William Lane Craig: Is God a Delusion? Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford October 2011

[Music] [Music] [Music] ladies and gentlemen good evening and can I warmly welcome you so the Sheldonian theater this evening for the talk that we're just about to hear is God a delusion my name's Robbie Stratton I'm the president of the Christian Union here at Oxford University and it is a delight to be joined this evening by William Lane Craig who would just be in a moment giving a lecture in response to Richard Dawkins book The God Delusion now it would have been great to be able to welcome professor Richard Dawkins here this evening for public debate unfortunately he wasn't able to make it it is it is instead a great privilege to be joined by Professor Peter Milliken who is the Gilbert Ryle Fellow and professor of philosophy at Hartford College Oxford he's going to be chairing the evening and I really hope that you enjoy the evening this evening thank you very much it's a real pleasure to welcome William Lane Craig to talk to us tonight for the last 15 years he's been research professor of philosophy at the Talbot School of Theology in La Mirada California he's the author of over 30 books and over a hundred peer-reviewed articles in philosophy and theology I'm just going to mention a couple of those books the cosmological argument from Plato to Leibniz that's actually my own copy dated 1980 I got it when studying the be Phil here studying philosophy of religion under Basel Mitchell and it was clear even men that Bill's book was a new landmark in discussion of the cosmological argument more recently 2009 one of his latest contributions is the monumental Blackwell companion to natural theology which he jointly edited no less than 700 pages and a snip at 125 pounds another book I'll particularly mention is this one God a debate between a Christian and an atheist jointly done with Walter Sinnott Armstrong it grew out of a debate they did together and I think I can't think of a better book to recommend if you want to see the theist and atheist points of view put robustly but with respect and a very energetic argument bill has a particular connection with Britain he actually did his PhD in philosophy under John hick at the University of Birmingham back in 1977 yes Birmingham actually is where I debated with Bill on Friday and we had a spirited debate so I'm in the other camp but you won't be hearing much from me tonight apart from directing proceedings if you want to know what I think about these things I think our debate is soon to appear on the web after doing the PhD in philosophy bill also took a doctorate in theology under the celebrated theologian wolf harp Annenberg at Munich so he's extremely well prepared on both sides in my debate on Friday our debate on a Friday I I realized what it's like dealing with such an extremely well-prepared opponent where it's very hard to come up with things that he hasn't heard before and thought through it will be very interesting tonight to hear what he has to say on Richard Dawkins arguments the pattern for tonight will be that bill will be speaking for 45 or 50 minutes we then have three Oxford academics who have kindly offered to come representing a range of views to comment on what bill has to say bill is then going to be given a chance to respond to them and then we'll have a short break now cards have been given out to the audience if you haven't got one then that in that break please feel free to ask one of the ushers for one in those car on those cards you are welcome to write questions also you're welcome to tell us who to whom you would like the question to be addressed now three speakers are Daniel came Stephen priest and John Parrington and I'll be saying a little bit more about them in turn when we introduce them but if one of them as well as bill says something to which you'd like to respond feel free to do so those questions will come to me during the break and then I shall try to sort through them and pick ones that are particularly representative of the questions that have been asked and give our speakers a chance to respond to them so without further ado I'd like to hand over to William Lane Craig for that on the subject is God a delusion thank you thank you thank you very much it is a privilege to be here with you this evening and speaking in such an August setting as this during the years that Jan and I lived in England while I was doing my doctoral studies at the University of Birmingham we grew to have a deep affection for this country and for people and so it is truly a joy and a delight for us to be back in the UK and to be participating in this speaking tour including the event tonight a couple years ago I published an article in which I described the Renaissance among contemporary philosophers concerning arguments for the existence of God and it was fascinating to read the discussion in the blogosphere in response to this article along with expressions of appreciation there were also comments like the following Dawkins The God Delusion soundly deals with these arguments did you even do any research or again have you even read Dawkins apostrophe s book he answers every one of those arguments quite well or again I was dismayed that dr. Craig has used these arguments to defend the existence of God as someone mentioned before has he even read Dawkins book well what is remarkable what these comments is the degree of confidence placed in Richard Dawkins supposin refutation of the arguments for God's existence are they right has Richard Dawkins dealt the deathblow to these theistic arguments that I discussed well I propose this evening to look at those arguments and see what Dawkins has to say about each one now since our time is very limited tonight I can consider only the objections that Richard