Is There Evidence for God? | William Lane Craig & Kevin Scharp

thank you I'm grateful to the Veritas forum for the invitation to participate in tonight's dialogue and I'd also like to thank Kevin sharp for his willingness to join in we are here to discuss whether there is evidence for God I think that there is in fact I'm convinced that God's existence best explains a wide range of the data of human experience let me mention briefly six one God is the best explanation why anything at all exists this is the most fundamental question of philosophy suppose you were hiking through the woods and found a ball lying on the ground you would naturally wonder how it came to be there if your hiking buddy said to you forget about it it just exists inexplicably you'd think that he was either joking or else just wanted you to keep moving no one would take seriously the idea that the ball just exists without any explanation why not because the ball is contingent in its existence it can exist but it doesn't have to exist so what makes the ball different from say unicorns which can exist but do not exist very simply there is something that explains the balls existence typically a causal explanation now notice that merely increasing the size of the ball even until it becomes coextensive with the universe does nothing to provide or remove the need for an explanation of its existence so what is the explanation of the universe whereby the universe I mean all of space-time reality the explanation of the universe can be found only in a transcendent reality beyond the universe beyond space and time which is metaphysically necessary in its existence now there's only one way I can think of to get a contingent entity like the universe from a necessarily existing cause and that is if the cause is a personal agent who can freely choose to create a contingent reality it therefore follows that the best explanation of the existence of the contingent universe is a transcendent personal being which is what everybody means by God we can summarize this reasoning as follows one every contingent thing has an explanation of its existence - if the universe has an explanation of its existence that explanation is a transcendent personal being 3 the universe is a contingent thing for therefore the universe has an explanation of its existence 5 therefore the explanation of the universe is a transcendent personal being which is what everybody means by God number 2 God is the best explanation of the origin of the universe atheists have typically held that the universe never had a beginning but is just eternal in the past but we now have pretty strong evidence that the universe is not eternal in the past but had an absolute beginning of finite time ago in 2003 Arvind borde Alan Guth and Alexander Vilenkin were able to prove that any universe which is on average in a state of cosmic expansion throughout its history cannot be infinite in the past but must have a past space-time boundary because we don't yet have a quantum theory of gravity we can't provide a physical description of the first split second of the universe but any sort of quantum physical state which may have characterized the early universe cannot be eternal in the past because it is unstable and so must have had an absolute beginning even if our universe is just a part of a so-called multiverse composed of many universes the universe itself or the multiverse itself must have had an absolute beginning of course highly speculative scenarios like loop quantum gravity models string models even closed timelike curves have been proposed to try to avoid this absolute beginning these models are fraught with problems but the bottom line is that none of these theories even if true succeed in restoring an eternal past according to the Lincoln none of these scenarios can actually be past eternal he concluded all the evidence we have says that the universe had a beginning but then the inevitable question arises why did the universe come into being what brought the universe into existence there must have been a transcendent cause which brought the universe into being we can summarize our argument as follows 1 the universe began to exist 2 if the universe began to exist then the universe has a transcendent cause 3 therefore the universe has a transcendent cause by the very nature of the case that cause must be a timeless spaceless immaterial being now there are only two types of things that could possibly fit that description either an abstract object like a number or else an unembodied mind or consciousness but my abstract object don't stand in causal relations the number seven for example has no effect upon anything therefore the cause of the universe is plausibly an unembodied mind and thus were brought not merely to a transcendent cause of the universe but to its personal creator three God is the best explanation of the applicability of mathematics to the physical world philosophers and scientists have puzzled over what physicist Eugen Vigna called the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics how is it that a theorist like Peter Higgs can sit down at his desk and by pouring over mathematical equations predict the existence of a fundamental particle which thirty years later after investing millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours experimentalists are finally able to detect mathematics is the language of nature but how is this to be explained if mathematical objects are abstract entities causally isolated from the universe then the applicability of mathematics to the physical world is in the words of the philosopher of mathematics Mary Lang a happy coincidence on the other hand if mathematical objects are just useful fictions then how is it that nature is written in the language of these fictions the naturalist has no explanation for the uncanny applicability of mathematics to the physical world by contrast the theist has a ready explanation when God created the universe he designed it on the mathematical structure which he had in mind we can summarize this argument as follows 1 if God did not exist the applicability of mathematics would be a happy coincidence to the applicability of mathematics is not a happy coincidence 3 therefore God exists number four God is the best explanation of the fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life in recent decades scientists have been stunned by the discovery that the initial conditions of the Big Bang were fine-tuned for the existence of intelligent life with a precision and delicacy that literally defy human comprehension now there are three live explanatory options for this extraordinary fine-tuning physical necessity chance or design physical necessity is not however a plausible explanation because the finely tuned constants in quantities are independent of the laws of nature therefore they are not physically necessary so could the fine-tuning be due to chance the problem with this explanation is that the odds of a life-permitting universe governed by our laws of nature are just so infinitesimal that they cannot be reasonably phased therefore proponents of chance have been forced to postulate the existence of a world ensemble of other universes preferably infinite in number and randomly ordered so that life permitting universes would appear by chance somewhere in the ensemble not only is this hypothesis tomorrow richard dawkins phrase and impossible newest extravagance but it faces an insuperable obstacle by far most of the observable universes in a world ensemble would be worlds in which a single brain fluctuates into existence out of the vacuum and observes its otherwise empty world worlds like that are simply incomprehensible more plenteous in the world ensemble than worlds like ours thus if our world were just a random member of a world ensemble we ought to be having observations like that since we don't that strongly disconfirms the world ensemble hypothesis so chance is also not a good explanation it follows that design is the best explanation of the fine-tuning of the universe thus the fine-tuning of the universe constitutes evidence for a cosmic designer number five God is the best explanation of objective moral values and duties in the world in moral experience we apprehend a realm of moral values and duties which impose themselves upon us as objectively binding and true for example we all recognize that it's wrong to walk into an elementary school with an automatic weapon and shoot little boys and girls and their teachers on a naturalistic view however there's nothing really wrong with that moral values are just the subjective byproducts of biological evolution and social conditioning in Richard Dawkins words there is at bottom no evil no good nothing but pitiless indifference we are machines for propagating DNA it is every living object sole reason for being by contrast the theist grounds objective moral values in God and our moral duties in his commands the theist thus has the explanatory resources which the Atheist lacks to ground objective moral values and duties hence we may argue one objective moral values and duties exist two but if God did not exist objective moral values and duties would not exist 3 therefore God exists so if you think that there are at least some things that are really good or evil you should take a serious look at the ISM number 6 God can be personally known and experienced this isn't really an argument for God's existence rather it's the claim that you can know God exists wholly apart from arguments simply by personally experiencing him philosophers call beliefs like this properly basic