On 2/18/21, Dennis Prager, in Ep. 174 of his Fireside Chat series, interviewed, Craig Biddle author and director of Objective Standard Institute. Craig is sharp and an eloquent but sensible advocate of Ayn Rand philosophy. I took notes on this 81-minute video and will comment where necessary.
The title of this Ep. Was: “A Dialogue: About God and Ayn Rand. What is the source of morality? Atheist and founder of The Objective Art Institute, Craig Biddle, joins Dennis this week to discuss Objectivism, God and where they disagree. Enjoy.”
Dennis (D) after this: “Craig and I disagree on God’s existence and morality. Craig is the best exponent there is on Ayn Rand, so if I want an opponent’s view, I want the best available for my audience.
We have in common in more important than what divides us. We are both crazy about liberty. I prefer an atheist that loves liberty over a believer in God that does not. I seek clarity over agreement, and it is more important to be clear than to win. See where we differ.”
My response: Dennis is correct. God favors liberty over tyranny, so the atheist loving tyranny is closer to God than a believer that seek big government and tyranny. As always, clarity is vital.
D: “Do you hope you are right that there isn’t a God?”
Craig (C after this): “I have not pondered that. I hope there is not a God because if God exists it eliminates some of the important things about life. If God exists, and is omnipotent and omniscient, that eliminates free will, which I believe in.”
My response: I think God is close to being all-powerful and all-knowing, but God built De’s own free will into humans, so by not interfering with humans with their big brains and agency, God is faithful to De’s promise to the world to abide by De’s principle of non-interference if human choices. God cannot and would not interfere, and this is not connected to what God has the power to do or foresee, for those are separate issues from allowing free choice and chance, the jokers in the cosmic deck of outcomes, so God’s omniscience and omni-potency do not invalidate human free will.
I think the other reason that Craig does not want to believe in God, is the fear by a secular humanist that, if God is present, there will be much less opportunity for humans to self-realize. I think God encourages, rewards and even mandates that we self-realize, rather than suppressing human freedom and achievement by existing and being on the scene.
Craig seems to believe that there can only be human free will if God does not exist.
D: “Only if there is a God is there free will. Michael Sherman of Skeptic magazine wrote that he wants to see people in an afterlife, so that, based on their free will, evil people can be judged.”
C: “There is no evidence of an afterlife, of heaven or suffering in hell. In this life we should be just, treat people well as they deserve to be treated, and treat good people well. Evil people should be punished.”
D: “Craig, are you a materialist?”
C: “No, I believe in consciousness and matter. Existence and consciousness both exist. Consciousness is real. Maybe an emergent consciousness is not just neurons and physical; it is real though we do not know what consciousness is, just as gravity exists though we cannot explain gravity. Consciousness and existence are both axiomatic, the foundation of all knowledge. Both existence and consciousness exist.”
My response: Craig and Ayn Rand are both not just materialists but also see human consciousness emergent enough in smart humans, where they can reason, act, and choose their own course and then do it.
Unlike Dennis and religious believers, Craig does not accept that consciousness is not just a biological brain but is a spiritual soul, the inner seat of human consciousness.
D: “Right. Is consciousness a product of physical existence?”
C: “Yes, but it is not the same as physical existence. Consciousness could have come into existence from physical matter.”
D: “Why isn’t that an argument for a Creator?”
My response: Dennis is suggesting that the Creator made the world and matter, so if consciousness arose out of matter, it could lead to the introduction of spiritual consciousness into reality.
C: “Consciousness and a creator are not the same thing. With the idea of a Creator is the idea that at one time there was not existence, and the Creator’s consciousness created existence. But existence has always been here, so it is quite speculative to posit a Creator.
Aristotle objected to explaining reality by reference to another dimension (Forms); that is too complicated, so if seek Form to justify Forms to justify forms, then we have an infinite regress.”
D: “You only get an infinite regress is the Creator creating is not eternal.”
My response: Dennis is offering that everlasting Creator is the foundation of existence, making infinite regress a non-issue.
C: “Existence is primary, and it is eternal. The universe is not in time, time is in the universe. The universe has always existed (not created) and time is a measure of motion in the universe. Take Big Bang theory: something had to exist to explode into, and something had to exist to expand into. We can’t get something from nothing, or expansion into nothing.”
D: “I agree. You can’t get something from nothing; something always existed.
