@MichaelPayton67 I agree that WL Craig is appauling. Take it as a compliment that i hold you to the high standard of pointing out what appears (to me) to be a minor quote out of context. Thank you for your great videos. I only discovered your channel a few days ago, but have allready been watching a bunch of your vids.
1) You said if you can justify killing children, your wrong etc. You cant just blindly state this and hold it to be true, thats fallscious.
2) Divine command theory is subjective. Well, no. A) "Does God command us to do these things because it is good, or is it good because god commanded us?" neither is true. Rather, God is by his very nature "the good" in the platonic sense, and therefore commands us to do things that are an extension of his nature.
@DazedSpy2 and therefore god is not being arbitrary. B) There can be nothing more subjective to do insight issues: Well, again, this is fallacious. It is obviously true that if my perceived insight is wrong, my following actions will be wrong, but thats hardly a hit against divine command theory, its rather just double underlining the necessity that you get your knowledge from a reliable source. So long as you can have reasonable confidence that
2) The "nature" response doesn't help the situation. Either God is control of his nature or he isn't. If he does control his nature than it is subjective. If God doesn't control his nature then there is some other appeal to the good which makes God irrelevant to moral theory.
@MichaelPayton67 God is unchanging, and no, the inability to change what you are fundamentally does not result, logically in "some other appeal to the good". By definition when we use the term God we are referring to the maximal being, if there is something greater, than we term that God.
so according to Craig's ethics it's right to just kill all children in order to send them to Heaven and in fact it'd be immoral for us NOT to kill them, because by letting them grow up in this 'sinful' world we're allowing for the possibly of them risking their eternity of happy dwelling in Heaven! nice going craggie! anybody ever told you're a despicable, insane POS ?
2:44 "Spared them the ... horrors of paganism"? My gosh, what a pathetic argument for genocide!
The "Yeah! ..." suggests that philosophy degrees do not include the recognition of fallacies of logic. Wait a minute -- one can't be an apologist without embracing fallacies of logic.
Ignore accusations of "quote mining" -- they are hurled in lieu of cogent arguments.
@lukeism2 ..... sooooo, we should kill starving afrikaan children... they'll be so much more happy when their soul floats up to heaven, problem solved
Funny... I thought I had lost any respect for WLC long ago, and yet with these phrases he manages to sink even lower in my esteem. How can he even address anyone on the subject of morality after uttering such abject theories?
I don't know how objective "it horrifies me so I don't want to believe it" is, but I can't disagree either. And I think the problem is largely that today- the lack of objectivist ethics. Of saying.. right and wrong thinking are the business of religion and I'm not religious so it has nothing to do with me and I can act as destructively or with as much short sighted disregard as I want and it's none of your business..that nihilist excess ridiculous in the other extreme.
I find it kind of strange that Dr. Craig speaks against the notion of assimilating exogenous cultures. It conveniently ignores all the alterations to Christianity in an attempt to make it more appealing to Pagan religions. Christmas being a good example. Another good example would be the depiction of Christ in early Christian art and the gradual adoption of the roman emperor's appearance as being that of Jesus.
PS great videos Mike, glad i could finally make the time to watch them.
"Divine command theory is subjective . . . god only communicates to people through insight"
I agree, but even without that fact it is still subjective, for Craig and his followers submit that god himself is a mind of sorts, so therefore his commands are themselves arbitrary.
Yes absolutely, usually a moral theory is considered subjective if the referent of the moral fact or principle is dependent on conscious awareness. Also I've noticed that the youtube/blog community seem to routinely confuse the absolute/relative distinction with the subjective/objective distinction. It bugs me every time.
@MichaelPayton67 Hmmm. Wouldn't there be a relationship with relative to subjective, and absolut to objective? Is that the kind of confusion you're talking about? Just trying to see if I'm understanding the relationship you're talking about here.
Side (Silly) Question : Do Christians that believe that babies that die get an automatic ticket to heaven believe that these babies grow up in heaven or stay as babies for all eternity?
I grew up hearing the argument Craig makes here. I turned the whole "babies go to heaven" argument around on them to make the case for abortion being morally acceptable. If a fetus has a soul, and children go to heaven, then abortion is a straight path to heaven without the risk of sinning and ending up in hell. Not surprisingly, they were unconvinced.