beliefs they aren't based on some other beliefs rather they're part of the foundation of a person's system of beliefs other properly basic beliefs would be belief in the reality of the external world or the reality of the past when you think about it neither of these beliefs can be proved on the basis of evidence how could you prove that the world was not created five minutes ago with built in appearances of age like food in our stomachs from the breakfast we never really ate or memory traces in our brains of events we never really experienced how could you prove that you're not a brain-in-a-vat of chemicals being stimulated with electrodes by some mad scientist to believe that you're sitting here in this auditorium listening to this lecture although these sorts of beliefs are basic for us that doesn't mean that they're arbitrary rather they are grounded in the sense that they're formed in the context of certain experiences in the experiential context of seeing and feeling and hearing things I naturally form the belief that there are certain physical objects which I'm sensing that's my basic beliefs are not arbitrary but appropriately grounded in experience there may be no way to prove such beliefs and yet it is perfectly rational to hold them you'd have to be crazy to think that you're a brain-in-a-vat or that the world was created five minutes ago such beliefs are thus not merely basic but properly basic in the same way belief in God can be for those who seek Him a properly basic belief grounded in our experience of God hence we may you won beliefs which are appropriately grounded maybe rationally accepted as basic beliefs not grounded an argument to belief that God exists is appropriately grounded 3 therefore belief that God exists can be rationally accepted as a basic belief not grounded on argument now if this is right then there's a danger that arguments for God could actually distract your attention from God himself the Bible promises draw near to God and He will draw near to you we mustn't so concentrate on the external arguments that we fail to hear the inner voice of God speaking to our own hearts for those who listen God becomes an immediate reality in their lives good evening friends thanks to the sponsors of tonight's event for inviting me and thanks to Professor Craig for participating and thanks to all of you for coming out so professor Craig went first and got to give his case for a theism going second I'm now expected to present my position argue it and dismantle his so I better get going I call the position 21st century atheism why 21st century because I think we've learned some important lessons in the 20th century about philosophy of religion and it's time to take advantage of those insights next let's play the let's define the position first for we should be formulating theism and atheism in terms of confidence levels from 0% to 100% not in terms of belief confidence levels are much more precise for example if forced to answer who would be the next president I'd probably say Hillary Clinton but I'm only at about 51% confidence on that so there's no way that I would say sincerely Hillary is going to win in normal circumstances a certain level of confidence is required in order to count as a belief we should formulate the ISM and atheism in terms of specific gods or religions the terms theists about X and atheist about X should be primary and then you can define general theism and general atheism in terms of those we also need to distinguish between weak religious views and strong religious views a weak religious view is greater than 50% confidence a strong religious view is high enough to count as knowledge or outright belief so using these points we can map out the various options next on the Left we see views on whether some God exists here I've put in the threshold for belief at 80% but that's just an example saying that it's more probable than not that some God exists means that you only need to show greater than 50% confidence but saying that we know we're believed that some God exists requires a higher confidence level next top and the bottom indicate strong positions the top strong theism the bottom strong atheism next the middle positions are in between and they're weak just above the 50% we have theism just below 50% week atheism next now on the right we have the same kind of options but instead of being about whether there's any gods at all there about whether capital G God the Christian God exists and now back to both frameworks here we have next 21st century atheism depicted on the previous framework as the red X on the left and the red X on the right the left X indicates that it's more probable than not that there are no gods at all the right X indicates that it is sorry that there is no Christian God and that's a high confidence claim you can imagine a bunch of frameworks just like the one on the right for other sorts of gods like Zeus or Thor or what-have-you and the X is gonna be in the same place in each case okay so 21st century atheism is a fairly simple theory and the primary argument for it is fairly simple as well I call it the confidence argument for any familiar God including capital G God the evidence is always either in ancient history or someplace where there are a few witnesses or it's based on someone's private experience also the evidence for it conflicts with our best scientific theories in biology chemistry and physics and we should have way more confidence in those scientific theories than in any existing evidence for any familiar God the confidence argument should give us high enough confidence to say God does not exist Zeus does not exist Thor does not exist and so on but what about our confidence for the claim that there are no gods at all any God that supposedly intervenes in the world in any familiar way is going to be undermined by the confidence argument and we have no reason to believe in gods that do not intervene in the world at all because they don't need them to explain anything so there's no reason to think that they do exist and there's very weak reason to believe they do not exist therefore it's more probable than not that there are no gods but this confidence isn't high enough to count as knowledge or outright belief next that's my position and my arguments for it it's important to note that 21st century atheism has nothing to do with the following views no strong general theism that would require arguing for high confidence against the existence of all conceivable gods even those that might want to deceive us about all the evidence like carts evil deceiver defending strong general atheism is in my view a sucker's bet no reductive naturalism I have no patience with the claim that everything can be reductively explained in terms of science and it's completely independent of 21st century atheism I have not argued that religion has bad consequences I have not implied that theists are stupid professor Craig might be the smartest person in the room for all I know I have not argued that miracles are impossible only that all the evidence we have for them does not override or even come close to our evidence for scientific theories that conflict with the supposed miracle now I want to develop a new kind of criticism of arguments for theism and for Christianity I call it the appeal to divine psychology you might have noticed I didn't use the problem of evil in my arguments here at all that's because contemporary Christian philosophers of religion to their great credit have largely dismantled the problem of evil in essence the theist points out that we should have no confidence at all in understanding God's global plans or how the evil we see might be outweighed by some more important part of the plan then the argument turns into a fight about divine psychology by divine psychology I mean what God would do what God would believe what God would want what plans God would have or what reasons God would have arguing with a theist about divine psychology is like arguing with a little kid about his imaginary tea party and all the parents in the room know that you don't win that argument no one seems to have realized that the point can be generalized to show that an entire category of arguments is unacceptable that entire category I call appeals to divine psychology and it includes many of the theists favorite arguments as well abandoning divine psychology cuts both ways but it cuts the theists deeper in particular cosmological arguments Tulia logical arguments explanatory arguments and miracle arguments all make appeals to divine psychology the Christian might claim that appeals to divine psychology are just fine but the theist can't have it both ways if we allow claims about God's psychology then the problem of evil comes roaring right back and you don't want that now when you determine to the arguments for theism and for Christianity in particular because my discussion partner is Professor Craig I'll be focusing on his work and what follows in assessing his arguments I will talk as I would to any other professional philosopher whose system I've managed to work my way into that is I don't pull punches but I also never attack character so it isn't personal professor Craig knows this I know this I'm saying it for the benefit of the audience in part because I respect the guy he's got some great philosophical skills he's a talented system builder which I admire and he's done a tremendous service to the Atheist movement by trouncing most of our heroes and raising the bar on both sides I'm serious that's a major that's a major benefit a major thing that we can say thank