ceci n’est pas Jesus

Dr Craig’s sixth claim, that his god is the best explanation for objective moral values, is one I want to dwell on at some length, so please sit back in your electrified chairs and enjoy my reflections if you can. But please note that I dwell on the subject for my own interest’s sake, not because I find Dr Craig’s views require much work to overcome – far from it.

I suppose it’s fair to say that when it comes to moral issues, unlike with matters scientific, we all like to consider ourselves experts, and we’re all a little more committed and vociferous, because – it’s personal. So I’ll begin with some personal stuff. From earliest childhood I’ve always felt very emotional about issues of cruelty and injustice. I was often in tears on witnessing kids in my class being bullied – more often than not by teachers. When I was a little boy I read the Hans Andersen story, ‘the little match girl’, a simple but devastating story about a young girl out in the cold snow, trying to sell matches for her impoverished family, afraid to go home without having sold any. She finally dies, out in the cold, on the last night of the year. This tale of unfairness and cruelty and indifference, had me awash with tears at the time, and literally haunted my childhood. I think it’s fair to say that a sense of empathy was well developed in me from an early age. Needless to say, ethical ideas based on the harm principle, such as those articulated by the liberal philosopher John Stuart Mill, held great appeal for me, but further than this, active moral programs to protect and support individual human beings, such as those enshrined in the universal declaration of human rights and in the many conventions and protocols that have followed from that declaration, are programs that I hold dear.

The point I’m making here is that the starting point for my own moral values was an emotional one, a visceral one, if you like, and not something derived from any ‘higher consciousness’ or reflectivity or rationality.  And I suspect that’s quite a common experience. We don’t generally choose to cry over or be haunted by an injustice. So where do these deep emotional feelings come from? I have absolutely no reason to associate them with a non-material being who has, as far as I’m aware, never communicated anything to me. Nor was I, during my childhood, convinced that everyone would feel the same way as I did if exposed to the story of the little match girl. Some would, I was sure, but others would be cruelly indifferent, and there would be a whole variety of responses along the spectrum. In short, my observations of life, even from an early age, told me that people valued things and experiences very differently from me, and very differently from each other, to a rather bewildering and unpredictable degree.

So, from the fore-going I hope it won’t come as a surprise to you that I don’t believe in objective moral values, but that I’m far from believing that this entails some kind of moral nihilism or amorality. In Dr Craig’s presentation of this argument, he suggests that those who don’t subscribe to objective moral values, by which he means, values that come from a male supernatural being, don’t see anything ‘really’ wrong with the massacre of schoolchildren. Let me put that in another way. He argues that my own deeply felt disgust, shock, anger and pain, when I hear about, and see, played out on my tv screen, those sorts of crimes, is not really real, because it isn’t connected to a non-material creator-protector god, which is how he defines objective morality. I find this a ridiculous argument, as well as an offensive one.

Firstly, Dr Craig’s version of morality is a sham because it exists nowhere. Dr Craig will not be able to give you a single instance of a command from his favoured deity. The decalogue, the ten commandments, were written by men, and though some of them may seem uncontroversial – don’t lie, steal, don’t kill – even these aren’t absolute. A starving person, in my view, would be justified in taking food belonging to another person, who had an abundance of such food, if the alternate was death. I have no difficulty with that. Some people would, as they have the view that private property is sacrosanct. And I could make similar arguments to justify lying, and even killing, under certain special circumstances. To me, there are no absolutes. Other commandments, such as keeping the sabbath day holy, I don’t take at all seriously, because I don’t believe a supernatural being made the world in seven days, though had I lived several thousand years ago, I might well have believed that. And so my morality would have been different then, just as my morality would be different if I were born, on the same day that I actually was born, but in the city of Basra, to a devout Moslem family. My morality, that I hold so dear, and which gives my life so much meaning, is the result of my particular upbringing, my peculiar variety of experiences and influences, the culture that I was born into, my genetic inheritance, and I’m sure there are other factors that I’ve left out. One thing I’m happy to leave out, though, is the command of a deity. I’ve never experienced such a command, and I have no reason to believe anyone else has either.

Now, there are atheists I know who argue for an objective morality, but obviously not grounded in a deity. Personally I find such rational arguments a bit weird, and I’ll say no more about them here, except to make the obvious point that being an atheist doesn’t commit you to any specific moral position, as it’s simply an absence of belief in a deity. That’s all.

What I do want to focus on is the claim that morality without a deity is merely subjective and not really real. That’s to say, without a deity we can do whatever we like and call it morality. Well, that’s not how I feel about morality, and it’s not how morality, and laws relating to morality (and most laws have some sort of moral reasoning behind them) have developed in our increasingly secular society. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is entirely secular, and I think it’s a grand step forward in global human interaction. And it’s more of an effect than a cause, it’s symptomatic of a gradual shift in our attitude to other cultures, in our attitude to race, whether the concept is a valid one or not. In the attitude of men to women, in the attitude of heterosexuals to homosexuals, in our attitude to and respect for children, and in our attitude to and respect for other species on this planet. All of these attitudes have changed drastically in the past 150 years or so. Living in an eternal present as we often do, we can easily overlook how thoroughly transformational these essentially moral developments have been, and they’ve owed nothing whatever to religion, which has generally dragged its heels at the rear. Look, for example, at the Catholic Church.

I’m an avid reader of history, and as such I’ve noted the social changes, particularly in western Europe, that occurred over the past 400 years or so. What has always struck me, in reading about the Thirty Years’ war or the English revolution of the 17th century, or the early slave trade, is how often and regularly God (the Judeo-Christian one) is invoked in the primary documents of those times. God appears on every page, often several times on every page, of every legal document. I’ve described the 17th century, and the centuries before, as a ‘god-besotted age’. And yet the everyday brutality, the callous inhumanity, the cruelty, the viciousness, the inequity, the impoverishment of basic human values of those times, were everywhere on display. If you think you’ve got problems now, transport yourself back to pre-Enlightenment Europe for a wake-up call. Arbitrary rulers, upstart priests, popular revolutionaries, all invoked the divine in order to invest themselves with authority, as still happens today. Think of the divine right of kings, and papal infallibility, and the dear leader and great leaders of North Korea, who promoted themselves as divine. In the past, monarchs regularly passed laws in the name of the god whom they represented. Nowadays, elected politicians pass laws in the name of the people who elected them. It seems to have been a great improvement.

Our morality and our laws are grounded, it seems to me, in our common, but changing, evolving human nature. This is not mere subjectivity. In fact it’s all we have to go on. We don’t make up our own morality as individuals because we’re essentially social beings who rely on each other for our survival and our thriving. We’re empathic because we see ourselves in others and others in ourselves. And we’ve evolved that empathic capacity to embrace species other than our own, which I think is a great step forward.

The theist has no ground for objective moral values because no single moral value, claiming to be objective, has ever been shown to come from a deity. I have no doubt that they’ve all come from human beings.

The full MP3 is available here.

Below, I’ve summarized the two opening speeches from each debater. I put snarky clarifications in italics.

Here is Dr. Craig’s opening speech: (1:24)

Craig’s case for God.

