011
October
10
Oct
23
23
2011
10:36 PM
10
10
36
PM
PST}

For some reason you, and some others, seem to think I must be saying the opposite, even though I make this point frequently, and that it is intrinsic to my points above! When you say 'the world IS teleological and purposeful!', you are pretending that those words are what you know I mean them to be. You know this is not the case - what "purpose" and "teleology" cash out to given the conjunction of materialism and atheism are not what is meant by the innate teleological reasoning of most children or many educated adults. Put simply, it is not derived intentionality, it is intrinsic and/or related to a metaphysical view you explicitly reject. I'd go into what "teleology" means given your views, along with "purposeful" again - we've talked about this at length in the past - but frankly, I have a low opinion of how you interact in arguments. Other people are willing to discuss things at length with you while you manipulate words and definitions to the point of dishonesty - I am not one of them. And I've reached the point where I'm not interested in wasting the time. My interactions with you have led me to this conclusion: You are intellectually dishonest. You mangle words and concepts intentionally and flagrantly to obscure your views and your positions. The fact that you do so while talking cheerfully does not excuse this. Yes, I know, this is where you'll stamp your feet and insist you are never intellectually dishonest and so on - and I'll reply, exchanges like this, as well as your general track record with me, have simply solidified my views.nullasalus_{October 23, 2011
October
10
Oct
23
23
2011
09:53 PM
9
09
53
PM
PST}

Take your time. I appreciate the dialogue.StephenB_{October 23, 2011
October
10
Oct
23
23
2011
08:42 PM
8
08
42
PM
PST}

I suspect that we are all Christian Platonists insofar as we agree that God is constrained to goodness by his own nature.StephenB_{October 23, 2011
October
10
Oct
23
23
2011
08:40 PM
8
08
40
PM
PST}

nullasalus: I'll accept your description of Craig's views because I don't know his thought all that well. What've I've heard him say up to this point, and what I've heard about him, I admit, tallies with your account. It was his defense of the Canaanite slaughter that called up visions of literalism and inerrantism, and the sort of person who usually calls non-literalists liberals. But it's unfair to impute the whole conservative schtick to him, just on the basis of one passage he wrote, so I accept your correction and I'll remove Craig from the group of people that I am criticizing. T.Timaeus_{October 23, 2011
October
10
Oct
23
23
2011
08:36 PM
8
08
36
PM
PST}

T, I entirely see where you're coming from, I think. First, let me note that I disagree with William Lane Craig on plenty - but there's one criticism you have of him that strikes me as entirely off-base, if I read you correctly: The idea that he operates from a perspective of 'My way of understanding the bible/Christ is correct and any other Christian understanding is that of a damn dirty liberal' strikes me as very much mistaken - in fact, Craig is pretty liberal when it comes to understanding the bible. If I recall right, he considers Christianity compatible with evolution even while having a positive view of ID. You can even find Craig arguing that one can reject biblical inerrancy and still be Christian. Again, I bring this up not to endorse all of Craig's views, but to point out that he's not exactly a man who stamps his feet and draws lines in the sand where if you disagree with him you're some dirty liberal. Of course I'd also agree that ID shouldn't be tied to any theology at all. You're talking to a guy who tried to round up the agnostic and atheist ID proponents and ID sympathetic sorts on this site to speak up and join the conversation. (With, I'll add, nary a word of discouragement from much of anyone around here, and plenty of encouragement.) I'd probably have some disagreements with you on the particular OT question, but absolutely I endorse that desire to make it clear that ID proponents come from a diversity of perspective - and, again, to want more of an ID focus on ID sites in general.nullasalus_{October 23, 2011
October
10
Oct
23
23
2011
03:33 PM
3
03
33
PM
PST}

