Craig´s Moral Argument: Getting to the Personal Being through Virtues and Duties

WL Craig´s argument that objective moral values prove the existence of God has some kinks in it. He phrases his argument in the negative, that "If there are no objective moral values, then God does not exist." It involves some little key points that he tends to bulldoze with his emotional appeals and appeals to other supposed authorities. In one case, he argues that moral virtues are not qualities of objects. Plato´s "good" is a quality of a person, not objects, so that Plato´s "ideal" of good must be a personal being, meaning God. Moral duty is a debt invoked by persons, not abstract principles. In neither case. Craig´s questioner is saying that he observes that we are born with these feelings as part of our human nature. Craig presents the case of a child. He asks if caring for the child on one hand, or abusing the child on another, are morally equivalent acts. Or not. The questioner says he is having difficulty linking the feelings to the case for a source of objective morality. Recalling the Buddha, he presented karma as the relationship between good deeds and bad deeds and their consequences in this life, as established by "a Spirit that dominates existence as a Law...." Craig, no less, is implicitly arguing from the perception of God the Parent´s act through Jesus the Son of God and Man, as well. In a sense, Craig is arguing in a similar way that Buddha did. Except that he identifies the personal character of moral laws which require a lawgiver. I begin to explore this below. I think we benefit by identifying Buddha´s and Confucius´ efforts of identifying moral laws. Apparently the role of the physical world created an impression that interfered with perceiving the personal character of God the Creator. That identifies an additional factor in the special role of Jesus the Son of God and Man. His assertion of God´s love, his demonstration of it, led to Christians being able to turn monastic schools into Universities, take ancient Greek proto-scientific esoteric philosophy, and make it empirical. Progressive Christians Global.Progressive Christians Global Admin · neodopstSrll51at0h1 u16fe7u5g AJf:1gnh 572Muf39093 · Paul Boghossian: Is there an objective morality? This gets into a few more reflective issues on the subject.... I had a nice bus ride yesterday, and managed to make some progress organizing and extending some of my thoughts on WL Craig´s argument that there are "objective moral values" that prove God´s existence. I see that Craig has pulled a kind of "magic trick," in making emotional appeals to popular semantics and the sympathy of others, not logical coherence and correspondence to reality. Craig has expanded the cast of his net from "torturing babies for fun" as "bad" to refer to Amnesty International and human rights in other videos. His strongest arguments were equating such moral subjects with math formulas, citing authorities, again in appeal. That, and the argument from evil, that without good, we wouldn´t know evil. As a conservative, Craig faces some restrictions and sensitive spots in his ability to expand the argument empirically. He might have to criticize profiteering businesspeople, for starters. However, we can start with some empirical contexts to help flesh things out. Infanticide for one, and incest taboos, for another. The seige of Athens by Roman Gen Sulla, for another. Sulla arrived to put down a rebellion. He was met by some Athenians who glorified Athenian cultural glory. Sulla responded, "I came to put down a rebellion, not get lectured about Athenian culture." The Athenians had blockaded themselves in, but Sulla´s men found a way to breach the wall. He was prepared to massacre the population and burn the place to the ground. However, friends of his had been arriving because of a bloody massacre by his own rival in Rome. Those refugee friends did value Athens for its culture. So, we can observe behaviors, "objectively" in the scientific sense, by observing that a human in clothing stood in physical orientation to each other (Roman Gen Sulla and his soldiers, and Athenians). One group killed others, and spared some. That´s as far as physical objectivity gets. "Objective" more loosely used can refer to impartial assessments, but in human psychosocial studies, has necessarily had to get more precise. People enthusiastic about "science", ie scientific natural philosophy, have tried to apply the "scientific method" to human affairs since Descartes. G Vico of the 1700s is known as a pioneering antipositivist and interpretivist with his development of ideas around verum factum, "the truth is what we make," today and since Piaget called constructivist epistemology. Thus, "objective" at least can mean "observable," and in relation to human psychosocial activity, is not accurate and more formally needs to be called "empirical." As for "moral values," the category actually implies "morally good" values. Technically, infanticide ancient Rome and elsewhere, indigenous human sacrifice and cannibalism, and Alexander the Great´s execution of rival relatives in monarchic bloodline status were all "acts with moral values." In those moral systems, those acts were acceptable. They were "moral values." Thus, going from "observable or reported observed acts", we go from physical to empirical human psychosocial acts. Gen Sulla in ancient Rome at Athens was a general, which is a symbolic concept reflecting a system of related norms and values. His friends, then, had slightly different values. He wanted to slaughter Athenians indiscriminately and took offense at their cultural pride. Some of Sulla´s refugee friends from Rome shared in the value of Athenian cultural pride, and were able to persuade him to adjust his own behavior to a degree. So, empirical moral values exist on a spectrum. From infanticide killing of babies to sparing the lives of others because of cultural value and affinity. For example. Empirical values of moral goodness? Sulla´s friends had certain inclinations more familiar to modern "Western" society. Buddha has a story that he told about a King Brah-ta who conquered a smaller kingdom. The king there Dir-ti fled and lived with a potter. He had a child, Dir-gu who he sent away to be educated and for his protection. One day, the barber of Dir-ti betrayed him for some money. Brah-ta led him to be executed, and Dir-ti saw his son Dir-gu in the crowd on the street. Dir-ti wanted to protect him, and said aloud, "Hate never ends with hate, only with forgiveness." Dir-gu got work, and one day, got work in Brah-ta´s royal stables. He would sing, and Brah-ta heard it and liked the singing so much, he summoned the young man, Dir-gu to be in his court. Brah-ta found Dir-gu so appealing he made him a close assistant. One day out on a hunt, Brah-ta took Dir-gu and fell asleep. Dir-gu thought, 'Now is my chance!'. He drew his sword. Then he recalled his father´s words, "Hate never ends with hate, only with forgiveness." Dir-gu put his sword back. Brah-ta then awoke, saying, "I was dreaming that Dir-gu, the son of Dir-ti, was going to kill me." Dir-gu said, "I am Dir-gu, the son of Dir-ti and the time of revenge has come," and he drew his sword again. "Spare my life!" Brah-ta said. Dir-gu said, "How can I spare your life? My life now is in danger from you! You need to spare my life!" And Brah-ta said, "And so I do." They swore never to harm each other, and in remorse, Brah-ta gave Dir-gu his kingdom back. The Buddha took the Hindu concept of karma, and saw it as a moral law, that bad, harmful deeds are followed by bad, harmful consequences for the doer. Good, beneficial deeds are followed by good, beneficial consequences for the doer. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, the expressions, "you reap what you sow" and "live/die by the sword" express the same principle. Thus, we see that people have moral capacities that relate to sources of moral orientation. Buddhism spread throughout Asia, but as in Japan, remained subordinate to the cultural priorities, directed by human meta-animal, bio-psychosocial tendencies. Thus, "moral goodness" as one category of moral value developed by the Buddha, first refers to the full spectrum of moral values. Alexander the Great, for his part, assumed leadership after his own father was assassinated by his mother´s apparent agent. Alex went on to conquer extensively out to India, but back in Babylon was assassinated by his cupbearer. The cupbearer was the son of an official in danger after being summoned from Greece to see Alex. The philosopher Aristotle, in fear for his life, fled Athens when he heard about Alex´s death. In a short time, Alex´s four top generals engaged in a civil war for forty years that split Alex´s empire in four parts. The question is, is "moral capacity" for moral goodness an argument for God´s existence? More later....