“Colorless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously” as Reasonable as the Trinity

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christian trinity atheismLinguist Noam Chomsky suggested “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously” as an example of a sentence that is grammatically correct but logically ridiculous, but it is no more ridiculous than the Trinity.
The Christian doctrine of the Trinity claims one God in three persons. The Catholic Encyclopedia defines it this way: “In the unity of the Godhead there are Three Persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, these Three Persons being truly distinct one from another.”
Unity but also distinct? Three but also one? That makes no sense, so let’s go to the source and read about it in the Bible.
And the Bible says …
Though the Trinity is one of the most fundamental doctrines of Christianity, the Bible says nothing about it directly. Did Paul and the apostles define God in a trinitarian fashion? Nope. If the Trinity is essential to a proper understanding of Christianity as the modern church claims, the ancients’ silence on the matter makes clear that it is a later invention.
That’s not to say that one can’t use the Bible to form arguments in favor of various relationships between God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. Several interpretations competed in the early centuries of the church.

  • Was Jesus merely a good man, adopted by God (Adoptionism)?
  • Are Father, Son, and Holy Spirit just labels for the different roles of one being (Sabellianism or Modalism)?
  • Was Jesus created by God and subordinate to him (Arianism)?

These are all plausible interpretations, justifiable with Bible passages, but they are heresies today. It took about two centuries for the doctrine of the Trinity to enter the debate (through Tertullian), and it took almost two more centuries of haggling for the doctrine to mature into its present form and sweep away its competitors at the First Council of Constantinople (381).
While still a cardinal, the man who would become Pope Benedict XVI was asked if he was bothered by many Catholics ignoring papal dictates. He said that he was not, because “truth is not determined by a majority vote.” But a majority vote is exactly how doctrines like the Trinity came into being.


See also: Bible Contradictions to the Trinity

Comma Johanneum
You know how I said that the Bible says nothing directly about the Trinity? For completeness, we should address this:

For there are three that testify in heaven: the Father, the Word and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one. (1 John 5:7)

The part in italics is called the Comma Johanneum (a “comma” is a short clause). The oldest and most reliable manuscripts do not show the Comma. It appears first in a few seventh-century Latin manuscripts and only centuries later in Greek manuscripts. Unlike much of the rest of the New Testament, it doesn’t appear in the letters of early church fathers, many of whom would’ve delighted to support their position with such a quote.
It is agreed by scholars to be a later addition to the original.
What is the Trinity?
Lots of analogies have been proposed for the Trinity. Maybe it’s like water, which has the three states of solid, liquid, and gas. Or like a person who can be spouse, parent, and employer. But this is modalism—God acts in different modes at different times.
Okay, then maybe it’s like an egg, which has shell, white, and yolk. Or like time, which has past, present, and future. Or like the Borromean rings above—three unlinked rings that make a linked whole only when all three rings are present. But this is Partialism, the heretical claim that the three persons of God are three separate parts.
Even world famous apologist William Lane Craig commits this heresy:

[The Trinity] is the claim that the one entity we call God comprises three persons. That is no more illogical than saying that one geometrical figure which we call a triangle is comprised of three angles. Three angles in one figure. Three persons in one being.

