Deconstructing New Atheist Objections to the Arguments for God and Q&A

good morning everyone and a very warm welcome to this the first rethinking apologetics conference it's great to see so many of you here my name is Chris Knight and I work for the universities and colleges Christian Fellowship editing and coordinating the be thinking dot org apologetics website to chair a first session it's a great pleasure to have Tom price with us Tom is the founding editor of be thinking dot org my predecessor he's a tutor at the Oxford Center for Christian apologetics in Oxford a speaker for the Damaris trust and for Trevor's accurized International Ministries in Europe Tom come up to introduce bill pray good morning it's wonderful to be with you I'm so excited to see so many of you here with a hunger to learn and think about apologetics many of you coming from different backgrounds some of you being a more skeptical more agnostic about some of the questions we're going to be discussing today I myself 10 or 11 years ago wasn't a Christian and I came to a Christian faith partly through studying and thinking about the questions and philosophy of religion and some of the authors that I came across will be names that are familiar to some of you I started to read Alvin Plantinga very quickly I started to read bill Craig's books JP Moreland and Francis Schaeffer and these books and the ideas in them completely transformed the way that I viewed the world the way that I read my Bible and the way that I thought that we could reach out that we could do mission that we could reach out to people with the good news of the gospel so it's my pleasure to introduce you to William Lane Craig bill is the research professor of philosophy at Talbot School of Theology in La Mirada California he did his first PhD I don't know many people who her too but Bill's just greedy like that he did his first PhD on the cosmological argument under John hick at Birmingham University in 1977 then he did his second PhD under warp art panin Berg in Germany in 1984 studying the historicity of the resurrection he comes with him with the credibility of being a widely known and respected philosopher of religion known in secular philosophy departments across the anglo-american world he is no Christian secret he has made major contributions to the philosophy of religion and his defense of the Kalam cosmological argument in fact that argument has been the most widely discussed argument for God in Western philosophy I'd like to just put two books in front of you the first book is the first book of bills that I read it's coryza noble faith and I would encourage you if you don't have a copy of this book to get a copy of it and then the second book is a book called on guard now this is seven pounds 90 and for my money this is one of the best popular level explanations of the evidences and arguments for God's existence that I have ever read in my life it is a fantastic book and it's a triumph of popularization and writing at the same time keeping that academic and scholarly credibility so without further ado you may I introduce you to William Lane Craig who is going to deconstruct the new atheist objections to the arguments for God thank you Tom and thank you very much thank you for coming it's a delight to be with you here and share this conference with you this morning after debating three times at British universities it's nice to have a day off and speak to a friendly faces who are interested in the defense of the faith so it's great to be with you today over the last 50 years or so there has been an extraordinary renaissance of Christian philosophy in the anglo-american world and one of the manifestations of this renaissance has been a revival of natural theology in our day that is to say arguments for the existence of God one of the fruit of this revival of natural theology is the Blackwell companion to natural theology published by Blackwell's in Oxford and this book includes 11 detailed lengthy I think indispensable expositions of the classic arguments for God's existence and is just one of the indications of the sort of Renaissance that is going on in our day among contemporary philosophers with respect to the defence of arguments for God's existence I described something of this Renaissance in an article for Christianity today a couple years ago and it was interesting to see the reactions in the blogosphere to this cover story along with expressions of appreciation there were comments like the following Dawkins The God Delusion soundly deals with these arguments did you even do any research or again have you even read Dawkins apostrophe s book he answers every one of those arguments quite well or this comment I was dismayed the dr. Craig has used these arguments to the and the existence of God as someone mentioned before has he even read Dawkins book now it is the merit of The God Delusion that it does engage seriously with the classic arguments for God's existence the writings of the New Atheists in general do not typically even engage with theistic arguments and at least Dawkins makes an attempt to do that but what's remarkable I think about these comments is the degree of confidence placed in Richard Dawkins supposed refutation of the arguments for God's existence are they right has Dawkins really dealt the deathblow to these theistic arguments well this morning I'd like to look at those arguments and see what Dawkins has to say about each one now since my time is limited this morning I can only consider the arguments that Dawkins himself raises doubtless you can think of other objections to these arguments and that's good it means you're thinking for yourself but for a fuller treatment I would recommend either my book reasonable faith or the Blackwell companion we have a PowerPoint to help us so let's bring up the first slide which is on the cosmological argument now Dawkins doesn't even mention the primary form of the cosmological argument which I presented namely the argument from contingency this is itself a remarkable oversight because this is the most famous version of the cosmological argument that has been defended so obviously it cannot be the case the Dawkins has refuted all of the arguments that I mentioned since he doesn't even deal with the first form of the cosmological argument but he does discuss a different type of the cosmological argument which can be formulated as follows number one everything that begins to exist has a cause to the universe be gantu exists three therefore the universe has a cause and once we reach the conclusion that the universe has a transcendent cause then we can analyze what sort of properties such a cause must have now premise 1 of this argument seems obviously true I think it's at least more plausible than it's contradictory or negation to