@QuarkyGideon this shit is making you laugh? it should make you sad and ashamed that such mad ramblings are tolerated anywhere outside a mental hospital
By Craig's reasoning, while it may (occasionally) be immoral to kill children, getting murdered is the best thing that could happen to them!
What bothers me about divine command theory is that no particular action is ever immoral in that system (as disobeying god is the only sin). There wouldn't be anything inherently wrong with causing someone pain & suffering ,or denying them their rights; the only immoral aspect of doing such things would be if you did them when god didn't want you to.
Given that god is supposed to be omnipresent, then it follows (in a sense at least) that devine commands are objective.
Beyond that I can't think of a way to justify the position that devine commands constitute the basis of an objective morality. I'd love to hear someone try though.
Craig is way more dangerous than Ray Comfort and similar apologists. He's using semantics and education to silence any criticism and to confuse opponents. Great vid.
Excuse me for this - But didn't WLC just provide justification for the Nazi holocaust, Hitler was just preventing the intermixing of the Aryans with the Jews.. Not only did he protect the Aryan race but he delivered the Jews their salvation so they could go straight to heaven.
@justintempler right. and one of the most contemptible things about the genocide apologist Craig is his insistence that from the perspective of ATHEISM we can't say genocide (or anything else for that matter) is wrong! he makes this grotesque claim in almost all of his debates: "If you agree with me that torturing little children for fun is really wrong, then you have to agree that god exist!" yuk!
I've always been partial to the argument - and I think I first heard it on the Atheist Experience - of "What if God came to you today and said that raping children was a good thing?" Would that make raping children a good thing?
The common answer is "God wouldn't do that". The obvious response is "But what if He did?"
I've never been able to get a comfortable answer out of a theist (though the only consistent one would be "Yes, it would be good").
Dr. Craig's belief in divine command morality, and his belief that a self-authenticating Holy Spirit will override any evidence which would invalidate his current beliefs make it very difficult for me to take him seriously. Those are both pretty frightening.
I'm glad you picked up on that. If he thinks that these religious experiences are objective and they can potentially include the commandment to kill then it's not hard to see the problem there.
@MichaelPayton67 Here's something I can't wrap my brain around: divine command morality can only exist as a concept. Can Dr. Craig give a single modern example of an action which would normally be immoral, but was not because God commanded it? When people kill abortion doctors, or drown their children because they said God told them to, or let their children die because God wanted them to pray about it, they're usually considered insane, even by Christians.
God knew that if the babies had grown up, then there would be a 100% chance that they would sin (thus they would have had no free will), so God chose to have them killed before they could sin(thus saving them).
It's like if someone mugging you suffered a heart attack. Then they aren't guilty anymore :D
I dont like killing children but if i feed them in my basement for to long they grow to old to be sexual attractive to me. Also if i let them go for sure they will tell the cops. No no its better to just replace them as they tend to get loose after a while anyways. Okay that said now im off to give a sermon at my church (slaps on priests robes).
The idea that killing children is not only allowable but something to be desired if they follow the wrong religion lead me to a strange conclusion. If a child is pure and will go to heaven when killed, then why not kill all the children in the world right now? The Christians will go to Heaven, all other kids goes to Purgatory or Heaven and their pagan parents will burn in Hell.
I do not actually think anyone will buy this, but isn't this a logical end when justifying Old Testament massacres?
@StahnKage it's perfectly logical in all monotheistic religions. if innocent children go to heaven, we should just slaughter all of them because we'll be doing them the greatest favor possible-- and the fact that we'll go to hell for that actually makes it a selfless act and all the more significant! I can't think of any better example of the sheer madness of monotheism
Well, there are two sides to this argument, with regards to the atrocity itself, or the nature of atrocity. On the theist side, the argument is fairly simple.
All non-chosen or non-christian children are destined to grow up in sin and burn in hell. It is a mercy, then, that they do not grow up at all, for anyone who actually has true faith in their religion. If you HONESTLY believe that everyone who does not follow your beliefs will burn in hell, letting the children live would be cruel.
This, incidentally, also handily countermands the argument of "That was the Old Testament; that no longer applies to Christians."