Hello Timaeus, "peculiar name!" I've tried changing it; but when I do, I end up in the great abyss, also known as the moderation filter. "You and I are in agreement." I appreciate that. I wasn't sure if I had properly expressed what was occurring to me, or if perhaps I was overlooking something. "Your solution to the problem — that God is constrained to goodness not by something external to him, but by his own nature — is perfect Christian Platonism." Again, appreciated. However I've only dabbled in theology and philosophy, so I didn't know I was a Christian Platonist! If there are any pass words or secret handshakes, please let me know. xp Best, m.i.material.infantacy_{October 23, 2011
October
10
Oct
23
23
2011
02:58 PM
2
02
58
PM
PST}

Good to see this discussion :) Yes, I'm moved too. Stephen - sorry I didn't get back to your post today. I haven't forgotten, and will respond when I can.Elizabeth Liddle_{October 23, 2011
October
10
Oct
23
23
2011
02:50 PM
2
02
50
PM
PST}

material.infantacy (peculiar name!): Your initial objection to StephenB is that there cannot be a standard higher than God. But you are also aware of the danger of making God unconstrained, chaotic, or capricious. Your solution to the problem -- that God is constrained to goodness not by something external to him, but by his own nature -- is perfect Christian Platonism. You and I are in agreement. I suspect that StephenB would be willing to modify his expression, as I suspect that in the end he would agree with your formulation above. T.Timaeus_{October 23, 2011
October
10
Oct
23
23
2011
02:12 PM
2
02
12
PM
PST}

"...God commands acts because they are good. They are not good simply because God commands them." I'm struggling with something here. If God is held to a standard, one that is independent of His nature, then there is a moral authority that surpasses God. This is impossible. Therefore, what God commands is good, because He is commanding it. He is bound by nothing but His own uncompromising nature -- that is, His holiness. God can command nothing that is not good, not because God is obligated to be good, but because He is obligated to His nature. Perhaps the distinction is not apparent, or perhaps I'm just confusing matters. However I reason that what is good proceeds from God's nature -- God's nature does not conform to what is good. God is the source of goodness, he doesn't conform to an independent standard of it. He is the standard, that is, the definition. This is not to say that God is unconstrained, chaotic, capricious. He is constrained to act according to His nature, which is specific, non-chaotic. It's that non-chaotic nature that delineates good from evil, that what is good specifically conforms to God's nature, and everything else is evil.material.infantacy_{October 23, 2011
October
10
Oct
23
23
2011
01:04 PM
1
01
04
PM
PST}

Timaeus, Nullasalus, I am moved by your discussion because I perceive in both of you an uncompromising fidelity to the truth as best that you can both apprehend it. First of all, I fully recognize the Christian principle inherent in Timeaus argument, namely that God commands acts because they are good. They are not good simply because God commands them. This point sets Christianity apart from other world views such as Islam, which proposes the doctrine of "abrogation," the problematic notion that God can literally change His mind about what is moral, leaving his poor creatures scratching their heads and trying to build their lives around a moving moral target. Naturally, this creates problems for rational Christians who understand the natural moral law, The Ten Commandments, and the Sermon on the Mount. Is God, as God, bound by his own moral laws, and if not, how can we identify with him? In one respect, it would seem that HE is. Did God not create numerous covenants with his people and did He not always remain consistent in keeping His part of the bargain even when His creatures failed to hold up their end? If He was not bound by his moral laws in that sense, that is, if we could not count on his word, then his covenants would be meaningless. On the other hand, God is NOT bound by every standard expressed in the Sermon on the Mount, which, as we know, is the gold standard of morality for humans. Among other things, we cannot judge our neighbor, but God does, and has, and will judge our neighbor. Does this constitute Divine Command morality? No. God judges us because his justice demands it, and his justice is inherently a good thing, as is His mercy. What happened to the children of the Canannites matters, of course, but the bigger question is: Where are they now? There is a related point here that I think everyone is missing. As important as a person’s actions are, their reason for doing it is always more important. If I help a little old lady across the street solely to impress onlookers, it may appear as a moral act, but it isn’t. More to the point, when Moses participated in the destruction of the Egyptians in the Red Sea, it may have appeared as an immoral act, but it wasn’t; it was the only way God’s people could have been saved. What mattered was his (and God’s) reason for performing the act. This was not a case of something being good because God commanded it; it was a case of God commanding it because it was good. Granted, some acts, like abortion, are intrinsically evil; no good intention can change that fact. Still, there is such a thing as a good act that is also violent. But, again, what about the children one might say? Since when have children been spared from the sins of their Fathers? The broader point, though, is this: until we know WHY God did what he did (I speculate on that @35) we cannot pass judgment on the morality of His actions.StephenB_{October 23, 2011
October
10
Oct
23
23
2011
10:30 AM
10
10
30
AM
PST}