suggest that things could just pop into existence uncaused out of nothing is to quit doing serious philosophy and to appeal to magic premise 2 can be supported by both philosophical argument and scientific evidence the philosophical arguments aim to show that there cannot have been an infinite regress of past events or in other words that the series of past events must have had a beginning now these philosophical arguments for the finitude of the past are mind-expanding and very fascinating but we needn't consider them this morning since dawkins doesn't object to any of these arguments as for the scientific evidence for the beginning of the universe this is based upon the expansion of the universe we now have pretty strong evidence that the universe is not eternal in the past but had an absolute beginning a finite time ago in 2003 Arvind borde Alexander Vilenkin and Alan Guth were able to prove that any universe which is on average in a state of cosmic expansion cannot be infinite in the past but must have had a past space-time boundary even if our universe is just a tiny part of a so-called multiverse of many universes their theorem requires that the multiverse itself must have had an absolute beginning now of course highly speculative scenarios such as loop quantum gravity scenarios string models even closed timelike curves have been proposed to try to avoid this absolute beginning these models are not merely fraught with problems but the bottom line is that these theories even if true do not succeed in restoring an eternal past at the very most they just push the beginning back one step the Lincoln pulls no punches he says it is said that an argument is what convinces reasonable men and a proof is what it takes to convince even an unreasonable man with the proof now in place cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past eternal universe there is no escape they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning end quote now it follows from the two premises that the universe has a cause well what properties must such a cause of the universe possess well by the very nature of the case as the cause of space and time this entity must transcend space and time and therefore exist timelessly and non spatially at least without the universe this transcendent cause must therefore be changeless and immaterial since anything that is timeless must be unchanging and anything that has change less must be non-physical and immaterial since material things are always changing on the molecular and atomic level at least such a cause must be beginning less and just at least in the sense of lacking any prior causal condition since there cannot be an infinite regress of causes Occam's razor which is the principle that says we should not multiply causes beyond necessity will shave away any further causes since one cause is required to explain the effect this entity must be unimaginably powerful if not omnipotent since it created the universe without any material cause finally and most remarkably such a transcendent first cause is plausibly personal two reasons can be given for this conclusion first the personhood of the first cause is implied by its immateriality and timelessness the only entities which could possibly possess such properties are either unembodied Minds or else abstract objects like numbers but you see abstract objects don't stand in causal relations the number 7 for example can't cause anything and therefore it follows logically that the transcendent cause of the origin of the universe is plausibly an unembodied mind second this same conclusion is also implied by the origin of an effect with the beginning from a beginningless cause we've concluded that the beginning of the universe was the effect of a first cause now by the very nature of the case that cause cannot have either a beginning of its existence or any prior cause it just exists changeless lee without a beginning and the finite time ago it brought the universe into existence now when you think about it this is exceedingly odd the cause is in some sense eternal and yet the effect which it produced is not eternal but began to exist just a finite time ago how can this be if the necessary and sufficient conditions for the effect are eternal then why isn't the effect also eternal how can the cause exist without its effect well it seems to me that there's only one way out of this dilemma and that is to say that the cause of the universe's beginning is a personal agent endowed with freedom of the will who freely chooses to create a universe in time philosophers call this type of causation ancient causation and because the agent is free he can initiate new effects spontaneously by freely bringing about conditions which were not previously present and thus a finite time ago a free creator can bring about the universe at that particular moment without any antecedent determining conditions so in this way the creator could exist changeless ly and eternally but freely choose to create the world in time by freely exercising his causal power he brings it about that a universe with a beginning comes to exist and so the cause is eternal but its effect is not in this way it is possible for the temporal universe to have come to exist from an eternal cause namely through the free will of a personal creator we may therefore conclude that a personal creator of the universe exists who is uncaused beginning less change less in material timeless spaceless and unmanned Ginobli powerful now Dawkins does as I say address this version of the cosmological argument remarkably however he doesn't dispute either of its premises instead he merely questions the theological significance of the conclusion he says and I quote even if we allow the dubious luxury of arbitrarily conjuring up a Terminator to an infinite regress and giving it a name there is absolutely no reason to endow that Terminator with any of the properties normally ascribed to God omnipotence omniscience goodness creativity of design to say nothing of such human attributes as listening to prayers forgiving sins and reading innermost thoughts now apart from the opening slurred this is an amazingly concessionary statement Dawkins doesn't dispute that the argument successfully proves the existence of an uncaused beginningless changeless timeless spaceless and unimaginably powerful personal creator of the universe he merely complains that this cause hasn't also been shown to be omnipotent omniscient good creative of design listening to prayers forgiving sins and reading innermost thoughts so what the argument isn't intended to prove those things it would be a bizarre form of atheism indeed and atheism not worth the name which admitted that there exists an uncaused beginningless changeless timeless immaterial spaceless unimaginably powerful