you for I've managed to take a look at professor Craig's entire system here it is here's what we have I think all the major arguments here here that Professor Craig is either advocated or proposed over the years is divided into arguments for theism in general at the top and for Christianity in particular at the bottom recall he just gave the contingency argument the Kalam argument the mathematical applicability argument the fine-tuning argument the moral argument in the experience argument for arguments from the top two arguments from the bottom that's the six he just gave next in this table professor Craig's arguments are on the left and some major problems they're on the top next we can see first a previously unknown problem that affects the entire system I call it the weakness problem it's sort of highlighted in blue up there professor Craig has routinely defended these arguments arguments for theism by saying that he only needs to convince you that the premises are more plausible than not but it should be obvious that it takes more than 51% confidence for knowledge or outright belief look back at the earlier framework for illustration here's what professor here is what Professor Craig argues for these are the way his arguments are presented next these are the conclusions that he draws from them go back those are the way he defends his premises and a gang forward those of the conclusions so ultimately he's been defending his arguments as if he advocate if he advocates weak theism but he's been advertising his view as if it's strong theism so the weakness problem is that his arguments are far weaker than they need to be to support his very strong conclusions therefore no one should take any of these arguments seriously until they are completely read offended from the ground up to match the standard professor Craig has set for himself otherwise he could backpedal and opt for weak theism but either way the entire system needs to be reworked well there are plenty of interesting things to say I I don't really need to do any more to undermine the entire system of arguments with the exception of the experience argument at the bottom it doesn't have any X's at all but don't let that fool you that just makes it very different from the other ones I do want to emphasize a couple of points look at the divine psychology objection the problem affects a lot of the arguments up here and it's not gonna affect the moral argument but everyone except for moral and experience of the ones that he presented it's their next think about explanation professor Craig routinely formulates his arguments as inferences to the best explanation I don't know if you noticed that but every single one of the first five arguments were formulated as inferences to the best explanation tonight however he admits that it's almost impossible to determine what God would do or plan at all for example if we think of God alone existing all by himself then there's no way to infer that God would even create the universe professor Craig freely admits that the god hypothesis doesn't make any predictions but it also it also makes no retro diction's a retro diction is like a prediction but it's predicting something that we already know know about like the existence of the universe the god hypothesis offers no predictions no retro dictions and as such it's a terrible explanation moral argument the first premise states that if God does not exist then objective moral values do not exist either in arguing for this premise professor Craig just assumes that the Atheist has to explain all morality in terms of evolutionary theory he said it again tonight but that is so completely wrong that you can't know anything about the whole history of ethics over the last century if you espouse that there are literally dozens of theories of moral values and moral duties that are objective not naturalist and make no appeal to gods for example GE Morris or William David Ross Christine Korres guards Thomas gamblin Derek Parfit Philip a foot David inna rush Schaffer Landau Roslyn hearse House John McDowell Jonathan dance eh a pitcher Roger crisp Joseph razz gene Hampton and Rafe Wedgwood that's just a few therefore until he's refuted every single one of these theories he needs to stop using the moral argument the lesson for everybody else stop assuming that atheists cannot accept that there are objective moral values all it demonstrates is that you know nothing about ethics next finally professor Craig makes a big deal of his knowledge of cosmology and he uses it in the Kalam argument in the fine-tuning argument both arguments that you saw tonight however he rejects evolutionary theory and with it contemporary biology in favor of intelligent design which is the idea that biological species developed by God's guidance but it doesn't make sense to claim to be an expert on cosmology and at the same time reject evolution that's just cherry-picking does he think there's a magic dividing line between biology and chemistry how do you think the fine-tuning argument even works those calculations are about biochemistry and that's the basis for evolutionary theory in biology at this point we understand life well enough that if you reject evolutionary theory it's pretty easy to trace that how you would have to reject chemistry and ultimately physics as well so professor Craig from one philosopher to another please drop intelligent design I would like to have a stronger opponent than that it does nothing to help you and it makes you look like you're more scared of evolutionary theory than Richard Dawkins is scared of you and we both know that's pretty scared we don't need to go through much more partly because for the apologist these arguments are just smoke and mirrors anyway and as we'll see their fate has no impact on the apologists belief that God exists the real heart of the system is the experience argument we'll turn to that professor Craig claims that even if all the other arguments for God's existence were shown to be worthless that would have absolutely zero impact on his belief that God exists that's because his own religious experience that he knows God exists independently of any argument or evidence he makes two appeals to justify this radical thesis first the belief that God exists is a basic belief because it's like a perceptual belief and second that his religious experience is an intrinsic defeat or defeater this means that his experience is so powerful that it undermines any reason one might have to doubt it so according to Professor Craig his religious experience is so powerful it allows them to know God exists it can never be reasonably doubted and he doesn't have to provide any arguments for it at all you gotta hand it to the guy he knows where his weak spot is the fact is religious experiences do not fit well into basic structure because they don't have they don't act like perceptual experiences at all perceptual experiences are backed up by other evidence including biology not so for religious experience and in addition we've got very good reason to think that there are no intrinsic defeat or defeat or because any experience can be misleading indeed we can stimulate a person's brain in certain ways and caused them to have very powerful religious experiences even though they aren't experiencing anything if professor Craig's experience was truly an intrinsic defeat or defeat her it would have to defeat all of neuroscience that potentially undermines it and that's absurd subjective experiences even really really really really powerful ones are just that subjective all by themselves they don't allow us to know anything about the experience argument is that it's supposed to justify being an apologist which is how professor Craig identifies the apologist is concerned first and foremost with defending the belief that God exists there's never an attempt to figure out whether it's true that God exists and the apologist is completely opposed to even considering that God might not exist I am ready to become a Christian tonight but professor Craig because he's an apologist has decided to put becoming an atheist completely out of the question the apologist puts this belief that God exists completely out of bounds for critical thinking being an apologist is seriously irrational first of all putting any belief completely out of balance where critical critical thinking is irrational how irrational well we have lots of great theories of rationality and critical thinking but none of them can even model the apologists irrationality for example you might be able to come close if you stipulate that the belief in God has to be a hundred percent confidence but Professor Craig emphatically denies that so he's suggesting that we should take a belief that isn't even certain and put it out of bounds for critical thinking our best theories of rationality can account for a lot of kinds of irrationality but the apologists the irrationality is so extreme that it can't even be modeled at all being an apologist is off-the-charts irrational when discussing the case of Ryan Bell the pastor who tried atheism for a year and lost his faith professor Craig freely admits that any Christian who allows Christianity to be subject to critical thinking just like any other belief is probably going to end up an atheist that's professor Craig's own stated view the greatest Christian apologist of the last half century is convinced that if the Christian gives the belief that God exists a fair shake in the process of rational belief revision then the belief that God exists is going to lose let that sink in for a second finally why