As many of you don’t know, and for good reason, William Lane Craig runs a little website called “The Reasonable Faith,” meaning he must be a hardcore Pastafarian as it is the only true and reasonable faith (it has the most nutritious deity to eat).  Though, I’m fairly certain you realize at this point that I’m sadly mistaken.  Unfortunately, there’s nothing reasonable coming out of Mr. Craig’s website.  In his latest answer to his question series, he claims that there is a moral obligation to belief. I think it best to start from the beginning:

As I said in response to Mark’s question a couple weeks ago (#172), it does seem to me that God’s motivation in creating is truly loving. I’m not sure I’d agree with you, Nancy, that true love doesn’t expect anything in return. A wife who truly loves her husband, for example, rightly expects him to treat her with respect, not to belittle or abuse her. Surely such expectations are wholly consistent with her truly loving him!

Yes, but if he doesn’t respect her and does abuse her that’s just too bad apparently.  It’s only an expectation after all. It’s not like the wife has a right to demand that her husband not abuse her and that he treats her with respect.  For, if she demanded such a right she would displease God by stepping out of place.

But let that pass.

Yes, because that’s just a little exercise in religiously motivated sexism and not the outrageous claim you’re looking for.

I think what you mean is that true love is unconditional, and the Bible does teach that God’s love is unconditional. Does that imply that He expects nothing in return? That doesn’t follow. For God could have other properties that would issue in obligations for those He has created. You’ve forgotten that God is also perfect justice, as well as perfect love. As a result we have certain moral obligations toward God to fulfill, such as to worship and love Him as the locus and source of supreme goodness.

So let me get this straight: God, who has created the moral structure we must follow, has decided that it is a moral obligation to worship him, otherwise we’ll be damned because he is also the justice system he created the laws for?  Does anybody see the problem with the idea that God created the moral obligation system that makes us morally obligated to follow God?

I think popular Christian piety very often overlooks the fact that we are morally obligated to believe in God. We often tell unbelievers that God loves them and offers them a relationship which they may freely accept or reject. That’s true as far as it goes, but it does not go nearly far enough. What is missing here is the fact that because of Who God is, we have a moral duty to believe in, love, and worship God with all our mind, heart, and strength, and when we fail to do so, we are morally guilty before Him and so fall under the righteous sentence of His justice. If God simply winked at sin, then He would not be perfectly just and so not perfectly good.

The problem still stands, God’s moral system is created by God, meaning if God doesn’t exist there is no moral obligation to follow God’s will.  An unbeliever would have no moral obligation to love God. Furthermore, I should think that God would have to demonstrate that we should follow his command by demonstration that they are moral commands.  Being that the Bible quite demonstrates that God is a sexist prick, I would consider us to have a moral duty to reject God, even if he did exist, for we have created ethical systems that are more just.  He is not perfect justice if he is law, judge, jury, and executioner as he is no more than a tyrant.

By ignoring the fact of our moral obligations toward God, popular Christian piety invites the response, “What kind of love is this? ‘Believe in me, or I’ll send you to hell!’” That retort is entirely appropriate for a being whom we have no moral obligation to love and obey.

Except that retort is still perfectly valid.  God created the moral obligation, demands we follow the moral obligation, and will punish us for failing to follow the moral obligation.  There is no moral obligation to follow God outside of God.  Ergo, God will send us to hell if we don’t believe per his moral obligation.  Ergo, tyrant.

But when we understand the fullness of the nature of God, then we see that while we have the ability to reject God’s love and so separate ourselves from Him forever, that does not imply that there are no consequences of such a choice. Because such a choice is profoundly evil, a perfectly just God must punish it. Just as we might say that while I have the freedom to speed down the highway at 100 miles per hour but do not have the liberty to do this because it is against the law, so I have the freedom but not the liberty to disbelieve in God.

The difference is that we have the choice to change the law in regards to speed limits as we live in a democratic society.  We can elect officials to represent us.  We have a say.  Even more so, the representatives of the law (police) exist.  They are not justice. The police do not make the law.  Ultimately, we as a society are our own law, judge, jury, and executioner. Thus, responsible to ourselves.  There is no choice among tyrants.  The only option available in this scenario is accept tyranny or be punished.  That scenario is a more profoundly evil choice. Even a benevolent tyrant is still a tyrant with no claim of authority beyond his own force.  Moral justification of authority cannot result out of having that authority.