Dawkins himself raises doubtless you can think of other objections full of fuller treatment I would refer you to my book reasonable faith or the Blackwell companion to natural theology to begin with then the cosmological argument Dawkins doesn't even discuss the first form of the cosmological argument which I mentioned in my article namely the argument from contingency now this is a remarkable oversight since it's the most famous version of the cosmological argument indeed it would be deserving to be called the standard form of the cosmological argument so obviously it isn't the case that Richard Dawkins has refuted all the arguments that I surveyed in my article but Dawkins does discuss a different type of cosmological argument which may be formulated as follows premise one everything that begins to exist has a cause to the universe began to exist 3 therefore the universe has a cause once we reach the conclusion that the universe has a cause we can analyze what properties such a cause must have now premise 1 that everything that begins to exist has a cause seems obviously true at least more so than its negation to suggest that things could just pop into being uncaused out of nothing is to quit doing serious metaphysics and to resort to magic premise 2 that the universe began to exist can be supported by both philosophical argument and scientific evidence the philosophical arguments aim to show that there cannot have been an infinite regress of past events or in other words that the series of past events must have had a beginning the philosophical arguments against an infinite regressive events are fascinating and mind-expanding but we needn't consider them this evening since Dawkins doesn't object to any these arguments the scientific evidence for the beginning of the universe is based on the expansion of the universe we now have pretty strong evidence that the universe is not eternal in the past but had an absolute beginning a finite time ago in 2003 Arvind borde Alan Guth and Alexander Vilenkin were able to prove that any universe which has on average been in a state of cosmic expansion throughout its history cannot be infinite in the past but must have a past space-time boundary even if our universe is just a tiny part of a so-called multiverse composed of many universes their theorem requires that the multiverse itself must have an absolute beginning of course highly speculative scenarios such as loop quantum gravity models string models even closed timelike curves have been proposed to try to avoid this absolute beginning although these models are all fraught with problems the bottom line is that none of these theories even if true succeeds in restoring an eternal past at most they just pushed the beginning back a step the Lincoln pulls no punches he writes it is said that an argument is what convinces reasonable men and a proof is what it takes to convince even an unreasonable man with the proof now in place cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past eternal universe there is no escape they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning end quote now it follows from the two premises of the argument that therefore the universe has a cause what properties must the cause of the universe possess well by the very nature of the case as the cause of space and time this entity must transcend space and time and therefore exist non temporally and non spatially at least without the universe this transcendent cause must also therefore be changeless and immaterial since anything that is timeless must be unchanging and anything that is changeless must be non-physical and immaterial since material things are constantly changing on at least the molecular and atomic levels such a cause must be beginning less and uncaused at least in the sense of lacking any prior causal conditions since there cannot be an infinite regress of causes Occam's razor the principle that says we should not multiply causes beyond necessity will shave away any further causes since only one cause is required to explain the effect this entity must be unimaginably powerful if not omnipotent since it created the universe without any material cause finally and most remarkably such a transcendent first cause is plausibly personal two reasons can be given for this conclusion first the personhood of the first cause of the universe is implied by its timelessness and immateriality the only entities which can possess such properties are either unembodied minds or abstract objects like numbers but abstract objects don't stand in causal relations the number seven for example can't cause anything therefore it follows logically that the transcendent cause of the origin of the universe is an unembodied or consciousness second this same conclusion is also implied by the origin of an effect with a beginning from a beginning less cause we've concluded that the beginning of the universe was the effect of a first cause by the nature of the case that cause cannot have either a beginning of its existence or any prior cause it just exists changeless lee without beginning and a finite time ago it brought the universe into existence now this is exceedingly odd the cause is in some sense eternal and yet the effect which it produced is not eternal but began to exist a finite time ago how can this be if the necessary and sufficient conditions for the effect are eternal then why isn't the effect also eternal how can the cause exist without the effect there seems to be only one way out of this dilemma and that is to say that the cause of the universe's beginning is a personal agent endowed with freewill who freely chooses to create a universe in time philosophers called this type of causation agent causation and because the agent is free he can spontaneously initiate new effects by freely bringing about