should we care about any of this well it has a huge impact on social issues in particular apologetics tends to creep into related beliefs and lead to arbitrary hatefulness for example professor Craig campaigns against same-sex marriage on the right for same-sex couples to adopt to try to undermine some perfectly great parents right to have kids as a personal disgrace and moreover it's not supported by anything in the Bible or entailed by anything that is of course there's no outcry about single people adopting kids nor is there an outcry about rich people adopting kids even though greed is mentioned right along with homosexuality in 1st Corinthians and is emphasized over and over throughout the New Testament when Professor Craig cites evidence for his view he focuses exclusively on the four studies that suggest some problems for kids from same-sex households conveniently he ignores the over seven D studies concluding that there are no problems specific to kids from same-sex households professor Craig don't forget you can always change your mind thank you okay thank you very much so the next part of our evening together is a moderated dialogue where I'm the moderator and what I want to do is just it's gonna I think we have about 20 minutes or so of this and then we're gonna move to an audience question and answer period after that so I guess I'd like to start off in just a kind of a general way since you both listen to the other person give their presentations and maybe I'll start with dr. Craig because Kevin had an opportunity to respond to some of what you said but if you had a question having listened to dr. sharp just now you know would you want to get us started with the kind of shirt well thank you for that very robust Geus response I think that the YouTube video this event will repay close study since this was like drinking from a firehose tonight and this will be valuable for people in the future I think I do have a question about something you said that rather puzzled me you characterized weak theism as having a greater than 50% confidence right level and then talked about how I draw stronger conclusions than that I think this was the so-called weakness problem that yes I draw stronger conclusions from arguments whose premises I say are simply more plausible than their victories now the way I understand this Kevin is that what I was trying to do was to set minimum thresholds for reasonable theistic belief and the idea there was that in a deductive argument if the conjunction of the premises is more plausible than not then that suffices for what you said though weak theism a confidence in theism now I myself think that those premises are far more plausible than not but that's just meant to set a minimum threshold to get somebody like yourself into the kingdom I don't even though I but so it seems to me there really is no a weakness problem I don't get in the kingdom unless I believe right what I don't get in the kingdom and I believe right so I believe 51% is not enough for belief belief requires higher confidence than that ah okay then I misunderstood what you were saying I thought you were sure him that a confidence level of 51% would be enough for having a weak theistic belief no weak theism so thinking that theism is more probable than not but that doesn't justify you and saying I believe God exists or I know God exists well that's what you want okay okay then I misunderstood what you're saying I suppose I have a confidence that in the premises of these arguments that leads me to the think that the conclusion is true yes if the logic is valid yes and I think that the premises taken together are more plausible than not yes then it follows that the conclusion is true so why would I not believe the conclusion good so the this is I think a good example of why the debate shouldn't be cast in terms of belief right you said I think the conclusion is true right you believe the conclusion is true fine but instead it makes more sense to cast them in terms of confidence levels if you have 51% on all of your confidence for the confidence levels for the premises of your argument and it's a deductive argument then your conclusion isn't going to end up somehow being 70 or 80 percent confidence right well all those probability levels for the premises do is set a minimum level for the probability of the conclusion in a deductive are try to review much higher so let me try to rephrase your minimum level needs to be much higher in order to get your conclusion to convince somebody to believe that God exists as opposed to just say I think it's more probable than not those are different puzzles me why if you think it's more probable than not if you think this is more probably true than false yes I would say that it's enough for belief yeah not in a current not according to contemporary epistemology and the Bayesian ISM that you yourself have used frequently to formulate probability claims and so forth 51% that's super variable it goes up and down think about the think about the Hillary example I just gave I'm I'm at 51% for Hillary winning right yeah does that mean I believe Hillary's gonna win now well I suppose it is going to depend on how much confidence you need think is required for belief I agree it does yeah you do have a threshold of how much confidence is required to believe yeah yeah in my example I put it at 80 you can put it 70 if you want somewhere in there it's gonna be context dependent to some extent depend on the topic at hand but it's surely not 51 that sounds like you just pluck that out of the air that I did it's just an example okay it's just an example but it's got to be way higher than 51% or at least considerably higher than that for a belief I don't think alright well that was the question I wanted to address yes so it's just as a recommendation for when you think about this in the future I would look at work on confidence levels and outright belief and knowledge and see exactly whether you can argue that 51% is good enough for belief I would expect that would be your move next time I take it part of what dr. Craig's question is is if I have say a 51% confidence level in some proposition and that's greater than my confidence level in the negation of that proposition which should be a 49 okay then then the question is you know it's belief or not belief isn't it haven't I done enough in terms of a conversation like this or debate like this to show that you know in terms of this evidence for God or some reason to believe in the existence of God isn't that enough for these kinds of purposes professor Craig wants to say that he knows God exists and he wants to say that these arguments should entitle a person if they accept these arguments as good arguments exactly - no they don't claims about the level of confidence I know you should get one has you should have God I mean I this is something to measure that I mean theists must be all over the map in terms of their degree of confidence some people of I agree Kierkegaard held two theistic beliefs despite great doubts I look great existential angst and others may have a more confident and buoyant belief in God and the great I it doesn't seem to me that there is any sort of non arbitrary level that you could set to say this is required to be a theist I'm not saying it's required to be a theist I'm saying it's required for belief I'm saying there's a difference but there's a way that belief and confidence levels interact and there's a certain threshold that you need to reach lips in order to get to belief and that you don't appreciate in the way that you formulate your arguments could i I just wanted to just because we only have I think about fifteen more minutes we move on to another argument so one thing that dr. sharp mentioned that I thought was pretty interesting just as somebody who follows these arguments only a little bit and don't really work in this area was this appeal to divine psychology argument and there's one thing what you thought about that about the way in which some of these arguments make claims about what God wants or God plans and at the same time it seems like we must have very little idea about what God psychology is like right I I and I would agree with that that we wouldn't know a whole lot about divine psychology about what God would do under certain circumstances but I don't see that that plays a significant role in the Kalam argument for example whose premises are very simple that if the universe the universe began to exist and if it did there must be a transcendent cause but I don't see any role played in that argument by divine psychology so far it doesn't with the way you just laid it out but what you need to think about is there's two issues one is you formulated mostly as an inference to the best explanation tonight but usually you formulated as a deductive argument I did both tonight well in first explain the arguments can be formulated either way inductively or deduct those are different kinds of arguments and the Kalam as an inductive argument is very different from the Kalam as a deductive argument I think you should keep it as a deductive argument it works much better for you because you don't appeal to God as an explanatory device in that way so are you saying that in the way I presented it tonight it isn't vulnerable today turbine cycle it is I haven't yet so in the way that you lay out there the premises you say there's got to be something that caused the universe to come into being and let's call that thing God okay great well how would I know that God even would create the universe if I don't feel like I'm justified in