Ben Wallis’s counter-apologetics blog

Christians face an interesting theological challenge regarding the crucifixion of Jesus, insofar as we want to know why Jesus had to suffer in order to save the faithful. God, being omnipotent, appears to have the power to save the faithful, regardless of whether he also sent Jesus to suffer on the cross. In order to explain why it was better for him to do so, we might be tempted to invoke the notion of justice. However, if we want to appeal to God's favorite system of justice to explain why Jesus had to suffer, then we must know why that system is ultimately good for us. Since we do not in fact know how God's rules of cosmic justice are ultimately good for us, then no appeal to those rules will serve as a satisfactory explanation.

WLC suggests we characterize objective morality in terms of God's nature. In particular, he suggests a form of DCT, that "God's own nature is the standard of goodness, and his commandments to us are expressions of his nature" ( On Guard , pp135-6). The obvious reply here is that we can conceive a God whose commandments are morally wrong; so for instance we can envision a God who expresses his nature by commanding, say, a father to sacrifice his son. Clearly this would be an immoral act, and since definitions are true essentially it shows that morality is not defined by God's nature. WLC anticipates this sort of objection, but complains that the envisioned scenario is "logically impossible," on par with suggesting that a square can also be a circle (p136). On his view, of course, that's true enough---but if the contradiction only manifests when we assume DCT in advance, then that just goes to show that DCT is wrongheaded. Since we know human sac...

In religious discussions, among other situations, we often raise the issue of whether or not moral values are objectively determined. By "objective" moral values, we typically refer to moral values which are not determined by human opinion or disposition. For instance, CSUSB philosopher Tony Roy characterizes objective moral values as those which are not "dependent on the attitudes of a person, group of persons, tradition, practice, or the like directed at" accepting that value. [ 1 ] Apologist-philosopher William Lane Craig considers an objective moral value to be one discovered "independently of whether anybody believes it to be so." [ 2 ] In this way, moral objectivism springs from the sense of morality laying in large part beyond our creative power, either as individuals or even as a society. Indeed, I take the view that circumstances far beyond our control determine the most fundamental moral values, and that no mere human opinion or social tre...