1) The origin of the universe (3:10)
- an eternal universe is not compatible with mathematics
- the impossibility of an actual infinite in nature (cites David Hilbert)
- an eternal universe is not compatible with science
- the big bang theory requires space and time to come into being out of nothing (cites PCW Davies)
- even radical alternative theories require an absolute beginning (cites Stephen Hawking)
- atheists must believe that the origin of space and time came from nothing and by nothing (cites Anthony Kenny)

Argument:
P1.1) Whatever begins to exist requires a cause
P1.2) The universe begin to exist
C1.3) Therefore, the universe requires a cause

What can the cause be:
- it must be eternal, because it caused time to exist
- it must be non-physical, because it caused space to begin to exist

Why must the cause of the universe be a person instead of a force?
Only minds can exist non-physically
- the only non-physical entities we know of are abstract objects and minds
- but abstract objects can’t cause physical effects
- therefore, the cause universe is a personal mind

Only minds can cause effects in time without antecedent conditions
- causally prior to the universe’s beginning, there were no antecedent conditions
- the only entity capable of acting freely, not based on antecedent conditions, are free agents
- therefore, the cause of the universe is a free agent

2) The fine-tuning of the initial conditions of the universe (9:15)
- the fine-tuning of the universe is supported by science
- the constants and quantities given in the big bang can take any of a range of values
- the actual values are within a extremely narrow range that supports the requirements of life
- he gives the example of the fine-tuning of the gravitational constant
- he gives the example of the fine-tuning of the weak force

Argument:
P2.1) The fine-tuning is either due to law, chance or design
P2.2) It is not due to law, because the numbers are independent of the law
P2.3) It cannot be due to chance, the life-permitting band is tiny compared to the possible values
C2.4) Therefore, the fine-tuning is due to design

3) Objective moral values are plausibly grounded in God (12:41)
- objective moral values are values that exist and are binding regardless of what individuals think
- objective moral values cannot be rationally grounded on an atheistic worldview (cites Michael Ruse)
- atheists can recognize moral values and act on them, but they cannot explain their origin and existence
- atheists can only appeal to personal or cultural preferences to say what is right and wrong
- the existence of objective moral is undeniable

Argument:
P3.1) If God does not exist, then objective moral values do not exist
P3.2) Objective moral values do exist
C3.3) Therefore, God exists

4) The resurrection of Jesus implies that God exists (16:04)
- if the resurrection of Jesus happened, then it would be a miracle, implying that God exists
- three facts are recognized by the majority of scholars
- the tomb was found empty after his death (cites Jacob Kramer)
- individuals and groups saw Jesus after his death (cites Gerd Ludemann)
- the belief in the resurrection of Jesus was totally unexpected (cites N.T. Wright)
- naturalistic explanations of these facts have been rejected by the consensus of scholars

Argument:
P4.1) The 3 minimal facts are established
P4.2) The hypothesis that God raised Jesus from the dead is the best explanation for these facts
P4.3) The hypothesis that God raised Jesus from the dead entails that God exists
C4.4) Therefore, God exists

5) God can be known directly by personal experience (20:02)
- God can be experienced just like you experience a relationship with human persons

Dr. Ahmed’s first opening speech: (22:10)

Rebuttal to Craig’s case for God.

0) Craig is wrong about faith and reason (25:20)
- Craig’s book Reasonable Faith, he makes a number of statements about faith and reason
- He writes that Christianity is not accountable to reason if reason goes against Christianity
- He writes that the truth of Christianity is knowable without rational arguments
- He writes that even if there are no reasons to believe, and many reasons to disbelieve, humans are still obligated to believe
- Question for Craig: is Christianity reasonable or isn’t it? Do reasons matter or don’t they?

1) Response to Craig’s first argument: the origin of the universe (28:27)
- what mathematicians say about the contradictory nature of subtraction and division for actual infinities is wrong
- what cosmologists and physicists say about the beginning of time is wrong, every event follows another one, there is no first event
- even if the universe is 15 billion years old, the act of Creation requires time and there was no time prior to the supposed beginning of the universe for God to act in
- the cause of the universe need not be a personal agent
- all minds are made of matter so a mind cannot be the cause of the universe, 
- it is impossible for a person to act outside of time
- why did God wait 15 billion years before creating humans and relating to them? 

2) Response to Craig’s second argument: the fine-tuning of the creation (32:38)
- where do these probabilities that Craig is using come from?

3) Response to Craig’s third argument: the moral argument (34:07)
- I have personal preferences about what counts as right and wrong, and they are superior to God’s preferences
- moral intuitions are not a good way of discovering objective moral values, so therefore objective moral values don’t exist

4) Response to Craig’s fourth argument: the resurrection (36:00)
- the number of eyewitnesses is not enough, because groups number of eyewitnesses can be fooled by illusions, as in David Copperfield illusions
- the Gospels contradict themselves, e.g. – the story of Matthew’s earthquake and walking dead isn’t in Mark – so that’s a contradiction, so the Gospels are not reliable sources for Craig’s 3 minimal facts

5) Response to Craig’s fourth argument: personal experience (37:30)
- there are many different religious experiences because there are many different religions, which means that no one religion can be right

Ahmed’s case against God.

1) Absence of evidence is evidence of absence (39:00)
- if there is are no reasons to believe in God, then this is evidence that he doesn’t exist

2) The inductive argument from evil (40:04)
- some evil is gratuitous – events cause people to suffer, and has no benefit that I can see, which argues against the existence of a good God
- God would not have allowed people to suffer, because he has no overriding purpose that would justify his permission of human suffering

3) Belief in God makes people evil (41:52)
- all genuinely religious people are very immoral, when measured against my subjective standard of morality

Further study

In case you are wondering about his inductive argument from evil, please read this summary on the problems of evil and suffering, which is taken from my list of arguments for and against Christian theism.  Keep in my mind that I am a software engineer with two degrees in computer science… not philosophy!

Craig mentions a paper by the late William P. Alston of Syracuse University in his rebuttal to the inductive problem of evil. The paper lists six limitations on human cognitive capacities that make it difficult for humans to know that some instance of  apparently gratuitous evil really is gratuitious – that God has no morally sufficient reason for permitting this specific instance of evil.  Since Ahmed is making the claim that some evil is gratuitous, he bears the burden of proof.

mind of god, exclusive pic

Dr Craig’s next argument is that his god is the best explanation of intentional states of consciousness in the world. This is a weird one, and I can only assume that he’s put his best forces in the vanguard in the hope of blowing the opposition out of the water, and that these rather piddling forces in the rear weren’t really meant to be exposed to the light of reason, and were just added to give a scarey sense of bulk or weight to the Doctor’s position. Never mind the quality, feel the width, as they say.

Dr Craig starts by ‘informing’ us that ‘philosophers are puzzled’ by states of intentionality. He doesn’t tell us which philosophers, but the clear intimation is that all philosophers are puzzled in this way – and by the way, this is a very typical piece of deceptiveness from Dr Craig, and your sceptical antennae should be stretched to their outermost limits by offhand remarks such as these. Dr Craig’s presentation here is very thin, but he’s trying, I think to convince you that philosophers are baffled by the non-materiality of intentionality or consciousness generally, and this is a massive misrepresentation of a complex area in the philosophy of mind. It’s true that there’s a lot of interesting debate, and has been for some decades, on the explanation of consciousness in material terms, but there are virtually no philosophers who consider that intentional states are without material cause. That’s to say, that you could have an intentional state without a brain – or something like it, such as a super-computer of some sort. Dr Craig makes the absurd claim that he can think about things, or of things, but a physical object cannot. But I see Dr Craig as a physical object, albeit one with intentions and consciousness. Dr Craig seems to want to make a distinction between objects and conscious subjects, but he doesn’t make this explicit in his rather clumsy argument. I have no difficulty with this distinction, seeing him, as I see myself, and my cat, as both object and conscious subject. In other words I see consciousness as necessarily embodied. Now, what the term ‘embodied’ means is really too complex to be gone into here, but I would strongly argue that, while philosophers debate the connection between consciousness and embodiment, and are perhaps especially interested in what embodiment entails, I don’t know of any who are interested in considering consciousness as entirely non-material.

Dr Craig claims that Dr Rosenberg, an atheist, takes the view that ‘there really are no intentional states’, and that ‘we never really think about anything’. I’m not familiar with Dr Rosenberg’s views, but to say that I suspect they’ve been vastly over-simplified and misrepresented by Dr Craig’s characterization of them would be too weak a statement by far. Furthermore Craig claims that Rosenberg’s views, whatever they are, represent atheism. This is nonsense. Philosophers hold vastly different views on the so-called ‘hard problem’ of consciousness, including the view that there is no hard problem. The vast majority of philosophers who debate these issues are, in fact, atheists.

Dr Craig ends this fifth point with another formal argument, which, for the readers’ convenience, I’ll put here.

