Week 8

Ch.6 - Can We Be Good Without God?

Class Date: October 8, 2025

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Introduction

The focus of this chapter is the question, "Can we be good without God?" The claim we are attempting to establish is that moral truth requires an explanatory ground. As Dr. Craig states, "... if there is no God, then there is no foundation for objective moral values. Everything becomes relative."

Notice that we are not arguing that a person must believe in God to be good. In other words, the argument is about the existence of God, not a belief in God.

Let's introduce the chapter with this video:

A Moral Argument for God's Existence

The Premises

  1. If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.
  2. Objective moral values and duties do exist.
  3. Therefore, God exists.

Premise 1 - If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.

Important Distinctions - Values and Duties

Objective and Subjective

Defense of Premise 1

Objective Moral Values Require God

You'll remember from a previous session we talked about the logical relationship between "If A, then B: and that the only acceptable logic statement that we can make related to this is "If not B, then not A." Premise 1 states, "If God does not exist (A), objective moral values and duties do not exist (B)." We are therefore going to examine the statement, "if objective moral values do exist (not B), then God does exists (not A).[1]

When Dr. Craig says that the "objective moral values require God," he means that God is the ultimate source of moral values, not that someone needs to believe in God to be moral.

So, if atheism is true, then God is not the source of moral values and duties. Of course, that raises the question, "If atheism is true and God isn't the source of moral values and duties, then what is the source?"

If there is no God, then humans are the product of evolution and although it might be argued that sociobiological pressures have guided what is considered moral, it does not follow that there are objective moral truths. Dr. Craig writes, "... on the atheistic view, there doesn't seem to be anything about Homo sapiens that makes this morality objectively true. If we were to rewind the film of human evolution back to the beginning and start anew, people with a different set of moral values might well have evolved."

For further resources, that discuss this, see the following resources:
- Four Problems with Evolutionary Morality
- God, Evolution, and Morality – Part 1
- God, Evolution, and Morality – Part 2

According to evolutionary biology, moral values are a by-product of biological evolution. Instincts and behaviors that aided survival and reproduction would be naturally selected for. Over time, traits that promoted cooperation, altruism within groups, etc. would enhance a group’s chances of survival. So, moral propensities would be adaptive strategies, not as a result of eternal moral truths.

Also, moral values would be a product of social conditioning if atheism and naturalistic evolution are true. With social conditioning, different cultures reinforce values through teaching, laws, and social pressures. But what is “moral” in one society may be immoral in another. So morality would be subjective, not objective.

For a deeper examination of this topic, Dr. Craig answers the question, "Does Morality Require a Divine Lawgiver" in this video:

Atheistic Moral Platonism: Moral Values Simply Exist.

Remember, Premise 1 claims, "If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist." A view known as atheistic moral platonism claims that objective moral values and duties do exist, but that they exist independently of God.

According to Dr. Craig, "Plato thought that the Good just exists on its own as a sort of self-existent Idea." Dr. Craig goes on to say, "So some atheists might say that moral values like justice, mercy, love, and so on, just exist without any foundation. We can call this atheistic moral platonism. It holds that objective moral values exist but are not grounded in God."

So, in other words, atheistic moral platonism is the view that:

So atheistic moral platonism is an attempt to preserve objective morality while denying God.

This view of atheistic moral platonism is illustrated in this exchange between an atheistic philosophy professor, Dr. Bruce Russell of Wayne State University and Dr. Frank Turek.

Answer to Atheistic Moral Platonism

Dr. Craig offers these objections to atheistic moral platonism:

First, one can ask "what does it mean to say that these moral values and duties just exist?" As Dr. Craig states, "Moral values seem to be properties of persons, and its hard to understand how justice can exist as an abstraction."

Secondly, atheistic moral platonism doesn't offer any basis for moral duties. One could ask why they are responsible for moral obligations that just exist. As Dr. Craig asks, "... why are we obligated to align our lives with one set of these abstractly existing objects rather than any other?" In other words, atheistic moral platonism needs not only abstract moral values to exist but to also exert normative force. How could something impersonal, causally inert, and abstract impose real obligations on human beings?

Dr. Craig provided his thoughts on the interchange between Dr. Bruce Russell of Wayne State University and Dr. Frank Turek in the video below.

