[Robert] Bill, can the existence of God be
demonstrated? [Craig] Well I think that depends on what you mean by a demonstration,
Robert. I don't think that you can demonstrate God's existence with
mathematical certainty that will convince everyone [or make him appear
right here], right. But I do think that there are good arguments for God's
existence; there are good reasons to believe God exists. [Robert] Now we've had reasons for millennia about God's existence, so I really am interested in your feeling of
what are the best of those arguments that you're comfortable with today. [Craig] Well
one of the most appealing arguments to me personally that I find convincing is
the cosmological argument for God's existence. [Robert] And what does that consist of? [Craig] Well this is a family of arguments that tries to show that there is a first
cause, or sufficient reason, for the existence of the world. [Robert] So everything has to have a cause. [Craig] Well not everything that exists has to have a cause, but I would
put it this way: anything that begins to exist has to have a cause. Anything that
comes into being must have a cause, and this is rooted in the metaphysical idea
that being cannot come from non-being. Out of nothing, nothing comes; so if
something comes into being, there must be a cause which brought it into being. [Robert] So the only thing you would exclude from that is God himself? [Craig] Well I wouldn't
exclude God from this, but I would say God never began to exist. In other words,
what this argument will get you to is an uncaused, eternal, first-cause that never
came into being. [Robert] And that's God. [Craig] Right. And so the key premise here will be to
demonstrate that the universe began to exist, because if the universe began to
exist then it follows logically that the universe has a cause. [Robert] And that's the cosmological argument? [Craig] Right. [Robert] What else? [Craig] Well there are other versions of the cosmological
argument that don't depend on the universe having a beginning. For example,
the great German philosopher Leibniz asked the question why is
there something rather than nothing? And I think probably all of us have wondered
about the mystery of existence; why is there anything at all? And doesn't
there need to be some sort of an ultimate explanation of reality? And I
think that that's a very plausible principle, that everything that
exists has to have some kind of explanation for why it exists until you
get to an absolutely necessary being which is self-existent and not explained
by anything outside of itself. [Robert] Well people would argue that there are brute
facts, which means it's just there and you can't explain it. [Craig] Right, and I think that there
may be brute facts but I don't think that there are any brute things, that
concrete objects, things that actually exist, don't just do so without an
explanation. Things that are real, that actually exist, have their explanation in
causes that produce them. Or if you're talking about abstract things, like
numbers and so forth, they exist by the necessity of their own nature. [Robert] Alright, so we have again the cosmological argument, has efficient cause and you
need a beginning. [yes] Alright, what other arguments do you have? [Craig] Well there's the famous teleological argument, which would say that the universe exhibits a
complexity in its structure that cannot be attributed plausibly to either chance
or to physical necessity, and that therefore this is best explained by
saying it's the product of intelligent design. [Robert] And teleology means that from first happenings you project some sort of an end result? [Craig] Yes, it's the idea that there is an end in mind for which things exist, and so things are literally
designed. [Robert] And so the teleological argument is the design argument? [Craig] That's right; a new life has been breathed into this argument by the discovery of the
fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life, which doesn't
seem to be explicable on the basis of physical necessity because these
constants and quantities that are so finely tuned are independent of the laws
of nature, and it can't be plausibly explained by chance because the odds
against it are just so overwhelming that it seems rational to think that the
reason the world looks designed is because it was designed. [Robert] What else do you have in your bag of tricks of arguments? [Craig] Well there's the moral argument for
God's existence, and this would say that if there is no God then there really are
no objective moral values and duties. On this view, unless there is God to serve
as an anchor point for moral values and duties, moral values and duties are just
the products of sociobiological evolution, and on this view without God
everything is relative. Human beings are just relatively advanced primates and
moral values are just something we've evolved to get along in society without
killing each other off. [Robert] This argument to me sounds different in that you need
to assume the absolutism of moral values. In the other arguments you're assuming the reality of a beginning in a world, which I think everybody admits, but
when you deal with moral questions, you have to make the assumption that there
are absolute moral values, as opposed to relative values. If you don't have absolute values then you certainly don't need God. [Robert] I prefer to
speak of objective moral values, by which I mean mind-independent values, and
you're right; that would be the second step of the argument, would be to say but
there are objective moral values and duties. That is a premise in the argument. [Robert] That's an assumption! [Craig] Well it's a premise; I don't think it's just