conditions which were not previously present and that's a finite time ago a creator endowed with freewill could have freely brought the world into being at that moment in this way the creator could exist changeless ly and eternally but freely create the universe in time by exercising his causal power he brings it about that a world with a beginning comes to exist since the cause so the cause can be eternal but the effect is not in this way then it seems that it's possible for a temporal universe to have come into being from an eternal cause through the free will of a personal creator we may therefore conclude that a personal creator of the universe exists who is uncaused beginning less change less immaterial timeless spaceless and unimaginably powerful now Dawkins does as I say address this version of the cosmological argument remarkably however he doesn't dispute either premise of the argument instead he merely questions the theological significance of the arguments conclusion he writes and I quote even if we allow the dubious luxury of arbitrarily conjuring up a terminator to an infinite regress and giving it a name there is absolutely no reason to endow that Terminator with any of the properties normally ascribed to God omnipotence omniscience goodness creativity of design to say nothing of such human qualities as listening to prayers forgiving sins and reading innermost thoughts now apart from the opening slur this is a remarkably concessionary statement Dawkins doesn't dispute that the argument proves the existence of an uncaused beginning less change less in material timeless spaceless and unimaginably powerful personal creator of the universe he merely complains that this cost hasn't also been shown to be omnipotent omniscient good creative of design listening to prayers forgiving sins and reading innermost thoughts so what the argument was never intended to prove such things it would be a bizarre form of atheism indeed one not worth the name which admitted that there exists an uncaused beginning less change less in material timeless spaceless an unimaginably powerful personal creator of the universe who may for all we know also possess the further properties listed by Dawkins we needn't call the personal creator of the universe God if Dawkins finds this unhelpful or misleading but the point remains that such a being as is here described must exist secondly the moral argument here's a simple moral argument for God's existence premise 1 if God does not exist then objective moral values and duties do not exist to objective moral values and duties do exist 3 therefore God exists what makes this little argument so powerful is not only that it's logically ironclad but also that people generally believe both premises in fact Dawkins himself seems to be committed to the truth of both premises with respect to premise 1 that if God does not exist objective moral values and duties do not exist Dawkins informs us and I quote there is at bottom no design no purpose no evil no good nothing but pitiless indifference we are machines for propagating DNA it is every living object soul reason for being end quote but although he says that there is no evil no good nothing but pitiless indifference the fact is that Richard Dawkins is a stubborn moralist he vigorously condemns such actions as the harassment and abuse of homosexuals the religious indoctrination of children the incan practice of human sacrifice and prising cultural diversity over the interests of Amish children he even goes so far as to offer his own amended Ten Commandments for guiding moral behavior all the while marvelously oblivious to the contradiction with his ethical subjectivism thus affirming both premises of the moral argument Dawkins is on pain of irrationality committed to the arguments conclusion namely that God exists thirdly the teleological argument the cutting edge of contemporary discussion of the teleological or design argument concerns the remarkable fine-tuning of the cosmos for life Dawkins responds to this form of the argument in Chapter four of his book under the heading the anthropic principle cosmological version here's a simple formulation of a teleological argument based on fine-tuning premise one the fine-tuning of the universe is due to either physical necessity chance or design premise two it is not due to physical necessity or chance three therefore it is due to design now with respect to premise one I'd better explain what is meant by fine-tuning this expression does not mean designed otherwise the argument would be obviously circular rather during the last 40 years or so scientists have discovered that the existence of intelligent life depends upon a complex and delicate balance of initial conditions given in the Big Bang itself were nature's fundamental constants and quantities be altered by less than a hair's breadth the life-permitting balance would be destroyed and no living interactive organisms could exist dawkins himself citing the work of the astronomer royal Sir Martin Rees acknowledges that the universe does exhibit this remarkable fine-tuning now premise 1 the fine-tuning of the universe is due to either physical necessity chance or design simply lists the three possibilities for explaining the presence of this amazing fine-tuning of the universe the question is which of these all alternatives is the most plausible premise to addresses that question the first alternative physical necessity is extraordinarily implausible because the constants and the quantities are independent of the laws of nature the laws of nature are consistent with a wide range of values for these constants and quantities so for example the most promising candidate for a theory of everything to date M theory or super string theory allows for a cosmic landscape of around 10 to the 500th power