personal creator of the universe who may for all we know also possessed the properties listed by Dawkins so we needn't call the personal creator of the universe God if Dawkins finds this unhelpful or misleading but the point remains that such a being as described by this argument must exist argument number two the moral argument here's a simple moral argument for God's existence premise 1 if God does not exist objective moral values and duties do not exist premise 2 objective moral values and duties do exist from which it follows logically 3 therefore God exists now what makes this little argument so powerful is that not only is it logically ironclad but also that people generally believe both premises in fact with respect to premise 1 Dawkins informs us there is at bottom no design no purpose no evil no good nothing but pitiless indifference we are machines for propagating DNA it is every living object sole reason for being but although he says that there is no evil no good nothing but pitiless indifference the fact is that Richard Dawkins is a stubborn moralist he vigorously condemns such actions as harassment and abuse of homosexuals the religious indoctrination of children the incan practice of human sacrifice and prising cultural diversity over the interests of Amish children he even goes so far as to offer his own amended version of the Ten Commandments for guiding moral behavior all of while marvelously oblivious to the contradiction with his ethical subjectivism thus affirming both premises of the moral argument Dawkins is on pain of irrationality committed to the arguments conclusion namely that God exists number three the teleological argument the cutting edge of contemporary discussion of the teleological argument concerns the remarkable fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life Dawkins responds to this form of the argument in Chapter four of his book under the heading the anthropic principle cosmological version here's a simple formulation of the teleological argument based on fine-tuning premise one the fine-tuning of the universe is due to either physical necessity chance or design two it is not due to physical necessity or chance three therefore it is due to design now with respect to premise one I better explain what is meant by fine-tuning the expression does not does not mean designed otherwise the argument would be obviously circular rather during the last forty years or so scientists have discovered that the existence of intelligent life depends upon a complex and delicate balance of initial conditions given in the Big Bang itself were nature's fundamental constants and quantities to be altered by less than a hair's breadth this life-permitting balance would be destroyed and so no living interactive organisms could exist Dawkins himself citing the work of the astronomer royal Sir Martin Rees acknowledges that the universe does exhibit this remarkable fine-tuning now premise one simply lists the three possibilities for explaining the presence of this amazing fine-tuning of the universe physical necessity chance or design the question is which of these three alternatives is the most plausible well premise to addresses that question the first alternative physical necessity is extraordinarily implausible because the constants and quantities are independent of the laws of nature so for example the most promising candidate for a theory of everything to date the M theory or super string theory allows for a cosmic landscape of around 10 to the 500th power different possible universes governed by the present laws of nature dawkins notes that sir martin rees rejects this first alternative and dawkins adds i think i agree so what about the second alternative that the fine-tuning of the universe is due to chance well the problem with this alternative is that the odds against the universe as being life permitting are so incomprehensibly great that they cannot be reasonably faced so in order to rescue the hypothesis of chance its proponents have been forced to adopt the remarkable hypothesis that there exists an infinite number of randomly ordered universes comprising a sort of world ensemble or multiverse of universes in which our universe is but a member somewhere in this world ensemble finely tuned universes will appear by chance alone and we happen to be in one such world this is the explanation that Dawkins finds most plausible now Dawkins is acutely sensitive to the charge that postulating a world ensemble of randomly ordered universes seems to be what he calls and unperson Onias extravagance but he retorts the multiverse may seem extravagant in sheer number of universes but if each one of those universes is simple in its fundamental laws we are still not postulating anything highly improbable end quote unfortunately this response is multiple-- confused let me mention four points first each universe in the ensemble is not simple but is characterized by a multiplicity of constants and quantities if each universe were simple then why did Dawkins feel the need to recur to the hypothesis of a world ensemble in the first place second Dawkins assumes that the simplicity of the whole is a function of the simplicity of the parts if the parts are simple then the whole is simple but this is an obvious mistake for example a complex mosaic say a Roman face might be made up of a great number of individually simple parts in the same way an ensemble of simple universes will still be complex if those universes are randomly ordered in the values of their fundamental constants in quantities rather than all sharing the same values thirdly Occam's razor tells us not to multiply entities beyond necessity so that the number of universe is being postulated simply to explain the fine-tuning is at face value extravagant appealing to a world ensemble to explain fine-tuning is like using a sledgehammer to crack open a peanut fourthly Dawkins tries to minimize the extravagance of the postulate world ensemble by claiming that despite the extravagant number of entities postulated still such a postulate is not highly improbable now it's not clear why this response is relevant or even what this means the objection under consideration is not that the postulate of a world ensemble is improbable but rather that it's extravagant and unperson Onias to say that the postulate isn't also improbable is to fail to address the objection indeed it's very hard to understand exactly what probability Dawkins is talking about here he seems to me the to mean the intrinsic probability of the postulate of a world ensemble considered apart from the evidence of fine-tuning but how is such a probability to be termined by its simplicity but then Dawkins hasn't shown the world ensemble hypothesis to be simple so what Dawkins needs to say it seems to me is that the postulate