Big Bang, Evolution, and the Bible on the Judaism Demystified Podcast

thank you for joining the Judaism demystified podcast it is an honor and privilege to have with us Dr William Lane Craig first of all for our audience would you tell us a little bit about yourself I am a Christian philosopher I uh have a position at Talbot School of Theology in California and at Houston Christian University in Texas I'm also the president of uh an online Ministry called reasonable faith uh.org and am involved in um the philosophical and Theological exploration of Christian theism thank you very much for those listening my favorite interview that I've seen with uh Dr Craig is with Roger Penrose um I recommend all of you tune into to that one that was a great one so first my first question is would you elucidate your stance on creation X Neo that is creation from nothing integrating perspectives from both theological Doctrine and contemporary scientific understanding particularly in relation to the Big Bang Theory I think that Genesis 1 uh implies logically creatio xilo that is to say the doctrine that God created the universe but not out of any kind of material uh substratum uh the initial verse of Genesis says in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth and the word there bar for created is a word that has only God as its subject and does not require any sort of material substratum and the expression the heavens and the Earth is an idiom in the Hebrew language denoting the entire universe the entirety of physical reality so at face value verse one uh teaches that uh God at the very beginning created the entire physical universe and I think that verse one is neither a subordinate clause it is an independent clause and uh nor the title of chapter 1 but it is providing background information for verses two and following so I think right from the very first verse of the Bible um you have a teaching of Creo X nio and this is confirmed then in the prophets such as Isaiah and other uh passages in the Hebrew Bible and in connection with uh modern scientific understanding the ancient Jewish commitment to creio ex nielo creation out of nothing put uh Judaism in conflict with Greek philosophical thought which taught the past eternity of universe the universe and materialism that uh matter has always existed and for thousands of years this uh Jewish point of view stood in opposition to this mainstream view of materialism from ancient Greek materialism up through Modern uh Marxism and materialistic theories of the universe this however was dramatically upended in the second decade of the 20th century when Albert Einstein applied his newly discovered gravitation Theory the general theory of relativity to the universe as a whole and to his shock and the shock of everyone else it was discovered that the general theory of relativity would not permit a past Eternal Universe rather the equations indicated that the universe is expanding and that as you trace the expansion back in time the universe becomes denser and denser until until uh at a point in the finite past it literally disappears uh there is an absolute beginning not only of all matter and energy but a physical space and time themselves and so completely contrary to expectation contemporary astrophysics confirmed the ancient Jewish view of the beginning of the universe and its origination EX niilo amazing amazing so regarding the concept of EX Dio the idea that the Universe emerged from God and is inherently United with his own being while we both align against panentheism could you explore any spec any interpretations within the biblical narrative specifically the Old Testament or tanak that refute this perspective furthermore could you delineate the reasons why both pantheism and pantheism stand in contradiction to our faiths prefacing your explanation with a clarification of these terms for our audience okay so let's begin with a clarification of terms for the sake of the audience um pantheism means that the entire universe the all physical reality is itself God it identifies the physical universe with God pantheism is characteristic of many Eastern religions which deny that there is a Transcendent creator of the universe who exists beyond space and time who is himself immaterial and who brings all physical reality into being pantheism by contrast is the view that physical reality exists in God it doesn't exhaust God's being it's not identical to God as in pantheism but it says that everything is in God the physical Universe somehow in some mysterious ways emanates out of the very beginning of God out of the very being of God so even if God is more than the universe uh uh he is no nothing less than the universe the universe uh emanates or proceeds out of the very being of God now these World Views or perspectives I think are both antithetical to um theism which is taught in the judeo-christian TR tradition we saw that the Bible begins with the words in the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth for God to create the material Universe out of himself he would himself have to be material but that contradicts the fundamental um teaching of the Hebrew Bible that God is Spirit rather than material reality the word that is used for God uh over and over again in the Hebrew Bible is ruach uh spirit and this characterizes the being of God in contrast to say flesh or Bashar that word Bashar is never used of God in the Hebrew Bible whereas ruach is used some 136 times of