Ignoring the internal contradiction of that assertion, it still doesnt answer the proposition that, if you believe all non-faithful are bound for hell, you must then believe that allowing the children of heretics to grow up to be sinners and also burn in hell is cruel. Even without the old testament stories of genocide, modern christian values still demand it.
A better avenue of attack to Craig's argument may to be note that the Almighty's concern with the mixing of things - wool and linen, meat and milk, for example - seems to extend to races of people. Shades of Jim Crow and the Nazi miscegenation laws!
Canaanite infants could have been adopted and raised in the truth faith, but their blood would have tainted that of God's chosen people.
Oddly enough Craig is right. Those bizarre purity rules are psychologically linked to genocide. But the odd ting is there weren't any ancient genocides committed by Israelites--the slaughter of Canaanites the flood, etc., were all fantasies of genocide on the part of the OT authors. But Craig shares the same mind set: he wants it to be true. He not only apologizes for genocide he fantasizes about it, or else he would simply point out they aren't historical.
I certainly can't explain Craig's Divine Command "theory" to you because I agree with you, that's horrifying. Those kind of morals could make another Osama bin Laden.
But I've noticed that a lot of Christians don't seem to know what is in the Old Testament:
Like it or not, the adherents to divine command theory will claim that they do objectively know the word of God because it is given to them in their inerrant scriptures. Attempts at pointing out the circularity of this claim will prove futile.
Likewise, rationalization of the commission of atrocities will rely on claims of greater resulting good - e.g. salvation of murdered infants - or similar unfolding of a mysterious and unfalsifiable plan that is ultimately in our best interests.
What you did was most certainly NOT quote mining. A case can always be made for "taking things out of context", but from what I've seen of WLC, your montage nails him perfectly.
If not divine command, then what morality is to be used?
I don't disagree, Michael. Its just that you're likely to get many responses which attempt to hold that their divine-command-morality is the best one around, etc...
Do you think our physical condition informs our morality? What about the ~exceptions~ where an individual's neurology make them, well, evil?
Morality as given from evolution is descriptive. But most want it to be prescriptive. Thoughts?
2:10, so according to WL Craig, God is a racist, who believe in keeping the "Jewish race" pure.
qonf 9 months ago
@qonf
i was going to reply to your comment on my other video, but i see that since you made it to this video i won't have to
MichaelPayton67 9 months ago
@MichaelPayton67 I agree that WL Craig is appauling. Take it as a compliment that i hold you to the high standard of pointing out what appears (to me) to be a minor quote out of context. Thank you for your great videos. I only discovered your channel a few days ago, but have allready been watching a bunch of your vids.
qonf 9 months ago
Here is a weird take on Divine Command theory:
watch?v=OfH0NcuJRKM
It's Epydemic2020's video, "Morality and ShwaNerd."
zarkoff45 1 year ago
Ok, a few problems with your video:
1) You said if you can justify killing children, your wrong etc. You cant just blindly state this and hold it to be true, thats fallscious.
2) Divine command theory is subjective. Well, no. A) "Does God command us to do these things because it is good, or is it good because god commanded us?" neither is true. Rather, God is by his very nature "the good" in the platonic sense, and therefore commands us to do things that are an extension of his nature.
DazedSpy2 1 year ago
@DazedSpy2 and therefore god is not being arbitrary. B) There can be nothing more subjective to do insight issues: Well, again, this is fallacious. It is obviously true that if my perceived insight is wrong, my following actions will be wrong, but thats hardly a hit against divine command theory, its rather just double underlining the necessity that you get your knowledge from a reliable source. So long as you can have reasonable confidence that
DazedSpy2 1 year ago
@DazedSpy2 your source of knowledge for God's commands are valid, than the command is objective and extends to all mankind.
DazedSpy2 1 year ago
@DazedSpy2
1) P1) Killing children is morally permissible if and only if divine command theory is true P2) Killing children is not morally permissable
Therefore Divine Command theory is false.
Show me the "fallacy" in that and please identify what fallacy I am committing.
MichaelPayton67 1 year ago
@DazedSpy2
2) The "nature" response doesn't help the situation. Either God is control of his nature or he isn't. If he does control his nature than it is subjective. If God doesn't control his nature then there is some other appeal to the good which makes God irrelevant to moral theory.
