Reasonable Faith

Kevin Harris: Well, Sean McDowell called our attention to an interview he did with Bart Ehrman on Ehrman's new book, Love Thy Stranger. To start things off, Bill, let's take a look at what the book is all about, the thesis. Here's the first clip.

Sean McDowell: Yeah, so right at the beginning of the book, in the introduction, you state your thesis. You say, "My argument in this book is that the impulse to help strangers in need is embedded in our Western moral conscience because of the teachings of Jesus."

Bart Ehrman: I got very interested in why it is that when there's a disaster that hits, we feel this impulse to help. We write a check. That's true not only of people who are Christians; it's true of just about everybody in the West. It's not that everybody does it, and it's not that everybody has huge impulses, but people have that kind of pull, and many people act on it regardless of their religious commitment.

I got interested in that because, among other things, I'm an expert on the ancient world generally. I've long been intrigued by ancient Greek and Roman moral philosophy, as well as ancient Judaism before Christianity, and this impulse was not there. You can demonstrate it was not there. So my question was, how did it get here then?

If it wasn't there, how did it get here? My thesis in my book is that Jesus had a different idea from other moral philosophers of his day and from his Jewish tradition, so far as we can tell. When people are in need, we need to help them, whatever their relation to us is, whether we know them or not. If we don't know them, it doesn't matter what their nationality is, what their ethnicity is, what their religion is, what their gender is, or anything like that. Nothing matters except they're in need.

This was the teaching of Jesus. Because his followers ended up taking over the Roman Empire, that became the ethical message that was preached for centuries, so much so that it's just embedded in us if we live in the West.

Kevin Harris: So, that's the basic thesis of the book. Ehrman says that he can't find this impulse, he can't find anything prior to Jesus in the ancient world, that reflects the moral impulse to help strangers. But our modern Western morality does show that and exists because of Jesus. This goes right along with some of the scholarship we've discussed lately. Even atheist, agnostic, and non-Christian scholars recognize Jesus' impact.

Dr. William Lane Craig: Yes, no educated person can deny that Jesus of Nazareth was one of the most influential human beings to have ever lived, and his impact on Western culture is incalculable.

What's interesting about Ehrman's thesis is that it would be, to a certain extent, very verifiable by comparing Western values and culture to Eastern religions and cultures, such as Taoism, Buddhism, or Hinduism. I've heard from people who've worked in those cultures that indeed that is true, that there is not that same feeling of wanting to help out others in need that you do find in the West.

Kevin Harris: You know, Bill, I suppose that one doesn't have to hold that Jesus was divine to acknowledge his impact on history. But can't we use that as evidence for his divinity?

Dr. William Lane Craig: Well, I think it could be a part of a cumulative case. If Jesus was in fact divine, then you would expect him to have some sort of impact upon the world. But it would be a very small part. After all, Muhammad has had an enormous impact on the world, too, but that doesn't go to ratify the truth of his teachings. So it could play a role, but I think not a very important one.

Kevin Harris: In this next clip, Sean asks Bart about objective morality.

Sean McDowell: The heart of my question is, when you call this a moral transformation, is this a change on a horizontal level in which it's just a change like, say, clothing styles have changed over time? Or is this an objectively good transformation that Jesus brought, that we ought to live the way that Jesus lived and support things like hospitals, orphanages, and poor houses?

Bart Ehrman: I would say some things are objectively good, in my opinion. I think it's good that we have hospitals. It's good we have orphanages. It's good that we have disaster relief programs. I think these are good; that's my personal opinion. Since it's my personal opinion, I don't think it's objective, but my view is those are good things.

Kevin Harris: Well, I think I heard two answers from Ehrman there. He says some things are objectively good, but his opinions about what is good are not objective. Initially, it sounds rather confusing, Bill.

Dr. William Lane Craig: I think it's worse than confusing, Kevin. I think it's incoherent. He's very confused. It's like saying, "I think that chocolate tastes objectively better than vanilla, but that's just my opinion, and so it's not objective." It's self-contradictory. We are already seeing here a tip-off that Bart Ehrman is way out of his depth in discussing these ethical questions.

Kevin Harris: Yeah, and Sean wants to press the point in this next clip. He begins by defining objective morality.

Sean McDowell: Moral realism's basic claim is that some things are right and some things are wrong, or good or bad, regardless of people's beliefs, preferences, or attitudes regarding them. So, just like there are certain historical facts true outside of us, there are certain scientific facts true outside of us, there are moral facts true outside of us.

That's typically what's meant by moral objectivism. It sounds like you're saying you're a moral subjectivist, that the teachings of Jesus are based upon somebody's opinion whether they adopt them or not; they're not actually objectively good within themselves. Did I categorize that correctly?

