Why You Should Change Your Mind About Jesus | University of Tennessee - 2020

[Music] please join me in welcoming to the stage dr william lane craig thank you very much i want to begin by thanking razio christie for the invitation to speak tonight at the university of tennessee and i'm grateful for your attendance as well as a professional christian philosopher i believe that the hypothesis that god exists as revealed by jesus of nazareth makes sense of a wide range of the data of human experience and tonight i want to share with you some of these data in the time that we have together tonight i want to present four arguments in support of christian theism now in order to make these arguments easy to understand i'm going to be showing some animated videos that we've developed at reasonable faith that you can download free of charge on our website reasonablefaith.org so number one god makes sense of the origin of the universe our first video explains how the scientific evidence for the origin of the universe points beyond the universe to its ground in a transcendent creator [Music] does god exist or is the material universe all that is or ever was or ever will be one approach to answering this question is the cosmological argument it goes like this whatever begins to exist has a cause the universe began to exist therefore the universe has a cause is the first premise true let's consider believing that something can pop into existence without a cause is more of a stretch than believing in magic at least with magic you've got a hat and a magician and if something can come into being from nothing then why don't we see this happening all the time no everyday experience and scientific evidence confirm our first premise if something begins to exist it must have a cause but what about our second premise did the universe begin or has it always existed atheists have typically said that the universe has been here forever the universe is just there and that's all first let's consider the second law of thermodynamics it tells us the universe is slowly running out of usable energy and that's the point if the universe had been here forever it would have run out of usable energy by now the second law points us to a universe that has a definite beginning this is further confirmed by a series of remarkable scientific discoveries in 1915 albert einstein presented his general theory of relativity this allowed us for the first time to talk meaningfully about the past history of the universe next alexander friedman and george lumetra each working with einstein's equations predicted that the universe is expanding then in 1929 edwin hubble measured the red shift in light from distant galaxies this empirical evidence confirmed not only that the universe is expanding but that it sprang into being from a single point in the finite past it was a monumental discovery almost beyond comprehension however not everyone is fond of a finite universe so it wasn't long before alternative models popped into existence but one by one these models fail to stand the test of time more recently three leading cosmologists arvind board alan guth and alexander velenkan prove that any universe which has on average been expanding throughout its history cannot be eternal in the past but must have an absolute beginning this even applies to the multiverse if there is such a thing this means that scientists can no longer hide behind a past eternal universe there is no escape they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning any adequate model must have a beginning just like the standard model it's quite plausible then that both premises of the argument are true this means that the conclusion is also true the universe has a cause and since the universe can't cause itself its cause must be beyond the space-time universe it must be spaceless timeless immaterial uncaused and unimaginably powerful much like god the cosmological argument shows that in fact it is quite reasonable to believe that god does [Music] exist here once more are the three simple steps of this argument one whatever begins to exist has a cause two the universe began to exist three therefore the universe has a cause as explained in the video the board guth the lincoln theorem proves that classical space-time under a single very general condition cannot be extended to the infinite past but rather must reach a boundary at some time in the finite past now either there was something on the other side of that boundary or not if not then that boundary just is the beginning of the universe if there was something on the other side then it will be a region described by the yet to be discovered theory of quantum gravity in that case velenken says that region will be the beginning of the universe either way the universe began to exist since something cannot come into being out of nothing the absolute beginning of the universe implies the existence of a beginningless uncaused immaterial timeless spaceless changeless enormously powerful creator of the universe number two god makes sense of the fine tuning of the universe for intelligent life in recent decades scientists have been stunned by the discovery that the existence of intelligent life anywhere in the cosmos depends upon a complex and delicate balance of initial conditions simply given in the big bang itself the following video explains how this remarkable fine tuning points to an intelligent designer of the cosmos from galaxies and stars down to atoms and subatomic particles the very structure of our universe is determined by these numbers these are the fundamental constants and quantities of the universe scientists have come to the shocking realization that each of these numbers has been carefully dialed to an astonishingly precise value a value that falls within an exceedingly narrow life permitting range if any one of these numbers were altered by even a hair's breath no physical interactive life of any kind could exist anywhere there'd be no stars no life no planets no chemistry consider gravity for example the force of gravity is determined by the gravitational constant if this constant varied by just 1 in 10 to the 60th parts none of us would exist to understand how exceedingly narrow this life permitting range is imagine a dial divided into 10 to the 60th increments to get a handle on how many tiny points on the dial this is compare to the number of cells in your body or the number of seconds that have ticked by since time began if the gravitational constant had been out of tune by just one of these infinitesimally small increments the universe would either have expanded and thinned out so rapidly that no stars could form and life couldn't exist or it would have collapsed back on itself with the same result no stars no planets and no life or consider the expansion rate of the universe this is driven by the cosmological constant a change in its value by a mere one part in 10 to the 120th parts would cause the universe to expand too rapidly or too slowly in either case the universe would again be life prohibiting or another example of fine tuning if the mass and energy of the early universe were not evenly distributed to an incomprehensible precision of one part in 10 to the 10 to the 123rd the universe would be hostile to life of any kind the fact is our universe permits physical interactive life only because these and many other numbers have been independently and exquisitely balanced on a razor's edge wherever physicists look they see examples of fine tuning [Music] the remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life if anyone claims not to be surprised by the special features that the universe has he's hiding his head in the sand these special features are surprising and unlikely what is the best explanation for this astounding phenomenon there are three live options the fine tuning of the universe is due to either physical necessity chance or design which of these options is the most plausible according to this alternative the universe must be life permitting the precise values of these constants and quantities could not be otherwise but is this plausible is a life prohibiting universe impossible far from it it's not only possible it's far more likely than a life permitting universe the constants and quantities are not determined by the laws of nature there's no reason or evidence suggests that fine-tuning is necessary how about chance did we just get really really really really lucky no the probabilities involved are so ridiculously remote as to put the fine tuning well beyond the reach of chance so in an effort to keep this option alive some have gone beyond empirical science and opted for a more speculative approach known as the multiverse they imagine a universe generator that cranks out such a vast number of universes that odds are life permitting universes will eventually pop out however there's no scientific evidence for the existence of this multiverse it cannot be detected observed measured or proved and the universe generator itself would require an enormous amount of fine tuning furthermore small patches of order are far more probable than big ones so the most probable observable universe would be a small one inhabited by a single simple observer but what we actually observe is the very thing that we should least expect a vast spectacularly complex highly ordered universe inhabited by billions of other observers so even if the multiverse existed which is a moot point it wouldn't do anything to explain the fine tuning given the implausibility of physical necessity or chance the best explanation for why the universe is fine-tuned for life may very well be it was designed that way [Music] a common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super intellect monkeyed with physics and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature the numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question there is for me powerful evidence that there is something going on behind it all it seems as though somebody has fine-tuned nature's numbers to make the universe the impression of design is overwhelming the heavens declare the glory of god the skies proclaim the work of his hands day after day they pour forth speech night after night they reveal knowledge examples of fine tuning in the video are all up-to-date accurate and well-established so the question is what is the best explanation of the cosmic fine tuning there are three live options in the literature on fine tuning physical necessity chance or design so our argument can be formulated in three simple steps 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 as the video explains the only serious alternative to design is the multiverse chance hypothesis but as roger penrose of oxford university has argued forcefully if our universe were just a random member of a multiverse then we ought to be observing an orderly patch no larger than our solar system since a universe like that would be unfathomably more probable than a fine-tuned universe like ours in fact the most probable observable universe will be one which consists of a single brain which pops into existence out of the