Alex Rosenberg vs WL Craig´s Moral Argument: My Relatives Were Killed in the Holocaust, So If There Was a God, He´d Be Evil! So He Can´t Exist!"

Petr Petr 1 day ago It has every place in a public debate. Appeals to pathos are a staple of rhetoric, and debates like these are all about rhetoric. And I fail to see how it's any different than Craig's assertion that school shooters aren't morally objectionable in the atheist worldview. It's clearly calculated to shock the audience and cast it as morally rephrensible. If you think those sorts of assertions are wrong then that's their interlocutor's case to make, but don't complain that it's unfair. Green Peacemst Green Peacemst 1 day ago @Petrol It´s desperate and personal, and so rather pathetically self-serving and cowardly. Craig´s assertion is far from, "My relatives were shot by a mass murderer, so .....!" Craig is arguing about a logical point, so that the emotional shock value is secondary. Rosenberg is desperate and uncomprehending. "The Holocaust was terrible and they killed my relatives, so God doesn´t exist!" Indeed, it is a form of rhetoric, and Craig handled it well, helping save Rosenberg´s face to a degree. Highlighted reply Petrol Petrol 1 day ago @Green Peacemst I'm not sure how you see them as different. They both have a logical point point couched in an emotional appeal. Each appeals to what they presume the audience would find an unacceptable consequence of the other's worldview. One that mass shooters are not objectively immoral, and the other that victims of the Holocaust are lucky. I could rephrase Craig's point as "School shooters are terrible and I desperately want them to be objectively wrong, therefore God exists!", but I don't want to be selectively uncharitable. Green Peacemst Green Peacemst 24 seconds ago ​ @Petrol You´re not making parallel analogies, given the personal nature of Rosenberg´s appeal, which is the name of the fallacy I believe, an emotional appeal fallacy. Craig isn´t saying that the Holocaust is good, but Rosenberg is trying to make more than one appeal without stating a potential basic argument. As I recall, he´s implying that "They´re saying that the Holocaust was God´s punishment on the Jews!" and "I had Jewish relatives who died in the HOlocaust, my whole family, and I´m not evil!" built on a few assumptions. Rosenberg´s argument is based on the apparent foundations of his metaphysical naturalism and anti-theism, his guilt and resentment at that very belief. That explains the basic logical incoherence of his positions. Like all metaphysical naturalists, in the end to one degree or another. Rosenberg is fighting his own prejudicial assumptions that the Holocaust was God´s punishment of the Jewish people, apparently. An argument from a naturalist´s point of view would normally be, people are biologically based and pursue selfish ends, including especially violence. That in fact is how I would base my argument. It is integrity in Jesus´ loving integrity that demonstrates how Jesus´ historical figure has become a supershamanic figure, with his reference to the Transcendental Entity all accounting for the University-based cultural things involved, like the financial extreme of the 1929 crash and then the weapon technology that various sides developed, especially the Nazis at first in this case. FD Roosevelt´s Social Gospel values account for his exceptional pro-social response to the financial crisis, and later the military violence. As for your attempt to cast Craig´s argument as egotistical, you simply stretch and distort the argument itself. Craig´s presentation of the objective moral law argument is weak in the form he makes it. Empirically, I see that it can be made more clearly and soundly by arguing that taboos like those against incest sex abuse, patricide, and in-group murder are extremely common and widespread amongst human groups, showing a natural ability to create moral orientation amongst human beings. Meanwhile, violence and enslavement are common and widespread amongst human groups. The ancient Greeks had philosophers like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle who taught human virtues to certain degrees, but whose influence had little orientation to discipline politics. Alexander the Great thus assumed power after assassination, and executed his rivals, including family. His conquests included brutal massacres, he put statues of himself in temples of Zeus, and he was assassinated young at 32. Shortly after, his four generals engaged in a Civil War that lasted forty years. The human ability to recognize moral standards benefits from a mandate associated with an absolute source, and Jesus Christ delivered that in a way relating Moses´ 10 commandments to the new elevation by Jesus of two loving marker Commandments. The most powerful civilization of all time has been Western Civilization, globalized by first colonial activity and its low integrity human inclined merchant-soldier action, along with the presentation of high integrity Christian fruit in University-based culture. education. WWII ended with the US leading the end of the catastrophe matched by its aid-recipients the UK and Soviet Russia, and FD Roosevelt´s vision and legacy proposing UN human rights, negotiated with the world community, hair-raisingly by Eleanor, I understand. Thus, objective moral law requires a more complex argument to flesh out its implications. The responsiveness of the world community to FDR´s legacy proposal is a more powerful argument, that also needs to have human inclinations to indulgence in the abuse of power, privilege, and pleasure weighed in. So, I agree with you in the sense that Craig´s moral argument involves an oversimplified argument and an emotional appeal component. However, his move reflects a complex argument that deserves a better, and as a progressive with high integrity in Jesus, I´ll note that dimension as well, I could make one. However, Craig´s emotional appeal does represent a form of taboos against in-group murder that reflect the objective foundations of Jesus´ morality of universalized "love thy neighbor/enemy as thyself", and see the Good Samaritan for clarification of that. Again, Rosenberg avoided his own position in a complex argument trying to block a train with his body. The Holocaust was NOT good because Jewish people were killed, and high integrity Christian metaphysics doesn´t argue that God willed the Holocaust to punish the Jews. No, high integrity Christian metaphysics holds individuals responsible, and indicates that Christian spirituality doesn´t favor the German race, but is for all human beings, in-group to out-group. Hitler, thus, is confirmed in his total rejection of Christian integrity, and resorting to his worst human impulses, even if he drew on historical cultural religious prejudices of low integrity Christian anti-semitism. Rosenberg might try to construct an empirical psychosocial-naturalist explanation. But no, he threw himself in front of a moving train, "God is evil because he didn´t rescue the Holocaust and my relatives!" Overly personalized, the extreme of emotional appeal into psychological projection, at least, and implied ad hom, "I believe you´re evil if you challenge me!" Craig´s emotional appeal was strong, but is based on a clear perception of the value of life, not just life in his Christian group, but in the mainstream news.