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William Lane Craig’s moral argument, and five objections to it

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Which argument for God is the most accessible? To really sustain the cosmic beginning argument and the cosmic fine-tuning argument, you have to learn some scientific evidence. Same for the resurrection of Jesus – you have to learn some history. But what about the moral argument? All you need to make that argument is for your opponent to think that something is morally wrong.

First, let’s review the moral argument, from William Lane Craig.

He writes:

We are going to turn now to a discussion of the moral argument for the existence of God. So far we have been looking at philosophical and scientific arguments. This is an ethical argument. There are a wide variety of moral reasons for believing in God, but this is a particularly simple moral argument that I have used over and over again with university students and I find very effective. It really grabs people where they live. This is not just a matter of scientific evidence or philosophical issues that may not impact your life. This is an issue that is vitally important because everyday as you live you make moral choices. So everyday by your behavior you answer the question whether or not you believe that God exists. The argument consists basically of three simple steps:

1. If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist.

2. Objective moral values do exist.

3. Therefore, God exist.

That is a very simple argument for the existence of God and is easy to memorize. It is just three steps. It is logically valid. If those two premises are true then the conclusion follows necessarily and logically. The only question is: are the two premises true?

But there are some objections to the moral argument. CrossExamined.org has posted a list of five objections to the moral argument from philosopher Paul Rezkalla.

Here are the 5 points:

  1. “But I’m a moral person and I don’t believe in God. Are you saying that atheists can’t be moral?”
  2. “But what if you needed to lie in order to save someone’s life? It seems that morality is not absolute as you say it is.”
  3. ‘Where’s your evidence for objective morality? I won’t believe in anything unless I have evidence for it.’
  4. ‘If morality is objective, then why do some cultures practice female genital mutilation, cannibalism, infanticide, and other atrocities which we, in the West, deem unacceptable?’
  5.  ‘But God carried out many atrocities in the Old Testament. He ordered the genocide of the Canaanites.’

That last one seems to be popular, so let’s double-check the details:

For starters, this isn’t really an objection to the moral argument. It does not attack either premise of the argument. It is irrelevant, but let’s entertain this objection for a second. By making a judgement on God’s actions and deeming them immoral, the objector is appealing to a standard of morality that holds true outside of him/herself and transcends barriers of culture, context, time period, and social norms. By doing this, he/she affirms the existence of objective morality! But if the skeptic wants to affirm objective morality after throwing God out the window, then there needs to be an alternate explanation for its basis. If not God, then what is it? The burden is now on the skeptic to provide a naturalistic explanation for the objective moral framework.

If you have heard any of these objections before when discussing the moral argument, click through and take a look.

And if you have a non-Christian in your life who likes to make moral statements, it’s a good conversation to have. Where does your standard come from? Is it from your own desires? Is it from cultural conventions, that vary by time and place? Is it from Darwinian evolution? Find out what the answer is, and then respond to it.

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Leftist news media furious that conservatives noticed murder by 14-time repeat offender

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By now, everyone has heard about the murder of the 23-year-old lady by a 14-time repeat offender. The lady was just riding a light train in Charlotte, NC, and the criminal attacked her from behind and stabbed her many times with a knife. Two things are interesting about the story. First, the judiciary workers who released the criminal. Second, the reaction from corporate news media.

So, first, the facts of the case from Meg Basham at Daily Wire:

The victim, Iryna Zarutska, came to the United States in 2022. She was returning from her job at a local pizzeria when Decarlos Brown stabbed her repeatedly in the neck.

And this is the key part – in a Democrat-run city, the criminal was released FOURTEEN TIMES.

Brown had a lengthy criminal history, including at least 14 prior arrests for offenses such as armed robbery and assault with a deadly weapon. Despite serving five years for the robbery, most of his other cases resulted in time served, probation, or community service.

His most recent arrest in January was for misusing 911, yet Judge Teresa Stokes granted him pretrial release despite his violent record. In 2024 alone, Brown had three encounters with the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department’s (CMPD) community policing team, each time receiving referrals to resources and fines rather than jail time.

According to Grok, here are the qualifications for her position:

Under North Carolina law (N.C.G.S. § 7A-171), magistrates are appointed judicial officials, not judges, and do not require a law degree or bar admission.