uh quantum vacuum via a random fluctuation with illusory perceptions of the external world so if you believe in the multiverse hypothesis you're obligated to believe that you are all that exists that this auditorium your friends your body the earth everything around you is just an illusion of your brain no sane person believes such a thing on atheism therefore it's highly improbable that there exists a randomly ordered multiverse thus neither physical necessity nor chance provides a good explanation of the fine-tuning of the universe it follows logically that the best explanation is design number three god makes sense of objective moral values and duties in the world the following video makes this argument abundantly clear can you be good without god let's find out [Music] absolutely astounding there you have it undeniable proof that you can be good without believing in god but wait the question isn't can you be good without believing in god the question is can you be good without god see here's the problem if there is no god what basis remains for objective good or bad right or wrong if god does not exist objective moral values do not exist and here's why without some objective reference point we have no way of saying that something is really up or down god's nature provides an objective reference point for moral values it's the standard against which all actions and decisions are measured but if there's no god there's no objective reference point all we're left with is one person's viewpoint which is no more valid than anyone else's viewpoint this kind of morality is subjective not objective it's like a preference for strawberry ice cream the preference is in the subject not the object so it doesn't apply to other people in the same way subjective morality applies only to the subject it's not valid or binding for anyone else so in a world without god there can be no evil and no good nothing but blind pitiless indifference god has expressed his moral nature to us as commands these provide the basis for moral duties for example god's essential attribute of love is expressed in his command to love your neighbor as yourself this command provides a foundation upon which we can affirm the objective goodness of generosity self-sacrifice and equality and we can condemn as objectively evil greed abuse and discrimination this raises a problem is something good just because god wills it or does god will something because it is good the answer is neither one rather god will something because he is good god is the standard of moral values just as a live musical performance is the standard for a high fidelity recording [Music] the more a recording sounds like the original the better it is likewise the more closely a moral action conforms to god's nature the better it is but if atheism is true there is no ultimate standard so there can be no moral obligations or duties who or what lays such duties upon us no one remember for the atheist humans are just accidents of nature highly evolved animals but animals have no moral obligations to one another when a cat kills a mouse it hasn't done anything morally wrong the cat's just being a cat if god doesn't exist we should view human behavior in the same way no action should be considered morally right or wrong but the problem is good and bad right and wrong do exist just as our sense experience convinces us that the physical world is objectively real our moral experience convinces us that moral values are objectively real every time you say hey that's not fair that's wrong that's an injustice you affirm your belief in the existence of objective morals we're well aware that child abuse racial discrimination and terrorism are wrong for everybody always is this just a personal preference or opinion no the man who says that it is morally acceptable to rape little children is just as mistaken as the man who says two plus two equals five what all this amounts to then is a moral argument for the existence of god if god does not exist objective moral values and duties do not exist but objective moral values and duties do exist therefore god exists atheism fails to provide a foundation for the moral reality every one of us experiences every day in fact the existence of objective morality points us directly to the existence of god again this argument can be very simply formulated one if god does not exist objective moral values and duties do not exist two objective moral values and duties do exist three therefore god exists perhaps the most important thing to keep in mind about the moral argument is not to confuse moral ontology with moral epistemology now what do i mean by that moral ontology has to do with the objective reality of moral values and duties moral epistemology has to do with how we come to know moral values and duties the moral argument makes no claim whatsoever about how we come to know moral values and duties the argument is wholly about moral ontology the grounding of objective moral values and duties in reality so epistemological objections based on how we come to know about moral beliefs are irrelevant from the two premises it follows logically that god exists now the arguments surveyed thus far this evening give us a perfectly good personal creator and designer of the universe this already narrows down the field of the world's great religions to the monotheistic faiths such as judaism christianity islam and deism can we determine more specifically which if any of these monotheistic faiths is plausibly true well that leads to my fourth point four god makes sense of the historical facts concerning jesus of nazareth the historical person jesus of nazareth was a remarkable individual new testament critics have reached something of a consensus that the historical jesus came on the scene with an unprecedented sense of divine authority the authority to stand and speak in god's place that's why the jewish leadership instigated his crucifixion on the charge of blasphemy he claimed to be the long-awaited jewish messiah the unique son of god and the divine human son of man prophesied by the old testament prophet daniel he claimed that in himself the kingdom of god had come and his visible demonstrations of this fact he carried out a ministry of miracle working and exorcisms but the supreme confirmation of his claims was his resurrection from the dead if jesus did rise from the dead then it would seem that we have a divine miracle on our hands and thus evidence for god's decisive self-revelation in jesus now most people probably think that the resurrection of jesus is something you just believe in by faith or not but there are actually three established facts recognized by the majority of new testament historians today which i believe are best explained by the resurrection of jesus namely his empty tomb his post-mortem appearances and the origin of the disciples belief in his resurrection the following video animation explains some of the evidence in support of these three facts why was jesus of nazareth crucified because he made outrageous claims about himself he claimed to be the one and only son of god why would anyone take his claim seriously well that all depends if jesus actually rose from the dead then his claim to be god's unique son carries considerable weight on the other hand if the resurrection never actually happened then jesus may be safely dismissed as just another interesting but tragic historical figure did jesus rise from the dead as we explore this question we need to address two further questions what are the facts that require explanation and which explanation best accounts for these facts there are three main facts that need to be explained the discovery of jesus's empty tomb the appearances of jesus alive after his death and the disciples belief that jesus rose from the dead let's examine each of these fact number one the discovery that jesus tomb was empty is reported in no less than six independent sources and some of these are among the earliest materials to be found in the new testament this is important because when an event is recorded by two or more unconnected sources historians confidence that the event actually happened increases and the earlier these sources are dated the higher their confidence moreover the gospels indicate that it was women who first discovered that jesus's body was missing this is likely historical because in that culture a woman's testimony was considered next to worthless a later legend or fabrication would have had men make this discovery our confidence in the empty tomb is further increased by the response of the jewish authorities when they heard the report that the tomb was found empty they said that jesus followers had stolen his body thereby admitting that jesus's tomb was in fact empty most scholars by far hold firmly to the reliability of the biblical statements about the empty tomb fact number two the appearances of jesus alive after his death in one of the earliest letters in the new testament paul provides a list of witnesses to jesus's resurrection appearances he appeared to peter then to the 12 then he appeared to more than 500 brothers at one time then he appeared to james then to all the apostles finally he appeared also to me furthermore various resurrection appearances of jesus are independently confirmed by the gospel accounts on the basis of paul's testimony alone virtually all historical scholars agree that various individuals and groups experienced appearances of jesus alive after his death it may be taken as historically certain that peter and the disciples had experiences after jesus death in which jesus appeared to them as the risen christ fact number three the disciples belief in the resurrection after jesus's crucifixion his followers were devastated demoralized and hiding in fear for their lives as jews they had no concept of a messiah who would be executed by his enemies much less come back to life the only resurrection jews believed in was a universal event on judgment day after the end of the world not an individual event within history moreover in jewish law jesus crucifixion as a criminal meant that he was literally under god's curse yet somehow despite all of this the disciples suddenly and sincerely came to believe that god had raised jesus from the dead they were so completely convinced that when threatened with death not one of them recanted even the pharisee paul who persecuted christians suddenly became a christian himself as did jesus skeptical younger brother james some sort of powerful transformative experience is required to generate the sort of movement earliest christianity was that is why as an historian i cannot explain the rise of early christianity unless jesus rose again leaving an empty tomb behind him these three firmly established facts cry out for an adequate explanation how do you make sense of them down through history various naturalistic explanations have been offered to explain away these facts the conspiracy hypothesis the apparent death hypothesis the hallucination hypothesis and so on all of these have been nearly universally rejected by contemporary scholarship the simple fact is that there is