God in the uh Hebrew Bible and indicates the antithesis between spirit and materialism and the most theologically significant use of ruach or spirit is for Spiritual Beings or spiritual agents that is to say agents without bodies and I'm thinking here of the use of ruak to describe first human Spirits uh when human Spirits are described apart from the body when the um body has died and is laid in the earth human Spirits continue to exist and are referred to a as being ruach Spirits uh in addition to that ruach is used of non human finite Spiritual Beings such as Angels or demons which are also personal agents without bodies and then finally as I indicated the preeminent use of ruak in the Hebrew Bible is of God himself God is a spiritual being he is an immaterial reality who transcends the physical world and has created the physical world so I think that panentheism not to say pantheism is completely incompatible with the conception of God in the Hebrew Bible fascinating and um I actually wanted to point out there is a famous verse that says holy holy holy God is um his his honor fills the world I'm paraphrasing it um but basically the the real translation of kadosh which is holy is actually Sanctified or separate that God is separate it's a separate separate separate his honor fills the world meaning meaning to say that it's not him who fills the world it's his we can see evidence for his you know his his glory or his honor or his intelligence we see evidence for that in the world but it's not him um that's a very important uh verse I feel like people should really analyze um but thank you so much that was really really uh fascinating so another topic I want to get into is the accusation from atheistic circles that often centers around theist resorting to a god of the gaps argument for phenomena unexplained by science interestingly some atheists appear to embrace the concept of an eternal Universe potentially through the unverifiable notion of a Multiverse to circumvent the implications of the Big Bang yet dismiss the plausibility of God's eternality notably figures Like Richard Dawkins have posited that the complexity observed in DNA suggests an intellig designer albeit ascribing it to extraterrestrial origin rather than a Divine entity could you address this apparent science of the gaps contradiction and share your compelling Arguments for theism when confronting atheistic critiques all right there are a number of facets to the question that you've asked first of all I think it's very important to understand that the basis for belief in creation out of nothing is not science it is is the Bible the Bible teaches creatio X Neo and for Millennia Jews and Christians have believed this Doctrine wholly apart from modern science it wasn't until roughly 100 years ago that we had scientific evidence for the beginning of the universe so the basis for the belief in creation out of nothing is Biblical teaching not science the question question for the Bible believer then is is this Biblical teaching at odds with the deliverances of modern science or is it in accord with the deliverances of modern science and here it's indisputable I think that the doctrine of creation out of nothing is certainly in accord with modern science uh whether or not it's proved by modern science is irrelevant the Jew or Christian who comes to the table with his biblical theism firmly in hand is adopting a position concerning the origin of the universe that is right at the center of contemporary cosmogony and astrophysics there is no Discord uh between the belief in Creo X Neo and contemporary science even if one doesn't regard modern science as a positive proof of creatio EX Neo now with respect to this idea of a god of the gaps argument I think it's very important to understand that um arguments that appeal to Scientific evidence are not using God to be a stop Gap to plug up the holes in our scientific understanding of reality rather the proper way to view these arguments is that science can provide evidence in support of a premise in a philosophical argument leading to a conclusion of theological significance let me repeat that just to make it clear science can provide evidence in support of a premise in a philosophical argument for a conclusion that has theological significance so for example take the cam cosmological argument which has been uh defended historically by Jews uh Muslims and Christians this argument is very simple premise one is that the UN or premise one is that whatever begins to exist has a cause of its beginning premise two is that the Universe began to exist and then three the conclusion is therefore the universe has a cause of its beginning and you can then do a conceptual analysis of what it is to be a cause of the universe and number of theologically striking properties uh can be recovered from such an analysis now notice that the second premise of that argument the universe began to exist is a religiously neutral statement that can be found in any textbook on astronomy and astrophysics to claim that the scientific evidence supports this premise is not in any way to postulate a god of the gaps uh this is a theologically neutral premise which has I think really compelling scientific evidence in its support so someone who uses um the scientific evidence in support of a premise in an argument um for theological conclusion is not postulating God of the gaps reasoning that is to say using God to stop up the gaps in our scientific