Bart Ehrman: I think you're doing two different categories. Some things are objective. It's objective that there are public hospitals.

Sean McDowell: Agreed.

Bart Ehrman: It's not objective that moral values are either good or bad, usually. There are lots of subjective moral values. Is it good to kill somebody? Well, it depends.

Sean McDowell: I agree with you in principle that sometimes it depends whether we should kill somebody or not. Maybe you and I would agree in self-defense that's morally okay. So...

Bart Ehrman: Not necessarily. In some cases, it's okay. That's the point, though. If it's based on a situation, then it's not objective that it's good or bad to kill somebody. It depends on the situation.

Kevin Harris: Well, we've got Sean's definition, and my ears perked up when he started talking about situations, Bill. Is this situational ethics?

Dr. William Lane Craig: Well, I think that Ehrman here is just again confused. He's confusing "objective" with "absolute." To say that something is absolute is to say that it is not relative to certain situations. So the opposite of absolute is not subjective; the opposite of absolute is relative.

Sean, as you saw, is quite ready to agree that often various actions that we undertake have their moral value relative to the situation. For example, the killing of a person could be a moral evil if that's an elementary school shooter killing children and their teachers. On the other hand, if it's a policeman who kills the shooter and rescues the children, then that's a moral good.

So we all agree that many moral values are relative to the situation in which the action takes place, but that's not to say that they're not objective. There is something that is objectively wrong in that situation and something objectively right in that situation. We must not think that by saying that moral values are not absolute, therefore moral values are not objective. Someone like Sean McDowell is defending the position of moral realism, that there are objective moral values and duties, but he would recognize that the moral worth of an action will be relative to the circumstances in which it takes place.

Kevin Harris: Sean still wants to press the point. Here's clip number four.

Sean McDowell: Okay, so some moral claims depend upon the situation, but that doesn't make them necessarily subjective. For example, the claim in your book, we could jump straight to the case as you condemn antisemitism and violence against Jews, which you argue led to the Holocaust. So let's talk about that one. Are there circumstances that would make that okay, or is it universally wrong to do what the Nazis did against the Jews?

Bart Ehrman: I don't have any access to any kind of universal objectivity. I'm a human being, and I have thoughts and views. So do you. If there were something that was a universally objective moral value, our only access to it would be through our brains.

Our brains are objects. You have roughly 100 billion neurons in yours; I've got a few less in mine. But since our recognition of morality is based on our human perception, even if you want to claim that there's some kind of moral objectivity, we have no direct access to it except through our subjectivity.

Kevin Harris: So, Bart says that even if there are universally objective morals, he has no access to them, Bill.

Dr. William Lane Craig: Yeah, this is a confusion that I have repeatedly encountered among laypeople, Kevin. They don't understand the difference between an experience and the object of that experience. By definition, an experience is subjective; it is a state of mind. But the object of that experience is often an objective reality.

For example, the physical world around us is an objective reality, but the only access we have to it is through our subjective sense experiences: smelling things, touching things, seeing things, hearing things, all of which are mediated, as Ehrman would put it, through our brain. It is through subjective sensory experiences that we apprehend the objectively existing physical world.

So, the question here is the degree to which we trust our experience. I would say that unless and until we have some defeater of our experience, we are perfectly rational to believe that we are experiencing some objective reality.

Kevin Harris: Sean, I believe, has a response to Bart's "lack of access" comment. It's clip number five.

Sean McDowell: There are different ways we know truth in science. There are different ways we know truth in history. The mere fact that we are subjects trying to discover something in different means doesn't follow that there's no truth. That's the only comparison that I made between history and between science and then with morality.

You said we have no access to moral truth. I guess I'd say a couple of things. I don't know what it means to know moral truth through our brains. It makes sense with science because we're studying physical matter, but moral truths are not physical; they're immaterial, they don't have weight. So clearly we're going to access them differently than we do science, just like history accesses things differently than science. My question is you said, correct me if I'm wrong, you said we have no access to moral truth. How do you know that?

Bart Ehrman: It's my opinion, just as yours is your opinion.

Kevin Harris: Okay, well, several things to comment on there, Bill. When it comes to moral values and duties, we all have our opinions and that's the best we can do?

Dr. William Lane Craig: Poor Bart. It's just his opinion that he has no access to moral truths. His view is suffering self-collapse before our very eyes. He claims we have no access to moral truths while at the same time claiming that he has no access to that truth—the truth that there are no moral truths.

Notice that it's not just when it comes to moral values and duties, but when it comes to everything; all we have is our opinions. It leads to complete skepticism. So Ehrman's view is on a course to self-destruction.

Kevin Harris: Sean tries to designate an objective moral truth in this next clip. It's clip number six.

