Christopher Hitchens CHALLENGES William Lane Craig’s Moral Argument for God

Added: 2026-05-17

[00:00:00]You have to imagine that human beings are born um well actually most of them a good number of them aren't born they die in childbirth or don't long outlive it.

[00:00:10]Uh they're born into a terrifying world of uh of the unknown.

[00:00:16]>> Hey everyone, welcome back to the channel. Genuinely glad you are here for this one because this might be one of the most intellectually charged conversations I have ever put in front of you. We have got William Lane Craig, one of the most decorated Christian philosophers and apologists alive, going head-to-head with Christopher Hitchens, the sharp tongue journalist and author who spent years traveling the world challenging the very foundations of religious belief. The topic on the table is whether God exists. And both of these men came prepared, came swinging, and came with zero interest in backing down.

[00:00:57]I want you to stay with this one all the way through because the second half of this clip is where it gets really interesting. The kind of moment where you pause the video and just sit with it for a second. Before we get into it, well, I'm drop a comment and tell me where in the world you are watching from right now. I always love seeing how far this channel reaches and it genuinely makes my day reading through where you all are coming from. All right, let's get into it.

[00:01:28]>> So, it seems to me that the fine-tuning argument is also unrefuted. What about the moral argument? We saw that without God there are no objective moral values.

[00:01:37]Mr. Hitchens agrees with this. And yet, he himself affirms over and over again moral statements like the moral um repbation of uh religious intolerance and violence in the name of religion.

[00:01:51]So, he does affirm objective values but without any basis for it. what I can offer him as a theist is a transcendent basis for the objective moral values and duties that we both want to affirm.

[00:02:03]Fourthly, the resurrection of Jesus, again, there was no response to this.

[00:02:07]Let me simply quote NT Wright in his recent study of the resurrection. He says that the empty tomb and the appearances of Jesus have a historical probability so high as to be virtually certain like the death of Augustus in AD14 or the fall of Jerusalem in AD.70.

[00:02:25]So we are on very solid ground in affirming these three facts that I mentioned in my opening speech and I can't think of any better explanation than the ones that the eyewitness gave namely that God raised Jesus from the dead. Finally, the immediate experience of God unless Mr. Hitchens can show that I'm psychologically deranged or delusional. It seems to me I'm perfectly rational on the basis of my immediate experience of God to believe that God exists and that therefore this for me is a properly basic belief. So I think all of these arguments stand intact despite his reputation. We've seen no argument for atheism. So clearly the weight of the evidence falls on the side of the scale for Christian theism tonight.

[00:03:08][applause] >> [applause] >> There is a there is a terminological problem here uh which may conceal more than just terminological difficulty. um the the proposition that atheism is true or that is is a is a misstatement of of what I have to prove and what we uh believe.

[00:03:44]There's an argument among some of us as to whether that we need the word at all.

[00:03:47]In other words, I don't have a special name for my unbelief in tooth fairies say or witches or in Santa Claus. I just don't think that they're there. I don't have to prove a tooth theism. I don't have to prove a Santa Clausism. I don't have to prove a witchism. It's just I have to say I I think that those who do believe these things have never been able to make a plausible or intelligible case for doing so. Um that's not agnosticism because it seems to me that if you don't think there is any evidence, you're wrong to take refuge in saying you're neutral. You ought to have the courage to answer the question which one is regularly asked. Are you an atheist or not? Yes, I will say I am.

[00:04:29]You can't tell anything else about me.

[00:04:31]can't tell anything else about what I think about what I believe about um uh what my politics are or my other convictions. It's just that I I don't believe in the existence of a supernatural dimension and I don't I've never been shown any evidence that any process observable to us cannot be explained uh by more satisfactory um and more convincing means. Um the great uh physicist Lelas um when showing his working model of the solar system to the emperor Napoleon was asked, "Well, your your model seems to have no room for a god in it, for deity." And he said, "Well, your majesty, it it still all operates without that assumption."

[00:05:13]Um now, here's what you would have to believe if you thought that this was all designed.