knowledge this argument is based on what we do know about uh the universe it is based on what contemporary science does tell us about the past namely that the universe is in all probability not past Eternal but had an absolute beginning a finite time ago now you spoke of a Kind of Science of the gaps that is often used by naturalists in response to arguments of this sort and I wouldn't characterize that Ben as science of the gaps I don't think this is an opposition between theism and Science in any way rather I would characterize it as a naturalism of the gaps naturalism is the view that there are no Supernatural entities uh particularly there is no God uh that all that exists is just SpaceTime and its contents uh and I think it is a kind of naturalist M of the gaps that motivates a lot of these desperate attempts to avoid where the evidence points uh and here I think that's evident in that there would be no reason to resist where the evidence is pointing for example the beginning of the universe if it were not for the fact that these naturalists see where that's leading uh leads to an unacceptable conclusion and therefore they have a kind of naturalism of the gaps that what ever caused the universe or whatever the the evidence is somehow the universe is not passed Eternal despite the fact that all the evidence points in that direction and so I would ask them apart from the presupposition of naturalism which is to beg the question why resist where the evidence points why not accept uh where the evidence points which is that the universe is not past Eternal but had a beginning now in terms of the arguments for theism that one might present I have presented multiple Arguments for theism only some of which appeal to uh scientific evidence in support of some of its premises let me just list some of these Arguments for you number one I think that God is the best explanation for why anything at all exists rather than nothing this version of the cosmological argument doesn't appeal to Scientific evidence rather it's a purely uh philosophical argument that at the basis of all reality there must be a metaphysically necessary being which is distinct from the universe and supplies a sufficient reason why the universe exists the second argument would be that God is the best explanation for the origin of the universe at a point in the finite path this is the colam cosmological argument to which I've already uh alluded and I think it has both philosophical and scientific evidence in support of its key premises the third argument would be the argument from The Uncanny applicability of mathematics to physical phenomena why is it that the physical phenomena of this world are describable by elegant mathematical equations uh that are incomprehensible in their accuracy and uh so valuable in their utility this argument from the applicability of mathematics has been defended in our day by the Jewish philosopher um Mark Steiner in his book The applicability of mathematics as a philosophical problem fourth would be that God is the best best explanation for the fine tuning of the universe for embodied conscious agents like ourselves the fine tuning of the universe refers to the fundamental constants and quantities that were simply given in the Big Bang itself that show that the universe is fine-tuned to an Exquisite Precision for the existence of embodied conscious agents like us again all probability uh given naturalism the fifth argument would be that God is the best explanation for the objectivity of moral values and moral duties in the world again this is not a scientific argument it's a philosophical argument that appeals to our moral experience we sense that certain things are really right and and really wrong really good and really evil and the best explanation for the objectivity of the moral values and duties that we grasp uh are that these are grounded in God who is the Paradigm of moral goodness and whose commands constitute for us our moral obligations the sixth argument would be that the very possibility of God's existence entails that God exists this is the f famous ontological argument of St anel and I'm persuaded that a sound and plausible version of the autological argument can be formulated such that the atheist has to deny not merely that God exists he has to deny that it's even possible that God exists so long as God's existence is even possible the argument shows that that entails that God exists and then finally I think that God can be personally known and experienced this isn't really an argument for God's existence but it's the claim that Holy apart from arguments you can know that God exists by having a personal um relationship with God and so for all of these reasons I think that we have a powerful cumulative case for believing that God exists so I want to just ask a few questions on this and Zev also has questions on this particular so um what is the the strong what is the argument of the of the Multiverse Theory and like for example the fine-tuning they seem to be trying to kind of dismiss that by saying that well this universe that we live in in particular happens to be fine-tuned but the other ones are not so H how does that work I'm trying to understand like the log maybe understand it better I think I can make this very clear to our listeners if you have just one roulette wheel spinning then the probability that you're going to come up with just a particular uh number like the red 20 is very remote but if you have