Customer Reviews

Is Goodness without God Good Enough?: A Debate on Faith, Secularism, and Ethics

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Stand-up debates rarely, in my experience, amount to much--at least if one's looking for deep reflection as opposed to the scoring of forensic points. There's just not enough time in your typical debate to discuss a topic fruitfully. This is particularly true, it seems to me, when the topic is philosophical in nature.

In October 2001, Paul Kurtz and William Lane Craig met to debate whether morality is possible if God doesn't exist. Predictably, the debate didn't amount to much. Kurtz rehearsed some general bromides about humanistic ethics, and Craig defended the traditional claims that God is the seat of value, the commander of moral rules, and the source of moral accountability. Neither man put in an impressive showing.

The transcript of this rather lackluster debate is printed in Is Goodness without God Good Enough? (The editors don't explain why the book appears a full seven years after the event.) What makes the book worthwhile are the quite interesting and closely-reasoned articles by seven philosophers that comment on the debate topic. Four of them are written by theists (C. Stephen Layman, John Hare, Mark Murphy, and Richard Swinburne), three by atheists (Louise Antony, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, and Donald Hubin). Kurtz and Craig finish out the volume with responses to their critics. Both essays are much better than the original debate. Kurtz spends most of his energy defending his own brand of humanistic ethics, objective relativism. Craig more pointedly devotes his essay to arguing against his critics. Neither man pulls his punches.

Although all seven of the responsive articles are good, some are better than others. For my money, Antony's piece, "Atheism as Perfect Piety," is the best of the bunch. She argues against divine command theory, but also that genuine contrition for evil acts requires that God not exist, since otherwise the contrition would always be tainted with self-interest (God will reward me or not punish me so severely if I repent).

Hare's article, "Is Moral Goodness without Belief in God Stable?" is an interesting reflection that reminds one of Paul's lament that he knows the better but does the worse. Hare argues that God is necessary in order to bridge the gap between our privileging our own interests and our awareness of what we ought to do. This continuous grace, as theologians would call it, provides the moral regeneration that humans can't pull off on their own steam.

Equally interesting is Hubin's "Empty and Ultimately Meaningless Gestures?" Responding to Craig's claims that acts of self-sacrifice are meaningless gestures if there is no God-based accountability, Hubin argues, reminiscent of Antony's strategy, that in fact the existence of a God who will escatologically reward self-sacrifice empties self-sacrifice of its moral meaning, since a rewarded self-sacrifice isn't sacrificial at all.

A valuable contribution to the on-going conversation, so urgent these day, about the existence of God.

Four stars.

After the introduction, the book includes a revised version of a debate between Christian theist philosopher William Lane Craig and secular humanist philosopher Paul Kurtz. Kurtz and Craig interpret the question in different ways. This would be a problem for the book, but it is not because the ensuing discussion of the relevant issues (by Craig, Kurtz, Louise Antony, John Hare, Donald C. Hubin, C. Stephen Layman, Mark C. Murphy, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, and Richard Swinburne) is able to cover more philosophical territory. Kurtz interprets the question as focusing on whether or not a person can be moral without belief in God. He argues that such belief is neither necessary nor sufficient for personal morality. Craig agrees with this. However, he interprets the question in a different manner. The issue for Craig is the ontological foundation for morality, and he argues that theism soundly provides such a foundation, whereas atheism does not.
The commentary on the debate from various theistic and atheistic philosophers is provocative and insightful. The concluding responses from Craig and Kurtz, which did not appear in the original debate, are also helpful. My take on the book is similar to a point made by Craig in response to Sinnott-Armstrong's chapter. The latter argues that a morality based on harm-avoidance is a modest but still sound morality. We can know that harm is wrong without God, and we can avoid harming others in unjust ways without God as well. The bone of contention, so to speak, is whether or not this is a suitable terminus, or stopping point, of explanation. For Craig, it is not. Why is it wrong to harm others, especially if in so doing I can get what I want? And if naturalism is true, and we are the by-products of blind natural processes, why care about harming others? For the theist, such an attidude is justified because other human beings have inherent value and dignity as made in the image of God.
In closing, I really enjoyed this book and found it to provide important challenges for people on both sides of the debate. I would have preferred that the original debate focus on the same conception of the question, "Is goodness without God good enough?" However, with the additional contributions made by the original participants and the other commenters, in the end a we are left with a substantive and insightful work on this metaphysically and existentially important issue.

High level debate. Might not be appropriate for someone's first look into this area. Both sides are presented well. William Lane Craig is one of the preeminent Christian apologists of our time.

received this book in excellent condition - dr. William crain does a materful work in this debate on the subject Without God there can be no Objective Morality - objective value, duty and accountability - reccoment it hightly to those studying this topic...Minister Gene Greer