Now in light of that, let’s think about your questions:

In creating the world, did God not expect anything in return (as in response to Him)? No, He did expect in return that we would love and worship Him as the highest good. (By “expect” we obviously mean here, not “anticipate,” but “require.” The question is, do we have certain moral requirements or obligations toward God, and the answer is clearly, “Yes.”) In fact, the first and greatest commandment of the Jewish law, according to Jesus, was, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength” (Mark 12. 30).

As in, “Believe in me, or go to hell.”  A requirement is not a moral obligation.

That’s good of you, Nancy, to be willing to give your salvation for the sake of those whom you love. Paul said the same thing about his fellow Jews who had rejected Messiah Jesus (Romans 9. 1-5). Be assured that God loves them even more than you do. When we once understand both the depth of God’s love as shown in Christ’s sacrificial death and our moral obligation to love and worship God as the paradigm of goodness itself, then as you say, why hesitate?

So now, we’re saying that worshiping God is the ultimate good because God loves us?  I believe then, in the words of the great philosopher, Sting, “if you love somebody, set them free.” If God so loved us there would be no demand of us to acknowledge his existence.  To demand so is not perfect love.

The thing I like about Bill Donohue is just how delightfully insane he is.  By now the Empire State Building has a dedicated staff of people who don’t give a shit about Mother Theresa.  Apparently though, Bill Donohue really is a vampire fiction fan and thinks Anne Rice needs the same uppity scorn and derision from his haughty air of superiority that he normally reserves for such miscreants as South Park and atheists.

Anne Rice started as a believing Catholic; then she quit the Church; then she rejoined the Church; now she has quit again.

So she’s the Kirstie Alley of the Catholic Church, good job Bill, way to resort to victim blaming.  Anne Rice has an addiction and needs our support to help her quit.  You wouldn’t deride a crack addict for quitting crack, would you?

All of this is as amusing as it is sad, and would be of no interest to the Catholic League save for her parting shots at the Catholic Church.

Well, the Catholic League is of no interest to most people except for its comedy potential, but do go on.

Rice said this week that when the American bishops opposed homosexual marriage, that was the “last straw.” She offered, “I didn’t anticipate in the beginning that U.S. Catholic Bishops were going to come out against same-sex marriage.” Did she think they would be silent on one of the most contentious moral issues of our day?

We’re talking about the Anne Rice who went ballistic on negative Amazon.com reviews, so yeah, she probably did expect they wouldn’t openly condemn gays to hellfire, because, you know, being religious doesn’t mean having to be a conservative tool. 

Or that they were silently cheering for gay marriage all along?

Well, given that they’re about the biggest closeted supporters of NAMBLA that you’re going to find…

Either way, her virginal views are startling.

Because to be Catholic, one must not just feel the spirit, one must be fucked by it. 

Here’s another beauty. She said this week that “I refuse to be anti-gay,” thereby separating herself from all those awful Catholic bigots. But when she was asked two years ago on ABC-TV whether the Catholic Church condemns her gay son to hell, she said, “I don’t think anybody in my church would say that. I think our view is far more compassionate.” She got that right. But does she have any idea how she looks now?

A lot more sane, rational, compassionate?  You know, like anybody who really took an inventory of a situation and realized that a group they were associating with was being run by a bunch of old, conservative, white dudes who didn’t have the best interest of a free and just society at heart and decided that they could not morally or rationally support such an institution.  So yeah, I think she looks pretty swell in comparison to the Catholic League, who happens to think that a school not printing “in the year of our lord” on their diplomas is a slap across the face of our founding fathers, as if they would give a shit.

Last night, Rice told Joy Behar “I myself am anti-abortion.” It didn’t take long before the pro-abortion and anti-Catholic Behar snapped, “You would deny other women the choice to have an abortion?” To which Rice said, “I would not deny them the choice.” Yet in the same breath she added, “I do think it’s the taking of a human life.”

Rice came back to the Catholic Church in the 1990s, but only the day before yesterday did she learn that the bishops are not fond of guys marrying. She said in 2008 that Catholicism is not anti-gay, but in 2010 it was so anti-gay she had to quit. She is pro-life, knows abortion kills, but sides with the agenda of Planned Parenthood. She wants Christ without the Christianity. This is more than an odyssey—it’s a tragedy.

Right, because one can’t have Christianity without trying to impose one’s beliefs on the society as a whole because those who don’t share those beliefs should not be given rights at all.