believing that God would do that then why would I be justified in naming whatever caused the universe God yeah well I attempt to deduce some of the properties of the cause of the universe and through such an analysis what I derive is quite a striking neither of theologically significant aggregates that this cause must be beginningless uncaused timeless spaceless immaterial yeah enormous ly powerful fair enough personal creator of the universe now that I think is a rich enough concept to be called God great no part out from psychology now let's think for a minute why think that that thing would create the universe and if it wouldn't there's no reason to call whatever caused the universe to exist God even if it's personal it would be a personal creator of the universe now it would be a very strange form of atheism that admitted that there exists a timeless spaceless immaterial enormous ly powerful personal creator of the universe yeah what do you call it God or not I agree I don't I don't agree with that part of the argument I'm only pointing out a different problem with the entire thing okay I guess I just don't see the problem I find there's a finding I think there's a yeah in that one one says that the fine-tuning of the universe is more probable yeah given theist an intelligent yeah given theism yeah then it is given naturalism good that's great and there it seems to me that all the theist needs to do is to show that it's not improbable but God would want to create a finely-tuned universe and and that is surely going to be much much more probable than on naturalism all of these constants and quantities falling by accident into the life permitting zone good I'm not gonna get sucked into that trying to have a discussion about what God would do or what he wouldn't do or anything like that that's all divine psychology all equally murky and unclear and I don't think we have any good reason to believe any of that stuff so if you want to push the fine-tuning argument then what you need to do is say that the chances that God would create the universe are actually better than the chances that it was created randomly given this fine-tuning and you don't do that pardon me you don't argue that well I think I do does that in his formulations of the fine-tuning argument he he what he argues is that the naturalist would have to show that there's some sort of significant improbability in the designers creating a finely tuned universe and the probability of these constants and quantities falling into the life-permitting zone is so I know their comprehensive oh I got it but the atheist could never demonstrate that it's less probable than that that a design I would want to create a finely-tuned world why not why assume that why not assume why not actually do the calculation and show me how likely it is that God would create the universe well I think it's a matter what's the calculation is the probability is it Lane you want in 10 to the 10th or you put numbers on this can't I group what and that means you can't conclude what you want to conclude what finds a is a given an intelligent designer of the universe it's not improbable that he would finally tune it fried you justify the life of fun why do I think that that's not improbable that God would create a universe at all well you don't have to show that it's not improbable but simply that the probabilities are not as low as all of these constants of quantities falling by accidental life permitting zone and that is so absurdly improbable that I think it just outstrips any sort of uncertainty with respect to sing that a designer in the universe would finally tune the universe for agents excellent so why isn't it absurdly improbable that God would create the universe it's not absurdly improbable because God could have good reasons for doing that he just want to create but that's not performed for no probability one could have reasons yes right and so he does have the burden of proof here is on the atheist to show that this is somehow less probable than the constants and quantities falling into the life-permitting zone by accident and the theist doesn't need to show that it is probable just to turn back the atheists objections from divine psychology that that this is highly highly unlikely that a designer would want to do this it it seems to me if that if the designer is good he might very well want to create finite person who could have a relationship with him as you're fond of saying on your podcast the burden of proof lies on the person making the assertion good I want to move on to one more thing uh well this has been very good so far but I'm just conscious of time do I get to ask my question yeah if you'd like to if you'd like to ask a question professor Craig I I wanted to ask you a question about love love yeah love so you've said that all Christians have a duty to love God and you know certainly one of the essential aspects of God's message is if you love me and believe in me you're gonna go to heaven otherwise you'll suffer eternal damnation in hell and if we just distill out the kind of core message there it's something like love me or I'm going to make you suffer so being a Christian is fundamentally to put this sort of extortionist concept of love at the center of your life it seems to me like kind of going through life with a gun to your head or even better maybe going through life with a gun to your soul yeah so I want to ask you how can you possibly think that's love or recommend this kind of relationship to other people yeah Kevin I don't think that I think that's a gross caricature of Manatee and if that's what you think it's no wonder you would reject it what what what the Bible says is that because of our only our own freely chosen evil and and moral wrongdoing we find ourselves spiritually alienated from God and morally guilty before him and and culpable before him but God loves us so much that he has sent his son into the world as a sacrificial offering yep to bear the punishment for our wrongdoing so that we might be forgiven and reconciled and come to know him and have eternal life and it's up to us whether we want to accept that grace or not if we don't and those who refuse it you see they refuse his forgiveness and so find themselves still in this state of spiritual alienation culpability and condemnation they find if they die in that state they go into a state of eternal separation from God but it's not God who rejects them it's they who reject God yeah but God is still saying if you don't love me and believe in me you're going to go to hell and suffer right it's that wrong I thought this was that is rhyming woody what he's saying is you're already morally guilty and culpable you're drowning but I am I'm going to save you if you will let me but if you repulse me if you push me away than God has no choice oh that's so unfortunate for God he has no choice but to condemn the unbeliever said well I mean in one very interesting line of discussion but I'm not sure that it really relates to either the arguments you laid out no it does actually because I think one of the major important issues for the for understanding Christianity is the concept of love and God's love and it does serve as evidence against Christian to think that the concept of love here is not genuine love that is a legitimate point okay what I wanted to in our last couple of minutes I wanted to ask one more question related to something that dr. Sharpe presented and then there's a question that I want to ask of each of you to address to the audience it's some of what you presented in one specific place you said you're not on board or the kind of reductive naturalism that's right and I we just wanted you to say a little bit more about that because sometimes when you see debates like this yes you know with a there are these physicists or other people who are arguing really hard to basically prove that God doesn't exist because God isn't sort of part of any sort of natural science or a scientific explanation yeah and it seems like you're backing away from a kind of strong naturalistic claim but I'm wondering what what does that really come to in terms of a discussion like this I think those are terrible arguments I think we have no reason to believe that everything can be reductively explained in terms of science and one of the professor Craig's main thrusts and his arguments is that the moral moral values and duties cannot be reductively explained in terms of science and I agree 100% with them but the Atheist is not saddled with that position and instead can adopt a much more reasonable position that reductive naturalism is false and no part of atheism whatsoever I think that's just a terrible way for the atheist to go there's no reason to take on a gigantic explanatory burden when you don't need to so just for people out here what is it a non reductive naturalism so non reductive naturals and movies say there are moral values they're real they're objective but you cannot explain them in terms of science and my position would be the theist has an explanatory ground for the objectivity of moral values and duties which are not available to the atheist for the Atheist he can certainly affirm these but they're just sort of hanging in the air there isn't any sort of explanatory ground for them especially for moral duties why would we have a moral prohibition or obligation to do certain things if there is no moral lawgiver it seems to me that duty is very mysterious on an atheistic view could I there are arguments and I mean in the history of moral philosophy and lots of arguments about moral duties in a that come