hundreds thousands that's say millions of roulette wheels all spinning at the same time then the chances are that in at least one of them that the red 20 is going to come up and if getting the red 20 is a necessary condition of your existing then of course anybody that is alive is going to observe the red 20 because the other universes that are not fine-tuned would be unobservable you you wouldn't exist in them so you you couldn't observe them and so the claim is that if you multiply your probabilistic resources sufficiently that anything can be explained away on the basis that there is this infinite Multiverse of Worlds uh so that fine-tuned worlds will appear somewhere in this world Ensemble and those are the only ones that are observable and there therefore there's nothing here to be surprised about or to be explained now Roger Penrose has raised an objection to this Multiverse explanation of find tuning that I think is really devastating what he points out is that it is not true that only fine-tuned worlds are observable you can have worlds that are not fine-tuned for the existence of uh of embodied conscious agents like us but that which would be still observable there could be freak observers uh that could observe their worlds these are often called Boston brain yes yes okay these are often called boltzman brains after the great 19th century Austrian physicist Lish boltzman and these boltzman brains would be just a brain that fluctuates into existence say out of the quantum vacuum and just exists for a little time with illus perceptions of an external world around it but in fact the bolon brain is the only thing that exists and the rest of the universe is all an illusion of this brain well that kind of universe is incomparably more probable than a finally tuned Universe like ours and yet it is observable and so on the Multiverse hypothesis it leads to a radical skepticism about the world around us that the the The Atheist would have to believe that he is all that exists and that the rest of the universe his own body his wife other people are just illusions of his own Consciousness well no sane person believes that he's a boltzman brain and yet if the Multiverse hypothesis is true there's no way to distinguish between uh a normal decent Observer like ourselves and a boltzman brain and therefore this is really I think a devastating objection to the rationality of the Multiverse hypothesis yeah I mean that almost sounds like solipsism like you know which is insane solipsism that's right uh you would be the only thing that exists and everything else is an illusion of your Consciousness exactly and I and I I love how you the arguments you Marshall in favor of God basically being the final Theory of Everything I had two questions on on two of the points there was one about the column cosmological argument I know that the second uh point about everything that begins to exist that has obviously uh in some circles is more controversial um so I I would be curious to hear what you say about that um so I'll take that question first that'll be yes let's review the first premise is that everything that begins to exist has a cause of its beginning now as you say I think that's hardly controversial things don't just pop into existence out of nothing out of nothing nothing comes so if something begins to exist there must be a cause that brings that thing into being I think that's quite perspicuous so the more controversial premise is the second one that the Universe began to exist and here I would Marshall both philosophical arguments as well as scientific arguments in support of this premise concerning philosophical arguments a medieval Jewish philosopher like Sadia Ben gayan uh defended uh Arguments for the beginning of the universe on Purely philosophical grounds showing that there cannot have been an infinite regress of past events and there sadya claimed there must must have been an absolutely first event uh which was brought into being by a Transcendent Creator and I'm persuaded that these purely philosophical arguments are sound arguments and have defended them in my published work what is incredible is that since uh the second decade of the 20th century there has been ACC accumulating increasingly scientific evidence uh or confirmation of this second premise and I have reference here to two things first would be the discovery of the expansion of the universe and the Big Bang model of the origin of the universe which shows that the Universe cannot be past Eternal but must have had an absolute beginning over the decades since this was first proposed in the 1920s there has been a parade of alternative theories trying to avert the beginning of the universe predicted by the standard model we've seen oscillating models vacuum fluctuation models steady state models and over and over again these theories have been shown to be either mathematically untenable or physically uh impossible or they actually wind up implying the very origin of the universe that they sought to avoid and so the evidence is such that a cosmologist like Alexander venin um a preeminent uh astrophysicist at tus University can say that all the evidence we have says that the Universe had a beginning now that's a remarkable statement think about it venin does not say that the evidence for a beginning outweighs the evidence against a beginning no he says all the evidence we have says that the universe had a beginning in fact I'm not aware of any evidence that the