MichaelPayton67 1 year ago
@MichaelPayton67 God is unchanging, and no, the inability to change what you are fundamentally does not result, logically in "some other appeal to the good". By definition when we use the term God we are referring to the maximal being, if there is something greater, than we term that God.
DazedSpy2 1 year ago
so according to Craig's ethics it's right to just kill all children in order to send them to Heaven and in fact it'd be immoral for us NOT to kill them, because by letting them grow up in this 'sinful' world we're allowing for the possibly of them risking their eternity of happy dwelling in Heaven! nice going craggie! anybody ever told you're a despicable, insane POS ?
AgeOfReasonXXI 1 year ago
2:44 "Spared them the ... horrors of paganism"? My gosh, what a pathetic argument for genocide!
The "Yeah! ..." suggests that philosophy degrees do not include the recognition of fallacies of logic. Wait a minute -- one can't be an apologist without embracing fallacies of logic.
Ignore accusations of "quote mining" -- they are hurled in lieu of cogent arguments.
Um, it's "upping" with 2 p-s.
EvolvedAtheist 1 year ago
I finished the video and replied with it, let me know if it doesn't show up....it's hard to tell with this new youtube format :o)
Graffight 1 year ago
morally clouded idiot
lukeism2 1 year ago
@lukeism2 ..... sooooo, we should kill starving afrikaan children... they'll be so much more happy when their soul floats up to heaven, problem solved
lukeism2 1 year ago
Funny... I thought I had lost any respect for WLC long ago, and yet with these phrases he manages to sink even lower in my esteem. How can he even address anyone on the subject of morality after uttering such abject theories?
gildor67 1 year ago
Nice way of putting it mildly.
I just want to punch him if he thinks genocide is okay.
voyagervsbor 1 year ago
I don't know how objective "it horrifies me so I don't want to believe it" is, but I can't disagree either. And I think the problem is largely that today- the lack of objectivist ethics. Of saying.. right and wrong thinking are the business of religion and I'm not religious so it has nothing to do with me and I can act as destructively or with as much short sighted disregard as I want and it's none of your business..that nihilist excess ridiculous in the other extreme.
JaysThoughts 1 year ago
I find it kind of strange that Dr. Craig speaks against the notion of assimilating exogenous cultures. It conveniently ignores all the alterations to Christianity in an attempt to make it more appealing to Pagan religions. Christmas being a good example. Another good example would be the depiction of Christ in early Christian art and the gradual adoption of the roman emperor's appearance as being that of Jesus.
PS great videos Mike, glad i could finally make the time to watch them.
bablenoisefrenzy 1 year ago
"Divine command theory is subjective . . . god only communicates to people through insight"
I agree, but even without that fact it is still subjective, for Craig and his followers submit that god himself is a mind of sorts, so therefore his commands are themselves arbitrary.
HonestDiscussioner 1 year ago
@HonestDiscussioner
Yes absolutely, usually a moral theory is considered subjective if the referent of the moral fact or principle is dependent on conscious awareness. Also I've noticed that the youtube/blog community seem to routinely confuse the absolute/relative distinction with the subjective/objective distinction. It bugs me every time.
MichaelPayton67 1 year ago
@MichaelPayton67 Hmmm. Wouldn't there be a relationship with relative to subjective, and absolut to objective? Is that the kind of confusion you're talking about? Just trying to see if I'm understanding the relationship you're talking about here.
RichardRoy2 1 year ago
Side (Silly) Question : Do Christians that believe that babies that die get an automatic ticket to heaven believe that these babies grow up in heaven or stay as babies for all eternity?
NYCAustinNYC 1 year ago
Good job, Michael. Good job. (Thats all I can say for now.)
Wrath0fKhan 1 year ago
I'm going to shoot to make you a video response tonite :)
Graffight 1 year ago
@Graffight
Looking forward to it
MichaelPayton67 1 year ago
I grew up hearing the argument Craig makes here. I turned the whole "babies go to heaven" argument around on them to make the case for abortion being morally acceptable. If a fetus has a soul, and children go to heaven, then abortion is a straight path to heaven without the risk of sinning and ending up in hell. Not surprisingly, they were unconvinced.
vexgodglove 1 year ago 2
Dr Craig had me laughing there. What a moron!