from that our objective that come from a secular background right and I'm sure you're aware of those of course there adequate it's not enough just to list them yes I mean after all they're they can't all be right because they're mutually contradictory but that aspect of them can be right the non not not reductive naturalist objective no appeal to God that can be right yeah I I have tried to deal with some of these for example what I call a theistic moral Platonism or humanism which sees human flourishing is the good and it seems to me that all of these ultimately proved to be explanatorily and adequate okay okay so that there there there it's not that they sort of don't make any sense at all it's that ultimately you think they fail as moral theories for some planet orally inadequate in that they don't have an adequate a plausible and non arbitrary grounding for moral value and duty which the theist has I think theism is a superior moral theory in terms of its grounding of these ok good ok so unfortunately we're coming to the end of this time but I have a last question that the Veritas forum wanted me to ask at each of you and it's basically something the answer should be addressed I think to the audience everyone here so it seems likely that each of you would agree that a university like Ohio State should be a place where people generally explore different ideas and weigh the evidences of various worldviews and if we're intellectually honest people should be open to changing our belief systems if the evidence merits this change based on tonight what would you challenge Ohio State students to do or to consider going forward would you like to start sure I would encourage students are interested to begin to read some of the literature on this material particularly from the standpoint of Christian theism there is a wealth of material available on our website reasonable faith org and I would encourage students to avail themselves of the articles that are there on YouTube there are many debates that you can listen to as well as lectures there's a great wealth of material on all of these different arguments that I've shared tonight that's available on the website and you might think about taking some philosophy courses here at OSU in order to acquaint yourself more here here this material okay thank you doctor yeah the advice I would have would be think critically subject your beliefs to critical scrutiny and if they do not hold up change them and by doing that you end up crafting your own belief system that you can use to live your life in the 21st century instead of relying on borrowed beliefs from whoever raised you in the case of Christianity you're relying on beliefs from the Iron Age Thanks all right if you can hear me I think we're gonna start the last portion of the evening with your audience questions the first question that comes in to us is for both of the speakers each of the speakers I'll start with dr. sharp but then also ask the question of dr. Craig why do you care if someone holds your atheistic or theistic views i I don't really care whether other people are atheists but I do care about whether people think critically about the best way to behave as a human being about the best way to organize ourselves into groups the best way to have a government or an election or an economy and what-have-you and I think that if you are pledging allegiance to a certain religious view without thinking critically about it then that often leads you to say things that I think are rather arbitrary and rather unhelpful in these other situations so I've got nothing against someone who is atheist but willing to think critically about all of these other issues and in fact divorce the positions that they take on social issues from white what might be prescribed by the church I believe that the ultimate purpose for which humanity was created was to be in relation with God God is the fulfillment of human existence he is an in commensurable good the locus of infinite value and love and to know God and to be related to him forever is the end for which human beings were created so that's why I think belief in God is so important it is the first step toward coming into a relationship with God experiencing his love coming to know him and his forgiveness and being in communion with God for eternity which is a good than which no greater could be conceived okay the second question is for dr. Craig it says why duh why does dr. Craig believe the universe needs a reason for existing now I'm not clear whether this is in reference to my contingency argument or the Kalam argument with respect to the Kalam argument I think it's very clear why they would need to be a cause of the universe because something can't come out of nothing if you think about it that's worse than magic to say the universe just popped into being uncaused so clearly in that sense that would need to be a cause with respect to the first argument the contingency argument think again about the ball in the woods the the ball can exist but it doesn't have to exist so what what's the difference between the ball and say unicorns which can't exist but do not exist the difference is that the ball has an explanation of its existence and just making the ball bigger until it's the size of the universe doesn't do anything to remove the need for an explanation it's the universe is just big and the size of something doesn't do anything to explain why it exists or to remove the need for an explanation okay dr. Sharpe third question and this is picking up on where we were near the end of our last part if God does not exist how could there be absolute moral values well there can be absolute moral values because they're grounded in something other than God for example rationality or harm or any one of a number of different positions and there's lots of professional ethicists who are working on good theories of what makes good things good and bad things bad what makes right things right and wrong things wrong and there's a ton of these theories that appeal to our more rationality or what have you and no appeal to God whatsoever the values that these theories explain are objective they're independent of what anybody believes about them they're not the sort of thing that you would get by saying it's just a sort of herd mentality that arrives by evolution that's just not any part of these views and so there's a perfectly good explanation for how moral values and duties exist even in a godless world just as a follow up to that is is there anything added by the idea of having a lawgiver which seem to be I don't think one of the main points the no I don't think so I think that the existence of God is not a good explanation it doesn't predict anything it doesn't retro anything it doesn't explain anything the existence of God doesn't make the probability that there would be moral duties any higher I'm gonna keep trying to move along on these questions it seems like you could both chime in on any of these questions but it since some of them are directed at just one or either it seems it's nice to try to get in as many as four so I would always give you an opportunity to respond okay professor sharp has not presented much evidence for the non-existence of God does he have any to present I thought I gave the confidence argument who wrote that I gave a whole argument about this though think about the evidence that's out there let's let's take the the Christian God and the evidence that's out there is a bunch of ancient manuscripts and if you're going to say that God is the best explanation for those claims made in these ancient manuscripts then you're making a claim that conflicts with our best scientific theories in biology and chemistry and physics and you should have much higher confidence I don't mean why a little bit I mean by a mile in those scientific theories than you do in any claim about what needs to be explained in some ancient manuscript that's the argument it has to do with saying that you should have a higher confidence in our best scientific theories than in any existing evidence for any God I can imagine better evidence for a god but we don't have anything like that right now so I'm not saying there's no such thing as miracles there's no possibility that I would ever believe something supernatural of course I could believe something like that but given the evidence we have right now you're better off believing are way better off believing in our best scientific theories one of the things that puzzled me that I want to do address during our Q&A time is that my appeal has been precisely to our best scientific theories I'm not proposing alternatives to standard Big Bang cosmology fine-tuning of the universe or the applicability of mathematics to the physical world I don't see any conflict here at all because it is our best scientific theories that support some of the key premises and these theistic arguments so I dispute that but those arguments that you're pointing out are arguments for theism in general they're not arguments for Christianity I'm talking about particular tonight right well it's obvious but the evidence is that God capitalized in the in the title I'll bet it is and that means that you're talking about the Christian God let me jump in because the very next question is conductor Craig if God exists why the Christian God well are anything yes is that the the arguments that I presented tonight are arguments that are common property of Jews Muslims and Christians they would be to fact defended by and have been defended historically by persons and all of those great monotheistic traditions