different possible universes governed by the present laws of nature dawkins notes that Sir Martin Rees rejects this first alternative physical necessity and Dawkins adds his own comment I think I agree so what about the second alternative that the fine-tuning of the universe is due to chance the problem with this alternative is that the odds against the universe's of being life permitting are so incomprehensible great that they cannot be reasonably faced in order to rescue the alternative of chance therefore its proponents have been forced to adopt the remarkable hypothesis that there exists an infinite number of randomly ordered universes composing a sort of world ensemble or multiverse of which our universe is but a part somewhere in this infinite ensemble finely-tuned universes will appear by chance alone and we happen to be in one such world this is the explanation that Richard Dawkins finds most plausible now Dawkins is acutely sensitive to the charge that postulating a world ensemble of randomly ordered universes seems to be what he calls and unperson Onias extravagance but he retorts and I quote the multiverse may seem extravagant in sheer number of universes but if each one of those universes is simple in its fundamental laws we are still not postulating anything highly improbable end quote unfortunately this response is multiply confused first each universe in the ensemble is not simple but is characterized by a multiplicity of constants and quantities if each universe were simple then why did Dawkins feel the need to recur to the hypothesis of a world ensemble in the first place second Dawkins assumes that the simplicity of the whole is a function of the simplicity of the parts but this is an obvious mistake a complex mosaic for example is made up of a great number of individually simple parts in the same way an ensemble of simple universes will still be complex if those universes are randomly ordered in the values of their fundamental constants and quantities other than all sharing the same values third Occam's razor tells us not to multiply entities beyond necessity so that the number of universes being postulated simply to explain the fine-tuning is at face value extravagant appealing to a world ensemble to explain fine-tuning is like using a sledgehammer to crack a peanut forth Dawkins tries to minimize the extravagance of the postulate of a world ensemble by claiming the despite its extravagant number of entities still such a postulate is not highly improbable but it's not clear why this rejoinder is relevant or even what it means the objection under consideration is not that the postulate of a world ensemble is improbable but that it's extravagant and unperson Onias to say that the postulate isn't also improbable is to fail to address the objection indeed it's hard to know what probability Dawkins is talking about here he seems to mean the intrinsic probability of the postulate of a world ensemble considered apart from the evidence of fine-tuning but how is such a probability to be determined by simplicity but then Dawkins hasn't shown the world ensemble hypothesis to be simple what Dawkins needs to say it seems to me if I might offer a suggestion is that the postulate of an ensemble of universes may still be simple if there is a simple mechanism which through a repetitive process generates the many-worlds in that way the huge number of entities postulated is not a deficit of the theory because the entities all issue from a very simple fundamental mechanism so what mechanisms does Dawkins propose for generating such an infinite randomly ordered world ensemble well he suggests to first he suggests an oscillating model of the universe according to which the universe has gone through an infinite series of expansions and contractions Dawkins is however apparently unaware of the many difficulties of oscillatory models of the universe which have made contemporary cosmologists quite skeptical of them such models contradict the Hawking Penrose singularity theorems the evidence of observational astronomy has been consistently against the hypothesis that the universe will someday re contract and the thermodynamic properties of such models imply the very beginning of the universe that their proponents sought to avoid but leave all that aside even if the universe could oscillate from eternity past ironically such a universe would require an infinitely precise fine-tuning of initial conditions in order to persist through an infinite series of expansions and contractions so that the mechanism the Dawkins postulates for generating as many worlds is not simple in fact quite the opposite it requires infinite fine-tuning moreover such a universe involves fine-tuning of a very bizarre sort because the initial conditions have to be set at minus infinity in the past but how can that be done if there was no beginning Dawkins second suggested mechanism for generating a world ensemble is Lee smolens of Ellucian arey cosmology according to which black holes are portals to baby universes being birth by our universe universes which produce lots of black holes therefore have an evolutionary advantage in producing more offspring now since black holes are the result of star formation and stars favor planets where life can evolve the unintended effect of evolutionary cosmology is to make life permitting universes more probable Dawkins acknowledges that not all physicists are enthusiastic about smolens scenario talk about an understatement for Smolin's scenario wholly apart from its ad hoc and even disconfirmed conjectures and countered insuperable difficulties first a fatal flaw in Smolin scenario was his assumption that universes which produce lots of black holes would also produce lots of stable stars in fact the exact opposite is true the most proficient producers of black holes