just no plausible naturalistic explanation of these three facts the explanation given by the original eyewitnesses is that god raised jesus from the dead if it's even possible that god exists then that explanation cannot be ruled out for a god who is able to create the entire universe the odd resurrection would be child's play an empty tomb jesus appearances alive after his death and a group of dejected followers suddenly transformed by a radical new belief in a risen messiah these are independently established historical facts how do you explain them for review the three facts which require explanation are these fact number one jesus tomb was found empty by a group of his women followers on the sunday morning after his crucifixion to be clear the multiple independent sources attesting to the empty tomb are not the books of the new testament but rather the sources used by the writers of the new testament in composing their books sources like the pre-paul line formula quoted in first corinthians 15 3-5 the pre-markin passion story matthew's non-markin source material and luke's non-markin source material fact number two on separate occasions different individuals and groups of people experienced appearances of jesus alive after his death these appearances were witnessed not only by believers but also by unbelievers skeptics and even enemies and fact number three the original disciples suddenly came to believe in the resurrection of jesus despite having every predisposition to the contrary think of the situation that the disciples faced following jesus crucifixion number one their leader was dead and jewish messianic expectations included no idea of a messiah who instead of establishing uh god's kingdom and ruling over israel's enemies would instead be shamefully executed by them as a criminal second jewish beliefs about the afterlife precluded anyone's rising from the dead to glory and immortality before the general resurrection at the end of the world nevertheless the original disciples suddenly came to believe so strongly that god had raised jesus from the dead that they were willing to die for the truth of that belief the question we face then is what is the best explanation of these three facts the following video explains the current state of scholarship with regard to this question [Music] it's a matter of historical record that jesus of nazareth died and his body was placed in a tomb it's also been firmly established that after his death in burial his tomb was found empty various individuals and groups saw appearances of jesus alive and his disciples somehow became absolutely convinced that jesus had risen from the dead these are the historical facts how do you explain them down through history various naturalistic explanations have been offered to explain away these facts let's examine the four most popular ones first the conspiracy theory according to this view the disciples faked the resurrection they stole jesus's body from the tomb and then lied about seeing jesus alive thereby perpetrating the greatest hoax of all time however this theory faces overwhelming objections it's hopelessly anachronistic it looks at the disciples situation through the rearview mirror of christian history instead of from the standpoint of a first century jew jews had no concept of a messiah who would be defeated and executed by israel's enemies much less rise from the dead in jewish thinking the resurrection of the dead was a general event that takes place only after the end of the world and has no connection at all with the messiah the conspiracy theory also fails to address the disciples obvious sincerity people don't willingly die for something they know is not true an honest reading of the new testament makes it clear these people sincerely believed the message they proclaimed and were willing to die for for these and other reasons no scholar defends the conspiracy theory today a second attempt to explain the facts is the apparent death theory jesus didn't really die he revived in the tomb somehow escaped and managed to convince his disciples he was risen from the dead this theory also faces insurmountable obstacles first it's medically impossible the roman executioners were professionals they knew what they were doing and made sure their victims were dead before taken down moreover jesus was tortured so extensively that even if he was taken down alive he would have died in the sealed tomb second this theory is wildly implausible seeing a half-dead man who crawled out of the tomb desperately in need of bandaging and medical attention would hardly have convinced the disciples that he was gloriously risen from the dead as a result no new testament historians defend this theory today a third explanation is the displaced body theory perhaps joseph of arimathea placed jesus body in his tomb temporarily because it was convenient but later he moved the corpse to a criminal's common graveyard so when the disciples visited the first tomb and found it empty they concluded that jesus must have risen from the dead once again this theory cannot make sense of the facts jewish laws prohibited moving a corpse after it was interred except to the family tomb what's more the criminal's graveyard was located close to the place of execution so that burial there would not have been a problem also once the disciples began to proclaim jesus's resurrection joseph would have corrected their mistake so once again no current scholars endorsed this theory finally the hallucination theory the disciples didn't really see jesus but just imagined that he appeared before them they were all hallucinating this theory also faces considerable problems first jesus appeared not just one time but many times not just in one place but in different places not just to one person but to different persons not just to individuals but to groups of people and not just to believers but to unbelievers as well there is nothing in the psychological case books on hallucinations comparable to these resurrection appearances second hallucinations of jesus would have led the disciples to believe at most that jesus had been transported to heaven not risen from the dead in contradiction to their jewish beliefs moreover in the ancient world visions of the deceased were not evidence that the person was alive but evidence that he was dead and had moved on to the after world finally this theory doesn't even attempt to explain the empty tomb thus the four most popular naturalistic theories failed to explain the historical facts where does that leave us another possibility is the explanation given by the original eyewitnesses that god raised jesus from the dead unlike the other theories this makes perfect sense of the empty tomb the appearances of jesus alive and the disciples willingness to die for their belief but is this explanation plausible after all it requires a miracle a supernatural act of god think about it if it's even possible that god exists then miracles are possible and this explanation cannot be ruled out and surely it's possible that god exists so how do you explain the resurrection naturalistic attempts to explain the empty tomb the postmortem appearances and the origin of the disciples belief in jesus resurrection have been almost universally rejected by contemporary scholarship the simple fact is that there just is no good naturalistic explanation of these three facts therefore it seems to me that the christian is amply justified in believing that jesus rose from the dead and so was who he claimed to be but that entails that the god revealed by jesus is real we can summarize this argument as follows one there are three established facts concerning the fate of jesus of nazareth the discovery of his empty tomb his postmortem appearances and the origin of the disciples belief in his resurrection two the hypothesis god raised jesus from the dead is the best explanation of these facts three the hypothesis god raised jesus from the dead entails that the god revealed by jesus of nazareth exists 4 therefore the god revealed by jesus of nazareth exists the significance of the resurrection of jesus lies in the fact that is not just someone or anyone who has been raised from the dead but jesus of nazareth whose crucifixion was instigated by the jewish leadership because of the blasphemous claims to divine authority whereby he put himself in the place of god if this man has been raised from the dead then the god whom he had allegedly blasphemed has publicly vindicated those claims the resurrection of jesus is god's imprimatur confirming that jesus was who he claimed to be but that entails that jesus holds the key to the door of eternal life jesus said i am the resurrection and the life he who believes in me though he die yet shall he live. and what is eternal life jesus said and this is life eternal that they might know you the only true god and jesus christ whom you have sent if you want to discover the eternal life and the relationship with god that you were created to have then you need to trust your life to jesus christ as your savior and your lord trusting in jesus as savior means trusting him to forgive and cleanse you of all the moral failures that stain your life and separate you from god trusting him as your lord means trusting you trusting him to make you into a new person filling your life with his presence and changing you from the inside out trusting in jesus as savior and lord is not a blind leap in the dark but rather as we have seen a rational commitment fully in line with the evidence a commitment that i personally made over 50 years ago and have never regretted and a commitment that i hope each of you will make tonight [Applause] thank you so much dr craig i always enjoy hearing you speak and i love those videos every time i see them you can find those online and for those of you thinking man i wish i'd brought fill in person's name here you should know we are recording tonight there will be a video for later distribution so please certainly subscribe to reasonable faith's youtube channel to find out when that appears now for those of you interested here in a few minutes dr craig will be fielding questions from the audience but first the nature of this type of discussion tends to draw a lot of examination as it should and we often hear certain challenges from those who disagree these kinds of challenges make for fantastic little sound bites but there's usually a lot of layers there that that is being that are being ignored and it can take a little longer to actually pick them apart and find out where the problems are than it does to simply state the challenge to begin with we have a few video clips of some well-known anti-christian critics and we're going to let dr craig take a shot at unpacking these ideas and responding to the objections joining dr craig on stage today is our friendly neighborhood apologist on campus and if you don't know what an apologist is a christian apologist is someone defending the faith ours happens to be our ratio christie director anna ketko [Applause] good evening nice to see everybody we have a running joke because every time we do one of these events i'm super