Given the clear history of conflict on this question and the many discarded explanations, you’d think that heretical analogies wouldn’t be offered.
Many careful Christians simply say that it’s a mystery and admit that we can’t understand it. Contrast that with the monotheism celebrated by Islam. The shahadah, the basic creed of Islam, says, “There are no deities but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet”—simple and unambiguous.
A few questions raised by the Trinity doctrine
Instead of the convoluted and unintelligible Trinity, why not simply embrace the polytheism? My guess is that first-century Christians so valued Jewish monotheism that this tenet couldn’t be dropped. As the stature of Jesus increased over time, from a good man adopted as messiah by God (as told in Mark) to a being who was there at the beginning (John 1:1), they were stuck with fitting the square peg of the divinity of Jesus into the round hole of monotheism.
Why not then have a duality, Yahweh + Jesus? The problem is that two is the number for male and female, which was not the symbolism they were going for. Perhaps the Holy Spirit, initially just a bit player or merely a synonym for God, was elevated into the Trinity. And even this is flexible. While the idea of Mary as Co-redemptrix is not Catholic doctrine, it has threatened to become so at various periods in the church’s history.
And now let us close …
The typical Christian response to a contradiction is to find a way to make both claims true. This is never clearer than with the Trinity. The Bible says that there is one god, but it also says that Jesus existed since the beginning of time. So they must both be true! But what first-century Christian would rationalize this with the doctrine of the Trinity?
Or, take this from the other direction. Explain the Trinity to first-century Christians and ask if that matches their understanding. If you imagine that they do, you have a new problem: why the vitally important doctrine of the Trinity wasn’t explained in the New Testament. And if they don’t, then why is the Trinity dogma today?
The Trinity is a Christian mystery—something that can’t be explained by reason alone. A supernatural explanation is necessary. (This raises the question: If it doesn’t make sense, why accept it? But let’s set that aside.) Apologists often admit that they will just have to ask God about it when they get to heaven.
That humility is laudable, but how about some of that in other areas? If you don’t trust yourself to make sense of the Trinity, why imagine that you correctly understand God’s position on polygamy, slavery, and genocide when the Old Testament gives clear support for them? Why imagine that your evaluation of abortion and gay marriage is correct when the Bible doesn’t address these topics directly?
If only the Trinity were a frequent reminder for Christians to be humble in their claims, it would be valuable for everyone.
See also: “God Has Many Names, But Do We Need One More?”

It is too late in the day for men of sincerity
to pretend they believe in the Platonic mysticism
that three are one and one is three,
and yet, that the one is not three, and the three are not one.
— Thomas Jefferson (letter to John Adams, 1813)

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 6/10/13.)
Image credit: Wikipedia
 

13 More Puzzles

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Crossword puzzleI recently explored a specific kind of puzzle in “Counterintuitive Puzzles that Should Be Easy.” I’ve explored other puzzles to shed some light on the religion question: the Monty Hall problem and the Puzzle of the Hidden Dots. There is more to be said about the odd ways the human brain works, but let’s postpone that and simply enjoy a few more puzzles for their own sake this time.
Write your answers to the puzzles that were new to you and check them with the answers below.
Got any good puzzles that you use to stump your friends? Tell us about them in the comments.
Quick ones
Let’s start with some quick ones like those in the previous post. See if the intuitive answer is correct.

  1. If fence posts are put in every 7 feet, how many posts are needed to make a fence 77 feet long?
  2. If it takes a chiming clock 3 seconds to strike 6:00, how long does it take to strike midnight? Ignore the duration of the sound of each chime. (h/t commenter Richard S. Russell)

Word sense

  1. Google’s new parser can make sense out of the following sentences. Can you? Here’s an example of a confusing sentence: “While Anna dressed the baby played in the crib.” That probably sounds odd until you mentally punctuate it like this: “While Anna dressed, the baby played in the crib.” Now try these:
  • The old man the boat.
  • While the man hunted the deer ran into the woods.
  • I convinced her children are noisy.
  • The coach smiled at the player tossed the Frisbee.
  • The cotton clothes are made up of grows in Mississippi.
  • The horse raced past the barn fell.

Easy physics puzzles
These are physics versions of the puzzles that should be easy to answer.

  1. Where does the length of a year come from?
  2. Why is it colder in the winter?
  3. A rowboat is floating in a swimming pool. Inside the rowboat is a cannonball. Take the cannonball and drop it overboard. Does the water level on the side of the pool rise, fall, or stay the same?

Something must be wrong here

  1. A friend of mine was from Iowa, and he said that there was quite a rivalry with the neighboring state of Missouri. Jokes were told in Iowa about how stupid Missourians were. They claimed that if Iowa gave the counties that bordered on Missouri to Missouri, it would raise the IQ of both states. But wait a minute—there has to be something wrong with that. Both states can’t improve, right?
  2. Proof that 1 = 2
  • Let a = b
  • Multiply both sides by a:

a2 = ab

  • Subtract b2 from each side:

a2 – b2 = ab – b2

  • Factor both sides:

(a – b)(a + b) = b(a – b)

  • Cancel (a – b) from both sides:

a + b = b

  • Substitute (remember that a = b):

a + a = a

  • Collect:

2a = a

  • Divide by a:

2 = 1 (But something has to be wrong here—what is it?)

