Response to Lawrence Krauss’ Anecdotal Argument about God and Morals

               Recently, Dr. Lawrence Krass attended DebateCon to debate Michael Jones of InspiringPhilosophy as to whether or not Christian Ethics or Secular Ethics were more beneficial to society. During some of the cross examination, Dr. Krauss put forward this anecdotal evidence for how Christianity/Theism can’t be all there is to Ethics, because he has polled crowds of people asking them “If you lost belief in God, would you go out and commit murder?” According to Dr. Krauss, everyone he asked said “of course not”. It seems good at first, but as Michael pointed out, it was really anecdotal evidence in the face of all the studies that Michael brought to bear. That being said, I wanted to critique Dr. Krauss’ whole premise, as it seems to me that one’s ethics and morals don’t exist in a vacuum, they have to be in response to something.

              I was pondering Dr. Krauss’ question on my drive in to my 8 am lecture the other day, and my brain came around to my son, who has Down syndrome. During my wife’s pregnancy with him, we both wrestled independently and as a team as to if we would have an abortion. If you are a follower of this blog, you may have seen my post in the past couple of years about my son’s journey, and how all medical signs at the time pointed to him dying in utero and miscarrying. We believed that evidence at the time, and were wondering if we should have just gotten it over with. However, I think we both came to the conclusion to give Austin to God, no matter what, and let God give us the answer. If my wife and I had not been Christians, then Austin very well may not have been born. While our journey with Austin is hard, he is such a blessing from God in that we have grown much, and everyone who hears is story is in awe and comes to the conclusion like we did, that God wanted Austin to live because He has a plan for my son.

              All of this to say, yes, I almost committed murder in response to my life circumstances Dr. Krauss. While no, I don’t think I would go on a mass murder spree, but if I ignore the fact that ALL people, including the infirm, bear the image of God and deserve that grace, dignity, and respect. So I would think you are asking the wrong question, you need to ask about their responses to life’s crises, not just what people would do in a vacuum if they didn’t believe in God.

              Now, I could be done right here, and answer an anecdotal argument with anecdotal evidence, but I wanted to further show Dr. Krauss that we cannot trust our emotions in the moment. Jeremiah 17:9 tells us that the heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. I think this works for a perceived good and ill. How many times have we convinced ourselves that twisting a certain scripture to our ends was justified? How many times have we convinced ourselves that we are basically good? I think that is what Dr. Krauss saw, if he himself was telling the truth of his questioning of people, or if he was cherry picking his own anecdote to try and reinforce his position. We also have Mark 7:21-23 telling us that from the heart of man comes evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness. So without the redeeming grace of God and Jesus’ gift of salvation that gives us the freedom to fight this sin nature, yes we would default to these things in response to life’s circumstances.

              I’m sure there is more that could be said to this “argument” and to the sin nature of man, but these are my semi organized thoughts on the issue. I would highly encourage you to watch the debate, which I will link below. Let me know what you think, and may God bless you and have a good rest of your day.