[00:05:23]William Lane Craig just spent his entire rebuttal declaring victory. He stood up there and told the audience confidently that every single one of his arguments stands intact. The fine-tuning argument unrefuted. The resurrection unrefuted.

[00:05:42]The moral argument unrefuted.

[00:05:45]And I want you to pay close attention to how he handles the moral argument specifically because this is where the weakness in his whole framework becomes impossible to ignore. Craig says that without God there is no objective foundation for moral values. That's his big claim. But here's what's fascinating. He then turns around and essentially agrees that Christopher Hitchens affirms moral values. He acknowledges it. He says Christopher affirms moral statements over and over again. So what Craig is really arguing isn't that atheists can't feel what's right and wrong. He's arguing they can't justify it philosophically without God.

[00:06:33]That's a much narrower claim than he's presenting it as. And the audience is not being told that distinction clearly.

[00:06:41]And then Christopher does something I think is genuinely underrated as a rhetorical move. Instead of getting defensive about the word atheist, he just owns it completely. He says, "You ought to have the courage to say yes, I am an atheist when asked." No hedging, no agnostic retreat, just straight honesty. And that matters because the entire debate up to this point has been Craig trying to push Christopher into a corner where not having proof of God's non-existence means you have to sit on the fence. Christopher refuses that framing entirely. Here's the historical context that makes this even more interesting.

[00:07:23]The physicist Laplas who lived in the 18th and 19th centuries and made foundational contributions to mathematics and astronomy was once asked by Napoleon why his model of the solar system made no mention of God. His answer was simple. The system operates without that assumption. Christopher brings this up and it landed exactly as intended because what Lelass was saying two centuries ago is the same thing scientists have been saying ever since.

[00:07:55]You don't need to insert a supernatural cause into a system that already explains itself. That's not arrogance.

[00:08:03]That's just how good methodology works.

[00:08:06]>> Um Dr. Craig gave a slight parody of what I think about this. It could be true. Um but you'd have to imagine let's say the human species has been homo sapiens has been with us. Some people say as long as quarter of a million years uh some say 200 some say 100 thousand. Francis Collins and Richard Dawkins oscillate about this. There's no it's not a very big argument. I'll just take a 100,000 if you like. You have to imagine that human beings are born um well actually most of them a good number of them aren't born. They die in childbirth or don't long outlive it. Uh they're born into a terrifying world of uh of the unknown. Everything is a mystery to them. Everything from from from disease to volcanic eruptions.

[00:08:53]um everything is their life expectancy for the first I don't know many many tens of thousands of years would be lucky to be in the 20s probably dying agonizingly over their teeth poorly evolved as the teeth are and from other inheritances of from being primates such as the appendix that we we don't need such as the fact that our genitalia appear to have been designed by a committee other shortcomings of the species um exaggerated by the by scarcity by war, by famine, by competition, and so on. And for 98,000 years or so, heaven watches this with complete indifference.

[00:09:33]And then we know where your children go to school, by the way. Um, heaven watches this with total indifference. And then with 2,000 years to go on the clock thinks, "Actually, it's time we intervened.

[00:09:45]This we can't go on like this. Why don't we have someone tortured to death in Bronze Age Palestine?

[00:09:52]That should teach them. That should give them uh the chance of redemption. You're free to believe that. But I think the the designer who thought of doing it that way is a very or was a very cruel, capricious, random, bungling and incompetent one. The news of this Dr. Craig talks as if okay, but since then there's been there have been more people born. So it might have been a good time in terms of population growth. Well, there are a huge number of people in the world who still haven't even heard of this idea. The news hasn't penetrated them or where it has, it's been brought to them by people who Dr. Craig doesn't think of as Christians, such as Mormons, for example. Um that and it's it's taught to them in many discrepant and competitive and indeed incompatible and violently irreconcilable ways. Um, and there's been a lot of argument in the church in the churches all this time about, well, okay, what is the answer to that? What about all the people who never could have heard the good news or who never will hear it or still haven't been reached by it and who've died not knowing about it? What happens to them?

[00:10:53]How can they be saved? Well, the argument is that it's all somehow made retrospective.

[00:10:58]And as with so many of these arguments, I just comment on these, well, how convenient.