Requirements include:

  • A four-year college degree, or a two-year associate degree with at least four years of experience in a related field (e.g., court administration, social services).
  • Completion of a 40-hour basic training course within six months of appointment, covering civil and criminal duties.
  • Annual continuing education through the North Carolina Administrative Office of the Courts (NCAOC) and UNC School of Government.

Grok also mentioned to me that she is married to a woman, Ayanna Ballard. Can you imagine choosing to live in a place like Charlotte, seeing the violent crime rates go higher and higher because of the failures of the district attorney and the others to deal with criminals and protect taxpayers? Why do people do it?

Anyway, the corporate news media was very upset… not with the murder, but with people noticing the murder.

Here’s Daily Signal:

Instead of focusing on the terrible and enraging crime that took place, it became one of their “conservatives pounce” spin jobs.

Axios put up a post on X, saying, “The gruesome video of the fatal knife attack on Iryna Zarutska on a light-rail car in Charlotte is drawing attention from MAGA influencers seeking to elevate the issue of violent urban crime—and accuse mainstream media of under-covering shocking cases.”

That wasn’t the only one, Politico was also concerned by the “political messaging war”, not by the actual murder of an innocent girl. Did you know that Democrats are the party of women’s rights? Yes, here is more of the Democrat party’s women’s-rightsing.

Here’s a gruesome story from September 9th, 2025, reported in the Daily Caller:

A Louisiana man reportedly may face chemical castration or the death penalty after he allegedly raped a four-year-girl on Aug. 1 and gave her Chlamydia.

Anthony James Jelks, 25, allegedly suggested that he raped the child on Aug. 1 at a Baton Rouge, Louisiana, residence, according to arrest documents obtained by WAFB.

[…]“Mr. Jelks, we have arrested six times over the past six years,” Baton Rouge Police Chief TJ Morse said. “He has everything from firearm charges to domestic violence battery, violation of protective orders, and is currently on probation.”

From May 2025, reported in New York Post:

College coed Logan Federico, 22, of Waxhaw, NC, was visiting friends in Columbia, SC, on May 3 when a prowler broke into a rental house, swiped her credit cards and gunned her down, the Columbia Police Department said in a press conference.

[…]Alexander Dickey, 30, a career criminal with 40 prior charges, allegedly broke into the rental home where Federico was staying and opened fire with a stolen gun after stealing from the house.

And here’s another one from December 2023, also reported in New York Post:

A troubled vagrant randomly stabbed two teenage girls enjoying a Christmas morning meal with their parents at a Grand Central Terminal restaurant — after ranting that he wanted “all white people dead,” authorities said.

[…]Hutcherson has 17 prior arrests on his rap sheet, sources said.

It’s hard for me to write about this. I am so upset by the attacks that are going on in Europe against young women, and then even now, here in the United States. And why? Because people vote for the secular left politicians. Secular leftists are dominated by irrational emotions. They have a real problem with moral judgments and punishments. For them, the important thing is to show great compassion with their non-judgement. They want to make a world in which no one can judge them for their evil.

In Europe, women’s groups are so concerned with prioritizing feeling good and looking good with virtue signaling, that they won’t even condemn crimes committed by unskilled immigrants from misogynistic countries against women.

The UK Daily Mirror explains:

More than 100 women’s rights groups have warned “racist” attempts to link sexual violence with immigration are putting victims at increased risk.

Rape Crisis England and Wales, the End Violence Against Women Coalition and Refuge are among the organisations warning anti-migrant groups and politicans are “hijacking” survivors’ trauma. They have signed a letter to Keir Starmer and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper warning that sexual abuse must not be used for political gain – and those who spread misinformation must be held to account.

Who pays the price for the “don’t judge” atttitude of the secular leftists? The victims of the criminals that they don’t punish pay the price. The real misogyny comes from the secular left. That’s why you should never vote for a secular leftist. They don’t have the ability to ground moral judgments and that’s why they need to be kept out of political power by wise voters.