Increasingly difficult puzzles

  1. You’re in the middle of an island covered uniformly with a dense, dry forest. Lightning sets the north end of the forest on fire, and the wind is blowing to the south. All the coast is cliff, so you can’t jump into the water to wait out the fire. The fire will reach you in an hour, and all you have is a backpack with things typically taken on a hike. What can you do to save yourself?
  2. You and I are going to meet at a cafe. The server delivers a coffee with milk on the side just as I get a text from you saying you will be 15 minutes late. Being the polite person that I am, I want to wait for you before drinking my coffee. If I want it to be as hot as possible, do I pour the milk in now or wait until you get here?
  3. Suppose we have 6-sided dice that don’t have the usual numbers 1 through 6 on them. If my die has a 6 on every face and yours has a 5 on every face, we could roll our respective die and I would beat you every time. Now suppose I change to a die with faces {6, 6, 6, 6, 1, 1}. My die is still the better one, but now I would beat your 5-faced die only 2/3 of the time. It’s easy to imagine die A being better than B, and B being better than C, but the puzzle is to make this loop around. That is, create dice such that A beats B, B beats C, and C beats A.
  4. Your company makes the metal numerals used by homeowners to identify their house number. How many of each should you make?
  5. Does the balance tip to the right, tip to the left, or remain unchanged?

Click on the Continue below for hints and then answers.
Balls and beakers

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion
but not their own facts.
— Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Image credit: stevepb, Pixabay, CC
Hints:

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Insights into Bible Miracles from Magician Uri Geller

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Remember Uri Geller? He was the psychic (or entertainer) who bent spoons and performed similar demonstrations in the 1970s and later. He claimed that extraterrestrials gave him paranormal powers, but wet blankets like magician James Randi stated that all of Geller’s claimed paranormal demonstrations were done with conventional stage magic. Randi showed this by publicly duplicating all of Geller’s tricks.
Geller responded: “Sure, there are magicians who can duplicate [my performances] through trickery.” In other words, just because others can do these things as tricks doesn’t mean that he’s not doing them using paranormal powers. But Randi observed that if Geller was actually doing what he claims, “He is doing it the hard way.”
Miraculous Bible claims
I was reminded of Geller when I recently read a defense of one of the Bible’s miracle claims. Maybe it was the Genesis flood story (which looks a lot like the prior Gilgamesh epic). Or the creation story (which looks a lot like the prior Sumerian creation story). Or the Jesus virgin birth story (which looks a lot like prior virgin birth claims of other great men). Or the Jesus resurrection story (which looks a lot like prior dying-and-rising stories of other gods from cultures in the eastern Mediterranean).
It doesn’t much matter which Bible story the apologist was trying to shore up—the defense is the same. It’s the Uri Geller Defense. Geller would say that just because they did his stunts through tricks doesn’t mean that he’s not doing them for real. And the Bible apologist says that just because other cultures anticipated some of the Bible’s fundamental miracle claims long before the Bible story was written doesn’t mean that that Bible story isn’t for real.
Granted. But if Randi can duplicate Geller’s demonstrations as tricks, that makes the starting hypothesis that Geller did the same, and his paranormal claims are fraudulent. Geller has the burden of proof to show that this simple and obvious natural explanation is wrong. And if we have precedents for many of the Bible’s miracle stories, that makes the null hypothesis that these are just ancient Jewish versions of well-known supernatural stories. The apologist has the burden of proof to show that, while the other stories are just myths and legends, the Bible miracles actually happened.
Yes, but those earlier stories don’t count!
Some apologists try to dismiss the earlier stories, but early church father Justin Martyr tried to spin the similarities between Jesus’s virgin birth claim and those of other gods to his advantage. He turned the tables. Why should the Greeks dismiss this miracle claim of Jesus, Justin asked, when they make similar claims about their own gods?
About the Jesus resurrection story, Justin speculated that the similar Dionysus story was planted in history by the devil himself. (I give Justin’s arguments in more detail here.)
Another angle is to emphasize that each Bible story is different from its precedents. Of course it’s different—if the Jesus story were identical to that of Dionysus (say), we’d call him Dionysus instead of Jesus. The question is: how can we trust a Jewish or Christian story as history when it came out of a culture swimming with older (false) stories with the same supernatural claims?
How we deal with similar claims.
Psychics might really be talking to the dead. Though that’s not where the evidence points, desperate customers want the psychics’ story to be true.
Crop circles might really be made by extraterrestrials. Though that’s not where the evidence points (creators have documented how they do it), crop circle enthusiasts dismiss the mundane explanation.
Uri Geller might be for real, though that’s not where the evidence points. Similarly, the Bible miracle stories might be true, but similar miracle stories in nearby cultures make copying by Bible authors the best explanation.
We can’t prove that the Bible’s miracle claims aren’t for real, despite all the precedents, but that’s the way to bet. The plausible natural explanation makes the supernatural explanation unappealing and unnecessary. Only someone with a desire to support a preconception wouldn’t follow the evidence where it leads.

