[Questioner] Seeing as you are using animals, are objective moral
values only related to humans? Can they not also be related to animals? If they're objective,
do they not relate to all of existence?
And therefore,
should there be a qualification saying objective moral values are in the mind of man, therefore God exists in the mind of man,
as opposed to that he exists totally? [Craig] Animal are not moral agents. When a lion kills a zebra,
it kills the zebra, but it doesn't murder
the zebra. When a great white shark
forcibly copulates with a female, it
forcibly copulates with her, but it
doesn't rape her, because you see none of
these things is obligatory or forbidden.
And it's the same on naturalism for
human beings; these are just ingrained,
sociobiological patterns of behavior
that evolution has put into us, but
they're not objectively binding. The
rapist who chooses to flout the herd
morality is doing nothing more serious
than acting unfashionably. He's the sort
of moral equivalent of Lady Gaga,
out of step with the herd, but there
really are no objective moral values on
this view. Now think of what that means;
that means that an atrocity like the
Holocaust wasn't really wrong, it was
just against the herd morality. But as
Darwin himself pointed out, if you
rewound the film of human evolution and
started anew, a very different type of
creature might have emerged with a very
different set of values, and it would be
guilty of speciesism for us to think
that our values are objectively binding
and true and that other creatures' values
are false. So on the naturalistic,
atheistic view, there really are no
objective moral values, but as Peter
explained, you cannot explain things like
fallibilism,
the self-refuting nature of subjectivism,
which says we ought to believe in
subjectivism, which is a moral ought about epistemic duties, the proper basicality
of our moral beliefs. I'll take
the question later. So I think we've got
good grounds for believing in objective
moral values, and if you agree with me
that some things are really right and
wrong, like torture, raping a little child,
hurting someone for fun, then you should
agree with the house that God exists.