of an ensemble of universes may still be simple if if there is a simple mechanism which through a repetitive process generates the many-worlds in that way the huge number of entities postulated is not a deficit of the theory because the entities all issue from a very simple fundamental mechanism so what mechanisms does talkin suggest for generating such an infinite randomly ordered world ensemble well first he suggests an oscillating model of the universe according to which the universe has gone through an infinite series of expansions and contractions Dawkins is however apparently unaware of the any difficulties of oscillatory models of the universe which have made contemporary cosmologists skeptical of them such models contradict the Hawking Penrose singularity theorems moreover the evidence of observational astronomy has been consistently against the hypothesis that the universe will someday wreak on tracked the evidence indicates that it will expand forever and the thermodynamic properties of such models imply the very beginning of the universe that their proponents sought to avoid but leave all that aside put it aside for now even if the universe could oscillate from eternity past the irony is that such a model of the universe requires infinitely precise fine-tuning of the initial conditions in order to persist through an infinite series of bounces so that the mechanism the Dawkins suggests for creating the world ensemble is not simple in fact exactly the opposite it is infinitely fine-tuned moreover this fine-tuning is of a very bizarre sort because the initial conditions have to be set at minus infinity in the past but how can you set initial conditions at minus infinity if there was no beginning of the universe so this mechanism is clearly untenable his second suggested mechanism for generating a world ensemble is Li smolens evolutionary cosmology according to this cosmology black holes are portals to baby universes which are being birthed by our universe since universes which produce lots of black holes will therefore have an evolutionary advantage by producing more offspring worlds which have lots black holes will be evolutionarily preferred and selected for now since black holes are the result of star formation they are the result of the collapse of stars and stars favored planets where life can evolve the unintended effect of evolutionary cosmology is to make life permitting universe is more probable now Dawkins recognizes and I quote that not all physicists are enthusiastic about Smolin scenario talk about an understatement for small and scenario wholly apart from its ad hoc and even disconfirmed conjectures encountered insuperable difficulties first a fatal flaw in Smolin scenario was his assumption that universes which produce lots of black holes would also produce lots of stable stars in fact it turns out that the exact opposite is true the most proficient producers of black holes would be universes which generate primordial black holes prior to star formation so that life-permitting universes would actually be weeded out by natural selection in Evelynn smolens cosmic evolutionary scenario and thus it turns out that Smolin scenario would actually make the existence of a life-permitting universe even more improbable secondly speculations about the universes begetting baby universes via black holes seems to contradict quantum physics the conjecture that black holes might be portals of worm holes through which bubbles of false vacuum energy can tunnel to spawn new baby universes was the subject of a bet between Stephen Hawking and John Prescott we're talking finally invented in 2004 that he had lost the conjecture would require that the information locked up in a black hole could be utterly lost by forever escaping to another universe one of the last holdouts Hawking finally came to agree that quantum theory requires that the information is preserved in black hole formation and evaporation the implications Hawking says there is no baby universe branching off as I once thought the information remains firmly in our universe I'm sorry to disappoint science-fiction fans but if information is preserved there is no possibility of using black holes to travel to other universes end quote and so if this result is correct Smolin scenario is literally physically impossible well these are the only mechanisms that Dawkins suggests we're generating an ensemble of randomly ordered universes neither of them is even tenable much less simple Dawkins is therefore failed to turn back the objection that his postulation of a randomly ordered world ensemble is an unpardonable objections to the postulate of a world ensemble of which Dawkins is apparently unaware his Oxford colleague Roger Penrose has argued forcefully that if our universe is just a random member of a world ensemble then it is inconceivably more probable that we should be observing an island of order no larger than our solar system in a sea of chaos observable universes like those are simply much more plenteous in the world ensemble than worlds like ours and therefore ought to be observed by us since we do not have such observations that facts strongly disconfirms the world ensemble hypothesis on atheism at least it is highly probable that there is no world ensemble the fine-tuning of the universe is therefore plausibly do neither to physical necessity nor to chance it follows that the fine-tuning is therefore due to design unless unless the design hypothesis can be shown to be even more implausible than its competitors and Dawkins does in fact contend that the alternative design is indeed inferior to the many-worlds hypothesis summarizing what he calls the central argument of my book Dawkins insists that even in the admitted absence of a strongly satisfying explanation for the fine-tuning in physics still the quote-unquote relatively weak explanations we have at present are self evidently better than the self-defeating hypothesis of an intelligent designer really what is this powerful objection to the design hypothesis that renders it self evidently inferior to the admittedly weak world ensemble hypothesis well here it is we are not justified in inferring design as the best explanation of the complex order in the universe because then a new problem arises namely who designed the designer now notice that Dawkins never even thinks to ask who designed the world ensemble because he mistakenly thinks that it's simple and so does it need a designer but this question who designed the designer is apparently supposed to be so crushing that it outweighs all the problems with the world ensemble hypothesis Dawkins objection however has no weight for at least two reasons first in order to recognize an explanation nation is the best you don't need to have an explanation of the explanation this