QuarkyGideon 1 year ago
@QuarkyGideon this shit is making you laugh? it should make you sad and ashamed that such mad ramblings are tolerated anywhere outside a mental hospital
AgeOfReasonXXI 1 year ago
@AgeOfReasonXXI
I do of course think dr craig is a complete twat of course and yes I can fucking laugh at him.
QuarkyGideon 1 year ago
@QuarkyGideon I don't know , I can laugh at him on almost everything else that's part of his apologetics exept this.
AgeOfReasonXXI 1 year ago
By Craig's reasoning, while it may (occasionally) be immoral to kill children, getting murdered is the best thing that could happen to them!
What bothers me about divine command theory is that no particular action is ever immoral in that system (as disobeying god is the only sin). There wouldn't be anything inherently wrong with causing someone pain & suffering ,or denying them their rights; the only immoral aspect of doing such things would be if you did them when god didn't want you to.
army103 1 year ago
I want to have a debate with you but I can't argue in favor of divine command morality without being profoundly dishonest.
MarkLucasTube 1 year ago
@MarkLucasTube
That's perhaps the most honest thing I've heard all day.
MichaelPayton67 1 year ago
What a dick!
BoredomCorner 1 year ago
Given that god is supposed to be omnipresent, then it follows (in a sense at least) that devine commands are objective.
Beyond that I can't think of a way to justify the position that devine commands constitute the basis of an objective morality. I'd love to hear someone try though.
TheSameDonkey 1 year ago
Fuck Craig
UncomfortableSilence 1 year ago
Craig is way more dangerous than Ray Comfort and similar apologists. He's using semantics and education to silence any criticism and to confuse opponents. Great vid.
dstabi 1 year ago 2
Excuse me for this - But didn't WLC just provide justification for the Nazi holocaust, Hitler was just preventing the intermixing of the Aryans with the Jews.. Not only did he protect the Aryan race but he delivered the Jews their salvation so they could go straight to heaven.
justintempler 1 year ago
@justintempler right. and one of the most contemptible things about the genocide apologist Craig is his insistence that from the perspective of ATHEISM we can't say genocide (or anything else for that matter) is wrong! he makes this grotesque claim in almost all of his debates: "If you agree with me that torturing little children for fun is really wrong, then you have to agree that god exist!" yuk!
AgeOfReasonXXI 1 year ago
I'm working on a video response to this. I hope for it to be up by the end of the day tomorrow!
morrkevi 1 year ago
I've always been partial to the argument - and I think I first heard it on the Atheist Experience - of "What if God came to you today and said that raping children was a good thing?" Would that make raping children a good thing?
The common answer is "God wouldn't do that". The obvious response is "But what if He did?"
I've never been able to get a comfortable answer out of a theist (though the only consistent one would be "Yes, it would be good").
I could at least respect that as honest.
Maelwysii 1 year ago
Dr. Craig's belief in divine command morality, and his belief that a self-authenticating Holy Spirit will override any evidence which would invalidate his current beliefs make it very difficult for me to take him seriously. Those are both pretty frightening.
chrisnu 1 year ago
@chrisnu
I'm glad you picked up on that. If he thinks that these religious experiences are objective and they can potentially include the commandment to kill then it's not hard to see the problem there.
MichaelPayton67 1 year ago
@MichaelPayton67 Here's something I can't wrap my brain around: divine command morality can only exist as a concept. Can Dr. Craig give a single modern example of an action which would normally be immoral, but was not because God commanded it? When people kill abortion doctors, or drown their children because they said God told them to, or let their children die because God wanted them to pray about it, they're usually considered insane, even by Christians.
chrisnu 1 year ago
Using WLC's reasoning, pro-life and pro-choice are both the wrong positions on abortion because abortion should be mandatory.
8WholeThing 1 year ago
God knew that if the babies had grown up, then there would be a 100% chance that they would sin (thus they would have had no free will), so God chose to have them killed before they could sin(thus saving them).
