Is God Necessary for Morality? William Lane Craig v. Shelly Kagan

Even some Christians think Dr. Craig lost this debate.

Is God Necessary for Morality? from The Veritas Forum on Vimeo.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Kagan made his case. Just beause he doesn't have cosmic significance it doesn't follow that he has no significance at all. It doesn't follow that because there is no ultimate meaning there is no meaning at all. As Kagan said, it is "outrageous" to say otherwise. Kagan won this debate, by a nose.

Teleprompter said...

I have tried to make that point about the bankruptcy of "ultimate significance" as a prerequisite for human meaning for some time.

The meaning we experience is defined by the conventions which shape and mold our experiences. In 500 years, I doubt very much the same contexts which make my life meaningful today will make any sense at all, just as someone who lived 500 years ago and came back to our times is unlikely to have an easy time finding meaning in today's world. Human meaning is not ultimate -- it is conventional.

If you remove the conventions which defined the meaning, you change the meaning. Yes, one could say that the previous meaning has lost significance once its context has changed (once the conventions have evolved), but that doesn't mean that the meaning *was not relevant at the time of the original conventions*.