1. If God did not exist, intentional states of consciousness would not exist.

2. But intentional states of consciousness do exist.

3 Therefore God exists.

However, this argument is so paltry and pathetic that it isn’t worth commenting on further, except perhaps to say that it doesn’t deserve to be called an argument.

gee thanks, goddie – and can you help me win my soccer game on saturday?

Dr Craig’s fifth argument is the well-known fine-tuning argument. Once again I should point out that when Dr Craig brings up these science-related topics it isn’t from a fascination with science itself – indeed Dr Craig likes to use the term ‘scientism’ when he refers to science other than when he’s using it to support his obsession. He uses science solely to mine and manipulate it to convince himself and others that there’s a warrant for a supernatural agent who has a personal love for him. So you should always consider his use of science with that in mind. And you should ask yourself, too, why is it that the physicists and cosmologists and mathematicians of the world, the people who work on a daily basis with the so-called laws of nature and the physical constraints of the universe, are by and large so completely lacking in belief in a personal deity? This is a sub-population that is more atheistic than any other sub-group on the planet. How does Dr Craig account for this? Madness, badness, indoctrination? How is it that the greatest physicist, by general acclaim, of the twentieth century, Einstein, regularly described belief in a personal god as a form of childishness? Why is it that Bertrand Russell, one of the greatest mathematicians and logicians of all time, wrote, ‘I am as firmly convinced that religions do harm as I am that they are untrue’? What is it with the Richard Feynmans, the Stephen Weinbergs, the Stephen Hawkings of this world that they’ve been so indifferent or hostile to the claims of religion? Perhaps Dr Craig should consider launching a wholesale attack on these disciplines, since they seem such a breeding ground for views so completely out of synch with his obsessions. How can they not know that all their researches and discoveries converge on the screamingly obvious fact that a loving human-focused supernatural being designed everything. What a bunch of blind fools.

The fine-tuning argument has been around for a long time despite its seeming ultra-modernity, though of course it gets updated in terms of constants and constraints. It’s of course, a rubbish argument like all the others. This universe wasn’t fine-tuned for anything. There was no tuner, as far as we know, and it would be impossible to predict what possibilities could emerge from the hugely complex and almost entirely unknown preconditions of the universe’s existence. Our universe will provide us with many many surprises long into the future, and I would not be surprised if those surprises include forms of life hitherto thought impossible, due to the ‘laws of nature’. Dr Craig claims that the various constraints and quantities that he talks about are independent of the laws of nature, which is a nonsense, as it’s only through our application of physical laws that we’ve been able to determine these quantities. So I don’t know what to make of his claim that these constraints aren’t physically necessary. The constraints exist as an essential part of the physical nature of this universe. The question of necessity or chance just doesn’t arise. These are the constraints we have to work with, and we find that, within these constraints, intelligent life is clearly possible, though perhaps very rare, though perhaps not so very rare as we once thought. I think we must all agree that we live in exciting times in the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence and extra-terrestrial life more generally. We’re homing in on the zones elsewhere that meet all the conditions for the emergence of life, and I believe we will find that life in time. Intelligent life, by our standards, will no doubt take longer.

Dr Craig says the odds of this universe being life-permitting are astronomically small. Some cosmologists agree, but they don’t then make any leaps to a supernatural cosmic designer. And I mean none of them do. It’s interesting that the cosmologist Alan Guth, to whom Dr Craig has already referred, believes that humans will one day be able to design new universes, no doubt with the help of quantum computers, and there are others who suggest that this may be how our universe came into being. All highly speculative stuff, and not particularly mainstream, but good fun, and worthy of reflection. Others, such as Stephen Hawking, have proposed a superposition of possible initial conditions for the universe which provides for an ‘inevitability’ of us finding ourselves in just this kind of life-sustaining universe at a later stage. It’s all to do with the manipulation of time-perception apparently. This hypothesis eliminates the need to posit a multiverse. There are many other hypotheses too, of course, including the multiverse, the bubble universe and others. It’s an exciting time for cosmology. Tough, but exciting, and far more interesting and rewarding than theology, I can promise you that. As students, I hope you continue to follow this stuff, for its own sake, not to mine it as confirmation for preconceived ideas.

Now we come to the argument that God is the best explanation of the applicability of mathematics to the physical world. My intuitive response to this – and of course I’m not a mathematician – is that mathematics appears to me to be be a kind of abstraction from, that’s to say a manipulation of, a play on and further development of, the regularities that exist in the world, and that if no such regularities existed, the world wouldn’t exist. Or at least would not be in any sense describable. For example, the most basic form of regularity required would be a binary contrast, describable in mathematical or logical terms as x and not x.  The real world, though , offers far more opportunities for playing on and manipulating regularities than this. So many opportunities have been found in fact, and so many beautiful theorems have been developed from them over the centuries that mathematics has often been given a mystical, miraculous status. One thinks of the Pythagoreans in ancient times, and the mathematically-obsessed philosophers of the seventeenth century, such as Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz. However, I think it’s fair to say that, historically, when mathematics has been raised to mystical heights, great problems have ensued. So I don’t see anything particularly miraculous in the fact that a tool for understanding the regularities of the world can be developed and manipulated to underpin theories which further deepen or extend that understanding.

Eugene Wigner’s 1960 essay, ‘The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences’ is available online, and everyone should be encouraged to read it – though it doesn’t make for easy reading. I think it’s a little unfortunate that Wigner uses the word ‘miracle’ a number of times in the essay, but he certainly doesn’t refer at any time to a god. And while I would hesitate to interpret Wigner from my lay background, I’m not sure I agree with his view in the essay that, while elementary mathematical concepts derive directly from the perceived regularities of the actual world, more complex and abstract mathematical concepts don’t so derive, and yet can be applied with uncanny reliability, or if you like profitability, from our perspective, to that world, as is the case with much modern physics. If that were so, if the mathematical abstractions our minds create were completely removed from the world’s actual regularities, and yet just happened to apply to them to provide us with a richer and more developed view of our universe, then that would indeed be a ‘happy coincidence’. But abstraction doesn’t occur in a vacuum. Just as non-Euclidian geometry derives from the regularities of nature that Euclid strove to axiomise in a set of rules, and just as multi-dimensionality derives from the standard three-dimensional world of our experience, mathematical abstraction is always tied to some underlying actual regularity, however obscured by its overlay. The applicability of maths is not a happy coincidence (which isn’t to say all mathematical abstractions are applicable of course), but that is just because the world has regularity. Thus when we look at Dr Craig’s formal argument:

1. If God did not exist, the applicability of mathematics would be a happy coincidence.

2. The applicability of mathematics is not a happy coincidence.

3. Therefore God exists.

we see once again that the problem lies in the conditional statement – this time statement one. Our world has regularities, without which not. Mathematics is all about the play of regularities, so it isn’t coincidental that some mathematics has applicability. This is not mysterious, and it doesn’t imply anything about supernatural agency. Thus it isn’t reasonable to infer the existence of any god, let alone the human-obsessed, son-begetting god adhered to by Dr Craig.

It’s not just Christian scholars and pastors who need to be intellectually engaged with the issues. Christian laymen, too, need to be intellectually engaged. Our churches are filled with Christians who are idling in intellectual neutral. As Christians, their minds are going to waste. One result of this is an immature, superficial faith. People who simply ride the roller coaster of emotional experience are cheating themselves out of a deeper and richer Christian faith by neglecting the intellectual side of that faith. They know little of the riches of deep understanding of Christian truth, of the confidence inspired by the discovery that one’s faith is logical and fits the facts of experience, of the stability brought to one’s life by the conviction that one’s faith is objectively true.

~ Reasonable Faith

Dr Craig’s second argument is clearly related to his first. Indeed some of you might wonder – what’s the difference between the claim that a transcendent personal being explains the universe, and the claim that a transcendent personal being explains the origin of the universe. Well, I don’t think there’s much difference, but it does bring in temporal or time-related questions. Finiteness and infinity, eternality, beginnings and ends, and so forth. Dr Craig is obviously concerned to emphasize to us that the universe had an absolute beginning, as if that provides evidence for a transcendental personal being. He underlines that absolute beginning or origin by citing a 2003 paper by Borde, Guth and Vilenkin, which he claims proves, not only the absolute beginning of our universe, but of any multiverse our universe may have been part of. He further claims that a much more recent paper by Vilenkin concluded that all the evidence we have converges on the conclusion that the universe/multiverse did in fact have an absolute beginning.