universe is past Eternal what evidence we have is all on one side of the scale and so I think that makes it highly probable that in fact the second premise is true that the Universe began to exist uh in addition to that there's also scientific confirmation from the second law of Thermodynamics the second law of Thermodynamics shows that the Universe cannot be projected uh into past Infinity rather there must have been a beginning a finite time ago in which the energy of the universe was simply put in as an initial condition and since then the energy level has been uh running down just like a clock that has been wound up and is gradually running down and so we have very positive and Powerful scientific evidence in support of that second premise that the Universe began to exist and and even if we go past um because I know this is a little bit out of my depth but I I know you discussed this with with with Roger Penrose that there's time there's like ordinary space time and then there's of course before that you could still there's still cause and effect in the sense of temporal ordered time is that correct like like even if we were to say before the Big Bang there would be time in a certain sense in physical cosmology Ben there is no time before the Big Bang that is inept to say what was before the Big Bang that's like asking what is north of the North Pole um the initial cosmological singularity in the standard model simply represents the beginning of time and SpaceTime cannot be projected further backwards than that now as a philosopher however metaphysician I think it is coherent to talk about a sort of metaphysical time that existed prior to the Inception of physical time and I think a knockdown argument for that would be that God could count down to the moment of creation uhg -3 -2 ne1 let there be light and in that case there would be a series of M events that would be sufficient for time even prior to the Inception of the physical universe so I think it is possible to have a kind of metaphysical time prior to Creation though I see no basis for postulating that sort of pre-creation time uh and indeed I don't think it could be infinitely extended and therefore I I adopt aam's razor here you don't postulate uh entities or hypotheses Beyond necessity I think it's simpler simply to say that time began at the moment of creation so on the model of uh time that I adopt I argue that God without creation is timeless but that he enters into time at the moment of Creation in virtue of his causal relationships uh and knowledge of the temporal world and and I guess you can't so uh this might sound like a silly question I know that there's this notion of quantum foam maybe this is one of the models you were talking about that wouldn't be Eternal or or or would because there would have to be like some cause that brought that into being right or yes it can't be projected into the infinite past um the Lincoln himself tries to offer a Quantum physical model to explain the origin of the universe and these models if they're to be consistent with the evidence cannot be projected into past Infinity so the argument for the beginning of the universe doesn't depend on there being an initial cosmological Singularity you could have a Quantum physical model of the origin of the universe that would not involve a singularity but nevertheless these are still past finite they cannot be projected to past eternity and be physically adequate excellent and I know uh Ben just asked about the the the fine-tuning the constants I had a question about the um mathematical uh how you said the the collaboration in mathematics um and how that's and the fact that we can even do mathematics and how you know amazing that is um so one question I had was um and I know you've written a lot about this and I know it's it's a long subject so but um the idea of is mathematics real you knowm um because some people can make the argument that well mathematics and laws physical law everything came from physical laws maybe those are Eternal they're abstract they're Timeless they're formless so how would we uh respond to that very good this is again the argument from the applicability of mathematics to the physical world that I described Eugene vigner the Nobel prizewinning uh Quantum physicist presented this argument based upon what he called the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics and what vigner noted is that mathematics is not pursued uh for reasons of empirical adequacy the way scientific theories are in science you only postulate such entities as are warranted by the scientific evidence but that's not the way mathematics Works mathematics adopts maximal principles where you posit as many mathematical entities as you can short of of contradiction and therefore mathematics is pursued for what vigner called aesthetic reasons not um empirical reasons it having to do with mathematical Beauty moreover these mathematical entities as you just described them even if they exist if you adopt a platonic or realist uh view of these math mathematical objects they are by definition causally AIT that is to say because they're abstract they have no causal effect upon anything abstract objects like numbers and sets and functions and so forth exist beyond space and time and they have no causal powers and therefore they are impotent to affect the physical world and this is one of the Myst iies that Roger Penrose was so tortured by how do you explain the fact that this