In a world without God, who’s to say whose values are right and whose are wrong?
Jan 24, 2013
In a world without God, who’s to say whose values are right and whose are wrong? There can be no objective right and wrong, only our culturally and personally relative, subjective judgments. Think of what that means! It means it’s impossible to condemn war, oppression, or crime as evil. Nor can you praise generosity, self-sacrifice, and love as good. To kill someone or to love someone is morally equivalent. For in a universe without God, good and evil do not exist—there is only the bare, valueless fact of existence, and there is no one to say you are right and I am wrong.” – William Lane Craig (from, On Guard: Defending Your Faith with Reason and Precision)
We’ve done pretty well without any gods from the beginning, and we will be able to do OK without any gods, even though some think there are. And that’s cause, even if there were gods, the moral values wouldn’t be objective at all? Because there cannot be objective values. A value, by definition, requires the some sort of conscious evaluation. Even if there was a god or gods, those values wouldn’t be objective, but subjectively god’s. We might follow those values or not, but it wouldn’t be our values at all. They would still be God’s values alone. And if got to value them, then they would become ours subjectively. But if that happens, we would have a reason to value them. Maybe be cause they bring well-being for mankind, and that would be exactly why they have value at all. Nothing can be valuable or be a value independently of everything. There are no objective values. There are no values independent of conscious processes. Stop repeating that nonsense Dr. Craig.
We’ve done pretty well without any gods from the beginning, and we will be able to do OK without any gods, even though some think there are. And that’s cause, even if there were gods, the moral values wouldn’t be objective at all? Because there cannot be objective values. A value, by definition, requires the some sort of conscious evaluation. Even if there was a god or gods, those values wouldn’t be objective, but subjectively god’s. We might follow those values or not, but it wouldn’t be our values at all. They would still be God’s values alone. And if got to value them, then they would become ours subjectively. But if that happens, we would have a reason to value them. Maybe be cause they bring well-being for mankind, and that would be exactly why they have value at all. Nothing can be valuable or be a value independently of everything. There are no objective values. There are no values independent of conscious processes. Stop repeating that nonsense Dr. Craig.