an assumption. I think that there's no more reason to deny the
objective reality of moral values than there is to deny the objective reality
of the physical world. [Robert] Well that's a strong statement. [Craig] Any argument
that you could give me for denying the objective reality of moral values I could construct a parallel argument for being skeptical about the objective
reality of the external world. If we trust our sensory intuitions, that there
is a world of objects independent of us out there, I don't think we have any
grounds for distrusting our moral intuitions of the realm of objective
values. [Robert] Certainly to verify the objectivity of the external world
we're dependent upon our senses; everybody agrees with that. [Craig] And there's no way to get outside your senses to prove you're not a body lying in the matrix programmed to believe in something. [Robert] Sure I'll agree with that, but when you get to moral
values that's different. That's not an objective sense in the same way that
everybody in every society in the history of the world would have had that
same view of this chair or this carpet, I mean they would know it's there, but if
you deal with moral values, different societies have had different moral
values. [Craig] Well I think that's certainly true, though very often you will find
there is a commonality among cultures that underlies the different cultural
expressions of these moral values. For example, modesty is a common moral value, but what is considered modest in one culture rather than another may differ.
Or for example cannibalistic tribes do believe in the ethic of loving your
neighbor, but they don't consider people in other tribes to be their neighbors, so
that while they wouldn't cannibalize their own tribal members, they would
members of another tribe. So beneath seeming moral diversity there is I think
a common moral code. [Robert] There are some tribes that would practice cannibalism
to ingest the wisdom of their ancestors. [Craig] Well I think you would be hard-pressed to find examples of many tribal groups that cannibalized their own people. [Robert] Alright, let's go on; I think that's there's a difference
between the moral argument and some of the others. [Craig] Yeah I guess I don't think
that's right; I mean it does seem to me that we have good grounds for accepting
our moral experience. When I talk to folks, 99% of people will say to me yes I
think there is an objective difference between torturing a child for fun and
loving that child and caring for it, that these are not morally indifferent acts. And I simply say, why distrust that moral intuition? We clearly perceive objective
moral differences in the world, but if they exist, and that first premise is
right, then it follows logically and inescapably that God exists. [Robert] I think that first premise is critical for the moral argument. What else you got? [Craig] Well
that would be the argument that would be rooted in the person of Jesus of
Nazareth. I don't think that any historian who is a purely naturalistic
historian can give a plausible account of events like the death and
resurrection of Jesus. I think we have here in essence a kind of argument from
miracles for the existence of God. It may surprise most people, but the fact is
that there is a majority of New Testament biblical critics who have come
to believe that part of the portrait of the historical Jesus that is established
by an examination of the evidence is that after his death Jesus was buried in
a tomb by a Jewish Sanhedrus named Joseph of Arimathea, that on the first
day of the week following this crucifixion that tomb was found empty by
a group of his women followers, that thereafter various individuals and
groups of people experienced appearances of Jesus alive after his death, and that
the original disciples suddenly and sincerely came to believe that Jesus was
risen from the dead, despite having every predisposition to
the contrary. Now those are the generally, not unanimously, but generally agreed
facts, and the question is how do you best explain them? Well I don't know of
any naturalistic hypothesis that can explain those facts without bruising
them. I think that the best explanation is the one the disciples gave, and that
was God raised Jesus from the dead, and that entails that God exists. [Robert]
I would think that's a rather lengthy set of premises to get to your
conclusion, but I will leave that for you and go on to the next one. [Craig] Well the
next one would be the ontological argument, and this is the argument that
the very concept of God properly understood implies that God exists. And
the idea here is that God is a maximally great being; he is the greatest
conceivable being by definition, but a greatest conceivable being would have
necessary existence. He would be omniscient, omnipotent, morally perfect, [Robert] and really existing! [Craig] Well yes, in every possible world. And since this is a possible world, it follows that God must exist in this
world, and therefore he exists. And I think that this argument is a sound
argument for God's existence. [Robert] How about arguments that are personal, that you can't convince anybody else of but that you feel? I know people have
them, because many people about them [right], but are those are those
philosophically legitimate? [Craig] Oh absolutely; I would say that my belief in the
existence of God is ultimately not rooted in these arguments. These
arguments provide confirmation, or reinforcement, for my belief that God
exists, but my belief that God exists is rooted in my personal experience of God.