pregnant so bear with me thank you dr greg it's nice to see you again we appreciate you now as confessing christians here at russia christie and reasonable faith it matters that we attempt to practice what we preach and since this bible here with us tonight is so very precious to us we would be remiss to ignore the significant passages commanding us to engage the questions that are posed to us and defending the hope that we have in our savior with kindness and respect so that's what we're going to do now beginning with the four biggest anti-christian voices in our culture and then moving on to inviting questions from you the public so let's go ahead and get started with odoozy astrophysicist and neil degrasse tyson do you believe in god me later yeah so i'm the the more i look at the universe um just the less convinced i am that there is something benevolent going on so if you if if your concept of a creator is someone who's all powerful and all good that's not an uncommon pairing of powers that you might describe to a creator all powerful and all good and i look at disasters that afflict earth and life on earth volcanoes hurricanes tornadoes earthquakes disease pestilence congenital birth defects you look at this list of ways that life is made miserable on earth by natural causes and i just ask how do you deal with that so philosophers rose up and said if there is a god god is either not all-powerful or not all good i have no problems if as we probe the origins of things we bump up into the bearded man if that shows up we're good to go okay not a problem there's just no evidence of it and this is why religions are called faiths collectively because you believe something in the absence of evidence that's what it is that's why it's called faith otherwise we would call all religions evidence but we don't for exactly that reason so so i i'm given what everyone describes to be the properties that would be expressed by an all-powerful being in the gods that they worship i look for that in the universe and i don't find it so i i remain unconvinced but if you've got some good evidence bring it bring bring it up bring it okay and so i don't i don't lead with that information because what i believe should be irrelevant to anyone it's not about me it's about the real world what's going to say the trilom i got neil degrasse tyson what do you think well he actually raises two objections to belief in god the first is what philosophers call the problem of evil whether moral evil in the world or physical suffering and he focuses on that second natural evil as it's called then the second assertion is that there's no evidence for god's existence now i think we can dismiss the second objection immediately based upon what i've shared tonight tonight i've shared three good arguments for thinking that a personal creator and designer of the universe exists and dr degrasse tyson hasn't responded to those arguments i would want to add though however that i think his definition of faith is mistaken this is how an unbeliever defines faith believing in something without any evidence but that's not how believers define faith i would say that faith is trusting in what you have good reason to think is true faith is trusting in what you have good reason to think is true and faith in that sense is not at all incompatible with evidence um on the contrary once you have good reason to think that something is true then you will face the question now am i going to trust in this am i going to trust in god for example so i do not find the second argument that he gives at all persuasive now what about the first one the argument that he states based on evil is an example of the logical version of the problem of evil this version says that the propositions god is all good and all powerful and the proposition evil and suffering exist are logically incompatible with each other they cannot both be true they are logically inconsistent now the problem with the logical version of the problem of evil is that those two propositions are not logically contradictory one is not the negation of the other so if the atheist is claiming that they are implicitly contradictory then he must be making some hidden assumptions that would serve to bring out the contradiction and make it explicit but the difficulty anna is that no philosopher has ever been able to successfully identify what those hidden assumptions are on the contrary i think we can actually provide good reasons to think that those two propositions are logically compatible in order to show this all we have to do is find a third proposition that is compatible with the first one that god is all good and all powerful and entails the second one that evil and suffering exist and here's an example of such a proposition god has morally sufficient reasons for permitting the evil and suffering in the world right if that's even possibly true it shows that these two propositions are not logically incompatible with each other now someone might say well what could those reasons be well doubtless they're multifarious but for example perhaps only in a world that is suffused with natural evil such as dr degrasse tyson described would the optimal number of people freely come to know god and to find eternal life which is an incommensurable good now is that true i don't know who knows but it's possible as long as it's even possible it proves that there's no logical incompatibility between god's being all powerful and all good and the evil and suffering in the world and so i'm very pleased to be able to report tonight that it is almost universally recognized among contemporary philosophers both theist and atheist that the logical version of the problem of evil is bankrupt it's a failure correct moving on astrophysicist richard dawkins let's hear from him faith means belief in something without evidence because if you believe something without evidence then that justifies anything you you're no longer vulnerable to somebody coming back at you and saying hang on a minute let me argue the case if you believe it without evidence which is what faith is then you don't argue the case you say no i'm not arguing that case this is my faith it's mine it's private i don't i don't dissent from it i don't retreat from it you're just going to have to accept it now that is evil and yet you spend so much of your time debating people of faith so clearly people of faith are interested in having discussions they're not just all blind believers insisting on their way of nobody said anything about all of them i mean the vast majority of religious people are perfectly good nice people um as you are there's no suggestion i've ever made that all religious people are evil of course not there is a logical progression that goes from believing in faith having faith that your god tells you to do something and doing terrible deeds like suicide bombing like flying planes into into skyscrapers the vast majority of people of faith don't do such terrible things but those people who do terrible things do it believing that they are righteous and good and they think that they're doing the will of their god so they are they're not evil people they're actually good people by their own lights they believe they're doing good things and that's why religion is evil because it can make you do evil things believing that they are good richard dawkins actually contradicts himself in this very clip on the one hand he says believing in something by faith inevitably leads to violence and moral atrocities when the other fellow challenges him he says oh well this doesn't happen in the majority of cases of religious believers they live good lives well which is it exactly does believing something by faith lead inevitably to moral atrocities or is it in fact the case that the vast majority of religious believers lead good and decent lives it's corrupt religion that leads to violence and atrocities not religion as such so dawkins comments are logically incoherent he's contradicting himself in the very clip now i've already commented on this definition of faith as believing in something without evidence but i want to add an additional wrinkle here dawkins is quite mistaken when he says that if you believe in something by evidence then a pardon me when he says if you believe in something without evidence right then that makes you impervious to reason and to refutation and that is demonstrably mistaken a person who believes simply by faith in something has no good grounds for believing it and so that person is actually more vulnerable to rational attack and criticism than the person who has good reasons for what he believes and you see this happen in christian churches and youth groups all the time sir here on campus yeah you all hear kids in high school or college who've been raised on emotional worship experiences in church they've never been taught the grounds for faith and they are sitting ducks for that hostile high school teacher or university professor who presents good arguments against christian theism so it is demonstrably wrong to think that if you believe in something by faith that makes you impervious to criticism and reputation i would say exactly the opposite and we're seeing this right now here we're seeing this right now here yeah and all these kind folks who are here are here because they're let here for the reasons for the hope that is in them or to see the reasons for the hope that is in them that's excellent i agree completely i was actually surprised by this video when when dawkins released it it is surprising because as i say no one needs to refute what he says he refutes himself exactly let's take a harder one we're going to go to neuroscientist sam harris next okay okay i think there's a few obvious things to point out one is that you we clearly don't get our morality out of our holy books because when you go into the holy books they are bursting with cruelty the old testament the new testament the quran these are profoundly cruel and morally ambiguous books at best i mean the you know the ten commandments the first four commandments have nothing to do with morality they have to do with with theological offenses you know don't take any other gods before me don't take god's name in vain no graven images etc don't work on the sabbath what are you supposed to do when people break those commandments you're supposed to kill them i mean this is unbelievably immoral uh and yet and we're not doing that now not because the the book itself is so wise i mean to take a a more relevant example slavery slavery is clearly endorsed in the bible it's endorsed in the old testament it's endorsed in the new testament we all agree that slavery is wrong we conquered that ground morally through some very hard fought conversations and also wars um religion was a very little help in that i mean there were is it's true that abolitionists were cherry-picking scripture trying to find ways to to justify their project but their project wasn't coming from scripture because scripture is clear it supports slavery there was there's the evil of slavery is not recognized in the bible and it is it is certainly not repudiated in