It's like if someone mugging you suffered a heart attack. Then they aren't guilty anymore :D
snownet 1 year ago
I dont like killing children but if i feed them in my basement for to long they grow to old to be sexual attractive to me. Also if i let them go for sure they will tell the cops. No no its better to just replace them as they tend to get loose after a while anyways. Okay that said now im off to give a sermon at my church (slaps on priests robes).
myjizzureye 1 year ago
The idea that killing children is not only allowable but something to be desired if they follow the wrong religion lead me to a strange conclusion. If a child is pure and will go to heaven when killed, then why not kill all the children in the world right now? The Christians will go to Heaven, all other kids goes to Purgatory or Heaven and their pagan parents will burn in Hell.
I do not actually think anyone will buy this, but isn't this a logical end when justifying Old Testament massacres?
StahnKage 1 year ago
@StahnKage it's perfectly logical in all monotheistic religions. if innocent children go to heaven, we should just slaughter all of them because we'll be doing them the greatest favor possible-- and the fact that we'll go to hell for that actually makes it a selfless act and all the more significant! I can't think of any better example of the sheer madness of monotheism
AgeOfReasonXXI 1 year ago
Now we're cookin' with gas.
urbanelf 1 year ago
Well, there are two sides to this argument, with regards to the atrocity itself, or the nature of atrocity. On the theist side, the argument is fairly simple.
All non-chosen or non-christian children are destined to grow up in sin and burn in hell. It is a mercy, then, that they do not grow up at all, for anyone who actually has true faith in their religion. If you HONESTLY believe that everyone who does not follow your beliefs will burn in hell, letting the children live would be cruel.
Etimos 1 year ago
This, incidentally, also handily countermands the argument of "That was the Old Testament; that no longer applies to Christians."
Ignoring the internal contradiction of that assertion, it still doesnt answer the proposition that, if you believe all non-faithful are bound for hell, you must then believe that allowing the children of heretics to grow up to be sinners and also burn in hell is cruel. Even without the old testament stories of genocide, modern christian values still demand it.
Etimos 1 year ago
Way too many close ups of wlc.
claudiaquat 1 year ago
A better avenue of attack to Craig's argument may to be note that the Almighty's concern with the mixing of things - wool and linen, meat and milk, for example - seems to extend to races of people. Shades of Jim Crow and the Nazi miscegenation laws!
Canaanite infants could have been adopted and raised in the truth faith, but their blood would have tainted that of God's chosen people.
How's that for despicable thinking?
marcmerlin 1 year ago
Oddly enough Craig is right. Those bizarre purity rules are psychologically linked to genocide. But the odd ting is there weren't any ancient genocides committed by Israelites--the slaughter of Canaanites the flood, etc., were all fantasies of genocide on the part of the OT authors. But Craig shares the same mind set: he wants it to be true. He not only apologizes for genocide he fantasizes about it, or else he would simply point out they aren't historical.
HConstantine 1 year ago 2
If they really believe this they should embrace abortion.
traog 1 year ago
I certainly can't explain Craig's Divine Command "theory" to you because I agree with you, that's horrifying. Those kind of morals could make another Osama bin Laden.
But I've noticed that a lot of Christians don't seem to know what is in the Old Testament:
watch?v=NeyyBpKMumM
zarkoff45 1 year ago
Like it or not, the adherents to divine command theory will claim that they do objectively know the word of God because it is given to them in their inerrant scriptures. Attempts at pointing out the circularity of this claim will prove futile.
Likewise, rationalization of the commission of atrocities will rely on claims of greater resulting good - e.g. salvation of murdered infants - or similar unfolding of a mysterious and unfalsifiable plan that is ultimately in our best interests.
Really.
marcmerlin 1 year ago
What you did was most certainly NOT quote mining. A case can always be made for "taking things out of context", but from what I've seen of WLC, your montage nails him perfectly.
CousinoMacul 1 year ago
0:22 lol. You referred to his bullshit as theories. I lol'd.
Dogstolmychi 1 year ago
If not divine command, then what morality is to be used?
I don't disagree, Michael. Its just that you're likely to get many responses which attempt to hold that their divine-command-morality is the best one around, etc...
Do you think our physical condition informs our morality? What about the ~exceptions~ where an individual's neurology make them, well, evil?
Morality as given from evolution is descriptive. But most want it to be prescriptive. Thoughts?
Kreadus005 1 year ago
Destruction of children is their salvation... How to change semantics.
arsenelupin123 1 year ago