abstract causally aat mathematical realm is so descriptive of the physical phenomena which he as a physicist explores and it seems to me that the best explanation is the one that uh Plato in fact gave namely the God can look to the mathematical realm and fashion a world on the basis of the mathematical model that he prefers and a view similar to this was defended by the ancient Jewish philosopher Pho of Alexandria who was contemporaneous with the New Testament authors Pho argued that the conceptual Universe the conceptual World exists in in the mind of God himself it's not distinct from God as Plato thought rather these are Divine ideas that exist in God's mind and that God then fashion the physical Universe on the basis of the mental model that he had in mind that he prefers and I have argued that this theistic perspective provides a far more plausible explanation of the mathematical applicability to physical phenomena the naturalism is capable of and I formulated the argument very simply in the following way uh if God does not exist then the applicability of mathematics to physical phenomena is just a happy coincidence premise two the applicability of mathematics is not just a happy coincidence three therefore God exists I think that this is a surprisingly powerful argument for the existence of a Transcendent uh omniscient Cosmic Creator yeah I think it makes a lot more rational sense than saying as I've heard some suggests that there were these numbers and forms and God was just like a chain to them he had no choice he had to obey these mathematical uh constructs it makes more sense they have no causal power that he they would be he would be the originator of yeah that that's exactly right I mean the infinite or the realm of the mathematical is infinite and so it is not limited exclusively to one set of natural or mathematical laws there would be an infinite variety for God to choose from a and so I don't think anyone can plausibly maintain that the laws of nature that physicists articulate are metaphysically necessary the the universe doesn't have to be described by these elegant mathematical laws and in fact physicists regularly toy with alternative models of the universe that would operate according to different mathematical laws and they then see what would happen in these universes thank you that was amazing and um I before we move to the next question um I wanted to get back to the Richard Dawkins part of it because he um I I was watching a documentary once and I was a flabbergasted he was talking about DNA and how you know there is evidence for Signature in DNA I don't know if you've seen this before and and then he says well it must be that an extraterrestrial race um you know created us spawned our existence um first of all could you explain to the audience why there what that means what is this signature in DNA that he's talking about and his answer also like what is he trying to say the DNA uh that is at the basis of all life on this planet from bacterial life up through human beings uh exhibits uh roughly the same genetic code and the possibility of this just coming together by accident is so remote uh that um contemporary origin of life scientists have no explanation for where this came from or or how it arose and so some of them in a move similar to the Multiverse theorists appealed to Outer Space if you multiply your probabilistic resources then maybe on some Planet somewhere in the infinite Universe the DNA and RNA would accidentally come into uh being and that might as well be our planet as well as some other or one could say that then it was transported to our planet by comets and meteors and asteroids so that ultimately life Came From Outer Space well couple of problems with that is that uh even if the entire observable universe were filled with what's called primordial soup the odds against the uh chance origination of the genetic code are so remote that they would never have happened um in the time available but secondly you run into the boltzman brain problem again if multiply your your um probabilistic resources to Infinity then how do you know that these organisms evolved on Earth at all maybe they just sprang into being fully formed looking as though they had evolved but in fact evolution is an illusion and if the theorist like Dawkins replies well no that's absurd that's that's too improbable for fully formed organisms to Simply pop into existence without predecessors the answer then would be from the Multiverse theorist in an infinite Universe anything can happen and indeed will happen an infinite number of times over so that the appeal to extraterrestrial life actually turns out to completely undermine the theory of biological evolution and would make its adoption irrational brilliant so from my limited view the acceptance of evolution among Christians seems rare this perspective however seems more prevalent among some Orthodox Jewish Scholars such as Dr Gerald schroer who had advocates for the notion of guided Evolution this stance appears less contentious within Jewish interpretation of the Genesis account compared to the Christian tradition Dr Craig can you articulate your position on this matter how it harmonizes with Biblical texts and how you would counter Skeptics like Dr David berlinsky who challenges the scientific validity of evolution based on its perceived mathematical improbability one last related point I'd like you to address you've been involved in defending the age of the