I don’t want to argue 
with people who believe the world is flat.
— Episcopal bishop John Shelby Spong

Photo credit: Wikimedia
(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 6/5/13.)

My Post on Faith Appears on Patheos Public Square

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Faith abstractThe topic for the Patheos Public Square this month is, “Is Faith Rational, Irrational, or Arational?“

The tension between faith and reason is most prominent in Christian circles, but is to some degree a factor in every contemporary religious expression. Some argue that faith is a reasonable approach to reality, whereas others might argue that it must be a blind leap that transcends reason, and still others argue that it has no relationship to reason whatsoever. What does your faith tradition teach about reason and belief?

My rather uncompromisingly titled “Faith, the Other F-Word” from yesterday appears along with a dozen other articles, mostly authors outside Patheos and mostly more sympathetic to faith. (One exception: Roy Speckhardt, executive director of American Humanist Association.) I was pleased to add something to the skeptical side of the balance.

Check out Patheos Public Square if you’re curious about a broader look at faith. (And check back here on Monday for what I expect will be an even harsher critique of faith in my next post.)

Faith, the Other F-Word

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What is faith? Is it belief in accord with the evidence? Is it belief regardless of the evidence? Something else? Faith is defined in many ways. Let’s try to untangle the confusion (some of which I suspect is deliberate).
Editors’ Note: This article is part of the Patheos Public Square on Faith and Reason. Read other perspectives here.
Faith and Mother Teresa
Mother Teresa’s troubled relationship with faith is well known. She was celebrated by society but ignored by God. About her prayer life, she wrote of “silence and emptiness.” She described her own life as “darkness,” “loneliness,” and “torture” and compared it to hell. An editor at Jesuit magazine said, “I’ve never read a saint’s life where the saint has such an intense spiritual darkness. No one knew she was that tormented.”
And yet one biographer said about this dysfunctional life, “Her church regarded her perseverance in the absence of a sense of divine response as perhaps her most heroic act of faith.”
Heroic? When God doesn’t answer, is he inscrutable or just not there? Was Teresa displaying admirable perseverance or foolish futility? This persistence is laudable only in a world where religion celebrates faith over evidence.
For being so widely used, the definition of “faith” can be slippery. Let’s consider the two popular definitions, each staking out a different relationship with evidence.
Faith definition 1
Everyone wants good reasons supporting their beliefs—or at least to appear that way. Many Christians use the following definition for “faith.”
Faith definition 1: evidence-based belief; that is, belief that follows from the evidence. For example, you might have faith in your car’s reliability because it’s done a great job so far, but that faith will fade if it begins to act up. I would call this “trust,” and many Christians are fine with that—they just say that “faith” and “trust” are synonyms.
The Bible has plenty of examples where evidence backs up belief.

