Speaker 1
So, again, God's existence is clearly more probable given the fine-tuning of the universe than it would have been without it. We can also formulate this reasoning into a simple, deductive argument. Premise one, the fine-tuning of the universe is due to either physical necessity, chance, or design. Two, it is not due to physical necessity or chance from which it follows logically three, therefore it is due to design. Thus, the fine-tuning of the universe implies the existence of a designer of the cosmos. Number four, objective moral values and duties in the world. By objective moral values, I mean moral values which are valid and binding whether anyone believes in them or not. Many theists and atheists agree that if God does not exist, the moral values are not objective in this sense. For example, Michael Ruse, an agnostic philosopher of science asserts, morality is a biological adaptation, no less than our hands and feet and teeth. Considered as a rationally justifiable set of claims about an objective, something, ethics is illusory. Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction, and any deeper meaning is illusory. On a naturalistic view, moral values are just the byproduct of biological evolution and social conditioning. Just as a troop of baboons exhibit cooperative and even self-sacrificial behavior, because natural selection has determined it to be advantageous in the struggle for survival, so their primate cousins, homo sapiens, having evolved a sort of similar behavior for the same reason. As a result of sociobiological pressures, there has evolved among homo sapiens a sort of herd morality that functions well in the perpetuation of our species. But on the atheist's view, there doesn't seem to be anything about this morality that makes it objectively binding and true. But the problem is that objective moral values and duties plausibly do exist. In moral experience, we apprehend a realm of moral values and duties that impose themselves upon us. There's no more reason to deny the objective reality of moral values than the objective reality of the physical world. Actions like rape, cruelty, and child abuse aren't just socially unacceptable behavior, they're moral abominations. Some things at least are really wrong. Michael Ruth's self-adnits, and I quote, the man who says it is morally acceptable to rape little children is just as mistaken as the man who says 2 plus 2 equals 5.