Welcome to Defenders, the teaching class of Dr. William Lane Craig, today an excurses

on Natural Theology, Part 20.

For more resources from Dr. Craig, go to reasonable faith.org.

We've been talking about the moral argument for God's existence, and last time we looked at an

objection to the first premise, which is that if God does not exist, objective moral values

and duties do not exist.

And that objection comes from Plato's dialogue, Youuthyphro, in which Plato says that if you say

that something is good just because God wills it, then that makes good an evil arbitrary,

which seems wrong.

But if you say God will something because it really is good, then the good is independent of God,

and therefore needn't be dependent upon Him for its objectivity.

And I suggested that this is a false dilemma that what Christians say instead is that God will something because He is good.

That is to say God is himself the standard of goodness and value.

And that nature then is expressed toward us in the form of divine commandments which constitute our moral duties. So moral values are rooted in the nature of God.

Our moral duties are rooted in the commands of God. Now was there any final discussion or

question about this solution to the objection before we proceed? Dennis. So Bill, would it be correct to say that God then never deliberates over good and evil,

but simply is the good and there's no choice made?

He might deliberate over right and wrong.

Robert Adams, who defends this divine command theory of morality,

would say that not every moral command is necessarily true that God could issue certain commands

such as one has, for example, in Old Testament laws that are provisional and temporary,

so he could deliberate over that.

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