Now before I look at the theological implications, if any, of that conclusion, let me look at Dr Craig’s take on the B-G-V theorem. Remember what I said earlier about Dr Craig’s inevitable distortions of science arising from his theological obsessions. The 2003 paper, available online, is relatively technical and has nothing whatever to say about the absolute beginning of the universe. In a conversation with the physicist Victor Stenger, Vilenkin, one of the principal authors of the paper, described Dr Craig’s use of this terminology regarding the paper as ‘raising some red flags’. Stenger asked Valenkin directly, ‘does your theorem prove the universe must have had a beginning.” He immediately replied: “No. But it proves that the expansion of the universe must have had a beginning. You can evade the theorem by postulating the universe was prior to some time.” Stenger also asked the Caltech cosmologist Sean Carroll whether Dr Craig had any justification for his claim that the B-G-V theorem had anything valid to say about the beginning of the universe. This was his response:

“I think my answer would be fairly concise: no result derived on the basis of classical spacetime can be used to derive anything truly fundamental, since classical general relativity isn’t right. You need to quantize gravity. The BGV [Borde, Guth, Vilenkin] singularity theorem is certainly interesting and important, because it helps us understand where classical GR breaks down, but it doesn’t help us decide what to do when it breaks down.”

Now this is perhaps fairly abstruse stuff for the lay reader, and my reading up on this area reveals to me that these are live issues very much debated within cosmology, and in these debates there is nothing in the way of spillage into the metaphysical realms Dr Craig is so keen to leap into. Maybe cosmologists are just a timid and modest bunch, but they prefer to try to account for the mathematically calculable results of our inflationary universe through equations and formulae than to speculate about transcendent fatherly creators. There just seems to be no warrant, whether the universe is finally decided as finite in the past or not, for a non-evidence-based, non-material entity, somehow conscious, who created the universe with we humans front and centre of ‘his’ mind. That way, it seems to me, lies rampant anthropocentric egotism.

So let’s look at the formal argument with which Dr Craig ends his second point.

1. The universe began to exist.

2. If the universe began to exist, then the universe has a transcendent cause.

3 Therefore, the universe has a transcendent cause.

Again, the big problem is with the conditional in the second line. What is a ‘transcendent cause’?  Certainly it isn’t anything that science can deal with. And science is just our best way of arriving at reliable knowledge about the world. Dr Craig often associates the term, ‘transcendent’ with ‘non-material’. But all causes that we know of are material. It makes little sense to talk about a non-material cause. And don’t think in terms of force or pressure, or energy waves or the like, because in scientific terms these are all quantifiable. material entities. Now you might think, ‘oh you’re just a narrow materialist’. Well, I don’t like labels, but if I had to accept one, I’d prefer to call myself a realist. In the search for reliable knowledge, we limit ourselves to material, quantifiable entities for very good reason. Because if we let in the so-called non-material, or the ‘transcendent’ or the ‘ineffable’, then we let in anything and everything that our imagination wills and that our heart desires. Why not a whole culture of billions of godlike creatures or minds working together to create the universe? Why not a female immortal, who created the universe by accident and has been indifferent to it ever since? Why not a giant cosmic computer created by the minds of a species far more advanced than ours, on a planet in a dimension not yet fathomed by our greatest minds? When you’re not limited by evidence, everything is possible, and that might be a good thing – it makes for great science fiction. But it doesn’t make faith in a traditional, male god, born in the deserts lands of the Caananite people a few thousand years ago, particularly reasonable to me.

And so we move to the third argument.

When I answer this question, I only want to use the earliest, most reliable sources – so I can defend them on historical grounds using the standard rules of historiography.

The 4 sources that I would use are as follows:

• The early creed in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8, and 1 Corinthians 1
• A passage in Philippians 2
• Two passages from Mark, the earliest gospel
• A passage from Q, which is an early source of Matthew and Luke

So let’s see the passages.

1 Corinthians

I’ve written before about the early creed in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8, which skeptical scholars date to 1-3 years after the death of Jesus, for a variety of reasons I covered in the previous post. Here’s the creed which definitely makes Jesus out to be more than an ordinary man. Ordinary men don’t get resurrection bodies after they die.

Here’s the passage: (1 Cor 15:3-8)

³For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,

⁴that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,

⁵and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve.

⁶After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep.

⁷Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles,

⁸and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.

Additionally, 1 Corinthians 1:21-25 talks about Jesus being “the power of God and the wisdom of God”. Paul is identifying Jesus with the divine.

²¹For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.

²²Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom,

²³but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles,

²⁴but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

²⁵For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength.

But it gets even stronger! You all probably already know that the most important passages in the Old Testament for Jews is the famous “Shema“, which is found in Deuteronomy 6:4-9. The Shema is a strong statement of Jewish monotheism.

Here’s the passage:

⁴ Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.

⁵ Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.

⁶ These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts.

⁷ Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.

⁸ Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.

⁹ Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

So how does Paul fit Jesus in with this strong statement of Jewish monotheism?

Paul alludes to the Shema in 1 Corinthians 8:4-6.

⁴So then, about eating food sacrificed to idols: We know that an idol is nothing at all in the world and that there is no God but one.

⁵For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”),

⁶yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.

Holy mackerel! How did that get in there? Paul is splitting the roles of God in the the Shema and identifying Jesus in one of the divine roles! Jesus is not an ordinary man. That passage “through whom all things came” foreshadows John identifying Jesus as “the Word of God”, which “became flesh and dwelt among us”. Holy snark – did you guys know that was all in here so early?

The date for 1 Corinthians is 55 AD. It should be noted that skeptical scholars like James Crossley accept these passages, and you can check it out in the debate audio yourself.

Philippians

Check out Philippians 2:5-11.

⁵Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:

⁶Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,

⁷but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.

⁸And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death— even death on a cross!

⁹Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name,

¹⁰that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

¹¹and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

The date for Philippians is 60-61 AD. Still within the lifetime of the eyewitnesses, and written by an eyewitness who was in contact with the other eyewitnesses, like Peter and James, whom Paul spoke with numerous times on his journeys to Jerusalem.

Mark’s gospel

Mark’s gospel is the earliest and atheists like James Crossley date it to less than 40 AD, which is 10 years after the death of Jesus at most. When you read the gospel of Mark, you are getting the earliest and best information available about the historical Jesus, along with Paul’s epistles. So what does Mark say about Jesus? Is Jesus just a man, or is he something more?

Check out Mark 12:1-9:

¹He then began to speak to them in parables: “A man planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a pit for the winepress and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and went away on a journey.

²At harvest time he sent a servant to the tenants to collect from them some of the fruit of the vineyard.

³But they seized him, beat him and sent him away empty-handed.

⁴Then he sent another servant to them; they struck this man on the head and treated him shamefully.

⁵He sent still another, and that one they killed. He sent many others; some of them they beat, others they killed.

⁶“He had one left to send, a son, whom he loved. He sent him last of all, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’

⁷“But the tenants said to one another, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’

⁸So they took him and killed him, and threw him out of the vineyard.

⁹“What then will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others.

And Mark 13:32, talking about the date of the final judgment.

³²“No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.

And again, this passage is establishing a hierarchy such that Jesus is being exalted above all men and the angels, too. And the passage is embarrassing to the early church, because it makes Jesus look ignorant of something, so they would not have made this passage up. Jesus is not an ordinary man, he is above the angels – God’s unique Son.

The “Q” source for Matthew and Luke

Here’s Matthew 11:27, which is echoed in Luke 10:22:

²⁷“All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.

