Goodness Without God is Good Enough: William Lane Craig vs Paul Kurtz 1/7

A debate between renowned Christian apologist and philosopher William Lane Craig and prominent humanist philosopher Paul Kurtz at Franklin & Marshall College discussing whether God is necessary for a sound foundation for morality.

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• William
• Lane
• Craig
• Paul
• Kurtz
• Morality
• God
• Theism
• Atheism
• Humanism
• Nihilism
• Goodness

[FUahole69]

CHRISTIANJR4, please watch the last 4 mins of this video. I would like your opinion on this.

[Christianjr4]

Well I agree with everything he said insofar as I don't deny any of the claims he brought up (ie. Atheists being moral, scientists being Atheists etc). But none of them show that God doesn't exist or that morality can be objective without God, so it's not really relevant to the central question of the debate.

[86adamleon]

@Christianjr4

Thanks for all the wonderful video posts.

You said, 1 Year ago;

". . .none of them (atheists) show that God doesn't exist or that morality can be objective without God. . ."

A lack of belief is all that's required to be an atheist, so atheism doesn't have the burden of proof, because it does not make a claim; unless the atheist holds the additional belief, that no Gods exist; so it is theists who must give the reasons behind their beliefs.

What do you mean by Objective Morality?

[Christianjr4]

@86adamleon

Hi 86adamleon,

By the phrase "none of them", I actually meant the specific claims that were made by professor Kurtz near the end of this video. Those claims neither disprove God nor show that objective morality can exist without him. By objective morality, I mean moral values which are true independent of human opinion.

Concerning the definition of atheism and the burden of proof, I would disagree with you only on the former, but that is another discussion for another day. Regards!

[M3t4lManiac]

@Christianjr4 We don't need objective morality. The reason many societies view morality largely the same does not make it objective (and we CERTAINLY don't always agree what's moral). Did humans not have a sense of morality, the species wouldn't have survived. AND he is right, the burden of proof is on the theist so there is no "disproving god", it is not his duty to do so, it is the Christian's duty. On the subject: goodness is nothing with god for in a theistic world view all is commanded.

[Christianjr4]

@M3t4lManiac

The burden of proof is not only on the theist. The burden of proof falls on those that make knowlege claims, as 86adamleon pointed out above. Since both atheists and theists make knowledge claims about God (ie. the theist claims that God exists and the atheist claims that he doesn't) then if follows by the rules of epistemic justification theory that both parties have a burden of proof. It's the agnostic that makes no knowledge claims and therefore has no burden of proof. Regards.

[Vanmeter815]

Thanks for uploading this, you have the ultimate collection of WLC videos on youtube.

[meangreen4321]

@dmn22

Why does every thing need to be defined in relation to a divine decree? The difference between us and a dog is the fact that we humans have genuine feelings, emotions, higher intelligence and awareness, responsibilities, and moral sense. There's more than one way to determine value than our DNA structure. Besides, the Bible tells us that we are pieces of dirt in Genesis, worms in Psalms, lumps of clay in Romans. How is that giving us value?

[11trezor]

i like the way they toy with their words, but when push come to shove, they cant answer this simple question if what you say is true about humanity and that human dont need God to be good then by all means. i want you to release all those prisoners in jail and start teaching them of these new enlightment. lets see where it leads.

[Fleefles]

@M3t4lManiac No one acts on compassion, just on selfishness. You do "good" for selfish reasons - to release chemicals in your brain that make you feel good. If feeding the poor or helping starving puppies made a person experience excrutiating pain or sadness, people wouldn't do it. Praising people for doing good is like praising a child for not sharing their toys. Both are done for selfish reasons.

[SlaughterMeister]

@Christianjr4 The atheist doesn't necessarily make a knowledge claim about God. I don't claim to know that there are no deities, and that there are no supernatural things. My position is based on the simple fact that there is absolutely no proof nor evidence whatsoever for either of those things. All I have ever encountered for evidence of supernaturalism is a reiteration of the original claim to the existence of supernatural things.

I have no reason to believe in a god, so I do not.

[DeconversionCentral]

@Christianjr4

You are making a mistake in grammar, you correct that, and you will see the epistemological justification is found only on the theist.

People can make a claim, but you are thickheaded, atheist is a derogatory term, and negative label and connotes the ABSENCE of BELIEF, not the PRESENCE of BELIEF.

Further more, no answer can be given to an unknown fact.

It is funny, how Christians think any postulated argument for God can be arbitrary attached to the Biblical god. what a joke.

[M3t4lManiac]

@Diachi26 No. You are not acting on your own compassion if you're just doing what you're commanded and people don't need threats to do good deeds. Good people will always exist, religion just diminishes the value of their efforts to a command or the will of god, when their empathy is what really is to be credited.

[Diachi26]

@M3t4lManiac Would anything get done in the world if nobody was commanded to do anything? If nobody feeds the poor then who will? If nobody shelters the homeless then who will? Eventually somebody has to take action. Somebody has to feel it should be done and influence others to do the same. (that goes to both atheist and Christians) So wouldn't that in of itself be good?

[Sinnessa]

The opening quote from Craig is expressed with a subtle generosity, and should instead perhaps be more honestly expressed as "Until I prove theism to be true, I do not have a sound foundation for morality"

[M3t4lManiac]

@Christianjr4 With the definitions you use, you are correct. But refusing to accept a belief/lack of belief is atheism and that position is not a knowledge claim, it's a rejection of a knowledge claim that has not met it's burden of proof. Claiming that there is no god would require proof, very few atheists take that position.