would be universes which generate primordial black holes prior to star formation so that life-permitting universes would actually be weeded out by Smolin's evolutionary scenario thus it turns out that Smolin scenario would actually make the existence of a life-permitting universe even more improbable second speculations about the universe's begetting baby universes via black holes seems to contradict quantum physics the conjecture that black holes may be portals of worm holes through which bubbles of vacuum energy can tunnel to spawn new expanding baby Universe's was the subject of a bet between Stephen Hawking and John press kill hua talking finally admitted in 2004 that he had lost the conjecture would require that the information which is locked up in a black hole could be utterly lost forever by escaping to another universe one of the last holdouts Hawking finally came to agree that quantum theory requires that information is preserved in black hole formation and evaporation the implications hawking writes there is no baby universe branching off as I once thought the information remains firmly in our universe I'm sorry to disappoint fine science-fiction fans but if information is preserved there is no possibility of using black holes to travel to other universes end quote now if this result is correct and Smolin's scenario is literally physically impossible these are the only two mechanisms that Dawkins suggests for generating an ensemble of randomly ordered universes neither of them is even tenable much less simple Dawkins has therefore failed to turn back the objection that is postulation of a randomly ordered world ensemble of universes is an unperson is extravagance but there are even more formidable objections to the postulate of a world ensemble of which Dawkins is apparently unaware Roger Penrose has argued forcefully that if our universe is just a random member of a world ensemble it is inconceivably more probable that we should be observing an island of order no larger than our solar system observable universes like those are simply much more plenteous in the world ensemble the worlds like ours and therefore ought to be observed by us since we do not have such observations that fact strongly disconfirms the multiverse hypothesis on a theism at least then it is highly probable that there is no world ensemble the fine-tuning of the universe is therefore plausibly do neither to physical necessity nor to chance it therefore follows that the fine-tuning of the universe is due to design unless the design hypothesis can be shown to be even more implausible than its competitors and dawkins contends that the alternative of design is indeed inferior to the many-worlds hypothesis summarizing what he calls the central argument of my book Dawkins insists that even in the admitted absence of a strongly satisfying explanation for the fine-tuning in physics still the relatively weak explanations we have at present are and I quote self-evidently better than the self-defeating hypothesis of an intelligent designer end quote really what is this powerful objection to the design hypothesis that renders itself evidently inferior to the admittedly weak many-worlds hypothesis well here it is we are not justified in inferring design as the best explanation of the complex order of the universe because then a new problem arises namely who designed the designer notice that because Dawkins erroneously thinks that the world ensemble is simple it never even occurs to him to ask who designed the world ensemble but this question who designed the designer is apparently supposed to be so crushing that it outweighs all the admitted problems with the world ensemble hypothesis Dawkins objection however has no weight for at least two reasons first in order to recognize that an explanation is the best you don't need to have an explanation of the explanation this is an elementary point in philosophy of science if archaeologists digging in the earth were to unearth things looking like arrowheads and pottery shards they would be justified in inferring that these artifacts are not the chance result of sedimentation and metamorphosis but rather the products of an unknown group of people even if they had no idea whatsoever who these people were or where they came from similarly if astronauts were to discover a pile of machinery on the backside of the Moon they would be justified in inferring that it was the product of intelligent agents even if they had no idea whatsoever who these agents were or how they got there in order to recognize an explanation as the best you don't need to have an explanation of the explanation in fact when you think about it such a requirement would lead to an infinite regress of explanations so that nothing could ever be explained and science would be destroyed for before any explanation could be acceptable you'd need an explanation of it and then an explanation of the explanation of the explanation and then an explanation of the explanation of the explanation of the explanation and so on to infinity nothing could ever be explained if you accept Dawkins requirement so in the case at hand in order to recognize that intelligent design is the best explanation of the appearance of design in the universe one doesn't need to be able to explain the designer whether the designer has an explanation can be simply left as an open question for future inquiry secondly Dawkins thinks that in the case of a divine designer of the universe that is to say if the designer is identified as God then the designer is just as complex as the thing to be explained so that no explanatory advance is made now this objection raises all sorts of interesting questions about the role played by simplicity in assessing competing explanations for example there are many other factors besides simplicity