  • Elijah challenged the 450 prophets of Baal to a bake-off where the first one to get his sacrifice lit by heavenly fire gets to execute the others (1 Kings 18).
  • An angry crowd came to Gideon’s house after he destroyed an altar to Baal. Gideon’s father told them, “If Baal really is a god, he can defend himself when someone breaks down his altar” (Judges 6:31).
  • The parable of the sheep and the goats (Matthew 25) makes clear that good works and not faith are the ticket to heaven.
  • Jesus did his miracles in part to prove his divinity. “Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves” (John 14:11).

This conflating of faith with trust is popular among modern apologists as well.

  • Mathematician and apologist John Lennox said, “Faith is not a leap in the dark; it’s the exact opposite. It’s a commitment based on evidence.”
  • Christian podcaster Jim Wallace said that faith is “trusting the best inference from the evidence.”
  • Presbyterian leader A. A. Hodge said, “Faith must have adequate evidence, else it is mere superstition.”

Drs. Norm Geisler and Frank Turek in I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist said that plenty of evidence backs up Christian claims:

[For many nonbelievers] it’s not that they don’t have evidence to believe, it’s that they don’t want to believe.
God has provided enough evidence in this life to convince anyone willing to believe, yet he has also left some ambiguity so as not to compel the unwilling.

(My post responding to this book is here.)
Faith definition 2
But if you have any familiarity with Christianity, you know that doesn’t cover the spectrum. Faith can also have a very different relationship with evidence.
Faith definition 2: belief held not primarily because of evidence and little shaken in the face of contrary evidence; that is, belief neither supported nor undercut by evidence. This would be a belief that can’t be shaken by a change in evidence (such as, “I won’t give up my faith in Jesus for any reason”). Evidence for one’s belief can be nonexistent or it can argue against one’s belief (blind faith), or evidence can simply be insufficient.
Again, let’s start with the Bible to find support for this evidence-less faith:

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. … And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him (Hebrews 11:1–6).
Then Jesus told [Doubting Thomas], “You believe because you have seen me. Blessed are those who believe without seeing me.” (John 20:29)

The Hebrews passage has no need of evidence, and the statement of Jesus celebrates those who believe despite a lack of evidence.
Let’s check in with some early church fathers.

If you chance upon anything [in Scripture] that does not seem to be true, you must not conclude that the sacred writer made a mistake; rather your attitude should be: the manuscript is faulty, or the version is not accurate, or you yourself do not understand the matter. (Augustine)
[I don’t understand to believe but rather] I believe to understand. (Anselm of Canterbury)

Now consider some modern sources. Kurt Wise has a PhD in geology from Harvard, and yet he’s a young-earth Creationist. In high school he used scissors to cut from a Bible everything that science concluded couldn’t be interpreted literally. He said about the resulting corrected Bible, “I found it impossible to pick up the Bible without it being rent in two.”
But his definition of faith doesn’t follow the evidence:

If all the evidence in the universe turns against creationism, I would be the first to admit it, but I would still be a creationist because that is what the Word of God seems to indicate.

William Lane Craig’s gullible acceptance of magic rather than evidence as the ultimate authority is equally disturbing:

Should a conflict arise between the witness of the Holy Spirit to the fundamental truth of the Christian faith and beliefs based on argument and evidence, then it is the former which must take precedence over the latter, not vice versa. (Reasonable Faith [Crossway, 1994] p. 36)

We can see both definitions of “faith” in Geisler and Turek’s I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist. Above, we saw how they celebrate evidence when they think they have it. But the very title of their book denigrates “faith” as a leap unsupported by evidence. They say:

The less evidence you have for your position, the more faith you need to believe it (and vice versa). Faith covers a gap in knowledge. (p. 26)