Let us discuss free will. If we are only matter and matter drove consciousness, and if all I am is from genes and the physical environment, there is no free will. Only if you believe in the soul can you believe in a free will. If I am physical, everything is determined by my genetics, neurons, and environment. Where am I in this equation if there is no soul?”
C: “Good question. Ayn Rand posits that we have existence, consciousness and that involves free will. We can do anything at any time with no restrictions.
The locus of free will is the ability to focus your mind or not, to use mental exertion to understand the world or stop completely. Free will is the individual deciding to think or not and introspectively this is observable. Our reasoning is a lot; we can regulate. It is not a robust free will and my values constrain me to some degree.”
My response: In sleepy, non-enlightened, unaware average nonindividuators—the majority of humanity—the free will is not robust, but it will become far more robust should the agent elect to maverize over a number of years.
D: “People have the free will to violate their values and do so all the time. To deny free will is to insist there is nothing non-material that defines me—I am just a product of determining forces—there is no self. Do you condemn bad people or criminals?”
My response: each is born with a weak free will, some good in them and an atrophied sense of self, but a sense of self nonetheless. If there is no self, there is no individuality, no free will, no conscience, no one to blame for evil personal behavior.
C: “Yes, I condemn the bad and the criminal. I am different from most atheists like Same Harris that asserts that there is no self.
There is a self in the integration of your mind and body.”
D: “If I took 1,000 atheists and 1,000 churchgoers off the street which group is more pro-liberty?”
C: “More churchgoers believe in liberty.”
D: “That is intellectual honesty. How do you explain that?”
C: “Ayn Rand is new, only around since the 50s. Secular philosophy before that were bad; the Germans were awful, pro-tyranny. They introduce us to the Frankfurt school, to socialism, to Communism.
Atheists don’t believe in God and that is a negative stance. They have no positive story to share. By contrast, Randian thought offers a rich, positive morality that undergirds liberty. This positive story is the secular, atheist view that supports liberty, individual rights, American values.”
My response: Like Randian secular values are not as objective as Prager’s Judeo-Christian objective values (monotheistic ethics), but it is very impressive and useful, nonetheless, and Prager and Christian conservatives can learn a lot about egoism from Randian rational egoism.
D: “I wish you well. As I said, I am closer to the atheist-loving-liberty than to the churchgoer seeking to grow the state and is anti-civil liberties.
The track record of most atheists is bad.”
C: It is horrible.”
My response: I must jump in here and explain this to the reader for here is a critical juncture. Both Dennis and Prager are associating by implication that morally vicious atheists are backers of ideologies that gave us 100 million dead noncombatants in the 20th century. I think Craig would attribute it to ideology, totalitarianism, collectivism, and evil altruist ethics. I think Dennis would attribute the atheist record of wicked track record as attributable to their being secular, without God, wisdom, or good moral values.
I would say Craig is right that radical ideology (true-believers and their mass movement on the march), totalitarian big government, uncompromising idealism, collectivism, and evil altruist ethics is what made the atheists have such an evil record. He should add that their lack of sacred trust in God, with God’s wisdom, and positive moral values rendered them far more evil than they needed to be.
Dennis would add that big government, collectivism, radical ideology, and fanaticism would make the 20th century atheists very evil, but he is an altruist, so he regards altruism and kindness and egoism as evil, so he would miss having the proper ethics to fight the hyper-altruistic failed ethics of the egoists.
I would add my moderate egoist ethics and theory of self-realizing to the good attributes offered by both Dennis and Craig to counter the horrible track record of the atheists.
D: “There are some good atheists and some bad churchgoers, but the global moral record of atheists is awful. I am an ethical monotheist. God wants us to be ethical, and His revelation is the Ten Commandments. If we lived by these, it would be a good world.
I had issues with my parents but not major issues. But my training in God and the Bible helped me honor my father and mother. Where there is no religion, there is no morality, then one just follows one’s emotions. Who is likely to be moral, an atheist or believer?”
C: “Atheists just don’t believe in God. I don’t represent atheists or secularists as immoral. I represent Randians with an objective morality. We use observation and reason, and justice is one of our principles. People are judged by what they say and do and treated accordingly.
My father is an Episcopalian minister, a good man. I honor him because he is a good man, not because he is my father. Be moral not because God says so but because it is your self-interest, so act moral. If you parent is a monster, do not honor him. That is rare but it happens.”