Sean McDowell: Torturing a child for fun for adults' pleasure is wrong. Now, I have no problem, I'm about as close to being 100% certain as possible that torturing a child for adult entertainment is wrong. Now we don't know that the way we know science and history. we know it intuitively and naturally by reflecting upon it. So do you agree with me that torturing a child for fun is wrong?

Bart Ehrman: Yes.

Sean McDowell: Okay, so I guess I'm confused because you said it's only a matter of opinion, but now you agree this is wrong.

Bart Ehrman: I didn't say it was a matter of opinion. I didn't say that was a matter of opinion. I'm saying you and I have opinions about things. If you have an opinion, I have an opinion. What's the objective truth? The objective truth is we have different opinions. But how do you use objective truth in order to establish that you're right about either a historical claim or a moral claim and that I'm empirically wrong? How do you do that? You have to figure it out; you're doing it by your reason, you're thinking about it.

Sean McDowell: That's right.

Bart Ehrman: Other people think about it and have different views. Not about everything; most people do agree that if they were seeing me here, they'd agree I was sitting in a chair. I am sitting in a chair.

Sean McDowell: Me too.

Bart Ehrman: But what good does it do to say that there are moral objectives unless you can isolate all of them?

Kevin Harris: A couple of things there, Bill. They seem to agree about reflecting on moral questions when evaluating them and so on. But I'm not sure what Bart means when he said if morals were objective, we should be able to isolate all of them.

Dr. William Lane Craig: It's just silly, isn't it? How about just isolating one of them? Can we do that? Can we affirm with Sean McDowell that torturing a child for adult pleasure is wrong? On Ehrman's view, you cannot consistently affirm that because all you have is your opinions and you have no access to universal moral truths.

Kevin Harris: I wish there were a better example, but I don't think there is. This torturing a child example is disturbing and depressing, but it continues in this next clip. It's clip number seven.

Sean McDowell: But I don't know what it means to isolate them. I can state them. It seems that you agreed with me that torturing a child for adult entertainment is wrong. That's a universal moral truth.

Bart Ehrman: No, I don't think it is.

Sean McDowell: Okay.

Bart Ehrman: In the ancient world, for example, people were also human beings; they often practiced child sacrifice. It was often very painful. They thought it was the right thing to do. Now you could claim they didn't understand the objective truths of morality, or you could say that actually this moral truth that we thought was objective and available to everybody was not available to them.

Kevin Harris: Torturing a child for fun, or merely for adult pleasure, is very often the go-to example of objective morality. But Bart revises it to say pagans thought they were doing the right thing when they sacrificed children. I just want to point out that that is not the scenario or the hypothetical. The example is harming a child for fun or pleasure. Then he also suggested that they perhaps didn't have access in the ancient world to objective moral truth, Bill. So a few things there.

Dr. William Lane Craig: I think here Sean made a strategic misstep that opened an escape route for Ehrman. Sean spoke of universal moral truths rather than objective moral truths. Did you notice how Ehrman immediately leapt on it by saying that this moral truth, even if objective, is not universally believed? He interpreted the word "universal" to mean that it is universally believed by all peoples at all times.

That, of course, is just a red herring because that isn't what McDowell was claiming. But it enabled Ehrman, at least temporarily, to wiggle off the hook by saying that here's an objective moral truth that isn't universally believed.

Kevin Harris: In this next clip, Sean and Bart talk about moral progress and superior moral views. Clip number eight.

Bart Ehrman: I agree that humans have certain inclinations that absolutely tell us that something is right and wrong. That doesn't mean that there's some kind of objective standard there. It means that this is our inclination as human beings.

Sean McDowell: Okay. So let me ask this; this is helpful, by the way. I'm going to come back to this point about inclination, but in your book you make two claims. One, you talk about how you embrace your beliefs because you think they're superior, otherwise you wouldn't embrace them. By the way, I'm with you; that's what it means to hold a belief. There's nothing elitist about that; I don't fault you for that.

But then on page 76, you talk about progress we have made since our ancient forebears. So if it's all opinion and there's no standard by which we judge, I don't know what "superior" and "progress" even mean.

Kevin Harris: Let's get to Bart's answer to that in a moment, Bill. But what do you think about the point that Sean is making? If there's no standard, there's no way to gauge progress nor determine what is superior. Does better imply a best?

Dr. William Lane Craig: This gets back to Sean's earlier point about the difference between mere moral change, like the change in fashions over time, and genuine moral progress in the sense of objectively becoming better and better and better. Ehrman seems to want to believe in objective moral progress, but then he gives away the store by saying that it's just his opinion.