Finally, consider a faith that has real-world consequences. Though religion wasn’t involved, it seems faith rather than physics guided a hot-coal-walking exercise put on by motivational speaker Tony Robbins in 2012. Twenty-one people were treated for burns.
Snake handlers believe that Jesus said about them, “In my name … they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all” despite the very clear evidence to the contrary.
Pastor Mark Wolford died from a snakebite in 2012, and he had watched his father die from the same thing. Pastor Jamie Coots refused medical treatment for a snakebite in 2014 and also died. If anyone knew that God doesn’t protect believers from snakebite it was him, since that was his ninth snakebite.
Christian commentary
Christian scholars grope around as they try to justify belief without evidence.
John Warwick Montgomery suggests crossing a busy street as a parallel. You never have absolute certainty of your safety when you cross a street. Instead, you wait until you have sufficient confidence, then you cross. And then, you don’t just take 99 percent of yourself across (to match your degree of confidence in the safety of the trip); you take all of yourself. Faith jumps the gap, both for busy streets and for Jesus.
Another example is marriage. You don’t have certainty that the Bible is true, but you don’t have certainty that you’ve picked the right marriage partner, either.
Nope. Neither example makes the Christian case. Crossing a street is always based on evidence. You look for good evidence that it’s safe, and you reconsider your conclusion if new evidence comes in. You also weigh evidence in the search for a compatible mate. In the same way, we follow the evidence for the reliability of the Bible as well—and find very little, not enough to support its enormous claims.
Alvin Plantinga has an interesting angle:

No one thinks there is good evidence for the proposition that there are an even number of stars; but also, no one thinks the right conclusion to draw is that there are an uneven number of stars. The right conclusion would instead be agnosticism.

Is there a reason to believe that there’s an even number of stars? No. An odd number? No. What about God—is there reason to think that he exists? No. That he doesn’t? Yes! You can throw up your hands in the case of the number of stars because it’s impossible to answer—agnosticism (or apathy) is an appropriate response. But the data is in for God, and that hypothesis fails for lack of evidence, just like the leprechaun and Zeus hypotheses.
Anselm said, “I believe to understand,” but that won’t work for me. If God exists, he gave me this big brain to use. It would be impolite to ignore its objections or be a Stepford wife. If God exists, he’d be happy to see me challenging empty Christian claims.
Pick a definition and stick with it
Lots of words have multiple definitions. The problem here is that “faith” is often used to mean belief based solidly on evidence (but only when outsiders are looking). For example, “I have faith that the sun will rise tomorrow.”
But within Christian circles, the heavy burden of evidence is shrugged off, and faith might mean “believing as your heart speaks to you.” Christians might then speak with unjustified confidence about what heaven is like and who’s going there, what signal God conveyed with a recent disaster, who’s on God’s naughty list, and so on.
Christians, to help you make your own arguments more clearly and honestly, let me suggest some word hygiene. Use trust to mean evidence-based belief, belief in accord with the evidence and which will change as the evidence changes. Use faith to mean belief not primarily supported by evidence and which is not shaken by contrary evidence.
Each word has its place. Be consistent. Sloppy usage only confuses your message and yourself.
Continue with “How Reliable Is a Bridge Built on Faith?” for a spirited critique of faith.

Faith is the excuse people give
when they don’t have a good reason.
— Matt Dillahunty, Atheist Experience

William Lane Craig Doesn’t Believe in Objective Moral Values

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Avalon has supported this blog since its earliest days (and before, when I had a small corner of apologetics.com), generous both with comments and the occasional correction. He is today’s guest blogger.
If you want to write a guest post, contact me.
Dr. Craig’s famous moral argument goes like this:

  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 defines objective moral values like this:

To say that there are objective moral values is to say that something is right or wrong independently of whether anybody believes it to be so.

We may safely replace the definition of a word for the word itself without altering the meaning of a sentence. Let’s do so now to clarify the argument:

  1. If God does not exist, values and duties independent from what anyone believes do not exist.
  2. Values and duties independent from what anyone believes do exist.
  3. Therefore, God exists.

I take issue with #2. It is not self-evident that values and duties independent from what anyone believes do exist. Since every example of objective moral values Dr. Craig uses (Nazis, murder, rape, torturing babies for fun, etc. …) is in agreement with what everyone believes, I submit that they are not independent from human belief.
Therefore, I submit the following argument:

  1. If God does not exist, values and duties independent from what anyone believes do not exist.
  2. Values and duties are not independent from what anyone believes. They exist by consensus of belief.
  3. Therefore, the existence of values and duties has no bearing on the existence of God.

Dr. Craig goes on to explain,

It is to say, for example, that Nazi anti-Semitism was morally wrong, even though the Nazis who carried out the Holocaust thought that it was good; and it would still be wrong even if the Nazis had won World War II and succeeded in exterminating or brainwashing everybody who disagreed with them.