the bible um and so the the slave holders of the south were on the winning side of that theological argument and and it religion was an impediment to making that that moral progress um again the fact even if it were not an impediment even if it were extremely useful that would not be a reason to believe that any of our books were dictated by an omniscient being there are a number of confusions in this clip one is that harris confuses what is immoral with what is illegal right um i think it is immoral not to love the lord your god with all your heart and mind and strength and soul it it is immoral to make graven images uh instead of god but it's not illegal we don't live in a theocracy like ancient israel where god was the head of the government we live in a society that has a separation of church and state and so not everything that is immoral is illegal but that doesn't mean that one is therefore denounced the morality of the old testament secondly he's simply mistaken when he says that all of these crimes that he listed are capital crimes that is to say that they would merit capital punishment that's that's just it's not true it's actually false right um every jew knew that he didn't love the lord his god with all his heart his mind and strength all the time and that therefore his life was stained by sin and impurity but god had provided a means of forgiveness and moral cleansing through the system of levitical sacrifices that were offered in the tabernacle and then later in the temple so that even though one failed to keep the law perfectly one could find forgiveness from god and pardon and cleansing from a loving and forgiving god so it's just not true that these were all capital crimes as harris asserts finally harris imposes upon ancient hebrew society the model of slavery that we know from our experience in the american south which is completely right this is a complete mistake slavery in ancient israel was more appropriately called indentured servanthood exactly what happened was in that day there were no government safety nets there was no welfare there was no aid to the families with dependent children no public assistance no food stamps and so if a man got into financial debt um he could sell himself to the debtor or the creditor rather and work off his debt until he would be freed and by doing that he could retain his dignity he would work and earn a wage and he would keep his family together so this so-called slavery in the old testament is actually an anti-poverty program exactly it's a way of helping someone who got into financial straits to keep his family together to work off his debts and and to retain his dignity and uh every seven years in ancient israel all of the slaves had to be set free yes there were tons of limitations on even bond servanthood that made it you could not stay that way for your entire life right so that even if he hadn't completely worked off his debts he still had to be uh freed after those seven years and what's remarkable anna is when you look at our experience with the welfare state today in this country i have to say in some ways ancient israel's way of dealing with poverty was more effective than ours our um welfare state has created a dependent class that perpetuates depoverty and and dependency into the second the third generation yes it has been horribly destructive to inner city families particularly black families and resulted in so many children uh living with single moms because the aid to families with dependent children uh incentivizes splitting up the families it robs men of their dignity and their self-respect and just giving them a dole rather than allowing them to earn a wage and in contrast to that in ancient israel a man would retain his dignity he would work he would keep his family together and he could get out of debts and so in some ways this way of dealing with poverty was actually more effective than what we do today the things that bothered me about this particular clip is number one i have a great deal of respect for saint harris i review his material all the time and i noticed he wouldn't quote any scripture to back up the claim that god endorsed slavery in particular a type of antebellum south type of slavery and i found that very compelling because he usually does and the reason why he was having problems with it is because we don't have a bible verse endorsing slavery in in the pastoral epistles where paul lists some of the condemned certain sins he gives a list of sins one of them is slave trading exactly he condemns the slave trade exactly and harris just completely overlooks that which means that abolitionists aren't cherry-picking anything they're the only ones being consistent yeah i mean the the claim that the abolitionists were not motivated by scripture i mean doesn't he know about wilberforce and the lifelong struggle against slavery that he uh led in england and how it was out of his christian convictions that every person is created in the image of god and therefore endowed with intrinsic moral worth and basic human rights of course this was rooted in a judeo-christian concept of human beings exactly we'll send him this recording and see what he says let's do one more before we open it up to audience q a one of my favorite professors professor barterman did you say pastors my favorite professors oh professors okay he speaks like a pastor he speaks like a pastor that's why i thought you said that my first interest in this particular question about the accurate preservation of the gospels started out when i was a student at moody bible institute at moody bible institute i believed as did my professors that the bible is without error in the autographs in other words the originals of the new testament did not have mistakes in them even if subsequent copies of the new testament may have mistakes in them the problem is we don't have the originals of the new testament what we have are thousands of copies of the new testament that were made in most cases centuries later we don't have the originals we have copies made centuries later these copies that were made centuries later contain numerous mistakes thousands of mistakes tens of thousands of mistakes hundreds of thousands of mistakes this was a problem for me at moody bible institute and i decided that i wanted to learn more about the greek manuscripts of the new testament i went to princeton theological seminary to study with the foremost scholar in the field bruce metzger i devoted years of my life to this study this has been the core of my research for the past 30 years at some point i came to the realization that my belief in the inerrancy of the autographs didn't make sense if god inspired the bible without error why hadn't he preserved the bible without error i couldn't think of a good answer then and i still can't think of a good answer now even though i think i've heard every answer ever proposed i couldn't any longer believe that god had inspired the originals because i was sure he had not preserved the original let me tell you now what i think about this entire situation which is that the that we cannot know whether the gospels have been preserved accurately through the ages and i'm going to try and illustrate with you by explaining how it worked take the gospel of mark whenever mark was written say it was written in the year 65 or in the year 70 in the city of rome say i don't know where it was made whoever wrote mark put it in circulation and somebody copied the gospel of mark then somebody copied that copy and somebody copied the copy of the copy then somebody copied the copy of the copy of the copy of the copy and we don't have any of those copies everybody who copied the text made mistakes our first surviving copy of mark probably dates to around the year 220 a.d that is 150 years after mark was first produced our first complete copy of mark comes from the year 350 about 280 years after mark we have lots of copies from later times from thousands of years a thousand years after mark we get lots of copies when you compare all of these copies with one another they all differ from one another you can see that he was once an evangelical preacher because he really gets into preaching mode when he gets wound up now unfortunately what he says here is extremely misleading right indeed i think it's a deliberate misrepresentation on uh ehrman's i think the new testament is the best attested book in ancient history both in terms of the number of manuscripts and in terms of the nearness of those manuscripts to the date of the original autograph and as a result textual scholars have been able to re-establish the original text of the new testament to almost 99 percent accuracy there are about 138 000 words in the new testament and of those only about 1400 are still swipe slightly uncertain and nothing hangs on any of those 1400 words they would be for example like in first john when the author writes we write this that our joy may be full but some manuscripts read we write this that your joy may be full the difference is between the pronoun our and the pronoun your and we're not sure which one of those was in the original text that's an illustration of the sort of trivialities that still remain uncertain in the text in the new testament and no christian doctrine hangs upon any of these textual uncertainties when i went to wheaton i took new testament greek so that i could read the greek text in the original languages and when i pick up my greek new testament and read the gospel of luke or paul's letter to the romans i can be confident that i am reading with 99 accuracy the original words that luke and paul actually wrote and for those words that are still uncertain at the bottom of the page in the greek new testament it will give you a list of the variants exactly and it will rank them as to which variants are most probably the reading in the original now here's the key thing anna bart ehrman knows this exactly he knows this but he deliberately misrepresents the situation to unsuspecting layman in order to be controversial and frankly i think to sell popular level books and so ehrman's new testament colleagues have made an interesting distinction between what they call scholarly bart and popular bart right scholarly bart knows what i've said about the text of the new testament being 99 accurate but popular level bart is writing these sensationalist books and misrepresenting the situation to layman in order to gain money and reputation i heard ehrman on a radio program called the lutheran hour in 2008 that was so amusing because he was describing to the interviewer these hundreds of thousands of variants and all the copies of the copies of the copies that have been made just as he did tonight and at that point the interviewer says to him well dr ehrman what do you think the text of the new testament originally said enterman said well i don't know what you mean yeah and and the interviewer said well you said it's been changed and all these copiers what did it originally say do you think and herman says well it says pretty much what it says today yeah and the interviewer said but you said it's been changed and he says