Premise 2 - Objective moral values and duties exist.

In this section, Dr. Craig argues that, "in the absence of some reason to distrust my moral experience, I should accept what it tells me, namely, that some things are objectively good or evil, right or wrong."

Sociobiological Objections to Moral Experience

Some people may argue that we shouldn't trust our moral experience. In other words, when we inherently consider certain things to be objectively good or evil, or right or wrong, we shouldn't trust that moral experience since "our moral beliefs have been ingrained into us by evolution and social conditioning." Dr. Craig then asks, "Does that give us reason to distrust our moral experience?"

Answer to Sociobiological Objections

In this section, Dr. Craig answers this objection that moral truths arose from evolution and social conditioning and therefore our inherent sense of what is right or wrong, good or evil cannot be trusted.

He states, "The sociobiological account clearly does nothing to undermine the truth of our moral beliefs. For the truth of a belief is independent of how you came to hold that belief." He continues by saying, "...If God exists, then objective moral values and duties exist, regardless of how we come to learn about them" and "...if moral values are gradually discovered, not invented, then our gradual and fallible perception of those values no more undermines their objective reality than our gradual, fallible perception of the physical world undermines its objective reality."

In this video, Dr. Frank Turek answers the question, "Can Objective Morality be Founded on Society?"

Where We Have Been and Where We Are Going

General and Special Revelation

Up to this point in time, we have looked at arguments for the existence of God and we have depended on God's General Revelation and what is called natural theology to develop these arguments.

God has revealed himself in two ways: General Revelation and Special Revelation. In his book, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine, Dr. Wayne Grudem explains that the "knowledge of God's existence, character, and moral law, which comes through creation to all humanity, is often called general revelation (because it comes to all people generally). General revelation comes through observing nature, through seeing God's directing influence in history, and through an inner sense of God's existence and his laws that he has placed inside every person."

Scripture tells us that the natural world and its beauty, complexity, and order point to a powerful Creator. Psalms 19:1-4[2] and Romans 1:20[3] highlight how the heavens and the earth declare God's glory and divine nature.

Up to this point in time, we have been engaging in natural theology. Charles Taliaferro, in this chapter, "The Project of Natural Theology" in the book, The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology states that natural theology "is the practice of philosophically reflecting on the existence and nature of God independent of real or apparent divine revelation or scripture. Traditionally, natural theology involves weighing arguments for and against God's existence, and it is contrasted with revealed theology, which may be carried out within the context of ostensible revelation or scripture." He continues, natural theology "develops arguments about God based on the existence of the cosmos, the very concept of God, and different views of the nature of the cosmos, such as its ostensible order and value."

Other Arguments for the Existence of God

There are other arguments for the existence of God that are not in our book and we have not discussed. Arguments that I think may be particularly interesting to examine are the evidence for the soul, and the questions of what the mind and consciousness are.

Another argument for the existence of God is the argument for design as seen in the biological and physical world. Resources on these topics can be found below.

Evidence for the Soul

Arguments about Consciousness - Resources

Argument from Design in the Biological and Physical World

Books

Websites

Free Online Course

Review

Think back over the chapters we’ve covered so far. We’ve looked at two cosmological arguments.[4] You’ll remember that cosmological arguments involve examining facts about the existence of the universe (cosmos) and inquiring what the cause of the universe is. More specifically, we examined Leibniz‘s Cosmological Argument and the Kalam Cosmological Argument.

Then we looked the fine-tuning of the universe, one argument that falls under the teleological argument, or the argument from design.

Reflect for a moment and ask yourself how these arguments could be used to help a non-believer come to the realization that there is a God.

Upcoming Chapters

Beginning with Chapter 8, we'll be relying on special revelation to provide evidences for the claims of Christianity.

Footnotes

  1. In logic, this is called modus tollens - Wikipedia ↩︎

  2. The heavens proclaim the glory of God.
        The skies display his craftsmanship.
    2 Day after day they continue to speak;
        night after night they make him known.
    3 They speak without a sound or word;
        their voice is never heard.
    4 Yet their message has gone throughout the earth,
        and their words to all the world.
    God has made a home in the heavens for the sun. (NLT) ↩︎

  3. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. (ESV) ↩︎

  4. For those who want an extensive look at cosmological arguments, see Cosmological Argument (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) ↩︎