is an elementary point in the philosophy of science for example if archaeologists digging in the earth were to find things looking like arrowheads and pottery shards they would be justified in inferring that these artifacts are not the chance result of sedimentation and metamorphosis but rather they were the products of an unknown group of people even if they had no explanation whatsoever who these people were where they came from similarly if astronauts were to come upon a pile of machinery on the backside of the moon they would be justified and inferring that it was the product of intelligent agents even if they had no idea who those agents were or where they came from or how they got there in order to recognize an explanation is the best you don't need to have an explanation of the explanation in fact when you think about it such a requirement would lead to an infinite regress of explanations before you could have an explanation of something you need an explanation of the explanation but before you could accept that you would need an explanation of the explanation of the explanation and so on to infinity so that nothing could ever be explained and science would be destroyed before any explanation was acceptable you need an explanation of it and then an explanation of the explanation and then an explanation of the explanation of the explanation nothing could ever be explained so in the case at hand in order to recognize intelligent design is the best explanation of the appearance of design in the universe you don't need to be able to explain the designer whether the designer has an explanation can simply be left as an open question for future inquiry secondly Dawkins thinks that in the case of a divine designer of the universe if the designer is God then the designer is just as complex as the thing to be explained so that no explanatory advance is made now this objection raises all sorts of questions about the role played by simplicity in assessing competing explanations for example there are many other factors than simplicity that scientists weigh in determining which explanation is the best such as explanatory power explanatory scope plausibility and so forth an explanation which has for example broader explanatory scope may be less simple than a rival explanation but still be preferred because it explains more things simplicity is not the only or even the most important criterion for assessing theories but again leave those questions to the side Dawkins more fundamental mistake lies in his assumption the God is just as complex an entity as the universe that is plainly false as a pure mind without a body God is a remarkably simple entity a mind or a soul is not a physical object composed of parts in contrast to the contingent and variegated universe with all its inexplicable constants and quantities a divine mind is startlingly simple Dawkins protests a God capable of continuously monitoring and controlling the individual status of every particle in the universe cannot be simple well this is just confused certainly a mind may have complex ideas but the mind itself is a remarkably simple non-physical entity Dawkins has evidently confused a minds ideas which may indeed be complex with a mind itself which is an incredibly simple entity being a non-physical substance which has no parts therefore postulating a divine mind behind the universe most definitely does represent an advance in simplicity for whatever that might be worth Dawkins central argument thus fails to show that the alternative of design is in any way inferior to the many-worlds hypothesis indeed his smug and self-congratulatory attitude about this pitiful argument sustained even in the face of repeated correction by prominent philosophers and theologians like Keith Ward and Richard Swinburne is marvelous therefore of the three alternatives before us physical necessity chance or design the most plausible of the three is an explanation of the fine-tuning given by design finally the ontological argument the next argument to be discussed by Dawkins and the last that I have time to review is the famous ontological argument the version that I presented stems from Alvin Plantinga it's formulated in terms of possible worlds semantics now for those of you who are unfamiliar with the terminology of possible worlds let me explain that by a possible world I do not mean a planet or a universe or any kind of concrete reality rather a possible world is simply a complete description of reality or a way the world might be to say that God exists in some possible world is just to say that there is a possible description of reality which includes the statement God exists as part of the description now in his version of the argument planica conceives of God as a being which is maximally excellent in every possible world planning a takes maximal excellence to include such properties as omniscience omnipotence and moral perfection a being which has maximal excellence in every possible world would have what planting to calls maximal greatness and now Plantinga argues as follows premise 1 it's possible that a maximally great being aka God exists - if it's possible that a maximally great being exists then a maximally great being exists in some possible world 3 if a maximally great being exists in some possible world then it exists in every possible world 4 if a maximally great being exists in every possible world then it exists in the actual world 5 if a maximally great being exists in the actual world then a maximally great being exists 6 therefore a maximally great being or God exists now it might surprise you to learn that steps two through six of this argument are relatively uncontroversial most philosophers would agree that if God's existence is even possible then it follows logically that he must exist the principal issue to be settled with respect to planning is ontological argument is what warrant exists for thinking premise 1 it's possible that God exists to be true well the idea of a maximally great being is an intuitively coherent idea and so it seems plausible that such a being could exist in order for the ontological argument to fail the concept of a maximally great being must be in Co parent like the concept of a married bachelor but the concept of a maximally great being doesn't seem to be even remotely incoherent and this provides at least some prima Fauci warrant for thinking that it is possible that a maximally great being exists now Dawkins devotes six full pages brimming with ridicule and invective to the ontological argument without raising any serious objection to planning his argument he notes in passing Amano Elkins objection that existence is not a perfection but since planning as argument doesn't presuppose that it is we can leave that irrelevance to the side he reiterates a