oh well we've been able to reconstruct the original text exactly so he knows this but he deliberately misrepresents the situation to unsuspecting lay people all right now's your chance that was our last skeptic's question which means we're going to be moving on to audience q a i thought about asking dr craig to define sylopsism and maybe have a little discussion about truth and um but then you talked about there being no evidence for slavery in the bible and so i have to divert my plans i don't believe anybody said no evidence for slavery in the bible we said there's no evidence for antebellum south slavery what i said was that we shouldn't interpret slavery in the old testament and you said seven years and it was over didn't you i'm sorry you said seven years and it was over yes okay limitations from leviticus yes chapter 25 verse 44 both thy bondsmen and thy bondsmaids which thou shalt have shall be of the heathen that are round about you and of them shall ye by bondsmen and bonds made moreover of the children of the strangers that do souljarn among you of them shall ye by and of their families that are with you which they began in your land and they shall be your possessions and you shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you to inherit them for a possession they shall be your bondsmen forever but over your brother and the children of israel ye shall not rule over one another with rigor so yeah they would they would let uh hebrews go but they had slavery for life just like antebellum south what it's talking about there would be non-israelite slaves why just like antebellum south black people are weren't uh good enough not like the antebellum south which i've won my case here why don't we let others a really good discussion of this issue is in paul kopan's book is god a moral monster where he has two chapters on so-called slavery in the old testament and it's a real eye-opener to see the difference between uh this bond servanthood in ancient israel and what went on in the american style pleasure to be here my name is chris and i'm a historian i teach here at uh pellissippi so to make a long question short i myself identify as an evangelical who doesn't dissent from anything dr craig has presented tonight and i also believe in the josh mcdowellian titular slogan evidence demands a verdict okay the big problem i run into here teaching ancient human history to my students is that they are convinced that they have a binary choice to make and whether to believe in species evolution or the bible and i try in a secular setting to leave the doors open that will allow them to not see this as a binary choice within my you know secular duties and not tell them what to believe theologically but why is it that in the bible belt people embrace the idea that evidence demands a verdict but 60 of american evangelicals pulled a few years ago do not believe in evolution despite the overwhelming evidence i don't see any incompatibility with contemporary evolutionary theory and christian theology i was just on a panel discussion in san diego at the evangelical theological society conference in november with michael murray and john churchill and others and i argued that there's no incompatibility between evolutionary biology and the notion that god is provident that he's in control in fact i just wrote a question of the week for our website on this uh this morning [Music] again reinforcing the point that when evolutionary biologists say that the mutations occur randomly they don't mean by chance they mean irrespective of the benefit to the host organism and so the theory is entirely compatible with the mutations being caused directly by god even with a design in mind and a purpose in mind so i i just don't see any problem and i think the work of people like francis collins in this area have served to provide models of synthesis between christian theology and evolutionary biology now please lest anybody misunderstand me that's not to endorse the truth of evolutionary biology i think that's a scientific question but it's not a theological question and so i don't think that you can evaluate it theologically thank you dr craig for coming and speaking to us tonight i enjoyed it my question revolves around the problem of evil and theodicy so i see a potential uh inconsistency where with regard to the character of god and his goodness and his creating creatures uh so god is love according to first john and god is also free to create as you've argued for in the past but according to the book of james and hebrews god is not capable of sinning or he cannot sin cannot be tempted to sin so god can both be free loving and has does not have the ability to sin so why does he create creatures who can be both loving and free but yet can sin yeah i think that it's very plausible that um only god a divine being could be free and yet impossible to sin he you would have to have the very character of god himself the holiness the perfection of god in order to be incapable of sinning and so i don't think any creature could have that sort of character because he cannot be god follow-up question is then seen maybe a potential defeater with regard to the resurrection so at the resurrection we no longer commit sin no longer have choice on sinning we freely choose always to do good do you mean in heaven in heaven or at the resurrection i'm inclined to say that in heaven the freedom to sin will be removed that when we have the vision of christ unalloyed in all his glory and beauty and majesty this will be a vision so powerful so attractive that the freedom to sin will be removed and so i see this life as a sort of veil of decision-making during which we've been created at arm's length from god that permits the freedom to reject him but when we go to heaven and that distance is removed then i think the freedom to sin will also be removed it would be like a gigantic electromagnet with iron filings in its presence they would be just attracted just irresistibly stuck to the huge electromagnet with no ability to fall away and i strongly suspect that the vision of god the vision of christ in heaven will be so powerfully attractive that the freedom to sin will be effectively removed final part of the question so if in heaven we have a like an electromagnetic pool two being uh good or always choosing the good why didn't he start that way at the start instead yeah that's what i understood him you're saying why not just begin with the heavenly state right well and i think the answer to that is obviously because that state is a reward a final state for those who have freely chosen to respond to god's love and to place their faith in him and so it requires this period of decision making as i say before that final state is achieved but to just begin that way would be to begin with robots with with marionettes that have never had any freedom to respond to god or not does that answer your question i didn't botch it too bad by misrepresenting it i was just uh i hate to keep asking and so they so but we don't think god's a robot right so god's not a robot in no because as i said yeah being the standard of goodness himself being the paradigm of goodness as the moral argument video explained uh it's impossible for god to sin but he does good freely in the sense that there are no external constraints upon him but we don't have that kind of character i think we would have to be god in order to have that paradigmatic goodness and holiness thank you for taking so many questions thank you for the clarification over here please thank you i'm a pastor involved 30-year pastor involved in the training of pastors and my interest in apologetics flows from that so i resonated very deeply anna was something you said at the beginning and i i won't say it correctly but it seems seemed like you alluded to a change in the last few years in the uh the thought world of students right and you characterized it as apathyism correct so i've noticed the same thing from a pastoral standpoint i deal with youth a lot and i find that i so i feel like what i'm seeing now is the questions that were addressed tonight are the they're well addressed my battle is very often getting my prospects to the point of even caring about those questions intellectually so i guess i don't really know how to hone the question any better than to ask this how do you would you be willing dr craig to take a few moments and just address maybe world view sort of a broader or underlying worldview question how how do you address the person who who comes to these questions with apathy or who doesn't come into question because he's apathetic well and let me let me clarify just a little bit further i feel like from my own amateurs philosophical training i feel like the apathy that the folks i'm dealing with that they come with is sponsored by certain philosophical pre-commitments and i find that that trying to get a handle on those and challenging those helps but i'm doing it as a pastor and as an amateur and using scripture and i'm interested to hear what the philosopher of your credentials would say about those my best shot um at combatting apathyism is the work that i've done on the absurdity of life without god and i think that the atheistic existentialist philosophers like sartre and kamu have done a brilliant job of analyzing the human predicament in a world in which god does not exist they argue that life in fact becomes absurd and i analyze that to mean that life has no ultimate meaning no ultimate purpose and no ultimate value and using the work of the atheist philosophers themselves you can show what a crisis results for human beings if there is no god moreover i would argue that it's impossible to live happily and consistently within that framework no one can live happily and consistently as though his life were purposeless valueless and meaningless and so we find ourselves in a completely untenable situation and i think that should motivate us to go back to square one and say well wait a minute how can i be sure that god does not exist maybe there is a god after all and maybe life does have meaning value and purpose so this analysis of the human predicament doesn't show that god exists but it shows how much it matters if god exists and so if you look at the videos that are on our website the one that leads off the top of the list is the one on the meaning of life and it it presents this argument to try to jar people out of their apathy into thinking about these things before even presenting any evidence for god um my understanding of paul in the new testament is that god that god doesn't really care about where you are in your station in life whether you're a slave or a slave master that he's considered with a he's concerned with the orientation of the heart and so um i i i i think that uh uh what you presented was more questions to the atheists about um how they come to their uh view of the world um anthony flew who was a famous atheist from the 50s until i guess the 90s was probably the richard dawkins of his time and i'm a little bit late to the game but he wrote a book in 2008 called there is a god and you debated him at the university