[00:11:04]uh because if you're willing to make assumptions of this kind then really evidence is only ancillary to what you uh are advancing. Now I I didn't have the chance oh and just on Mr. Right. I I sorry I scrolled a note to myself. Um in your first round doctor, you said that uh Entright is an impressive person says that no no um explanation of the success of Christianity is possible.

[00:11:30]That doesn't rest on the terms of it being true. In other words, Wright says it was so successful it must have been and the people were so strongly motivated to believe it that it must have been true. I regard that as a very very unsafe assumption. or if it is a safe one then it must surely apply to Islam and to Mormonism. I mean these are two very very very fast growing religions have people prepared to sacrifice enormously for it uh have ancestors who were absolutely determined of the truth of it at the time and who made extraordinary conquests in its name. If you're going to grant this for one religion it seems to me you have to be willing not just willing you may you may indeed be compelled to make this concession for all of them. And that I think would be not just an unsafe assumption but for most of you here a distinctly unwelcome one.

[00:12:16]>> This is the moment. This is what the entire segment was building toward and I genuinely think it is one of the most effective arguments ever delivered in a live debate format. Christopher doesn't come at this with aggression. He comes at it with imagination. He asks you to actually picture it. Picture what it would mean for this all to have been designed.

[00:12:39]He walks you through a hund,000 years of human existence.

[00:12:45]The fear, the disease, the suffering, the dying young, the absolute terror of living in a world where nothing is understood and everything is dangerous.

[00:12:57]And he points out that on the theist model during all of that, heaven is watching and doing nothing. You have to understand what makes this so powerful.

[00:13:08]It's not just an emotional appeal. It's a direct challenge to the design argument Craig spent so much time building. If there is a designer of intelligence and purpose behind the universe, then that is the designer's track record. A 100,000 years of watching human beings suffer and choosing not to act. Christopher describes the divine response as arriving with 2,000 years left on the clock. And I want you to think about that framing for a second. 2,000 years out of a 100,000, that is the last 2%.

[00:13:45]And the intervention chosen was not medicine, not knowledge, not relief from suffering. It was an execution in an ancient territory that most of the world would never hear about for centuries.

[00:13:58]And then Christopher does something Craig never recovers from. He points out that the people who still haven't heard the story after all this time were supposedly the reason the whole plan was set in motion. The news didn't reach them. Or where it did, it arrived in versions that contradict each other so completely they've started wars. And Christopher's response to Craig's convenient theological workaround is just three words. How convenient. That's it. and it lands because everyone in that room knows exactly what he means.

[00:14:33]Every time the theist argument runs into an obvious problem, a new assumption appears to patch the hole. Christopher calls that out without raising his voice, and it is devastating.

[00:14:45]Then he turns to the NT right argument.

[00:14:49]The claim that Christianity success is evidence of its truth. And Christopher does what any clear thinker should do.

[00:14:57]He applies the exact same logic to Islam and to Mormonism. Both fast growing.

[00:15:03]Both with believers who sacrificed everything. Both with ancestors who conquered in the name of their faith. If success is your standard of proof, you don't get to apply it selectively. You have to follow it wherever it leads. And for most people sitting in that gym, following it consistently leads somewhere deeply uncomfortable.

[00:15:23]Now, I didn't get the chance because I outtalked myself and I'm sorry for it to get to to the moral dimension. Um, and I'm interested that the word objective morality is the one that Dr. Craig chooses. Usually, arguments about morality are whether morality is, so to say, absolute or whether it's relative.

[00:15:41]Um, as to objectivity, I think it's a very good compromise word, by the way, and I'm very happy to to accept it. But the problem with um with morality is this in respect of religion. You can't prove that anyone behaves any better if they refer this problem upward to a supreme dictator of a celestial kind.