Note that Dr. Craig has chosen an example of near universal agreement. How is it that Dr. Craig knows that the Nazis were objectively wrong? Isn’t it because everyone (except Nazis) agrees with him? This merely endorses his opinion that the consensus view is objectively true. But he’s just said that what we believe (individually, collectively, or universally) is irrelevant to the actual truth of the matter. Why rely on the consensus view to support your claim of objectivity? Is it just his intuition?
Suppose Dr. Craig’s scenario actually happened and everyone was brainwashed. Assuming a good brainwashing leaves no trace of your former beliefs and no memory of being changed, what position would Dr. Craig hold in this post-brainwashed world? Would he not point to what everyone (now) knows as evidence for the Nazis being objectively right? What makes the consensus view objectively right before we’re all brainwashed, but objectively wrong after we’re all brainwashed? According to Dr. Craig’s definition, where our beliefs are irrelevant, isn’t it entirely possible that our near universal beliefs were entirely wrong beforehand and the act of brainwashing simply put us onto the objective truth? Does Dr. Craig think his intuition remains unchanged after being brainwashed?
If Dr. Craig believes his own argument (values and duties independent from what anyone believes do exist) then why doesn’t he provide an example? He’s had opportunities to do so, yet he never appeals to his own argument.
For example, when asked about the Canaanite genocide that God ordered, Dr. Craig could simply reply that that was the objectively right thing to do even though we all believe it was wrong. But he doesn’t. Instead, he abandons all objective morality and cites many other, subjective moral theories (ones he supposedly rejects). These include cultural differences (“our moral sensibilities in the West”), upbringing (“shaped by our Judeo-Christian heritage, which has taught us…”), and consequentialism (“the death of these children was actually their salvation”). All of these reasons indicate someone who believes in the subjective nature of moral values rooted in what we all collectively believe about them.
The same is true when confronted with the problem of evil. Dr. Craig could say that we may perceive evil in this world, but we’re all wrong and it’s all objectively good. But he doesn’t. Instead he jumps right back on the subjectivist bandwagon and becomes a consequentialist when he says:

What I am simply saying is that God’s aims in this life, in this world, are for a maximum number of people to come to know God and His salvation as fully as possible. And it is possible that that would not be achieved in a world that did not involve as much suffering and evil as this world does. Far from being counter-intuitive, I find that very plausible. In fact, I have recently done a study, using a missions handbook, of nations of the world in which there has been intense suffering, and what I found over and over again is that it is in precisely those nations that evangelical Christianity is experiencing its most rapid and sustained growth.

So, in his mind, it’s not that what we perceive as evil is actually an objective good. We’re right again and it’s really evil, but it’s just a means to a greater good.
It is not self-evident that values and duties independent from what anyone believes do exist. Dr. Craig never provides an example of such independent values and duties. No one has ever provided evidence of independent values and duties that differ from human belief. And Dr. Craig refuses to use his own argument when the opportunity arises. Therefore, I submit that Dr. Craig doesn’t believe in objective moral values, that is, values and duties independent from what anyone believes.
So here’s the challenge to any objective moralist who agrees with Craig’s definition: give me one example of an objective good that everyone believes is wrong, some basic act that we all believe is evil, but is independently (that is objectively) good despite what anybody believes.
But perhaps I’m being unfair. Suppose it’s the case that objective moral values happen to be exactly the same as the consensus view of mankind at this point in time. If that’s the case, then it’d be impossible to provide a counter-example because none would exist. It could be that every moral consensus now is objectively true. If so, then we have a new definition of objective moral values: Objective moral values are the consensus values of mankind at this point in time.
If objective moral values are always identical to our consensus beliefs then their independence is irrelevant. We are then perfectly capable of determining moral values by a consensus of belief and no outside source (God) is necessary.

When people complain about the lack of values, 
They are usually complaining about the fact 
that other people fail to value the things they value, 
and they are presupposing that the things they value 
are the things that are truly valuable.
— Richard Garner

(This is a repeat of a post that originally appeared 6/3/13.)