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Study: galactic habitable zone depends on fine-tuning of cosmological constant

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This is going to be old news to readers of this blog who are familiar with the Michael Strauss, Walter Bradley and Guillermo Gonzalez lectures on habitability and fine-tuning. But, it’s nice to see these ideas show up in one of the most prestigious peer-reviewed science journals in the world (if not the most prestigious).

Here’s the article from Science.

It says:

Scientists have known for several years now that stars, galaxies, and almost everything in the universe is moving away from us (and from everything else) at a faster and faster pace. Now, it turns out that the unknown forces behind the rate of this accelerating expansion—a mathematical value called the cosmological constant—may play a previously unexplored role in creating the right conditions for life.

That’s the conclusion of a group of physicists who studied the effects of massive cosmic explosions, called gamma ray bursts, on planets. They found that when it comes to growing life, it’s better to be far away from your neighbors—and the cosmological constant helps thin out the neighborhood.

“In dense environments, you have many explosions, and you’re too close to them,” says cosmologist and theoretical physicist Raul Jimenez of the University of Barcelona in Spain and an author on the new study. “It’s best to be in the outskirts, or in regions that have not been highly populated by small galaxies—and that’s exactly where the Milky Way is.”

Jimenez and his team had previously shown that gamma ray bursts could cause mass extinctions or make planets inhospitable to life by zapping them with radiation and destroying their ozone layer. The bursts channel the radiation into tight beams so powerful that one of them sweeping through a star system could wipe out planets in another galaxy. For their latest work, published this month in Physical Review Letters, they wanted to apply those findings on a broader scale and determine what type of universe would be most likely to support life.

The research is the latest investigation to touch on the so-called anthropic principle: the idea that in some sense the universe is tuned for the emergence of intelligent life. If the forces of nature were much stronger or weaker than physicists observe, proponents note, crucial building blocks of life—such fundamental particles, atoms, or the long-chain molecules needed for the chemistry of life—might not have formed, resulting in a sterile or even completely chaotic universe.

Basically, the best place for a galaxy that permits complex, embodied life to exist is one where you can pick up enough heavy elements from dying stars nearby, but not be in an area that is so crowded by stars that you will be wiped out by intense gamma radiation when they die. So, you want to be between the “arms” of a spiral galaxy, close enough to the areas with a lot of stars, and not too far away. But you can only get that pattern of stars if the universe is expanding at the right rate.

More:

As it turns out, our universe seems to get it just about right. The existing cosmological constant means the rate of expansion is large enough that it minimizes planets’ exposure to gamma ray bursts, but small enough to form lots of hydrogen-burning stars around which life can exist. (A faster expansion rate would make it hard for gas clouds to collapse into stars.)

Jimenez says the expansion of the universe played a bigger role in creating habitable worlds than he expected. “It was surprising to me that you do need the cosmological constant to clear out the region and make it more suburbanlike,” he says.

Remember, this is only one of many characteristics that must obtain in order for a have a location in the universe that can support complex, embodied life of any conceivable kind.

The galactic habitable zone (GHZ) is shown in green against a spiral galaxy
The galactic habitable zone (GHZ) is shown in green against a spiral galaxy

Let’s review the big picture

Time for me to list out some of the things that are required for a galaxy, solar system and planet to support complex embodied life. Not just life as we know it, but life of any conceivable kind given these laws of physics.

  • a solar system with a single massive Sun than can serve as a long-lived, stable source of energy
  • a terrestrial planet (non-gaseous)
  • the planet must be the right distance from the sun in order to preserve liquid water at the surface – if it’s too close, the water is burnt off in a runaway greenhouse effect, if it’s too far, the water is permanently frozen in a runaway glaciation
  • the solar system must be placed at the right place in the galaxy – not too near dangerous radiation, but close enough to other stars to be able to absorb heavy elements after neighboring stars die
  • a moon of sufficient mass to stabilize the tilt of the planet’s rotation
  • plate tectonics
  • an oxygen-rich atmosphere
  • a sweeper planet to deflect comets, etc.
  • planetary neighbors must have non-eccentric orbits

And remember, these requirements for a habitable planet are downstream from the cosmic fine-tuning of constants and quantities that occurs at the Big Bang. No point in talking about the need for plate tectonics if you only have hydrogen in your universe. The habitability requirements are a further problem that comes after the fine-tuning problem.