He's a living reality in my life and has been ever since I became a Christian as
a teenager. And I think that's perfectly defensible; we spoke a moment ago about
our knowledge of the external world. There's no way to prove that the
external world exists; there's no way to prove you're not a brain-in-a-vat of
chemicals wired up with electrodes to think that we're here in this room having this conversation. Similarly, there's no way to prove that
the past is real, that everything wasn't created five minutes ago with
built-in memory traces and appearances of age. These are what philosophers call
properly basic beliefs; they lie at the foundations of our system of beliefs. Now these beliefs aren't arbitrary; they're rooted in experience. My
experience of seeing and feeling and smelling objects, and remembering the
past, and so forth. So these beliefs are grounded in experience, but they're
properly basic beliefs to my foundational system of beliefs. And I
would say similarly the belief that God exists is for those who experience him a properly basic belief rooted in the experience of God himself,
and in the absence of some overwhelming defeater or objection to belief in God,
the believer is perfectly rational to accept that God exists just as we are
perfectly rational to believe in the external world of the reality of the
past. [Robert] Well most people's internal feelings
about things are acculturated because of society or family or
experiences or psychological benefits or problems that people have had. How can
you depend upon something that is so emotionally-based to root your deepest
belief? [Craig] Well I think that an atheist, to carry this argument, would
have to show that there's a particular psychological profile that religious
people have, and that just has never been demonstrated throughout the world. There
isn't any sort of particular psychological profile that religious
believers exhibit; they come from all sorts of backgrounds, all sorts of belief
systems, all sorts of emotional and cultural
upbringing, and so I think it would be very hard for the unbeliever to try to
show that this experience of God is spurious or non-veridical. [Robert] But what
you're saying, though, demonstrates that all these different expressions of
people's belief are vastly different kinds of gods and religions and systems
and doctrines and all this mushed together, but you're pointing to some core
commonality among all these superficial differences that somehow proves an
existence of God, yet the God that those are all related to are all
different! [Craig] Well no, actually I wasn't appealing to that; I was thinking
of people who believe in a traditional theistic concept of God, that they don't
exhibit any sort of psychological profile. Freud attempted to do this
by saying that it's the projection of a sort of father figure on the heavens due
to an oedipal complex, and that's been I think completely evacuated of any
plausibility. So I wasn't speaking of pantheistic concepts of God or other
concepts of God; that's an entirely different question. What I meant
was that believers in the traditional concept of a monotheistic God don't
exhibit any commonality in terms of their psychological upbringing or
culture or profile that would lead us to think that you can say this is non-
veridical. [Robert] And you as a real individual will rely upon that more than all the
other arguments from science or philosophy? [Craig] Yeah, I would; I think that the experience of God, for him who has it, is a self-authenticating experience. It's
something that's so real that it overwhelms the defeaters which are
brought against it.
My favorite response to the Kalam argument is by TheoreticalBullshit (Scott Cliffton);
I "Kalam" Like I See 'Em...
Klarifying Kalam Kraziness!
Both of these are worth watching multiple times. If you are in a hurry, stick to the first one and view only the segment from 2:40 through 4:15; "Look, I've brought a fist into existence. Now, I've removed a fist from existence.". (Plus 7:45 through 8:50 for the moderately curious.)
Additionally, nobody has demonstrated the opposite; something becoming nothing. As such, why make a big deal about the other end of what is not demonstrated; something coming from nothing.
Note: Nothing in both cases are philosophical abstractions not demonstrated in reality; a true nothing does not exist, though we can point to practical configurations of nothing such as quantum vacuums.
Most of WLC's debates in a nutshell -
He's not a great debater, he's a one trick pony.
WLC is an absolutely great debater, but hardly ever convincing.
No shit.
I don't understand what anyone finds compelling about his arguments in debate. As far as I can tell, his M.O. is "repeat until true."