²²“All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and no one knows who the Father is except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”

Since this passage is in both of Matthew and Luke, but not in Mark, scholars believe that it is in the earlier “Q” source used by both Matthew and Luke. Q predates both Matthew and Luke, and so it is also fairly early (maybe 67-68), although not as early as Mark and Paul. Bill Craig writes that this passage is also embarrassing because it says that no one knows Jesus.

Learn more

You can learn more about the early belief in the divinity of Jesus by listening to a lecture by William Lane Craig and reading the related paper, and by listening to the debate between Richard Bauckham and James Crossley on that topic. The first link contains other scholarly debates on Jesus.

Points (1) and (3) are good advice. (2) may be true technically, but I don’t think we should ever advise anyone to “give up the minimal amount that you would have to in order to retain a  consistent Christian worldview.” Craig ends with “But don’t allow them [the portions of Scripture Steve finds disagreeable] to stand between you and a personal relationship with God.”

That’s pragmatic advice. No doubt Craig would marshall the thrust of point (1) in to support it. What’s the bigger issue: rejecting a part of Scripture or doctrine of Christianity or rejecting your personal relationship with God? Clearly the later. So putting the problem into perspective requires us to say that we should jettison some supplies to keep the ship from sinking. Right? But what if Craig isn’t advising Steve to throw out some extra baggage but to tear up some of the planks from the hull of the ship?

Let’s go back for a moment. I said that (2) is technically true. So if it is technichally true, then must it be that Craig is advising Steve to throw out some extra baggage and not some planks from the hall? Not necessarily. Technically, one can be a rapist and be “saved” (get to heaven). One can even be saved and then become a rapist and still be saved. Does this mean the belief “rape is wrong” is non-essential? Would Craig tell someone who finds the prohibition of rape disagreeable to not let that stand between them and a personal relationship with God? Of course not. That exposes an important point: to the degree that one indulges in such sexual immorality they cannot have a relationship with God. While it may be logically possible for the rapist to have a relationship with God, it’s highly questionable. That’s not solid ground to stand on, but more on this in my final paragraph.

This is like saying to a married man: look if you can’t resist adultery, it’s better to have a secret affair than letting that stand between you and a personal relationship with your wife. I know Craig would have a response to this. And I’m sure his response would be along the lines of this being a false analogy because rejecting inerrancy isn’t the same sort of relational deal-breaker that adultery is. But that sheds light on another problem with Craig’s advice. It ignores the very important question of the truth of these disagreeable elements of Scripture. Did God command the slaughter of the Canaanites? Does Scripture condemn homosexual relationships? Is Scripture inerrant? Is Scripture God’s word?

If Scripture is God’s word it’s hard to see how God’s word can get in the way of having a personal relationship with God, such that the solution is to reject God’s word! Now just as an adulterer can still have some relationship with his wife even amidst the affair, so Steve can have a relationship with God even while he commits spiritual adultery by embracing 21st century secular sentiments and morals. But let’s keep in mind that the ethics of Scripture are tied to the holiness of God. If we are going to accept Scripture, to find them repugnant is to find the holiness of God repugnant. Which is to find God repugnant. Craig thinks he can avoid this conclusion but pulling the chain of reasoning out from its roots: simply reject that Scripture is accurately depicting God. But, like I said, that side-steps the more important issue of whether such things are true.

I think a more sound route is this. We should advise the adulterous husband to cling to what little relationship he has with his wife not in the minimalist sense of being able to say he has a relationship with her but to try and plant his feet on what little ground he has so that it becomes a step toward embracing her more fully. And if the adulterer thinks he can continue on with the minimalist sense of relationship and say he has a legitimate marriage then he is gravely mistaken. If that’s the case, the adulterer’s relationship with his wife is a facade. The adulterer cannot rest with having met the minimal requirements. The attitude of such resting is in fact indicative of there being no genuine relationship.

P.S. I know I said I wouldn’t be posting much and here I am posting a lot the last few days…

Some years ago I did a wee post on William Lane Craig – to the effect that he was a pushover, more or less. Yet Craig keeps on debating, and claiming ‘victims’. It depends on who you speak to or read, but there’s no doubt that Craig has appeared to come off best in most of the innumerable, and same-ish debates he engages in with atheist academics and/or celebrities. There’s even a forum-type website here, which declares to the world ‘you are not qualified to debate WLC’ (unless you’ve been studying all that WLC has been studying for the last twenty-odd years). Oddly, though the writer also declares that WLC’s arguments aren’t that good, so WTF? (I just threw that in there to go with WLC).

So I’m going to prove this writer, Andrew, wrong, by debating WLC right now, and comprehensively thrashing him. I’m going to base WLC’s presentation on a recent debate he had, last month, with ‘the 13th most important atheist in the world’, Alex Rosenberg, whom I’d never heard of before listening to this debate. The debate, called, ‘Is faith in God reasonable?’ followed a format which seems to be of WLC’s devising, in which he always goes first and sets out five points, or six, or as in this case eight (it was a big event), which show why said faith is reasonable (the debate topic could be ‘does God exist?’ or variants thereof, and he could trot out the same six or eight points). He gets 20 minutes or so to do this, and finishes by saying something like – ‘these eight arguments must each be refuted for the opposition to be taken seriously’.  And so the opposition, namely myself (under my esteemed alias Luigi Funesti-Sordido, founding Secretary of the Urbane Society of Sceptical Romantics) will have twenty minutes to refute these eight points, after which there are 12 minutes each for rebuttals, and five minutes each of summing up, then a Q and A session.

But that’s not how this debate will go. Stay tuned for the drama…

WLC makes his way to the podium and begins. I’ve presented his arguments here virtually as-is, with just a bit of editing-out of examples and recapitulations, etc. Go to the debate for the full version.

WLC : I believe that God’s existence best explains a wide range of the data of human experience. Let me mention eight.

First, God is the best explanation of why anything at all exists. Suppose you see a ball by the roadside and you wonder how it got there, and your mate says ‘don’t worry about it, it just exists, there’s no explanation for it’, you’d think this was crazy, and you’d think the same thing even if the ball was swollen up to the size of the universe. So what is the explanation of the universe? It can lie only in a transcendent reality, beyond the material universe, and this transcendent reality is metaphysically necessary in its existence. Now there’s surely only one way to get a contingent universe out of a necessarily existing cause, and that is if the cause is a personal agent who can freely choose to create a contingent reality. It therefore follows that the best explanation of the contingent universe is a transcendent, personal, being, that’s to say, God. In sum, 1. Every contingent thing has an explanation of its existence. 2. If the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is a transcendent, personal being. 3. The universe is a contingent thing. 4 Therefore the universe has an explanation of its existence (from 1,3). 5. Therefore the explanation of the universe is a transcendent, personal being (from 2,4).

Second, God is the best explanation of the origin of the universe. We have strong evidence that the universe isn’t eternal in the past but had an absolute beginning. In 2003, Borde, Guth and Valenkin were able to prove that any universe which has on average been in a state of cosmic expansion, cannot be infinite in the past but must have a past space-time boundary. What makes their proof so powerful is that it holds regardless of the physical description of the very early universe. Because we don’t yet have a quantum theory of gravity, we can’t yet provide a physical description of the first split-second of the universe, but the B-G-V theorem is independent of any physical description of that moment. Their theorem implies that the quantum vacuum state, which may have characterized the early universe, cannot be eternal in the past, but must have had an absolute beginning. Even if our universe is just a tiny part of a so-called multiverse composed of many universes, their theorem requires that the multiverse itself must have had an absolute beginning. Of course, highly speculative scenarios, such as loop quantum gravity models, string models, even closed time-like curves have been proposed to try to avoid this absolute beginning. These models are fraught with problems, but the bottom line is that none of these models, even if true, succeeds in restoring an eternal past. Last spring at a conference in Cambridge celebrating the 70th birthday of Stephen Hawking, Valenkin delivered a paper entitled, ‘Did the Universe have a beginning?’, which surveyed current cosmology with respect to that question. He argued, and I quote, ‘none of these scenarios can actually be past-eternal. He concluded, ‘all the evidence we have says that the universe had a beginning’. But then the inevitable question arises, why did the universe come into being, what brought the universe into existence? There must have been a transcendent cause which brought the universe into being. In summary, 1. The universe began to exist. 2. If the universe began to exist, then the universe has a transcendent cause. 3 Therefore, the universe has a transcendent cause. By the very nature of the case, that cause must be a transcendent, immaterial being. Now, there are only two possible things that can fit that description. Either an abstract object, like a number, or an unembodied mind or consciousness. But abstract objects don’t stand in causal relations. Therefore the cause of the universe is plausibly an unembodied mind or person, and thus we are brought not merely to a transcendent cause of the universe, but to its personal creator.

