The supernaturalistic fallacy . . . ?

Clayton Littlejohn is not impressed with Christian apologist William Lane Craig. Nor am I, for that matter. But in Littlejohn’s disgust, he’s made a few remarks that I find somewhat puzzling (and some that I find downright unfair).

Much of what Littlejohn writes is in response to an article Craig has posted on his website entitled, “The Indispensibility of Theological Meta-Ethical Foundations for Morality.” In the article, Craig suggests, “If God does not exist, then it is difficult to see any reason to think that human beings are special or that their morality is objectively true.” As I understand him, Craig is supposing that our options are either (a) theism (and, of course, he’ll want to defend Christianity in particular) or (b) naturalism. And so, his point is that the intuitions had by many that (a) human beings are in some sense uniquely valuable (i.e., not merely another part of the natural world) and that (b) at least some moral beliefs are objectively true (in a realistic sense) are, at best, awkward and difficult to explain given only the resources of evolutionary naturalism.

I think it’s important to note that this is by no means a peculiarly Christian idea. Michael Ruse and E. O. Wilson have suggested that, according to naturalism, morality “is merely an adaptation put in place to further our reproductive ends,” later calling it all “an illusion fobbed off on us by our genes to get us to co-operate” (“The Evolution of Ethics,” in New Scientist, 108, 1478 (17 October), pp. 50-52). More recently, Sharon Street has argued that one cannot be both a realist about moral truths and a Darwinism-affirming naturalist. Street’s point is echoed by Tamlor Sommers and Alex Rosenberg, who suggest that a thoroughgoing Darwinism actually implies ethical nihilism. My guess is that Littlejohn would not be quite so hostile to any of these people, but they’re all making (roughly) the same point that Craig is trying to make.

What, then, is wrong with what Craig has written? For one thing, it isn’t academic enough for Littlejohn’s taste.

There is nothing in Craig’s piece that amounts to a half-decent argument. There’s some quote mining, some rhetorical questions, and an amazing absence of discussion of any of the work done in the last few thousand years in ethics that might be of service to someone wanting to make sense of morality without the invocation of the supernatural. There’s no reference to Plato and the Euthyphro, there’s no discussion of Kant or his attempts to do better than the simple minded conventionalism Craig forces on the atheists and agnostics, and there’s no attention spent on discussing any of the other alternatives to supernaturalism in ethics that would get a hearing in any decent introduction to ethics.

Much of what Littlejohn says here may actually be true. Craig doesn’t interact with Plato or Kant. But might this have something to do with the fact that Craig sees himself as addressing a much wider audience than just professional philosophers? The few philosophical discussions I’ve had with my mother-in-law, for instance, have involved far fewer (read: zero) references to Platonic dialogues than those conversations I’ve had with professors of philosophy. Craig spends much of his career speaking in churches to people with about as much background in philosophy as a telephone pole. And along the way, he’s probably directed a few lay people here and there to his website for more extensive answers to their questions then time affords while shaking hands in a church foyer. My guess is that Craig sees most of his work as a kind of middle ground between simple preaching, on the one hand, and hardcore analytic philosophy, on the other. Why, then, is it so surprising that he’d fail to delve into the particulars of Kantianism in this article of his?

But Littlejohn is troubled by Craig’s piece for more reasons than just its unimpressive list of references. He also finds Craig’s position (and the position of most theists, I’d say) to be “repugnant.” Littlejohn takes issue, for instance, with this comment of Craig’s:

The objective worthlessness of human beings on a naturalistic world view is underscored by two implications of that world view: materialism and determinism.

Perhaps “worthlessness” was a poor choice of words. The context of the paragraph from which Littlejohn lifts this quote makes it rather clear that Craig isn’t suggesting that human beings are actually worthless, just that naturalism doesn’t afford them any more (or less) intrinsic value than any other things in the world:

Naturalists are typically materialists or physicalists, who regard man as a purely animal organism. But if man has no immaterial aspect to his being (call it soul or mind or what have you), then he is not qualitatively different from other animal species. . . . On a materialistic anthropology there is no reason to think that human beings are objectively more valuable than rats.