Good point, nullasalus. Someone might argue that McCarthy's acts were justifiable, and I see the parallel here. But let's run with that. We know that Americans were divided over McCarthy. Some thought that the policing of speech and writing, and of political association, was justified by the danger of Communism to the American way of life; others thought that the means employed to combat the perceived threat were just as dangerous to the American way of life, and incompatible with it. I think the same is true regarding Christians and difficult Biblical passages. Some are inclined to shut the gates and man the ramparts to defend the literal accuracy of every last word and action attributed to God in the Bible; others are more inclined to say: "Well, there is a human element in the composition of the Biblical stories, and from time to time lower notions of God, reflecting the human limitations of the authors, such as parochial nationalist self-justification, appear. As Christians our duty is to filter out the lower from the higher, using as our sieve the teachings preached by Jesus Christ and his self-sacrificial life." The application of my observation is this. An American who despised the McCarthy-generated policies might say: "When this Communist points out that we are behaving in a totalitarian manner and are contravening our own principles, he is entirely right. True, his motivation in making the criticism is not to uphold the American freedoms he is weeping crocodile tears over; he is an enemy of those freedoms and I do not trust him as far as I can throw him. But the criticism itself is quite right. We should be ashamed of ourselves, for willfully extinguishing the flame of freedom passed on to us by our Founders." Similarly, a Christian might say: "Dawkins is right when he says that certain acts and speeches of the Biblical God which are praised by the Biblical narrator fall for short of the love and compassion and justice that Christians habitually preach. True, his motivation is not to help Christianity purify itself, but to destroy Christianity altogether, and I do not trust him as far as I can throw him. Nonetheless, he is right to say that if we do not disown these passages, our claim to champion a consistent and high spirituality and ethics, one which the world ought to follow, will not be credible." In other words, if Christianity were a monolith, with all Christians holding to a pure "divine command morality," there would be no purchase for the criticism of Dawkins, because the defense of the Bible would be: "Whatever God commands, is right and just and good, by virtue of the fact that he commands it; if he command murder and rape and betrayal of one's country or friends, that is right, and people should obey him just as quickly as if he commanded the opposites." But as long as some Christians feel certain in their guts that God would never have said or done some of the things he supposedly said and did in the Old Testament, then Christianity is divided between a "divine command morality" and what might be called a "natural law morality," and criticisms like those of Dawkins, even when they are clearly not disinterested, will still sting Christendom, or at least, a portion of Christendom. I myself am clearly on the side of the "natural law morality," and if that means sundering Christianity into two parts, the fundamentalists versus the natural law party, I'm willing to do that. I'd rather be a schismatic than uphold what seems to me to be a false picture of God. And if Craig etc. tell me I am just a blasted liberal, judging God by man's standards, I will reply that I'm judging God by God's standards -- where God's standards are best seen in the Sermon on the Mount, not in the narration of parts of the Old Testament. I think that the New Atheist criticism of Christianity is extremely shallow and inadequate, but it gets traction among undecided, borderline, thoughtful, might-become-Christian decent agnostic people, precisely because of the existence of a certain kind of militant fundamentalism. That fundamentalism sees God as a terrifying cosmic despot who will send you to eternal punishment, no matter how good and moral or even Christlike a person you are, if you don't believe literally in every word of the Book he allegedly wrote, including the words which make him repulsive and impossible to accept as the Father of Jesus Christ. I think it is necessary for those Christians who are firmly centered on Jesus Christ, rather than on a mechanical affirmation of the historical veracity of a book, to distance themselves from the other kind of Christian in word and deed. So I'm as angry at fundamentalist Christians as I am at Dawkins. Indeed, I see them as feeding off each other, strengthening each other, and as together completely obscuring the real meaning of Christianity from the religious seeker. And because the journalists love a great conflict -- conflict sells papers and magazines and television specials on religion -- they play up precisely the wrong notion of Christianity. Thus, while I think it is wrong for ID people to wade into these religious questions in the first place, when they do so wade in, I want to claim my right to disagree with some of my fellow ID supporters over religion. If someone is going to try (whether overtly or implicitly) to identify the cause of ID with the cause of a narrow, Biblicist notion of Christian faith, I have the right to argue that ID requires no such connection. I simply want readers of UD to know that ID is a very big tent on religious matters and that the sort of person who expresses adulation for William Lane Craig (or, worse, Ken Ham) does not exhaust the religious breadth and depth of ID supporters. Many of us are just as uncomfortable with divine command morality, and with the literalism and inerrantism that sustains that morality, as non-Christians are. No one who posts here can claim to speak for Christianity as a whole, or even for the Christian faith of ID supporters as a whole. When they speak about religious matters, they are speaking not for ID, or for UD, but for themselves. I hope that ID critics who visit this site understand that. T.Timaeus_{October 23, 2011
October
10
Oct
23
23
2011
08:00 AM
8
08
00
AM
PST}