parody of the argument designed to show that God does not exist because a God who created everything while not existing is greater than one who exists and created everything ironically this parody fall far from disproving the auto logical argument actually reinforces it for a being which creates everything while not existing is a logical incoherence and therefore is impossible there is no possible world which contains a non-existent being which creates the world now if the Atheist is to maintain as he must that God's existence is impossible then the concept of God would have to similarly be incoherent but it's not and that supports the plausibility of premise 1 Dawkins also chortles I've forgotten the details but I once peaked a gathering of theologians and philosophers by adapting the ontological argument to prove that pigs can fly they felt the need to resort to modal logic to prove that I was wrong this is just embarrassing the ontological argument just is an exercise in modal logic the logic the possible and the necessary I could just imagine what the philosophers and theologians whom Dawkins peeked at that conference must have been thinking well I'm out of time there are other arguments to be discussed doubtless you can think of substantive objections to the arguments I have discussed but at least I hope to have shown that the objections raised by Richard Dawkins to those arguments are not even injurious much less deadly we now have 20 minutes for your questions there are two microphones one here and one here so if you could form an orderly queue we'd ask you to keep your questions on the topic of Bill's lecture just now rather than asking other questions I think you need to give yourself a round of applause for having done multiverses before 11:00 a.m. give yourself another round of applause now just as people are coming some of you may be feeling oh I'm not sure if I understood all that and I certainly feel that I didn't understand everything that well said and so one of the things that we can do is to take away that confidence that the Christian worldview possesses the resources to be able to answer and deal with some of the most pertinent and pressing intellectual questions so I would invite you first of all to now put your questions to Bill are you ready sir please go ahead yes certain epistemologists have claimed over the years a manual can't David Hume and most recently Robert Fogel in that making a jump from a priori or experience based knowledge into the realm of the metaphysical is not is not possible or not intellectually responsible how would we respond to something like this well at least with respect to the lecture this morning I haven't done that the question concerns leaping from some sort of a priori knowledge to metaphysical knowledge now what's a priori knowledge this would be knowledge that is gained prior to experience a sort of innate knowledge but I think if you look at the premises of the argument I discuss there hardly aa priori they appeal to things like scientific evidence for fine-tuning for the beginning of the universe even the odd illogical argument I have come to see is really an a posteriori argument that is to say it is based on experience it's based on our understanding of modality and our experience of possibility and necessity so I don't think these arguments are a priori in any sort of objectionable way I do think they appeal to rational intuition but I see no trouble with that it if someone wants to defend a sort of strict naturalistic empiricism I think probably he's going to be caught in self reputation because the person says something like this we should only believe what can be scientifically proven that statement itself can't be scientifically proven so that it's self defeating Michael Ray in his book the world without design I think has shown that the only plausible view of naturalism is as a methodological assumption which someone might adopt but as a methodological assumption it's neither true nor false and someone's able to adopt different methodological assumptions so I guess I just don't see that concern as being relevant to what I've said with respect to these arguments thank you next question you have more questions do the objective moral values all right I mean I guess going to passage an exodus it's all about the time for moments and of some of the same commodities to not kill and also to not lie so I guess my question is if there are some situations in life where is actually Maury right to kill I'm in self-defense or to lie to protect somebody does that not undermine the objective moral values and actually God is morally relative no I don't think it does and here you'll notice that I use the language of objective moral values rather than absolute moral values and that is deliberate to say they're absolute moral values could be taken to mean that certain moral duties hold regardless of the circumstances you're in so thou shalt not kill regardless of the fact that a terrorist is about to kill your wife and children what I'm talking about is objective moral values which means that in any given situation in which you might find yourself there is something that is really right and really wrong independently of human opinion but clearly that might vary with the circumstances in some cases it would be morally permissible to kill but in other cases it would be morally impermissible to kill so what I'm talking about is objective right and wrong but not necessarily absolutes that take no cognizance of the circumstances in which a person finds himself okay thank you for your question I'm going to go again on this side you've been caring a little longer you ready go ahead yeah first of all pleasure to and be here and hear you lecture thanks very much and I have a question the moral argument a kind of comprehensive question and under some of the first premise of the argument if God does not exists an objective moral values and duties do not exist is not logically equivalent to the claim that objective moral values and duties exist if and only if God exists that is it's not a body condition in a recent Q&A and on the reasonable faith website you explain that the first premise and the moral argument is actually a counterfactual now if the first premise were a biconditional I take it back to demonstrate its truth you'd have to outline the necessary and fit and sufficient conditions they exist for the existence of objective moral values and duties and then show that necessarily those conditions cannot obtain on atheism but my question is what must be done to defend the first premise is a mere counterfactual and more specifically can you outline the premises that you would in fact use in an argument for the truth of that counterfactual kind of step by step yeah well what did you could you translate