[00:16:04]There's there's there there are two questions that I've asked in public um and I'll try them again because I try them on every audience and they're very simple ones. First, you have to name for me or challenges let's say rather than questions. have to name for me an ethical action or an ethical statement or moral action moral statement made or undertaken by a believer that I couldn't undertake or say I couldn't state or do um I haven't yet had an example pointed out of that to me that other words that a person of faith would have an advantage by being able to call upon divine sanction whereas if I ask you to think of a wicked act undertaken by someone in the name of God or because of their faith you wouldn't have or a wicked statement made. You wouldn't have that much difficulty, I think, in coming up with an example right away. The genital mutilation community, for example, is almost exclusively religious. The suicide bombing community is almost exclusively religious. There are injunctions for genocide in the Old Testament. There are injunctions and warrants for slavery and racism uh in the Old Testament, too. There's there's simply no way of deriving morality and and ethics from the supernatural.

[00:17:15]When we come to the question of the absolute, well, the most often cited one is the golden rule. The one that almost everyone feels they have in common. The injunction not to do to others as you wouldn't want them to do to you. This doesn't in fact come from the sermon on the mount or from Christianity or it doesn't originate with it. It's certainly adomated by Rabbi Hel, the Babylonian rabbi, and it's to be found in the analcts of Confucious, too. But it has, if since we're talking about objective, relative, and absolute, uh, a crucial weakness in it, unfortunately, we'd like to be able to follow it, but it's only really as good as the person who's uttering it. In other words, if I say, "I won't treat you as I don't want you to treat me," what am I to do when confronted with Charles Manson?

[00:18:00]I want I want him treated in a way that I don't I wouldn't want to be treated myself. Anything else would surely be completely uh relativistic. So the argument isn't isn't at all advanced by saying that I couldn't know any of this.

[00:18:14]I couldn't have any moral prompings. I couldn't decide for myself if I see a pregnant woman being kicked in the stomach that because she's pregnant that's obviously worse than if it was just a woman who wasn't pregnant being kicked in the stomach. This is part of my patrimony as a human being. It's part of the essential emotional solidarity that I need to have uh with my fellow creatures to make us realize that we are brothers and sisters one with another.

[00:18:41]We are dependent upon each other. We have duties. We have uh expectations of one another and that if we didn't have these and try and fulfill them, we couldn't have got as far as we have. We couldn't have evolved as a species. We couldn't have ever had a society.

[00:18:55]There's never been a society found where rape and murder and perjury are not condemned.

[00:19:01]>> This final section is where Christopher lands the philosophical core of everything he's been building. And I think it's the part of this debate that people remember least, which is a shame because it's actually the sharpest. He puts forward a challenge that he says he has tried on every audience he has ever spoken to. name one ethical action or moral statement that a person of faith could make or perform that a person without faith could not. He has never received a satisfying answer. Think about that. Not one example in every audience he has spoken to across years of doing this publicly because the honest answer is that goodness doesn't require permission from above. It just requires being human. And then he flips it. He asks the audience to think of a harmful act committed specifically because of religious conviction and says without any hesitation that the examples come immediately. He names communities built almost entirely around religious justification for practices that cause real harm to real people. He names texts that contain explicit instructions to exterminate entire populations. This isn't Christopher being provocative for the sake of it. This is him pointing at documented history and asking if this is where divine moral instruction leads.

[00:20:34]Why would you trust it as the foundation of ethics? Here's what I find most intellectually honest about Christopher's position in the segment.

[00:20:42]He doesn't claim that atheism guarantees good behavior. He never makes that argument. What he argues is something far more defensible. That the claim religion makes good people behave better has never been proven. And that the moral instincts we have as human beings predate every organized religion that has ever existed.

[00:21:07]Anthropologists and historians have documented moral codes, prohibitions against harming others, obligations to community, concepts of fairness in societies that had no contact with monotheism whatsoever. The moral sense is not a gift handed down. It is something that evolved in us because we are a social species that could not have survived without it. William Lane Craig's entire moral argument rests on the idea that without a transcendent foundation, moral values are just social conventions with no real weight. But Christopher turns that around and says, "What makes you think adding a supernatural authority actually a ds weight?" You still have to decide whether to follow it. You still have to reason your way to what is right. The authority doesn't remove your responsibility. It just gives you somewhere to deflect it. And that to me is the most important line of the whole debate. So, what do you guys think of this? Leave your thoughts down in the comments. Please like and subscribe. And I will see you in the next video.