of wisconsin a while back and i just wondered if you had any uh uh personal antidotes or stories um that when about professor flu who went from being a world recognized atheist from oxford uh to finally admitting that there is a god yeah i don't have any anecdotes about how he made that change um because at the time i debated him at university of wisconsin in madison he was firmly committed to his atheistic view and did attempt to defend it um in the debate uh and so there was no movement at that time it was later as he began to explore arguments for intelligent design of the cosmos that he became convinced that this universe could not simply be the product of blind um processes but that there was an intelligent designer behind the cosmos and so he he made that change right hi um my question is regarding uh the calum uh premise number two um everything that begins to exist has a cause now as as that's premise one i'm sorry um the universe began yeah um now as brilliant as alexander valenkin is doesn't that premise really hinge on his the gordon the gord uh guth paper i mean certainly the whole field of physics physicists don't agree on the the big bang cosmology model of the universe so certainly wouldn't you say that you can't continue logically until you resolve that premise or is it to say that he is the authoritative figure on the whole field of physics um it doesn't depend upon the board guthvalenkin theorem that is just perhaps the most recent uh confirmation in a long series of discoveries that go all the way back to lumetrin and alexander friedman that predict an absolute beginning of the universe the power of the board guthvalenkin theorem is that its conditions are so general um it it has such a general condition that it's very hard to craft a model of the universe that doesn't fall under this theorem and so avoids the beginning and so theorists who want to avoid the beginning because the theorem is generally accepted today in the physics community have to construct very exotic models of the universe to try to avoid the absolute beginning for example sean carroll postulates a universe in which the arrow of time at some point in the past flips over and runs in the other direction so that from one point the arrow of time goes forward from the same point the arrow of time goes backward and that type of universe would avoid the single condition laid down by the board guthalenkin theorem but as a number of thinkers have pointed out in fact that model doesn't avoid the beginning of the universe because that mirror universe that time reversed universe is in no sense in our past it is not earlier than our universe on the contrary because time runs in a different direction what you actually have there are two universes originating from a common point so it actually supports the beginning of the universe rather than denies it and this has been the pattern honestly over and over again model after model after model has been proposed to try to have a universe without a beginning and there aren't any that are successful that are empirically plausible and mathematically consistent and valencian in his most recent article that i've read in 2015 says that not only do no beginningless models exist that are tenable but he says it's likely that they cannot be crafted because of the requirements of the board the lincoln theorem so all i'm saying is that when i look at the evidence the evidence makes that second premise more probable than not and and yes go ahead would you say the majority of physicists agree with your assessment of the data regarding um i don't know i don't know if they would or not the ones i've talked to have for example even lawrence krauss who is as determined a critic as you might find will agree that it's probable that the universe did begin to exist krause admits that um because i will say i mean you've got people like carol as i say who who tries to escape the beginning but his model doesn't work and that's i think generally agreed so um stephen hawking in 1996 wrote a book with roger penrose called the nature of space and time and in that book he says today almost everyone agrees that the universe and time itself had a beginning at the big bang so that's hawking's view of the discipline hi i'm christina thank you dr craig for coming here to knoxville it's an honor to get to hear you talk i am a christian but i have a question from my friend who is an atheist who could not be here tonight he says in your debates you use the definition for atheism that means god does not exist and it seems no matter how many atheists give you their definition which i would assume to be unconvinced that god exists you do not change your meaning he is wondering why that is since it's easier to argue against your definition as it comes with a burden of proof and to that i would add as my own question at what point should skeptics move from withholding judgment or remaining unconvinced to being convinced or choosing belief and do we have any control over being convinced the view that god does not exist correct that is the standard definition of the word among philosophers that that isn't idiosyncratic it's these folks who want to reinterpret the word atheist to mean non-theist and i think the um incorrectness of that way of understanding atheism is so obvious in that non-theists include not just people who say god does not exist but it also includes agnostics who say i don't know if god exists and it includes verificationists or positivists who say the question of god's existence is meaningless right so the the non-theist is not a single view it includes traditional atheists agnostics and positivists so the the the person who tries to shift or avoid bearing his share of the burden of proof by redefining the term atheist is just offering an idiosyncratic and i think ultimately untenable definition of the word even anthony flew who was mentioned earlier tonight who proposed that we redefine atheism to mean ah theism non-theism flu admitted uh that this is an unusual definition that goes against the way the word is normally understood so your friend is just wrong about what this word traditionally means hey dr craig uh i just had a question um what would be the best way to explain to a naturalist determinist that their knowledge claims or their truth claims aren't really rational due to their uh their their deterministic view their deterministic view yes well you that's assuming that the naturalist is a determinist and denies free will but i guess if he does i think it is very difficult to see how belief and determinism could be rational because you're just determined to believe it it's like having a toothache or a tree growing a branch he's determined to believe by causes outside his control in determinism and you're determined not to believe in it by the same token so it's hard for me to see how if determinism is true it could ever be rational to believe in it dr craig i want to thank you for your ministry it's made a profound impact on my life for the last couple years and i really want to say thanks for putting all these questionnaires on youtube and all your debates on youtube it's a really great resource my question for you i've heard some videos that you've done in the past and i'll just read my question if biological evolution does not disprove creation how does it explain the doctrine of original sin and how could death and decay in the universe precede mankind if original sin had not yet been committed that's just something that's always i don't see any reason to think that god could not have used the evolutionary process to prepare a hominid body until it had the nervous system and brain that would be receptive to a human rational soul and then at some point god would so to speak breathe into or create a rational soul in that hominid and it would become a human being and then as a as a human being it would be tasked with certain moral duties uh and if it disobeyed um then it would fall into sin so i guess i don't see any problem in saying that god allowed the human body to evolve and then endowed it with a soul making it into a moral agent who then has moral duties to fulfill would you say the same thing applies to the animal kingdom too just because of death and decay that occurs in nature would you say that nature also suffers the same kind of thing that mankind goes through or is that separate is man dealt with i mean man obviously is dealt differently because we're created in god's image but how has how has death occurred in nature prior to i don't see any reason to think that animal death is a result of human sin that's certainly not in the bible there when you look at the curses in genesis 3 pronounced upon adam for his sin it nowhere does it say that animal death is the result of human sin so this is a case where oddly enough fundamentalist christians are reading things into the text reading between the lines things that aren't there yeah i think that's something that i've always been taught from you know five years old on that you know the consequences of of sin is death and nature was affected by that so i appreciate you clarifying that thank you sir um i'm a coptic christian and i really appreciate that you're here and that you spoke with us and i definitely appreciate your ministry so thank you for all of that um i have uh i guess a three-part question so the first part would be what do you believe um is necessary for salvation well i think there's very little um that needs to be believed in order to be saved i i think that most of these things are below the cut-off line as i would put it and that's why a lot of these questions you know like about what did satan think and things of that sort they're just not germane to the fundamental truth of christianity um those would be in-house questions that can be debated same with the slavery in the old testament that's not an essential tenet of christianity that's all a matter of old testament inerrancy so what would need to be believed well you'd have to believe in the existence of god i think you'd have to believe that human beings are morally responsible for god and to god and have committed moral failures for which they need god's forgiveness if you've heard of christ i think you'd have to place your faith in him as your savior and your lord believing that he died for your sins and that god raised him from the dead and beyond that i don't see that there's a whole lot that you have to believe to be above the cutoff line you don't have to believe in old testament inerrancy you don't have to believe in the virgin birth you don't have to believe in original sin those would all be secondary doctrines on which a diversity of opinions would be possible but in terms of what you you've got to believe in order to be saved i think it's very few things okay um each of those things uh could raise a ton of questions and i'm not going to get into those because we don't have yeah well and you notice that the videos that i showed tonight focus on those questions what c.s lewis called mere christianity those essential truths that are affirmed by all christians whether catholic protestant orthodox or or