My response: We should be moral because God commands it of us, and because it is in our self-interest to be liked and loved and have friends for being decent to people here, and to be able to get to heaven, having been a good person while alive (need faith too of course to get to heaven).
D: “Honor your parents even if you can’t love them. Totalitarian regimes: their first step is to sever parental authority. Parental authority is one of the great bulwarks against cults and authoritarianism.”
C: “Honor parents because it is the thing to do, not because they are wonderful.”
D: “If adults kids voted for Biden and their parents voted
for Trump, the kids often disowned them. If right-wing adult kids voted for
Trump, and their parents voted for Biden, those kids did not disown their
parents, not severing relationships with them. Atheism caused this.”
C: “It is not about atheism but about politics.”
My response: Craig is right that bad politics, not just atheism cause Biden voters to disown their Trump-voting parents. Leftism is cultural Marxism, a radical, ideology, an active American mass movement on the march, and the fanatical members of this ideology turn ruthless, vicious, cruel, and completely intolerant of those that dissent. Dennis is right, but these other causal factors must be identified openly, so we can oppose them actively and defeat them.
C: “The Left wants to destroy America. 100 years of Progressive education in school and 50 years of Postmodernist education in college have got us in trouble.
Parental authority is a bulwark against socialism, but individualism is the greatest bulwark against socialism. People need to be reasonable, use their rational minds, and parents and kids should treat each other as individuals.”
D: “I did not say that parental authority was the only bulwark against socialism but was a bulwark. I love individualism. The Bible says we are all made in God’s image, and when that dies, you get a herd morality.
Now to murder.”
My response: Dennis and most Jews and Christians are altruists, so that he admits that with religion, we are made in God’s image and that results in individualism, whereas when religion dies we get a herd morality, we are getting Prager close to admitting that egoist morality has a role to play in all good faiths, but he is not yet at that point.
D: “If there is no God, then murder is not wrong. The Catholic Church converted all of Europe to Christianity by the sword and by persuasion. The Germanic tribes were the hardest to convert for they hated the line that they could not kill. They were warriors implicitly in favor of Darwinian (they did not know Darwin) ruthless survival of the fittest as warriors that kill, we just follow nature. They needed an Absolute Moral Order telling them not to kill so they could come to accept it, because if there is no God and no absolute moral order, then it is not wrong to kill.”
My response: I like Dennis take about objective religious moral code guiding us, but I cannot—nor can anyone else—prove or give evidence, for certain, that it exists or that we can access it or make its principles humanly intelligible in clear language—I am probably certain that his moral code exists and is available to us, but that is as far as I can go, but I like what Dennis offers and we need to live by it—it is the best we got.
C: “Observation and reason are demonstrative, not revelation and faith. To be objective morally, we need a standard of value. You, Dennis, believe that God’s will is the standard of value to work to. My objective standard is not God’s will.
I have no evidence of God existing, and even if God existed, God’s will is still not my objective standard because it is just someone’s consciousness (That consciousness is subjective, some subject telling us what to do.) commanding dos and don’ts.
Rand’s objective standard is the value of life on earth as the objective value, the factual requirements of human life on earth. Because we are rational animals, our means of survival is the use of our reasoning mind to get by in the world.
Rand’s view is human life, and its requirements are the objective standard of human value.”
My response: As a moderate ethicist, I would combine Rand’s standard of human life as the objective moral standard, and God’s command to love our neighbor as oneself and to love God and obey the Ten Commandments. I would add my moderate egoist values to this, of course.
C: “So against this standard, we can say what is objectively good or bad. We can say why freedom is objectively good because the human needs freedom in order to live and prosper and act on his judgment to produce and trade goods voluntarily to mutual benefit.
That we must be free is not an opinion but a demonstrable fact. A right is the recognition to live: a human being must act in this way—he must be free to live as he will.”
D: “All that is your opinion, and that freedom is important, that a full life is important—these are not absolutes; I love your opinions.”
My response: both Dennis and Craig believe that only objective morality (knowable, usable, identifiable, principles, practical to use on earth) will give people the good values that people require to live good lives. Both assert that their personal kind of objective ethics (Randianism for Craig and ethical monotheism for Dennis) is the only game in town, and what the other guy is offering is mere subjective opinion. Dennis says this explicitly, but Craig implies it.