Third. God is the best explanation of the applicability of mathematics to the physical world. Philosophers and scientists have puzzled over what physicist Eugene Wigner called, ‘the uncanny effectiveness of mathematics’. How is it that a mathematical theorist like Peter Higgs can sit down at his desk and predict through calculation the existence of a fundamental particle which experimentalists thirty years later after investing millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours are finally able to detect? Mathematics is the language of nature. But how is this to be explained? If mathematical objects are abstract entities, causally isolated from the universe, then the applicability of mathematics is in the words of philosopher of mathematics Penelope Maddy, ‘a happy coincidence’. On the other hand if mathematical objects are just useful fictions, how is it that nature is written in the language of these fictions? In his book Dr Rosenberg emphasizes that naturalism doesn’t tolerate cosmic coincidences, but the naturalist has no explanation of the uncanny applicability of mathematics to the physical world. By contrast the theist has a ready explanation. When God created the physical universe he designed it on the mathematical structure he had in mind. We can summarize this argument: 1. If God did not exist, the applicability of mathematics would be a happy coincidence. 2. The applicability of mathematics is not a happy coincidence. 3. Therefore God exists.

Fourth. God is the best explanation for the fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life. In recent decades, scientists have been stunned by the discovery that the initial conditions of the big bang were fine-tuned for the existence of intelligent life with a precision and delicacy that literally defy human comprehension. Now there are three live explanatory options for this extraordinary fine-tuning. Physical necessity, chance, or design. Physical necessity is not, however, a plausible explanation because the finely tuned constants and quantities are independent of the laws of nature and therefore they are not physically necessary. So could the fine-tuning be due to chance? The problem with this explanation is that the odds of a life-permitting universe gotten by our laws of nature are so infinitesimal that they cannot be reasonably faced. Therefore the proponents of chance have been forced to postulate the existence of a world-ensemble of other universes, preferably infinite in number and randomly ordered so that life-permitting universes would appear by chance somewhere in the ensemble. Not only is this hypothesis to borrow Richard Dawkins’ phrase an ‘unparsimonious extravagance’, but, it faces an insuperable objection. By far, most of the observable universes in a world-ensemble would be worlds in which a single brain fluctuates into existence out of the vacuum and observes its otherwise empty world. Thus if our world were just a random member of a world-ensemble, we ought to be having observations like that. Since we don’t, that strongly disconfirms the world-ensemble hypothesis. So chance is also not a good explanation. It follows that design is the best explanation of the fine-tuning of the universe, and thus the fine-tuning of the universe constitutes evidence for a cosmic designer.

Fifth. God is the best explanation of intentional states of consciousness in the world. Philosophers are puzzled by states of intentionality. Intentionality is the property of being about something, or of something. It signifies the object-directedness of our thoughts. For example I can think about my summer vacation, or I can think of my wife. No physical object has this sort of intentionality. A chair, or a stone, or a glob of tissue like the brain is not about, or ‘of’ something else, only mental states or states of consciousness are about other things. As a materialist, Dr Rosenberg recognizes this fact, and so concludes that on atheism there really are no intentional states. Dr Rosenberg boldly claims that we never really think about anything. But this seems incredible. Obviously, I am thinking about Dr Rosenberg’s argument. This seems to me to be a reductio ad absurdum of atheism. By contrast, on theism, because God is a mind, it’s hardly surprising that there should be finite minds. Thus intentional states fit comfortably into a theistic worldview. So we can argue 1. If God did not exist, intentional states of consciousness would not exist. 2. But intentional states of consciousness do exist. 3 Therefore God exists.

Sixth. God is the best explanation of objective moral values and duties in the world. In moral experience we apprehend moral values and duties which impose themselves as objectively binding and true. For example, we all recognize that it’s wrong to walk into a school and to shoot little children and their teachers. On a naturalistic view however there’s nothing really wrong with this. Moral values are just the subjective by-product of biological evolution and social conditioning. Dr Rosenberg is brutally honest about the implications of his atheism. He writes ‘there’s no such thing as morally right or wrong, individual human life is meaningless and without ultimate moral value. We need to face the fact that nihilism is true.’ By contrast the theist grounds objective moral values in God and our moral duties in his commands. The theist thus has the explanatory resources which the atheist lacks to ground objective moral values and duties. Hence we may argue 1 objective moral values and duties exist 2 but if God did not exist, objective moral values and duties would not exist 3 therefore God exists.

seven. God is the best explanation of the historical facts about Jesus of Nazareth. Historians have reached something of a consensus that Jesus came on the scene with an unprecedented sense of divine authority, the authority to stand and speak in God’s place. He claimed that in himself the kingdom of God had come., and as visible demonstrations of this fact he carried out a ministry of miracle-working and exorcisms. But the supreme confirmation of his claim was his resurrection from the dead. If Jesus did indeed rise from the dead, then it would seem that we have a divine miracle on our hands and thus evidence for the existence of God. Now I realize that most people think that the resurrection of Jesus is something you just accept by faith, or not, but there are actually three facts recognized by the majority of historians, which I believe, are best explained by the resurrection of Jesus. Fact 1 On the Sunday after his crucifixion, Jesus’s tomb was found empty by a group of his women followers. 2 On separate occasions different individuals and groups of people saw appearances of Jesus alive after his death, and 3 The original disciples suddenly came to believe in the resurrection of Jesus, despite having every predisposition to the contrary. The eminent British scholar N T Wright near the end of his 800-page study of the historicity of Jesus’s resurrection, concludes that the empty tomb and post-mortem appearances of Jesus had been established to such a high degree of historical probability as to be ‘virtually certain, akin to the death of Caesar Augustus in AD 17 or the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70′. Naturalistic attempts to explain away these three great facts, like ‘the disciples stole the body’ or ‘Jesus wasn’t really dead’ have been universally rejected by contemporary scholarship. The simple fact is that there just is no plausible naturalistic explanation of these facts. And therefore it seems to me that the Christian is amply justified in believing that Jesus rose from the dead and was who he claimed to be. But that entails that God exists. Thus we have a good inductive argument to the existence of God based on the facts concerning the resurrection of Jesus.

Eight. God can be personally known and experienced. This isn’t really an argument for God’s existence, rather it’s the claim that you can know that God exists wholly apart from arguments, simply by personally experiencing him. Philosophers call beliefs like this ‘properly basic beliefs’. They aren’t based on some other beliefs, rather they’re part of the foundations of a person’s system of beliefs. Other properly basic beliefs would be belief in the reality of the past, or the existence of the external world. In the same way, belief in God is for those who seek him as properly basic, grounded in our experience of God. Now if this is so then there’s a danger that arguments for God could actually distract our attention from God himself. The Bible promises ‘draw near to God and he will draw near to you’. We mustn’t so concentrate on the external proofs that we fail to hear the inner voice of God speaking to our own hearts. For those who listen, God becomes a personal reality in their lives.

In summary then we’ve seen eight respects in which God provides a better explanation of the world than naturalism. For all of these reasons I believe that belief in God is eminently reasonable. If [the ineffable Mr Funesti-Sordido] is to persuade us otherwise, he must first tear down all eight of the reasons I’ve presented, and then in their place erect a case of his own to show why belief in God is unreasonable. Unless and until he does that, I think we should agree that it is reasonable to believe in God.

After the voluminous applause dies away, the redoubtable Luigi Funesti-Sordido, Founding Secretary of the (new) USSR rises to the occasion, and changes the world….

