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Ankerberg: Yes.
You’ve said, if life ends at the grave, that it makes no ultimate difference whether
you live as a Stalin or a Mother Teresa.
Explain that.
Craig: Well, again, if God does not exist, there is no hope of immortality, and therefore
there is no moral accountability for how you live.
Even if there were objective moral values under atheism, they’re hollow abstractions,
because Stalin and Mother Teresa ultimately meet the same fate; extinction in the heat-death
of the universe.
Ankerberg: Yes, and you had a great illustration of, even if you had immortality, you still
need God.
You had this science fiction illustration.
Talk about that.
Craig: Well, I once read a science fiction story as a boy where an astronaut is marooned
on a barren asteroid in outer space all alone.
And he had with him two vials.
Once was a poison; the other was a potion for immortality.
And seeing his predicament, lost in outer space on this barren chunk of rock, he decided
to commit suicide.
And he gulped down the vial of poison.
And then, to his horror, he realized he had swallowed the wrong vial—he had drunk the
potion for immortality and thus he was cursed to exist, a meaningless, valueless, endless
existence.
So it’s not just immortality that we need if life is to be ultimately meaningful, valuable
and purposeful; we need God and immortality.
Ankerberg: Yes, and you say the problem gets even worse, because without God we have no
objective way of saying what’s right or wrong.
No objective morals.
Craig: Yes.
Without God there is no absolute standard of right and wrong, good and evil.
Everything becomes socio-culturally relative, and there is no one to say whose values are
right and whose are wrong in the absence of this transcendent, absolute standard for good
and evil.
Ankerberg: And that would describe our culture today, wouldn’t it?
Craig: I don’t think actually, John, that our culture is relativistic; although many
people think so.
I think what’s happened is that there’s a new set of absolutes in place: Things like
the absolute value of personal autonomy, tolerance, acceptance of other viewpoints.
And this looks like relativism, but in fact, really it’s a new absolutism that rejects
traditional values in favor of these other values.