C: “I make the argument that Randianism is objectively correct. Rand held that here morality is the worked-out proof of what the Founding Fathers said in the Declaration of Independence. What they implied in the Declaration of Independence was the right to life, liberty, independence and property rights.
Rand says you have a right to these rights, and it is morally correct to pursue them. We are to use reason, logic, and observation to prove this moral system an objective standard of value.
Take the right to life: the right to life is self-evident or promised by the Creator? You have a right to life in your moral self-interest to pursue this. On a deeper level life is the objective standard of value.
Why life is the reason we can pursue value (we are alive) and is the only reason we need to pursue value in order to stay alive. A rock is not alive, not able to pursue value. To experience that living is a value a necessity, this fact makes life the standard of value.
We need to pursue values in order to stay alive. Life makes values possible, and life is the only thing that makes values necessary. Liberty: we must be alive in order to think.”
D: “Your leap of faith to protect life is commendable but it is still a leap of faith, not objective. Non-believers choose death.
Another aspect: Pragmatically, who produces fewer murderers, those who say life ends at death, or those who punish murderers after death (Who will murder less, atheists or believers?).”
C: “If people fear punishment after death, they will less likely kill. But Jews do not believe in hell.”
D: “We do believe in hell. There is Jewish believe in reward and punishment after death.”
C: “If people believe in hell, then will behave. If they have no belief in the afterlife, be nihilistic, and do whatever you want and misbehave.
An alternative moral motivator would be to offer happiness: you can’t act anyway you want and be happy, be productive, have good relationships, be worthy to have good friends. Happiness is attached to life as the standard of value.
Personal happiness is the moral of life. It is a science. What are your psychological and biological needs. What is happiness? Rand defines happiness as a state of consciousness that arises from achieving your values.”
My response: I like this last sentence and agree with it.
C: “Those values must be non-contradictory, not at war in our souls, but harmony. Follow the Ten Commandments because that is in your self-interest, not because of the commandment to obey God.”
D: “In society, there used to be secular communities like the Kiwanis, the Rotary, bowling clubs and so forth. Now those are gone, and the only community associations that meet weekly anymore are the Jewish and Christian churches.
There are no weekly atheist meetings, are there?”
C: “No, but there are community clubs are good if have life-serving values, and not all religious communities have life-serving values.”
D: “You state that there is no evidence of God’s existing. That seems odd to me. There is no proof that God exists, but there is evidence that God exists. Which do you mean?”
C: “Both are true: there is no proof or evidence of God’s existence.”
My response: I have not had time to research these claims, but I would assume that there is proof and evidence of God’s existence, but none that are necessarily true and irrefutable.
D: “Evidence that humans came from rocks requires a bigger leap of faith than does a belief in God. DNA is intelligence, information comes from intelligence. The world is too complex to have come about on its own.
Charles Krauthammer said atheism is absurd because everything came from nothing.”
C: “This is the fallacy of ignorance: we know not where life came from, ergo the God exists argument from ignorance is suggested.”
D: “Science answers how, and religion answers why.”
C: “Does existence have a beginning. Does it need it?”
Question from online audience about many denominations as evidence that there is no God because people have hundreds of conflicting, contradictory doctrines about God’s nature and purpose:
D: “Multiplicity of faiths are not a sign of no God. People always have multiple opinions about everything, just pick the opinion that makes the most sense to you.”
C: “If there is no God, it is claimed that anything goes. I would counter that if we have faith, anything goes, leading to religious terrorism.”
My response: Lack of belief in God and the decline of religious practice does lead to moral decay in society, and secular society and no belief in God or religious observance will lead to more decay, deeper, faster and more damaging than under most faiths.
Still, the main danger is whether a secular creed or a religious denomination are converted by their prophets and exponents into holy causes, and the passionate followers are frenzied, true-believing, full-fledged fanatics in service of this radicalized ideology—whether secular or religions—this is when hell of earth is about to be unleashed.
D: “What do atheists think of abortion? Would you allow abortion up to the 9th month?”
C: “Yes. Faith is a means of knowledge, but rights are individual and legally protected in a legal context. Fetuses are internal to a woman’s body, so they are not social yet, not granted individual rights, so there are no rights for the unborn, only for the mother. Once born, every human has a right to live.”
D: “Why not just go with eugenics? Non-religious people have no moral systems.”
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