William Lane Craig on The moral argument
Craig argues that objective moral values and duties require a transcendent ground, which he identifies as God.
Craig's moral argument runs: (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. He defends premise one by arguing that on naturalism, moral values are just evolutionary byproducts with no objective status — useful fictions, not truths.
Premise two, Craig contends, is supported by moral experience. We genuinely apprehend that torturing children is objectively wrong, not merely unfashionable. This moral knowledge, he argues, is as reliable as perceptual knowledge — we are as justified in trusting our moral intuitions as our sensory experiences.
Sam Harris and others have challenged Craig on this, arguing that well-being provides an objective foundation for morality without God. Craig responds that Harris confuses moral epistemology (how we know what's good) with moral ontology (what makes something good). Even if we can identify moral truths without God, we still need God to ground them.
“If there is no God, then moral values are just the byproduct of socio-biological evolution. They have no more objective validity than the herd instinct of elephants.”
“God is the best explanation of the existence of objective moral values and duties in the world.”