And this, Craig is supposing, creates a kind of tension for those who have the intuition noted above that human beings are in some sense uniquely valuable.

Littlejohn then posts two pictures of a baby and asks us to imagine that God had something to do with only the first of them, the second baby being merely a product of evolution. Then he concludes,

If Craig believes what he’s saying, although this [second] baby is as cute as our first, as sensitive to the heat and the cold as the first, as in need of protection and nurturing as the first, there’s a big difference between this baby and the previous one: although like the first baby in every natural respect, this baby is utterly worthless. There would be nothing wrong with abandoning it in a locked car on a Summer’s day, having it for lunch, selling it for a pack of cigarettes, etc…

Craig’s response, of course, would be this: Since when did it follow from a thing’s being cute (or sensitive to heat, or needy) that it possessed the sort of intrinsic value that so many of us believe is needed in order to ground the objectivity of certain prohibitions against harming it? (Think of how Ruse and Wilson might chime in here: Our belief that it would be wrong to have that baby for lunch is nothing more than a useful fiction . . . no matter how cute you think it is.)

The subheading of Littlejohn’s post is “The Repugnance of Supernaturalism in Ethics” — i.e., isn’t it repugnant for Craig to suggest that such a cute little baby is worthless? But only naturalists would read Craig as making such a suggestion. It’s pretty clear that what Craig is saying is that naturalism ought to be the target of Littlejohn’s distaste, since the baby’s worthlessness (again, speaking only in terms of intrinsic value) is a consequence of naturalism. (In fact, I suspect Craig would add that there is just no way that Littlejohn — an atheist — values cute babies as much as he — a theist — does.)

Littlejohn goes on to suggest that Craig is guilty of what he calls “the supernaturalistic fallacy”:

It is the fallacy of assuming that the supernatural can do what you think the natural cannot.

First, I’m a little confused as to how, exactly, we’re to understand this as a fallacy. Surely it’s a fallacy to assume that “since no natural process can square the circle, a supernatural one can” (as Littlejohn’s first commenter notes), but does it involve any sort of lapse in reason for one to believe that an omnipotent God could accomplish things that a human being could not? If yes, how? And if no, then where, exactly, are we drawing these lines?

And second, it’s not clear to me that Craig actually does commit this fallacy. As I read him, he’s simply making the suggestion that naturalism alone doesn’t afford us the resources to account for certain intuitions we have about the value of human beings and the nature of certain moral truths. And so, to the extent that his readers share such intuitions, they might be compelled to look beyond just naturalism for such an account. This is hardly the same thing as just assuming that supernaturalism does offer such an account. Hell, Craig is even free to try his hand at explaining what such an account would look like, all without committing the supernaturalistic fallacy.

Finally, Littlejohn writes,

According to Anselm, I’m a fool. I believe God exists only in the imagination. But even Anselm grants that God does exist in my imagination and that I have a grasp of what things would have been like had there been a God. Had there been a God, for example, God would have been very displeased with Hitler and commanded him to stop.

The point, I think, being: God’s existence is not actually necessary for us to imagine what sorts of things would either accord with or be contrary to God’s nature, and so God’s existence is not actually necessary for our moral beliefs to have the sorts of grounds that theists like Craig insist they have. Richard agrees:

Ideal standards can be grounded in counterfactuals, e.g. facts about what an ideal spectator would recommend; whether such an ideal spectator actually exists in the here and now is, quite simply, irrelevant. (This is a familiar point: one may ask, “What would Jesus do?” without requiring that Jesus actually be in that situation.)

But then the answer to the question, “In virtue of what do moral facts obtain in the manner that they do?” would still be “In virtue of the nature of God.” And what naturalist is going to be even kind of comfortable with that?

[Edited to add:

I want to make something clear: I'm no defender of Bill Craig. I've read some of his stuff, seen him deliver a few lectures, even met him once or twice; and my impression is that he's kind of rude. I can appreciate what he's done strictly in terms of influencing some Christians to pick up a decent book or two and learn how to substantiate their own beliefs, but I've never been a fan of Craig in particular. I'm really just interested in the idea that naturalism and moral realism might be incompatible and saw this as an opportunity to make a few related comments.]