the question of Christianity wasn't on the table tonight if I were asked to defend why I am not simply a monotheistic Riss tchen monotheists then I would appeal to the person of Jesus of Nazareth and ask ourselves who was this four century Jew what did he claim what did he teach about himself what do we know about him and I do think that the best historical evidence and this is not superstition or things of that sort we're talking about serious historical Jesus scholarship is that this man made radical personal claims about himself and I think that the best explanation for the evidence concerning his ultimate faith is that God raised him from the dead and vindication of those claims and that therefore there's quite good reason for being not simply a monotheistic Christian monotheism this I take it right is the resurrection argument you represented in your yeah slides arguments right yeah and I think that I think that an explanation for the four facts that you usually cite therefore the basis of the resurrection argument anything that's going to be compatible with our best theories in biology chemistry and physics is going to be a better explanation than that so for example aliens took the body doesn't sound like a very good explanation to me but it's a way better explanation than resurrection because aliens are at least compatible with our best scientific theory is that really what you're going to appeal to it is resurrection is incompatible its but but surely that's not right I mean important about the literature concerning the problem of miracles I do absolutely now what sermon miracles are not incompatible with Rawls I disagree with that and that is not right at all scientific theories do not have secret Keter aspera bus' clauses in front of them no they do not no all right the next question from the audience I don't think I'm doing anything funny how many time you live there you go how is confidence level I think this must be for dr. Sharpe how is confidence level protected from bias or subjectivism how does one measure a confidence level beyond being confident or not confident yes so confidence level is measured by your tendency to make various Gamble's using the particular theories of rationality decision theory game theory and so forth and confidence levels are used throughout well philosophy social science is all over the place because they're super helpful and they're very precise how are they not impacted by bias they are of course they're impacted by bias professor Craig is biased I'm biased you can't but be biased and the best thing that you can do is try to guard against cognitive biases the best the way that you can and that's by thinking critically about your beliefs do you want to chime in on that one only that I share the questioners skepticism about confidence levels I at least with respect to theism I when I introspect into my own life I'm not sure how I would assess the confidence level that I have I mean I'm staking my life on this agreed but I'm not sure what confidence level I have I don't know how to even answer a question like that so can I follow up on that a little bit to say I mean part we focused a lot on sort of arguments and evidence and the kinds reasons we can bring to bear either in favor or against the existence of God but it does seem and just a sort of a layperson in this sense this team a lot of what we're doing is budding up against the limits of what we can really understand and reason and you know when you start talking about things about the beginning of the universe for instance or some kind of a transcendent cause and what that could even mean when it's sort of outside of space and time and and I guess I I one way to pose this question is would be have to do with faith say like what's the place of faith when we're butting up against the limits of reason but I mean another way to put it would be to say I mean how much of this can we even be reasonably articulating either for or against and how much of this is is I guess they're never going to be settled just either of you want to take on some version of that question want that one yeah I think that we do have conceptual clarity about what we're talking about I mean with respect to the beginning of the universe contemporary cosmology is shot through with metaphysical and philosophical concepts and so I do think we have a fairly clear grasp of these concepts they are very strange and alien I think probably to the average person but philosophers talk about things like gods a temper allottee or his relationship to time or divine aceite I'm working on divine of sanity and abstract objects right now you can't get something much more ethereal than that and yet I I think we have good conceptual clarity about a lot of these questions even though they're very far removed from mundane affairs but I just I continue to come back to the strange question about belief and confidence I believe that these premises are true I believe that the conclusions the arguments are true and but but if you were asking me about confidence I don't I just don't have any sort of way of assessing that I simply believe that the evidence points to the truth of these and that the conclusions are therefore true good but the way that you formulate them is you say that the more probable than not so you do think that your confidence level is higher than 50% yes the premises yes so you do have a way of assessing it ok but but you said that that degree of confidence isn't enough for belief yeah there's something that you need to you need a certain level of confidence for outright belief yeah that's I guess it's that's what's not clear to me yeah I don't see why it needs to pass some threshold in order to believe because I certainly do believe right these premises I created the conclusions right but I wouldn't know how to put a figure on confidence I had my 75% of 80% of my 65 I wouldn't even know how to answer a question like that there's more work to do that so what one last question I know we're just gone over time but it's an important question so I don't want to fail to ask it I'm gonna move over to the podium as I asked it because I have then some closing comments about what will happen afterwards so a lot of you've both presented arguments in favor of your view against the view you disagree with but when you think about your own view is there any part of it that you personally struggle with the most that you see as a potential failing in the view and that makes you worry about your own view or yeah let me just leave it at that yeah is there some is there something you worried about in your own view or in the other person's view that you think is on to something that makes you think yeah I had a worry about God's relationship to abstract objects like numbers and propositions and possible worlds and things it seemed to me that these were uncreated realities and were therefore incompatible with the existence of God because God is the creator of everything apart from himself but over the last dozen years I've been studying this problem and have come to some resolution of it where I feel quite good about this so this worry doesn't bother me anymore cuz it is interesting I mean these arguments do change over time you mean over the centuries over the decades the kinds of arguments that are offered so we do find that some arguments don't work as well as others and then we find I am constantly thinking about these things reflecting on them I want a second to the importance of what Kevin sharpest said about critical thinking about your own beliefs this is something that I am constantly engaged in doing as a philosopher and I've changed my mind about a number of things in the process of doing so thanks dr. Sharpe is there's something that personally worries you about your own view or something in the other the opponents view that worries you I'm not worried about the arguments for it or the the content a cogent C of the view or anything like that but there are certain aspects of being an atheist that are unpleasant to some extent but I think there's also much to be happy about so it's not that there's something that worries me about the position about the theoretical position it's rather how do you go about how do you go about living life as a as a human being who's struggling just like you and you to figure out how we should live and what we should do and what we should believe and all of those things we're all on the same boat there and so I think that the the worries I have are associated with that more than the sort of cogent C of the view well thank you both so we've reached the end of our time and so I have just a closing statement about what's coming next what we want to do first is make note of a very important thing that they're going to be doughnuts and coffee I think those must be the undergraduates clapping so if you'd like to stick around and discuss any of this further with either of the speakers or with any of members from our sponsoring organizations they're all going to be around dr. Craig and dr. Sharpe in particular will be at each end of the stage and if your question was not asked during QA you're welcome to form a line and ask them a question please keep your questions brief be mindful that others are going to be waiting also to be asking their questions so finally on behalf of the Veritas forum and our sponsors thank you very much for your attendance and participation - thank you to both of our peoples for more information about the veritas forum including additional recordings and a calendar of upcoming events please visit our website at Veritas org