Pearson for us as well could we bring up the moral argument slide as I stated it today I think I stated it in the indicative mood that if moral Val got does not exist then moral values and duties do not exist but I think one can actually state it as a subjunctive conditional and this is the way I'd ran it in my debate with Peter Milliken last night I did use that namely if God did not exist an objective moral values and duties would not exist and the argument would be exactly the same namely that if atheism or true if naturalism were true then there just isn't any reason to regard human beings as low sigh of intrinsic moral value there they would just be relatively advanced primates and I just don't see any reason any explanation for thinking that the flourishing of these primates on this little planet is the source of intrinsic moral value especially difficult for the Atheist view would be source of moral obligation where would moral obligations and prohibitions come from if there is no moral lawgiver to prohibit or prescribe moral duties as chemists and ethicists alike recognized prescriptions require a prescriber and that would be missing if atheism were true so the arguments would be exactly the same whether it's a counterfactual or whether it's an indicative conditional okay thank you thank you very much your questions then hi well to do the moral question as well none of its premise to objective moral values entities do exist how do you justify that in sighs deeply objective moral values exist but it doesn't seem to me necessarily true it is he seems to be equally likely if I were an atheist but nihilism is true in other words there are no objective all thing is just simply associated or whatever yeah and as to objective moral values do exist so how would you say to how do you convince an atheist that actually no they really do exist as opposed to nine isn't being true apart from simply saying very unpleasant I think that the second premise is necessarily true but let's distinguish necessity from certainty that is very important to certainty as a property of persons necessity is a property of propositions and some propositions can be necessary even though they're very uncertain for example some complicated mathematical equation will be necessarily true if true but we may be very uncertain about it so the necessity of the second premise and the truth of the second premise doesn't require certainty what reason would we have to believe that objective moral values and duties exist well basically it would be our moral experience just as we believe in the world of sense objects around us physical objects because we have a sense of them through our senses so we can believe in the objective reality of moral values and duties on the basis of our moral experience and any argument you run to be skeptical about our moral experience I can run a parallel argument about why you should be skeptical about our experience of the physical world of objects around us maybe you're a VAT and a brain and a vat of chemicals being stimulated by a scientist to think you're here in this lecture hall listening to this lecture maybe you're a body lying in the matrix and you're inhabiting a virtual reality in the absence of some reason to defeat your experiences you're justified in believing in what those experiences teach you and similarly in the absence of a good defeater of our moral experience I think we're justified in believing what that experience tells us Louise Anthony is an atheist philosopher who put it so well I think is how she put it any argument for moral skepticism is going to be based upon premises which are less obvious than the reality of objective moral values themselves and therefore you would never be justified in accepting moral skepticism I like that and I think that's correct thank you for the question yes so endure if you could speak on increasing entropy with regard to the cosmological argument in the multiverse I heard it said that when on earth when the last black hole dissipates and we completely run out of energy our universe could run into another universe spawning at a new inner universe and wondering if the increasing entropy would discount that or how that well that would depend on the multiverse hypothesis that there in fact are other universes in which our universe or with which our universe might collide and as I said the board Guth the Lankin theorem applies to the multiverse itself so even if we are part of a multiverse with containing other worlds with which we might collide nevertheless the multiverse itself must have an absolute beginning at some point in the finite past so it doesn't avoid the problem Thank You Simon um with regard to the TV logical argument to which argument is logically teleological can we have that one come up please um I talked about it with one of my friends he said to me um that's all irrelevant because you were thinking about it kind of from the beginning you're saying how likely is one of these a universe like this would exist whereas actually as observers we could only exist in a universe this fine-tuned and so I probably couldn't say that as well given that neither you know Dawkins addresses that is he just pulling a fast one on me or what what your friend is talking about is a so-called anthropic principle and this was an attempt to say that we shouldn't be surprised at the fine-tuning of the universe for our existence because after all if it weren't fine-tuned then we couldn't be here to be surprised about it and therefore we shouldn't be surprised this is generally recognized today to be a fallacious argument just because it's true that only a universe which is fine-tuned for observers can have observers in it it doesn't follow that it isn't improbable that a fine-tuned universe should exist and that's why the appeal to the so-called anthropic principle today requires the appeal to the world ensemble you've got to have the many universes the many worlds so that somewhere in the world ensemble by chance alone finely tuned worlds will appear and then you can appeal to the anthropic principle to say we shouldn't be surprised because all the possibilities are actualized in the world ensemble so in the discussion today the anthropic principle requires the world ensemble or multiverse hypothesis just as Richard Dawkins recognizes so your friend would need to deal with the arguments about the multiverse in the world ensemble that I shared thanks for the question succinct Lee it's possible please you argued from the cosmological argue that God is changeless does that so he's not the god of the New Testament who became a man who lived amongst us very good question can we have that first argument up the cosmological argument I said that the cosmological argument gets us back to a being who transcends time