Kevin Harris: Let's go to Bart's answer then to the question about moral progress and standards. Here is clip number nine.

Bart Ehrman: So, this seems to be an issue that you're very intent upon. You and I share a human DNA that has been transformed over the centuries because of the way culture developed. You admit that in different cultures they have different views of what those objective moral truths are.

Sean McDowell: I think different cultures have common moral principles that transcend culture. These are principles that are universal or near-universal, even though the practices may vary, which is what we would expect.

Bart Ehrman: Okay. So one of my top moral priorities is to help people who are hungry and homeless. I think that for me, that is a core moral value, and I try to act on it. That moral value was not in evidence for the vast majority of the 300,000 years that Homo sapiens have been in existence. So if you want to say that we all have those moral values, I think history would show you that you're wrong. In fact, those moral values—that particular moral value of being of high importance to help those in need—has been around for about 1,800 years out of the 300,000 years that humans have existed. So I don't think we all have the same moral code.

Kevin Harris: So Sean says common moral values can be seen in societies throughout history, even though those moral values may be applied differently. Bart thinks that history shows that societies have differing moral codes, as he said, Bill.

Dr. William Lane Craig: Yeah, Ehrman is so confused. Sean is not trying to say that people have always had the same moral values. On the contrary, in fact, he's actually saying that there is genuine moral progress that is being made. People are discovering moral values that were objectively there all along even though they didn't realize it.

The question here is whether our moral values are gradually discovered or are they gradually invented. McDowell's position as a moral realist is that moral values are there all along but they are gradually discovered, whereas Ehrman seems to want to say that moral values are gradually invented and are not objective; they are purely subjective.

Kevin Harris: Sean is such a nice guy. He's so kind and generous. Let's wrap things up.

Dr. William Lane Craig: I want to say something about Sean, too, in his deportment in this interview. I thought he was just brilliant. Ehrman was trying to be jocular and laugh and make jokes, and you notice how serious Sean McDowell is; he never even cracks a smile. He is very focused and intent on these issues that he's grilling Ehrman over, and I think Ehrman found himself quite unprepared to be on the hot seat with Sean McDowell.

Kevin Harris: Yeah. We're going to wrap things up with Bart's summation of the whole thing. Here's clip number 10.

Bart Ehrman: We do feel guilt, and it's built into us. As you said, you've read a lot of evolutionary biology, and so it's not difficult to explain this from an evolutionary biological standpoint. The sense of guilt comes to us because we're doing things that might harm ourselves or others, and that's a problem evolutionarily because if you harm others within your community, you may destroy your community. It's not that we've evolved the sense of guilt so that we don't destroy our communities; it's that people who have this sense of guilt, this idea that they're acting wrongly, people who have that tend to survive better than others, and their genes survive better than others.

So it's within our genetic code to feel this. I have no problems with saying some actions are right and some are wrong without an objective standard. Yes, I think that is right. I know that sounds like people who believe in objectivity say you have no grounds for saying that, but I'm just telling you, yes you do, because it's written into what it means to be a human being.

Let me just emphasize as well for people who are listening to this: this debate of objectivity and subjectivity is not the point of my book at all. It's the point of the book is about a transformation of our ethical sense, and the argument that it would work whether you're a believer or not in terms the argument of my book about the historical transformation. But objectivity and subjectivity is not something I really, other than in the introduction to a couple of chapters where I explain why I don't think you have to believe in God to be a moral person.

Kevin Harris: He says evolutionary biology explains altruistic tendencies and things like guilt and so on. Bart emphasizes, Bill, that all this is not really the point of his book. But Sean really wanted to make some points about objective morality and perhaps the moral argument for God, probably based on that introduction that Bart mentioned there. I must say that Bart was willing to play along and get into moral philosophy, Bill.

Dr. William Lane Craig: Yes. Here we find Ehrman espousing the typical line that treats moral values as spinoffs of the sociobiological process in the struggle for survival. The idea is that having a conscience that feels guilt gives an organism an evolutionary advantage, and so it gets selected by natural selection and becomes a part of the herd morality.

It is certainly clear that the difference between moral objectivity and subjectivity is not the topic of his book. But just to end our conversation on a high point, Ehrman concludes with one more elementary error: namely, he thinks that Sean is claiming that in order to be moral, you need to believe in God. That is not, of course, what Sean is claiming.

The belief in God is not necessary for morality. The claim is that God himself is necessary for morality. Without a God, then objective moral values and duties do not exist. Instead, they are exactly what Bart Ehrman says they are: they are just sociobiological spinoffs of the evolutionary process and they have no objective validity or truth beyond that. So I think we see very clearly displayed here the difference between a moral realism such as McDowell affirms and this moral anti-realism that Ehrman would affirm.

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