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Clifton begins his critique by attacking the idea that the cosmological argument entails that God exists. The overall conclusion of the argument is that the universe must have a cause and Clifton takes issue with calling this cause “God”. Well, the fact that he doesn’t adress Craig’s argument for why the cause is a personal God, reveals that he only has a cursory understanding of the argument. Craig does provide arguments for thinking the cause to be a personal God. Firstly, and most obviously, the cause must be transcendent. Because it causes space and time, it must stand outside of space and time. Transcendence implies timelessness and immateriality. In what I believe is his most popular book, Reasonable Faith, Craig provides three reasons for considering it a personal agent ( pg. 152- 153). The beginning of the universe could not have a scientific explanation, which means that it must have a personal explanation ( which other type of explanation exists?).I’m not going to list the third reason as well, but the second reason is that his personhood is implied by his timelessness and immateriality. The only two things we know which can have such qualities is an abstract object or a mind. Abstract objects cannot stand in causal relations, which is why it is a mind. This isn’t only his book. Craig presents this reasoning about the personhood of the first cause in his debates too.

Clifton goes on to make a dubious claim about the first law of thermodynamics: that it states that energy “can neither be created nor destroyed”. Since I’m sure he isn’t a scientist himself, I would like to know his sources. It already sounds initially implausible that the laws of thermodynamics would entail that energy is infinite.  He then makes his main argument challenging the first premise of the cosmological argument ( everything that begins to exist has a cause). Clifton argues that everything that we would normally say begins to exist cannot be said to have begun to exist. This is because everything is just a reorganization of matter. Things that appear to begin to exist are not really beginning to exist because the matter that composed them existed before, in different organization. So, this argument is meant to undermine the first premise, that the universe began to exist. There are at least four things wrong with it. Firstly, it seems to commit the fallacy of composition ( reasoning from the component parts of a thing to the thing itself. Because the component parts of things are not new, it does not follow that the things themselves are not new). Secondly, simply because everything that we see come into being is a reorganization of matter clearly doesn’t mean that nothing new comes into being. That would be to imply that the matter of a thing is the only ontologically significant category regarding it, which is patently ridiculous. It is akin to saying that a lamp and a table are really the same things, because both of them are made of matter. Ontologically, what matters just as much as the matter, even more, is the form of a thing- matter is only one aspect of its being. In Aristotelian terminology, the material cause of a thing, is only a single cause, and cannot be seen to account for something all by its lonesome. To truly account for something, you at least also require the formal cause and the efficient cause. Organization is obviously not ontologically insignificant.

Thirdly, even if I were to concede the point above, and I think I have already given enough reason to throw it into an intellectual trash heap, it would still be faulty. It makes the assumption that the first premise depends upon empirical observation, which I don’t think it does. That things require a cause for their existence is an a priori, analytic principle, not ( or at least, not only) an a posteriori principle.We assume that things require an explanation of their existence independent of any observation. In fact, our empirical observation depends on the assumption that everything requires an explanation. The only way that we can make sense of empirical data is with this assumption.

Fourthly, I can assume that our observation of causality is really what the first premise depends upon and Clifton’s argument would still be faulty. In other words, even if the first premise doesn’t crucially rely on empirical observation, empirical observation can still be said to support it. The first premise is true not only of everything that begins to exist, but everything that happens at all!We can know that things that begin to exist has a cause, because we know that everything that happens has a cause ( and beginning to exist is something which happens). We know that when we hear a sound there is a cause to it. The idea that everything which happens has a cause, can easily be verified by empirical observation. So we have good inductive grounds for believing it.  We may reformulate the first premise: everything that happens has a cause, therefore everything that begins to exist has a cause.

Clifton’s objection to the first premise is very similar to one presented by Peter Millican, the Oxford philosopher, in response to Craig’s cosmological argument in a debate. In fact, Millican was probably one of Craig’s more formidable opponents, and I would encourage you to check it out. Craig’s response to this argument in the debate is as follows: “Dr. Millican says we don’t experience creation out of nothing. That’s right…Rather we don’t experience things coming into being without material causes. That’s true. But if something cannot come into being without an efficient cause, it is even doubly impossible for it to come into being without an efficient cause and a material cause. This is even more absurd…”

Then Clifton attempts to use this obviously inadequate argument to argue that creatio ex nihilo is impossible. As I understand it, he argues that because creatio ex nihilo is not empirically observable, it must be impossible. It doesn’t follow, clearly. The cosmological argument doesn’t claim that creatio ex nihilo is an empirically observable phenomenon. Here is where he becomes slightly convoluted. “If a thing ever did begin to exist, its impossible to demonstrate that it could’ve been caused to do so, by something that already exists”. Now, the way Clifton speaks about non-existence is very strange. “Riddle me this, how does something that exist, cause something that doesn’t exist, to do anything?” Again, very strange phrasing. Clifton assumes that causes must act upon raw material in order to create something new, which is what his objection to the first premise, just dealt with, is supposed to have shown. But anyway, his point seems to be merely, that creatio ex nihilo, is not an empirical phenomenon, and that, normally, causes operate on things which already exist. Well, this is all good and well. The cosmological argument doesn’t claim that creatio ex nihilo is empirical. It certainly doesn’t follow from this that creatio ex nihilo is a “logical contradiction”.  It has always been viewed as a highly singular event. The point of the matter is that the choice that lays before us is either the universe spontaneously appeared into being from nothing, without cause, or it had a cause to create it from nothing. Which is more absurd?Even if we do think that an omnipotent being creating something out of nothing is absurd, which I don’t see, the alternative is much more absurd. What is logically impossible about it? All that Clifton has shown is that it is not empirical ( if we assume that his argument is sound, which I’ve already shown, it is not). This doesn’t make it a logical contradiction. There seems to be something of a confirmation bias here in favour of verificationism.

Either way he doesn’t even seem to understand the position that he is commited to on atheism. Consider the following quote: “Something coming into existence ex nihilo is 100% conjecture.” Well, no, obviously not. Current scientific cosmology does say there is a decisive point at which the universe ( matter, energy and space) came into being. So, it becomes clear that something physical did come from what was non-physicality, and if the atheist wants to claim that the physical is all there is, then the universe did come into being from nothing. The atheist is commited to the greater absurdity in claiming the universe came into being from a bigger nothing, as it were, than the theist. For the theist, the universe, didn’t truly come into being from nothing- it came into being from God. On the atheist’s picture, however, the universe came into being from more of a nothing than on theism. There is no god and no preexisting material. Thus the atheist’s position is a greater “ex nihilo” than is the theist’s position.

Note: even if you have heard Dr. Craig’s arguments before, I recommend jumping to the 48 minutes of Q&A time, which starts 72 minutes in.

About Dr. William Lane Craig:

William Lane Craig (born August 23, 1949) is an American analytic philosopher, philosophical theologian, and Christian apologist. He is known for his work on the philosophy of time and the philosophy of religion, specifically the existence of God and the defense of Christian theism. He has authored or edited over 30 books including The Kalam Cosmological Argument (1979), Theism, Atheism and Big Bang Cosmology(co-authored with Quentin Smith, 1993), Time and Eternity: Exploring God’s Relationship to Time (2001), and Einstein, Relativity and Absolute Simultaneity (co-edited with Quentin Smith, 2007).

Craig received a Bachelor of Arts degree in communications from Wheaton College, Illinois, in 1971 and two summa cum laudemaster’s degrees from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois, in 1975, in philosophy of religion and ecclesiastical history. He earned a Ph.D. in philosophy under John Hick at the University of Birmingham, England in 1977 and a Th.D. underWolfhart Pannenberg at the University of Munich, Germany in 1984.

Here is the full lecture with Q&A: (2 hours)

Summary:

• Naturalism defined: the physical world (matter, space and time) is all that exists
• Dr. Craig will present 7 reasons why naturalism is false
• 1) the contingency argument
• 2) the kalam cosmological argument
• 3) the fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life
• 4) the moral argument
• 5) the ontological argument
• 6) the resurrection of Jesus
• 7) religious experience

The Q&A time starts around 1:12:00.

