Purpose and Morals without God

During the past week I read the second chapter of Christian apologist Dr. William Lane Craig’s book, Reasonable Faith, which is titled “The Absurdity of Life without God”. In it, Dr. Craig discusses what is called in philosophy “the human predicament,” which deals with the value of human life without God.

While reading this chapter, I couldn’t help but think of the post I wrote almost four months (four months?!) ago titled “Sense in a Senseless World.” In it I questioned how an atheist or an agnostic could handle the ideas of suffering and death without God to make sense of it.

By the way, after writing that post, in the comments I acknowledge that I probably focused too much on fear (specifically, fear of death). Ubiquitous Che countered my assumption of fear of death by essentially stating (more eloquently) “When I’m dead, I won’t know it,” or something thereabout, and while I don’t completely believe that philosophy will hold as death draws closer, I can understand how it can at least intellectually justify a lack of fear of death.

Dr. Craig talks about several different facets of the human predicament, but one thing he asserts is that man can find no purpose, value, or meaning in life, and he cannot make any claims to objective moral truth, without God. If he tries, he will end up making irrational and arbitrary claims of moral truth.

For example, while preparing to write this, I stumbled across a post on Che’s blog, rhetoric sans pareil. In it, Che reprints a comment he wrote on an article on Secular Philosophy. As I understand it, part of the post argues that objective morals truths can be claimed while holding a naturalistic worldview:

I’m convinced that there IS a moral truth about the world, and we CAN discover it through evidence-based reasoning. Morality and ethics are more like trigonometry than legislation.

Consider this: Practicing genuine compassion will lead to an increase in personal happiness. That increase will be proportional to the intensity of the practice. Hence, our personal quest for happiness provides a solid rationale for self-transcendence. It’s not a question of opinion. It’s an empirically testable statement about how morality and ethics function, and as such evidence-based reasoning DOES have something to say on the subject.

[...]

If a man should kill his daughter in cold blood because he perceives that she has committed some slight against his honor, there IS a moral and ethical truth to be discerned that is not relative to culture or perspective. That daughter had a long life ahead of her. Life itself is the very basis of compassion and happiness. Considering that life is also fragile, and we have a strong basis for regarding life as something precious. Far more precious than any perceived slight of honor could ever be. As such, the act of sacrificing a precious human life for the restoration of mere honor is in direct violation of basic moral and ethical principles.

If I read this correctly, Che argues that, for example, a man killing his daughter because she dishonored him is objectively morally wrong, because if the daughter had been permitted to live, she would have experienced happiness that she now will now not experience. This claims that the denial of potential happiness is something morally wrong, which ( at least in this passage) is arbitrary. What warrant does Che have for saying that happiness is something that should not be denied, or that the daughter’s happiness is more valuable than the man’s happiness cause by his “regained honor”?

Now, very importantly, I acknowledge that Che was not entirely trying to make a complete, airtight, philosophical argument out of this. Also, please refer to the comments on his post for a discussion he and some others had of this argument. I’m using his argument in this case as an example.

This brings me to the point of this post. As I was reading this chapter and the assertions Dr. Craig made, I became curious as to how atheists and agnostics would respond to this. I learned from my experiences with the “fear of death” discussion in my old post not to underestimate the innovation of philosophical arguments for either side, so I’d like to get some atheist and agnostic opinions while I’m still forming my thoughts on the issue. I know I have a few who have commented on this site, such as Ubiquitous Che and Mardé. I’d to pose this question to them, and to anyone else who cares to reply:

How can one hold an atheistic or agnostic view and still make rational claims of meaning and value in life, and objective moral truths?

In this particular case, I’m only concerned with naturalistic philosophies that believe in objective moral truth and meaning in life. I acknowledge that there are plenty that don’t, but for this particular discussion I only want to deal with those that do.

I look foward to your responses.