They do so on the Hugh Hewitt radio program, the transcript of which Wintery Knight helpfully formatted: Koukl offers as his final summary statement the following:
I started out talking about worldviews. And as a man trying to make sense of my world and finding a worldview that seems to fit reality as I experience it, I think atheism is way too austere for me, Hugh. It commits me to too many counterintuitive things – everything
comes from nothing, life comes from nonlife, consciousness comes from matter, morality comes from a reorganization of molecules. None of this seems to make sense to me. There is another alternative that seems to make a lot more sense, that a big bang needs a big banger, that a moral law comes from a moral lawgiver, that design comes from a designer. These notions are captured well, I think, in the Biblical account of life. And the person of Jesus, especially, exemplifying these notions, and then giving us a way to live that makes sense. And this is why I’m a Christian and not an atheist. I think it makes the best sense of the world as we know it.
Me: As I read the lengthy exchange between Shermer & Koukl, I felt something serious was left out. Both men agree that there is inbred morality in human beings, though they arrive at that conclusion via vastly different means. But the next step was never taken. "So what happens when one breaks the moral law? Is there such a thing as genuine "guilt"? How does one deal with that?" Such an existential dilemma -- it can be of crisis proportions -- they never dealt with. I would have liked to have heard Shermer's response, especially since he takes inward intuitions seriously.
Wintery Knight carries the discussion further by saying:
The question of “why should I follow these moral sentiments” was not addressed. It seems to me that on the atheist view, the only answer that could be given would be “because it makes me feel good to be liked by myself and others”. The problem is that there are going to be times when doing the right thing sets us back materially, or exposes us to sanctions from a society that has lost its moral bearings. What should the theist and atheist do then? Well, the theist can do the right thing in a society that values slavery. The atheist must do what makes like happier and easier. That’s why morality is illusory and irrational on atheism. When you are looking at an atheist, you are looking at someone who is constantly calculating how to game the system for their own benefit. The idea of moral obligations is meaningless in an accidental universe.