and space and notice my caveat I said and who is therefore timeless at least without the universe now philosophers introduced these little caveats for seasons and that is because I think as you indicate that it's very plausible that when God creates the universe that at the moment of the creation of time God enters into relationship with the universe and therefore is in time and therefore the Incarnation is no problem because God is in time I think God exists right now and he existed yesterday he will exist tomorrow so my studied view of this subject is that God is timeless without the universe and in time from the moment of creation on thank you questions about don'ts logical arguments it's easy you can get away usually in metal logic with using a counter population for things between I didn't catch that um it's easily we can normally get away in myrtle logic by using a counterpart relation or things Alice but I think panting has a solution to this presumably you've gotta pass the first premises there's a world at which something is such that it is maximally excellent at every world in which it exists and it seems that you need not just counter population but actually identity that between worlds I want to have a sense of that this is a very technical question about identity across possible worlds and Alvin planning as perhaps you know gives I think a very sound critique of counterpart theory in his book the nature of necessity and I see no reason whatsoever that we can't just stipulate which being it is in each possible world in which that being exists it's the problem with people who appeal to counterparts seem to think that it's a matter of sort of looking into this other possible world and finding Peter may in this other world how do you find him if he has red hair and he's short and fat how do you discover which one is Peter made but that's completely wrong headed it's just a matter of stipulating in this world Peter May weighs 300 pounds red-haired and short in this world he's tall and skinny it's simply stipulation so I don't see that there's any sort of problem with transworld identity and in that the vast majority of contemporary philosophers I think would agree there are very few that would hold to this kind of modal realism and and counterpart counterparts of you that exist in other worlds thanks for the question we have time for one more we've obviously got some philosophers in the audience today knocking - okay yeah they snuck in the day this will be the last question Thank You Hiro this is also about the ontological organ and it may even be the same question I don't have the philosophical for carefully to tell you it is what do you mean by a maxilla great or maxilla excellent being that seems a very ill-defined term to me so somebody could say I think it'd be more excellent for it to be a flying pig than not a flying pig flying white a flying pig can be really excellent so it is very subjective what we mean by excellent and again we're kind of saying this makes any great thing this properties that apply across different worlds are kind of making a metal world steaming about it is that a fair thing to do your job well I've already I think addressed the second issue I think it does make sense to talk about Transworld identity and many contemporary philosophers think for example that mathematical objects are necessarily existent being that numbers exist in every possible world there's no world lacking the number one for example so the idea of necessary existence is not probable problematic I think and the idea of maximal excellence is planning it defines it is pretty clear it's a being which is omnipotent omniscient and morally perfect now I don't think that's problematic it's better it's greater to be powerful than impotent and weak it's greater to know everything than to be right it's greater to be more perfect than morally flawed or evil so those seem to be clear great making properties and moreover it's greater to be necessarily existent than merely contingent to just sort of happen to be there so it does seem to me the concept of a maximally great being that is to say a being which has maximal excellence in every possible world is a perfectly coherent concept it's possible so the Atheist I think to resist this argument has to say the concept of God is like that of a married bachelor or a round square and that's right I think that's a very radical position it's not enough for the atheist to deny that God exists he's got to say it's impossible that God exists and oh I think something like that that seems to me to be extraordinarily implausible thank you very much now we will move to a break until 11:45 when John Lennox will come and speak on Stephen Hawking and the grand design may I also just make one further point in the presentation of what bill has done this morning and then by standing up here and defending his view opening himself up to questions he's demonstrated a core principle of what we believe as Christians that our beliefs are open to question we're not 6 foot above contradiction that we want to expose what we believe to these questions so I hope that you will be encouraged by that I hope that you'll be inspired by that to approach apologetics and to pick up these tools and use them in your own way in your own circumstances if you didn't have your question address then would I be able to encourage you to check out Bill's own website which is the reasonable faith website which you'll find WWE the noble faith org and he will regularly answer questions that come in from writers and from emails there so you may have the opportunity to have your question answered even if you didn't have it there this morning please would you give bill a thoroughly deserving round of applause my brief is to talk to you about probably the most powerful scientific voice that has been added to the atheist choir around the world their headlines were full of it Stephen Hawking says physics leaves no room for God and so on and on with many variations and these headlines were referring to the publication of his book co-authored with Leonard Noddin often titled the grand design what are we to think of it is it really true that the Grand Master of physics has checkmated the grand designer of the universe you

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Keywords: William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith, New Atheists, Atheists, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Arguments, God, Faith, Reason, Philosophy, UK, Westminster Chapel, Be, Thinking, Tour, Kalam, Cosmological, Moral Law, Moral Argument, Atheism (Religion), Christianity, Religion, Theism, Teleological

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Length: 73min 47sec (4427 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 04 2012