Dr. Craig does mention an 8th argument early in the Q&A – the argument from the non-physicality of mental states (substance dualism), which is an argument that I find convincing, because a materialist conception of mind is not compatible with rationality, consciousness and moral agency. He gets a couple of questions on the moral argument early on – one of them tries to put forward an evolutionary explanation for “moral” behaviors. There’s another question the definition of naturalism. There is a bonehead question about the non-existence of Jesus based on a Youtube movie he saw – which Craig responds to with agnostic historian Bart Ehrman’s book on that topic. There’s a question about God as the ground for morality – does morality come from his will or nature. Then there is a question about the multiverse, which came up at the physics conference Dr. Craig attended the day before. There is a good question about the Big Bang theory and the initial singularity at time t=0. Another good question about transfinite arithmetic, cardinality and set theory. One questioner asks about the resurrection argument. The questioner asks if we can use the origin of the disciples belief as an argument when other religions have people who are willing to die for their claims. One of the questioners asks about whether the laws of nature break down at 10^-43 after the beginning of the universe. There is a question about the religious experience argument, and Craig has the opportunity to give his testimony.

I thought that the questions from the Scottish students and faculty were a lot more thoughtful and respectful than at American colleges and universities. Highly recommended.

Here are the five most highlighted sections of my book and what they mean to me almost a year after publication.

1. Now, living with the understanding that this is it and this is all there ever will be literally makes every moment more valuable than I could have ever imagined. 31 people highlighted this.

• This is more true for me now, than ever. I’ve always tried to be an “in the moment” person and since I dumped god belief, that has naturally intensified. I’m very conscience of savoring moments; not in a “Tony Robbins” kind of way but almost in a morose sense because I know that this ride can end at any given moment. That understanding never sunk in with me as a believer since human death was simply a transition to the next thing. So now, the awareness of my pending finality may have morose shading, but even more so, it forces me to realize that I fucking love being alive. That juxtaposition is kind of cool but makes me feel really stupid at the same time (I’ll need to write about how I almost died a couple of times when I was a young, dumb, believer).

2. Not possessing the answer to a question by NO MEANS even remotely suggests that there isn’t an answer. This understanding might just be the most important concept that an intelligent species needs to wrap their arms around. 27 people highlighted this.

• I spend way to much time studying today’s popular apologists, like William Lane Craig, because I am a glutton for punishment and I like to try to understand as many facets of religious debate as my limited intelligence will permit. People like Craig, would run me ragged in a debate because I stammer and I struggle to make coherent verbal arguments since my brain vomits on itself when I try. Thus, I fare much better using a keyboard. I love that these two sentences resonate with people because they resonate with me and they point to perhaps the most glaring detriment of religious apologetics; arguing for a god or a supernatural belief, no matter how eloquent or how persuasive, really is one big argument from ignorance (IMHO).

3. The key to such a fear-based theology is to implement the dogma at as early an age as possible. 26 people highlighted this.

• Give me the child for his first seven years and I’ll molest him I’ll give you the man. (I was Jesuit educated, I’m very comfortable slipping in a Catholic rape dig, deal with it. FYI: the “give me the child” quote is attributed to Jesuit co-founder, Francis Xavier; interesting wiki read if you have time.) This sentence is very “Captain Obvious” but I’m still pleased that people highlighted it. I clearly remember sitting through religion classes in elementary school and never even suspecting that mixed in with math and reading was a daily dose of fear based fiction. I’d pay anything to watch magic video tape of my schoolboy days to see exactly what (and how) I was taught.

4. One other possibility, of course, is that religious texts are nothing more than long-winded, muddled, hyperbolic, confusing, contradictory, second (third, fourth, fifth)-hand, man-made publications that come with an inordinately small percentage of useful, yet obvious, words of wisdom that humans have figured out from millennia of experience and not from divine intervention. 25 people highlighted this.

• For me, the best (or worst) aspect of the Bible, or any other religious text, is the absolute dearth of useful writing. The Bible should be a succinct book that literally impresses every human from the idiot to the genius with its wisdom and clarity. But the reality is that the Bible is dull, rambling, confusing, contradictory, and tedious beyond measure; this is why barely anyone reads it.

5. But current ignorance is just not a sufficient reason to dismiss future discoveries. And personal ignorance is not a significant enough reason to dismiss current knowledge. 24 people highlighted this.

• When I read this it make me think about evolution deniers, most of whom know nothing about evolution to begin with but are more than confident to rejoice that they reject it. See argument from ignorance, above.

Part 1 of 2: (61 minutes)

Part 2 of 2: (42 minutes)

The moderator is none other than the famous journalist David Aikman! The opening speeches are only 15 minutes, and the rebuttals are 10 minutes. This debate is accessible because Craig’s opponent is not really attacking him on a scholarly basis, but more as the pretty typical liberal atheist that you meet at work.

Craig spends all of his opening speech explaining historical methods, sources, dating and how he infers the resurrection as the best explanation of the minimal facts. The resurrection of Jesus is quite awesome to debate when people are given time to explain the historical methods and how the scholars use these methods to evaluate which facts are likely to be historical and which are not.

First he outlines the familiar Cosmological Argument:

1. Everything that exists has an explanation of its existence, either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause.
2. If the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is God.
3. The universe exists.
4. Therefore, the explanation of the universe’s existence is God.

He then sets out to defend premise (2) by saying this:

Besides, (2) is quite plausible in its own right. For an external cause of the universe must be beyond space and time and therefore cannot be physical or material. Now there are only two kinds of things that fit that description: either abstract objects, like numbers, or else an intelligent mind. But abstract objects are causally impotent. The number 7, for example, can’t cause anything. Therefore, it follows that the explanation of the universe is an external, transcendent, personal mind that created the universe—which is what most people have traditionally meant by “God.”

In the quoted passage we have a blatant use of a false dichotomy.  He claims that there can only be two explanations for the causation of the universe: (1) an abstract concept or (2) an intelligent mind.  The force behind this claim is supposed to be that whatever it is that caused the universe must be outside space and time and the only two categories of things that can exist outside of time are abstract concepts or intelligent minds.  But why on earth does Craig think this?  The only intelligent minds we know about are made of matter, so it’s not clear how one can make the leap to say that intelligent minds are of a certain kind of thing that can exist outside of space time.  It is perhaps logically possible that something that functions as a ‘mind’ could exist outside of space time, but it would be fundamentally different than any mind we have ever come across and we have zero evidence about the existence of such minds (remember the Cosmological Argument is trying to prove the existence of such a mind, so it would be question begging to already say we know about minds in this way!).

Why does Craig think he can make any claims about what exists outside of space time?  What is the epistemic ground he is standing on to make such claims?  Shouldn’t we be purely agnostic on entities existing outside of space time?

This is where the Cosmological Argument fails on a fundamental level.  It actually succeeds, in my mind, up to the premise, “The Universe has a cause”. But the leap to, “that cause is God”, is so insanely large it’s hard to believe Aquinas wrote it in the first place. If we assume that the Universe is of a type of thing that is necessarily caused, then the type of thing that caused it would have to be a type of thing that itself does not require a cause, and would therefore be fundamentally different from our Universe.  There is no evidence to suggest the existence of anything of this sort.  At this point, as reasonable people, we must be humble in our epistemology and say, “I don’t know”, to the question of what exists beyond our universe, until a justified way of knowing about things outside of the universe comes to light.

Over at his personal website, people can read the full, free collection of Price’s thoughts on religion and comics with the complete archive of his “Hero Worship” columns. The host of The Human Bible and The Bible Geek podcasts also tackles topics like Kingdom Come, Marvel Man, and “The Death of Superman” storyline, all from his religious skeptic perspective.

Certainly, Price has his detractors (e.g. Reverend John Rankin, William Lane Craig, Bart Ehrman), little has been said about his reflections on comics — far little than, say, his writing on H.P. Lovecraft.

Rao Wants to Know:  Is Price a true comics scholar or a scholar who dabbles with comics?

This is a great opportunity!

God Bless

Brian Mason