universe as roughly 14 billion years old which has been controversial in Conservative Christian circles what evidence pointed you in this direction okay to begin with Ben it's really important that we defend what we mean by the word Evolution if we're not to lose our way in this discussion the word evolution is a sort of accordion word that can be expanded or contracted to cover many different things in contemporary evolutionary theory the word is used in at least three different ways one would be simply to say that all life on Earth is genealogically connected that is to say that all of the living organisms are descended from a handful of primordial ancestors and in that sense evolution is uh widely almost universally accepted today even among Christians I I think that it is only the young Earth creationists who would deny that there is a history of the evolution of life in that sense on this planet and they are in an increasingly dwindling minority even among Evangelical Christians not to speak of the uh Christian Community more broadly so don't be misled by the highly public nature of some of these young Earth creationists they really do represent a a dwindling minority even within Evangelical circles now the second way in which Evolution can be understood is the Reconstruction of the Tree of Life determining which organisms branched off of which others and tracing this tree of life back to its root this is hugely controversial today and by no means universally accepted indeed Dawkin himself says that the debates among evolutionists on this uh Recon construction of the Tree of Life are so acrimonious that even some have despaired of Darwinism itself so that is not universally agreed and then the third area would be an account of the causal mechanisms that would go to explain the evolution of organisms and this again is hugely controversial today the old um modern synthesis sometimes called Neo Darwinism is being increasingly challenged and I think could even be said to be overthrown now in favor of What's called the extended evolutionary synthesis which posits additional causal mechanisms Beyond just genetic mutations and natural selection so when you look at skepticism among Christians concerning evolutionary theory it is primarily directed at those second and especially the Third way of understanding Evolution so for example a theorist like Steven Meyer who is a colleague of David berlinsky whom you mentioned is very ready to accept uh the thesis of common ancestry he says this really needn't be a point of contention or dispute what he disputes is the causal mechanisms that are at the root of the evolution of uh complex life form forms and so I think this would be the same for berlinsky I I think what berlinsky is challenging uh is the mathematical probability of these causal mechanisms producing in the limited time available the sort of biological diversity and complexity that we see and this is in fact eminently challengeable and is a matter of tremendous dispute among evolutionary theorists themselves now as to your last point about the age of the universe again uh this is only controverted by these young Earth creationists who are an a dwindling minority within the Evangelical Community the very fact that we can see light from Stars billions of years away uh shows that the universe is older than 10 to 20,000 years uh of age as young Earth creationists would assert um in order to explain the fact that we can see the stars the young Earth creationist has to adopt the theory of apparent age uh that is to say that God not only created the earth and the distant stars but he created the light Ray in between them so that in the limited time available we can see these Stars which are billions of light years away and so ultimately the young Earth creationist is reduced to accepting this wild hypothesis of the mere appearance of age which just is to admit that the evidence on face value does suggest a very ancient Universe brilliant and um you know for us when we read the Torah we see you know the the creation process the the sun was created on the fourth day so clearly this this idea of days as we know it is not applicable clearly talking about something you know as as you were mentioning there's clearly a 14 billion or whatever it is that the number is it's clearly an an old universe and um I really really thank you for making the time um I want to also thank uh Dr Brian Crawford a friend of ours who made the connection with you um that was really amazing and we really wish you all the best God bless you and thank you for everything you do and we hope to do this again one day well thank you Ben and Zev uh it's been a pleasure and I I just want to say I I realize that not all Jews are zionists but for my part uh I want to express my personal support for Israel in this tremendous struggle in which it's engaged I believe Israel has the right of Defending its own security and National integrity and so I uh stand fully behind her in its battle with Hamas thank you so much we really appreciate that thank you so much well have a great one thank you thank you all right God bless appreciate it God bless

Channel: ReasonableFaithOrg

Views: 4,766

Keywords: William Lane Craig, Apologetics, Christianity, Faith, God, Jesus, Jesus Christ, Philosophy, Theology, Science, History, Cosmology, Kalam, Reason, Logic, Existence of God

Id: Fr_rCrcSLtw

Length: 51min 28sec (3088 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 25 2024