coptic but these other issues are all interesting in the house questions but what i'm focusing on are these essential truths that need to be believed to be saved go ahead um so for the second question as a copt obviously i take pride in the fact that my heritage as my church can be followed all the way back to saint mark as our first patriarch the mark the one who wrote the gospel of mark so i'm really proud of that and i'm curious how you reconciled the tenet of sola scriptura and protestantism with the fact that the bible was compiled and interpreted by early church fathers so how can you kind of reconcile the fact that the bible is put together by men as far as its assembly okay now if i understand you correctly your question is how can you reconcile belief in sola scriptura which is that scripture alone is the authority for faith and practice and the fact that human church fathers and others interpret the scripture not only interpret but also compile the scripture so as far as the like clement of rome and the other men well but but think about it there's no incompatibility there because what the early church was doing was trying to say which are the truly inspired books that need to be included in the new testament they weren't deciding that these books uh or or giving these books that authority rather they were trying to discern it right so there's just no there's not even an apparent incompatibility between saying that these books are solely authoritative for faith and practice and that the early church discerned which books had that property of being so inspired there's just not even an apparent incompatibility um my third and final question would be how do you reconcile this um lack of necessity on our part to behave a certain way for instance um with the early church that practice sacraments such as taking the eucharist or baptism or other types of sacraments like those how do you reconcile the fact that those practices in the early church have changed to this point as far as the way the protestant church practices now yeah as i understand the situation um different christians at different times and places could discern different moral duties that they had to fulfill and it's up to you to ask yourself who was right it's perfectly possible that the earlier ones were right and we're wrong but it's also possible that they were ensnared in legalism and that modern views are right so the fact that there's a diversity of opinions and a diversity of interpretations just doesn't do anything to show that there isn't any fact of the matter dr craig um i have a question about your cosmological argument so if you say that the cause of the universe is conscious right is what conscious yes at most the cosmological argument can lead you to a cause but it doesn't lead you to consciousness however the argument itself does not make sense because at the beginning of the universe time began so before time causes temporal so asking what caused this doesn't really make any sense it's like asking what was your favorite color before you were born well there there cannot be uh if time began at the big bang then there isn't any state of affairs before it that would be a self-contradiction right because that would imply time before time so what i've said is that god is timeless songs creation and in time from the moment of creation and that's a perfectly consistent way of putting it so i would say god is not chronologically prior to the universe he's causally prior to the universe but not chronologically now if your argument is that consciousness is inherently temporal and therefore cannot exist timelessly i would refer you to my book time and eternity the chapter on arguments for divine temporality where i examine this claim that um you cannot have an atemporal personal consciousness and i think i show fairly convincingly there that there are no good arguments against timeless consciousness uh so the main problem is that um if you say that he's timeless i agree that's a sufficient explanation as to my concern however that must be demonstrated in order to be sound of course yes right and and so i give arguments for this that the time and space began to exist that you cannot have an infinite regress of temporal events and that therefore there must be an absolutely first event maybe i need to add here that the video only looks at the scientific evidence for the beginning of the universe but in my published work that is just confirmatory of philosophical arguments against the infinitude of the past which for me are actually more important than the scientific evidence the scientific evidence is just icing on the cake i think it's these philosophical arguments against the infinity of the past that show that time had a beginning and that make it plausible that the creator of the universe or the cause of the universe exists timelessly sounds the universe okay so i agree that there's there are problems with last thing last thing be quick okay because i've cut me off i agree that there are problems with infinite regress however the problem is that you have not demonstrated that that god exists that's my only concern thank you that depends on if you think that the premises of the argument are true if everything that begins to exist has a cause and the universe began to exist then it follows logically that there is a cause of the universe that transcends the universe and is therefore timeless spaceless immaterial uh changeless and enormously powerful and then i give three arguments as to why it's also personal and i think that is a rich enough concept theologically to say that it is god thank you dr greg your question please hi dr craig thank you for coming out and thank you rashio christie for hosting events like this being an alumnus of ut i really appreciate seeing events like this um so my question i know that there have been a lot of questions on evolution tonight already and i hope that the answer to this isn't already been you know answered from the previous questions but i know that you stated that the question of evolution is not a theological one but if god is in control of the placement of you know these so-called random mutations um how can we separate humans from any other animal that may have risen from a common ancestor in terms of the imago day or to put in another way how can only humans be imprinted with the imago day if all animal life evolved from a common ancestor now by the imago dei he's using a latin phrase for the image of god only human beings are created in god's image according to genesis 1. and i think that this would be in virtue of man's having a rational soul i'm a a dualist interactionist i don't think we are just physical bags of chemicals on bones i think that we are body soul composites and even though this the body may be the result of biological evolution as i said earlier a hominid body has been prepared for god what makes us in the image of god is that that body is joined with a rational soul that makes us persons as god is personal so that we're able to relate to god so that i think is what would distinguish human beings from the rest of animal creation thank you i'm thomas i'm a christian um one of the main arguments that atheists have is that before god who was there and what they don't seem to understand is that god is eternal he's he will be he is and he always has been so why don't you think why do you think that atheists don't understand that do they do they disbelieve or just they can't rationalize you know really that's a sociological question not a philosophical question and it it is bizarre the things that people say and think that they have knocked down arguments or objections like who caused god you know if everything has a cause then what is god's cause and they don't seem to understand they've simply misrepresented the causal premise or misstated it or as you say there had to be something before god rather than thinking of god as timeless songs creation it's i think it's just ignorance uh our popular culture is very very ignorant of these things and so easily led astray by slogans and easy arguments that are are easily refuted for someone who knows traditional theology so um i'm a naturalist and an atheist and i used to be a baptist and uh was born you know a baptist and i feel like brainwashed into the religion and now i've escaped and understanding secular human humanism and the golden rule i feel like the more that children understand science the fewer will be terrified of eternal afterlife so my question is do you feel like you're scaring children with afterlife and scaring children with water with the afterlife with the eternal afterlife with the idea of an eternal afterlife i think that the afterlife is the a wonderful doctrine that provides a solution to the problem of human death and extinction i mean when you read as i said these existentialist philosophers like sartre and kamu it is the finality of death that puts a question mark behind human existence and makes us wonder what is it all for um what purpose is it if everything ends up the same and it's not just our individual deaths the whole human race is doomed to extinction in the heat death of the universe someday the universe itself unless christ returns is going to degenerate into a cold dark and lifeless state and so the idea that there is immortal eternal life beyond the grave is i think just a tremendous hope um that can fill our lives with eternal meaning and significance thank you for your question um can i add real quick that though i think that it actually makes life meaningless if you have a finite life and you have an infinite afterlife if you divide no matter how many years even if you lived a thousand years and transhumanism is successful it's still zero percent of your existence so that makes our finite life totally insignificant and meaningless again yes no no because the the things that we do in this finite lifetime are infused with eternal value and significance for example music or art these are not doomed to perish eventually in the heat death of the universe these human achievements and accomplishments will endure and so those kinds of things i think are infused with eternal value in virtue of the doctrine of the afterlife so the the promise of eternal life is such a great hope i think the suspicion is that it's pie in the sky that it would be invented because we need it so badly and that's where the resurrection of jesus is so remarkable that we have in the resurrection of jesus an actual historical event that provides a foundation for this wonderful hope of life beyond the grave have a wonderful evening drive safely and we will see you the next time at rocco christie public event [Music]

Channel: ReasonableFaithOrg

Views: 9,366

Rating: 4.9124088 out of 5

Keywords: William Lane Craig, God, Theology, Jesus, Christ, Christianity, Philosophy, Reason, Reasons, Evidence, Logic, Arguments, Atheism, Science, Cosmology, Good, Evil, Universe, The Existence of God, Resurrection, Big Bang, Creation, World, Fine-tuning, Kalam, Morality

Id: SYSwqWKCyCw

Length: 121min 2sec (7262 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 31 2020