I've posted my response to his video, but I plan on turning this into a video response myself. Tell me what you think.


There are a few things that we have to take into account when talking about the so-called atrocities in the bible, first off what William Lane Craig said was absolutely correct and I agree with him. However, I would add a couple of points to his explanation. I will also however mention that Dr Craig does not hold to divine command theory and using this argument to attack divine command theory is probably not the best one to use.

First we have to understand what God’s goal is, let’s face it morality has never been about the actions one is taking, but the reason they take it. For example the act of killing someone is an amoral action, but we look at the reasons to see if the action is good or bad. If I kill someone simply to take their money than that is bad. Conversely if I kill them because they are about to torture my daughter then it’s good. The action of killing was the same, but it is the intent that makes it right or wrong.

So the question here becomes. “Did God have morally justifiable reasons for killing people in the old testament?” Dr Craig and I would say that he did, and I come to this conclusion for a few reasons.

First – God seems to be moving towards a goal, and his goal seems to be the salvation of humans. This is the greatest thing that humans can hope for and ultimately the best thing for us. Given this fact a loving God would want the best for us and that is to be saved I would expect that actions he takes to be moving towards that goal. So how would a God with our salvation in mind interact with us? Would he command us to do some things that we might look back and consider to be horrible?

I think he would, but this doesn’t trouble me as a Christian. Consider the following:
As people we interact differently with others at different stages in their development. While as a parent, I might use capital punishment (or spankings) to teach my child something, or to change a behavior, but I wouldn’t use the same tactic on an 18 year old. Given this principle would it be fair to assume that God may work in a similar manor with humans? When humans were younger as a society it may have been necessary to do kill some people and expect adherence to certain laws that are unnecessary in an older society. When I hear this type of objection it leads me to ask some questions, and you can answer these.

Given my analogy:

· What would have happened if I had not punished my child?
· Would not punishing my child lead to them making good decisions in the future?
· Am I better equipped to know these answers than my child is? Why or why not?
· If I love my child is it possible that I am making the best decision even if my child doesn’t agree?

When applied to God:

· What would have happened had God let those who he killed live?
· Would letting those people live lead to less salvation for humanity?
· If God is all knowing is he better equipped to answer these questions than me?
· If God is all loving is it possible that he made the best decision?

The second point I want to make is that divine command theory is not an accurate depiction of how Christians get their morals. Under divine command theory morality comes from what God “says” where as the under the Christian worldview morality comes from what God “is” these are two very different things. Christians don’t believe that God picked morality out of a hat and could have picked something else, rather morality is a reflection of his nature which is unchanging that’s why we call it objective, God’s nature is the ground, it goes no deeper than that…this is also the answer to that pesky Euthyphro's dilemma

The point though is that as a Christian there is absolutely no reason for me to believe that God would tell me or anyone else to kill people. He doesn’t seem to interact with us that way anymore. All that stuff ended in with new testament…Christians are no longer under the OT law and nowhere in the new testament does it tell us to kill anyone. When I make this point many atheists will bring up Matthew 5:17-19 in an attempt to refute this fact, and if that’s the rout you want to take we can discuss that as well, but the overarching point is that Christians are not commanded to kill people, and no rational reading of the bible will lead us to that conclusion. In fact I would be extremely skeptical of someone who told me that God was telling them to commit genocide or mass murder of some type, because it doesn’t line up with the bible.

That brings me to the next point…where are you getting that God’s “PRIMARY” way of communicating with us is through prayer and intuition? That’s not accurate at all. God’s primary way of communicating with us is through the Bible. That’s not to say that God doesn’t speak to some people directly, but this is most certainly not the PRIMARY way he will interact with us. In fact I wish Christians would be more careful when we say God told me this or that, because most of us really don’t mean that we literally had a voice in our head telling us something. By and large the only way we hear what God has to say is in the bible, and if what a voice tells someone contradicts the bible then it’s not God…period. In addition, prayer is our primary way of communicating with God…not the other way around.

Now there are lots of different points I brought up that could lead into other discussions, and I’m willing to have those, but I’d like to finish the conversation about divine command theory first J I look forward to your response.