Channel: The Veritas Forum

Views: 60,243

Rating: 4.8000002 out of 5

Keywords: veritas forum, william lane craig, kevin scharp, philosophy, christian, atheist

Id: 8KMd_eS2J7o

Length: 77min 48sec (4668 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 31 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/ADefiniteDescription]

This is a recent debate between William Lane Craig and Kevin Scharp. Professor Scharp will also be doing an AMA here on /r/philosophy Wednesday September 7 at 11AM EST - please see this post where you can submit questions ahead of time, or join us Wednesday at 11AM in welcoming Prof. Scharp to our community.

Professor Scharp's slides and script can be found here.

[u/sguntun]

Around 45:25 we have this exchange:

Craig: The fine-tuning of the universe is more probable given theism than it is given naturalism. And there, it seems to me, all the theist needs to show, is that it's not improbable that God would want to create a finely tuned universe. And that is surely going to be much much more probable than in naturalism, all of these constants and quantities falling by accident into the life-permitting zone.

Scharp: Good, I'm not going to get sucked into that. Trying to have a discussion about what God would do or what he wouldn't do or anything like that, it's all divine psychology, it's equally murky and unclear and I don't think we have good reason to believe any of that stuff. So if you want to push the fine-tuning argument, then what you need to do is say that the chances that God would create the universe are actually better than the chances that it was created randomly, given this fine-tuning. And you don't do that.

I don't understand Scharp's point here. Why is the theist responsible for demonstrating that it's not unlikely that God, if he existed, would create life-permitting conditions? The "divine psychology" objection might suggest that we can't have any idea of what God would do (if he existed), but even then, doesn't the probability that God (if he existed) would create life-permitting conditions rest at a comfortable .5? And this is much higher than the probability of naturalistic conditions leading to life-permitting conditions, which is sufficient for the fine-tuning argument through.

[u/[deleted]]

I don't like WLC, i feel that all the this is confusing me, and using oral-communication-skill to distort the debate. He does not seem to be honest about having a clear debate. He has argued about the evidence of god many times but still "confuses" som of the opponents basic arguments. How can you know what what he mean efter hearing it for 20 time?

[u/uhrg]

Craig: "If you think it's more probably true than false, I would say that is enough for belief"

Scharp: "Not according to contemporary epistemology"

I don't understand this appeal to consensus. Consensus holds very little weight in philosophy. Scharp goes on to say that you need at least 70 or 80 percent confidence in a proposition in order to have a belief. Where is he getting this from? What argument does he present? Is it an appeal to intuition? Well that's no better than what Craig is offering when he says 51% constitutes belief.

Craig: "It doesn't seem to me that there is any non-arbitrary level that you could set to say this is what's required to be a theist"

Scharp: "I'm not saying it's required to be a theist, I'm saying it's required for belief"

But theism just is the belief in the proposition "God exists".

Scharp questions the Christian doctrine of hell, implying it's an immoral doctrine where God sort of blackmails people into accepting him. CS Lewis wrote on this topic and I think he gave a good response to it. God is basically the ultimate good, and God is the thing that gives anything else it's goodness. So when humans freely choose to remain separated from God, they willingly deprive themselves of the ultimate good. It's as if a thirsty man is walking in a desert, and God offers water, but the man rejects it. It's not that God is causing the suffering and death of the man. God is trying to help the man but the man rejects the thing that could give him health and happiness. As Lewis said, "The gates of hell are locked on the inside". Those who reject God do so willingly, and God respects that free choice. He does not impose himself on them. But the nature of reality is such that a state of separation from God is one of suffering. It is not the suffering of one man torturing another man, but rather the suffering of the parched man who freely rejects the offer of water.

By the way, this format of debate was not good. Craig and Scharp barely had any opportunity to respond to each other. The best part was the 20 minute back and forth session (all of these God debates should have the majority of time spent in this back and forth format), but the moderator wasted a lot of that time.

There was so much Scharp said that I take issue with. At the end for example he advised the audience to think for themselves and craft their own beliefs instead of adopting old beliefs, and he implied that Christian beliefs are no good because they're from the iron age. But this is just chronological snobbery, to quote Lewis again. Just because an idea is old doesn't mean it's false.

Scharp is asked for an argument in favor of the nonexistence of God, and he gives what he calls a "confidence" argument, that you should have more confidence in scientific theories than in the evidence that has been presented for God. But this "confidence" argument is not an argument that leads to the conclusion "God does not exist". It's just an argument that at best leads to agnosticism.

[u/-nirai-]

if reality is transcendent then why do we insist it must conform to our logic and reason? if reality transcends our reason then how can we conclude the universe must be metaphysically such and such?

[u/459pm]

I really love WLC honestly. I know it's not a popular view but I'd put him easily in my top 3 favorite living philosophers.