In the Judaeo-Christian tradition, the GR does not stand on its own. It is the second of two prime principles of morality: Love to God our Maker, Lord and common Father, and Love to fellow man also made in God's image, leading on to living in nation and community under God as mutually supportive neighbours. There are many, many subtle balances and nuances in that that remove from the table a lot of the problems that happen when the GR is taken in isolation.kairosfocus_{October 23, 2011
October
10
Oct
23
23
2011
02:06 AM
2
02
06
AM
PST}

F/N: I think there is another missing factor in all of this [cf here above], the irreconcilable, hereditary blood feud that could -- and historically did -- come back to bite, the better part of 1,000 years later.kairosfocus_{October 23, 2011
October
10
Oct
23
23
2011
02:02 AM
2
02
02
AM
PST}

F/N: I forgot to mention another factor in all of this -- the culture of the irreconcilable blood feud (family/tribe/clan, not race, all of these Semites and relatives were racially very close -- if we can project back such an anachronistic term). Let us not forget a further relevant factor: how that coming on 1,000 years later, under the Persian Empire, the Prime Minister Haman [the King's drinking buddy . . . ] -- a surviving Agagite -- felt obligated to try to wipe out the Jews, on any flimsy excuse. And we should not forget what moved the king to the final fury that put Haman on the gallows he had built for Mordecai: the King saw him falling on the couch where Queen Esther was, to plead for his life and thought this was sexual assault. Strange to us are the ways of an Honour/Shame culture. So, let us pause . . . What do you do in a culture where descendants of survivors of the hard core -- usually, city/fortress based (as opposed to the peasantry who probably would adhere to anyone who would give less burdensome conditions) -- nigh on 1,000 years later are quite willing/feel obligated to continue an existential blood feud? [Notice, this incident is one resolved through intervention of Mordecai and Esther, where there was a licensed internal civil war/feud in which the Jews and allies were permitted to arm and defend themselves from their enemies. The anticipated slaughter of the Jews turned into a bloody defeat of their enemies. This is the last incident of this order recorded in the Bible.] Just as a provocative question: could this be one of the missing factors in our view? Just think -- nigh on 1,000 years later, a hereditary enemy seeks to renew the existential battle and wipe out the nation of Israel. In that culture, what do you do about the hard core that is like that, and which has already filled up the cup of its iniquities? Less than 200 years ago, the English authorities and local Quislings kangaroo courted and hanged one of my relatives (essentially for speaking up for the literally starving poor -- they blamed him for the explosion he warned against, when it came), but all I can think about is that we must learn form the sad history. There is no eternal blood feud over this. (Didn't the Romans plough Carthage under and sow its land with salt?) The more I think on this thing, the more alien the culture of those times and places seems, and the more significant and deeply ingrained the softening impact of the gospel-based, Biblical moral tradition becomes. What now chills me to the bone -- as the ME now moves across the nuke threshold, is that it seems that significant aspects of that blood feud culture seem to still be in place. So, maybe this matter is not so remote after all.kairosfocus_{October 23, 2011
October
10
Oct
23
23
2011
02:00 AM
2
02
00
AM
PST}