that scientists weigh in determining which explanation is the best such as explanatory power explanatory scope plausibility and so forth an explanation which has broader explanatory scope may be less simple than a rival explanation but still preferred because it explains more things simplicity is not the only or even the most important criterion for assessing theories but again leave those questions aside Dawkins more fundamental mistake lies in his assumption that God is just as complex and entity as the universe that is plainly false as a pure mind or consciousness without a body God is a remarkably simple entity a mind or a soul is not a physical object composed of parts in contrast to the contingent and variegated universe with all its inexplicable constants and quantities a divine mind is startlingly simple Dawkins protests and I quote a God capable of constantly monitoring controlling the individual status of every particle in the universe cannot be simple end quote this is just confused certainly a mind may have complex ideas you may be thinking for example of the infinitesimal calculus but the mind itself is a remarkably simple non-physical entity Dawkins has evidently confused a minds ideas of which may indeed be complex with the mind itself which is an incredibly simple entity since it has no parts therefore postulating a divine mind behind the universe most definitely does represent an advance in simplicity for whatever that's worth Dawkins central argument in his book thus fails to show that the alternative of design is in any way inferior to the many-worlds hypothesis indeed his self-congratulatory attitude about this pitiful argument sustained even in the face of repeated correction by prominent philosophers and theologians like Richard Swinburne and Keith Ward is marvelous therefore of the three alternatives before us physical necessity chance or design the most plausible of the three as an explanation of the cosmic fine-tuning is design finally the ontological argument the next argument to be discussed by Dawkins and the last that I have time to review is the famous ontological argument the version I presented comes from Alvin Plantinga it's formulated in terms of possible worlds semantics now for those who are unfamiliar with the terminology of possible worlds let me explain that by a possible world one doesn't mean a planet or a universe or any sort of concrete entity but rather just a complete description of reality or away reality might have been to say that God exists in some possible world is just to say that there's a possible description of reality which includes the statement God exists as part of that description now in his version of the argument Plantinga conceives of God as a being which is maximally excellent in every possible world planica takes maximal excellence to include properties such as omniscience omnipotence and moral perfection a being which has maximal excellence in every possible world would have what planting recalls maximal greatness now planning argues as follows 1 it's possible that a maximally great being aka God exists 2 if it is possible that a maximally great being exists that a maximally great being exists in some possible world 3 if a maximally great being exists in some possible world then it exists in every possible world 4 if a maximally great being exists in every possible world then it exists in the actual world 5 if a maximally great being exists in the actual world then a maximally great being exists 6 therefore a maximally great being or God exists now it might surprise you to learn that steps 2 to 6 of this argument are relatively uncontroversial most philosophers would agree that if God's existence is even possible then he must exist the principal issue to be settled with respect to plantinga's ontological argument is what warrant exists for thinking the key premise it's possible that a maximally great being exists to be true the idea of a maximally great being is intuitively a cohan idea and so it seems plausible that such a being could exist in order for the ontological argument to fail the concept of a maximally great being must be incoherent like the concept of a married bachelor but the concept of a maximally great being doesn't seem even remotely incoherent this provides some prima facie warrant for thinking that it is possible that a maximally great being exists Dawkins devotes six full pages brimming with ridicule and invective to the ontological argument without raising any serious objection to planning as argument he notes in passing Amano Elkins objection that existence is not a perfection but since planning his argument doesn't presuppose that it is we can leave that irrelevance aside he also reiterates a parody of the argument designed to show that God does not exist because a God who created everything while not existing is greater than one who exists and created everything ironically this parody far from undermining the ontological argument actually reinforces it for a being who creates everything while not itself existing is a logical incoherence and therefore is impossible there is no possible world which includes a non-existent being which creates the world if the Atheist is to maintain as he must that God's existence is impossible the concept of God would have to be similarly incoherent but it's not and that supports the plausibility of premise one that it's possible that a maximally great being exists Dawkins also chortles I've forgotten the details but I once peeked a gathering of theologians in full suffers by adopting adapting the ontological argument to prove that pinks can fly they felt the need to resort to modal logic to prove that I was wrong well this is just embarrassing the ontological argument just is an exercise in modal logic the logic of the necessary and the possible