A Proposal to Augment the Plausibility of William Lane Craig’s Deductive Moral Argument

Abstract

The plausibility—though not the soundness—of William Lane Craig’s deductive moral argument for God’s existence has been insightfully challenged by David Baggett, who prefers to formulate the argument abductively. This paper proposes a way of couching and defending Craig’s argument so as to avoid the potholes Baggett identifies and preserve the value of the deductive form of the argument. Central to this proposal is justifying key criteria that any adequate ontological foundation for objective moral values and duties must possess, highlighting key insights in the history of moral apologetics that support these criteria. Defending the argument in this way both avoids the sting of Baggett’s critiques and offers what amounts to a cumulative case of ontologically focused moral arguments.