And I'll just add: revelation is intrinsically subjective. And choice of whose reported revelation to believe is just as subjective. In contrast, reasoning from fundamental principles is much more objective because independent reasoners can reach the same conclusion from the same principles. That's why I find this "divine command theory" fundamentally incoherent. Yes, it presupposes some absolute and "real" morality "out there" somewhere, but what use is that if our only access to it is via subjective revelation? And also dangerous, as it leads to the justification of patently evil acts (flying planes into tower buildings for instance) on the basis that the act was divinely commanded. The only reliable approach to morality, therefore, I would argue, is one based on reason and observation. And the maxim that repeatedly emerges is: treat others as you would be treated.Elizabeth Liddle_{October 23, 2011
October
10
Oct
23
23
2011
01:50 AM
1
01
50
AM
PST}

"I have seen nobody smearing Christians with support for genocide. I see Dawkins, and myself, challenging Craig’s declaired conclusion that something as self-evidently evil as genocide is not evil if God commands it. If you do not share that view, fine. If you do share it, I challenge you to defend it." What it all comes down to is with the Christian view of evil as stemming from human sin and not from God. God can kill at will for reasons we don't understand. God can sanction killing for reasons we might not understand; but humans by their own will are not to kill for reasons that go beyond self-defense or in an application of justice. It could be argued that the Canaanite slaughter was an issue of self-defence, but I think more appropriately as an act of judgment, as I discussed more at length in a previous post. But bottom line is that your dismissal of thinking of this sort stems from your rejection of scripture as being authoritative. Once that issue is settled, it then becomes much more reasonable that God is above us and that his commands are just. I think it is quite substantially argued that the reason we seem to have misgivings on the surface when confronted with the narrative regarding this event is that we've been well-fed from the morality that stems from New Testament Christianity, where much of our modern understandings are based, and rightfully so. Anyone who uses Old Testament acts like the one in question as a mandate for genocide is to be viewed as evil. Yes, the bible can be used to justify much evil, but it does not mandate nor condone any such acts. There's no part of scripture where genocide is condoned in any context - particularly for any modern displays of such evil. Direct judgment from God, however, is an entirely different matter. We should hope that there is judgment for some of the evil acts we witness today. Just this week, for example, a woman and two men in Philadelphia were arrested after a property owner found some mentally retarded adults locked in the basement of his property, malnourished and with clear signs of physical abuse - and leading to the evidence of perhaps 50 or more other victims of this abuse. After reading several comments on this story from various individuals, the common sentiment is that there's no punishment too great for such an evil act. Justice must be done in accord with the law, but such sentiments are quite common and justified when we consider the evil these people perpetrated against defenseless human beings. God's judgements are often severe, but in all cases justified. Craig does not view the Canaanite incident as genocide, but as God's judgment. So yours and Dawkins' argument is an exercise in smear semantics.CannuckianYankee_{October 23, 2011
October
10
Oct
23
23
2011
01:42 AM
1
01
42
AM
PST}

The world is "teleological and purposeful" (how are you distinguishing those two terms?), nullasalus. It's full of purposeful creatures like other people and other living things. Moreover "the average four year old" herself is extremely purposeful, and capable of recognising herself as part of the world, and of other people as purposeful agents like herself (part of ToM capacity). For some reason you, and some others, seem to think I must be saying the opposite, even though I make this point frequently, and that it is intrinsic to my points above! Stephen, thanks - I don't have time to respond in detail now, but I will read and digest it, and try to post a response maybe later today.Elizabeth Liddle_{October 23, 2011
October
10
Oct
23
23
2011
01:32 AM
1
01
32
AM
PST}

1 2 3 … 9 Next

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Leave a Reply