I can just imagine what the philosophers and theologians whom darken piqued at that conference must have been thinking well I'm out of time there are other arguments to be discussed doubtless you can think of substantive objections to the arguments that I have discussed but at least I hope to have shown that the objections raised by Richard Dawkins to these arguments are not even injurious much less deadly well thank you very much bill plenty of food for thought there you can imagine I'm itching to respond myself having been in the position of doing so on Friday but I must not that I we now move on to our our panel as I mentioned before three Oxford academics Daniel came is lecturer in philosophy at senta's College Oxford and has recently made quite an impact on the blogosphere discussing tonight and whether Richard Dawkins would or should come Stephen priest is also in the philosophy faculty at Oxford senior research fellow at Blackfriars Hall and John Parrington is lecturer in pharmacology and tutor in medicine at Worcester College so each of these is going to speak for about eight minutes after which bill will respond quickly to them and then we will move on to your questions afterwards without further ado Daniel Daniel Caine [Applause] thank you in the course of his critique of The God Delusion this evening professor Craig has offered several arguments for the for the existence of God and it will be impossible for me to address all of them or to commerce and all of them in the time available so what I'd like to do is to focus on a couple of key steps in two of professor Craig's arguments that I think are problematic so I'd like to say something first of all about the crux of professor Craig's version of the cosmological argument namely the second premise of the argument that the universe began to exist citing the Hawking Penrose singularity theorems professor Craig presents this second premise as an established scientific fact now it's true that most cosmos cosmologists believe that our universe began to exist at the moment of the Big Bang but physicists are also exploring the possibility that the universe was created from the death of an earlier universe instead of a Big Bang the models indicate that our universe began from a kind of Big Bounce with a predecessor universe contracting as it ended and then re-emerging as our new expanding universe now if that theory proved correct then it could mean that our universe did not have a finite beginning but is instead part of a chain of universes that expand and then contract to give rise to a brand new universe now this is very much alive possibility in contemporary cosmology so I think it is a bit more of an open question than professor crakes suggests whether the University didn't fit that did in fact have an absolute beginning in time a professor Craig also alludes to the mathematical reasons for thinking in the universe cannot be infinite in its past the main mathematical reason for supposing that that an infinite series of past events could not could not exist is something like the following it's part of the concept of an infinite series of events that it didn't start that it never started so it follows that and if any of for any event in the series that event had an infinite number of pre despread Assessor events now that makes it extremely hard to see how we could have ever got two now that makes it extremely hard to see how we could have ever got to the present moment I mean if the universe didn't start if the universe didn't start if for every event in the series of past events there is an infinite number of predecessor events then how do we ever manage to get had to be banished to get to this particular event now considerations such as these do indeed render the notion of a of an infinite series of past past events counterintuitive yeah they do render the notion counterintuitive but that something is counterintuitive doesn't entail that it's false but something is counterintuitive doesn't entail that it couldn't exist I mean we used to think in philosophy that the way the world is had to conform to our intuitions but the description of reality given by quantum mechanics shows that reality at its most fundamental level right is radically counterintuitive so to say that something is counterintuitive or absurd or leads to counterintuitive or absurd consequences I don't think carries much weight and certainly isn't sufficient to establish the truth certainly isn't sufficient to establish the impossibility of something what is more we we don't we don't seem to have a problem with the notion of an infinite series of numbers we don't have a problem with an infinite series of negative numbers for example so why should there be a problem with an infinite series of past events now standardly this sort of objection is dealt with by drawing a distinction between potential infinities in actual infinities right so the series of negative negative numbers is a potential infinite whereas an infinite series of past events is an actual infinite but in any app in any finite region of space in any finite region of space if we assume that space is real then there will it seems to me be an infinite number of actual sub regions within that area of space there'll be an infinite number of actual sub regions all of finite size you can take a region of space that say a meter a meter long and that region will be divisible into an infinite number of smaller sub regions now that's not a matter of potential potential infinite that seems to me to be a matter of an actual infinity of spatial regions so space is real that actual infinity of reach of regions is real so I Phi for one find it very hard to put my finger on any reason why there couldn't be an actual infinite series of events there's no contradiction it seems to be involved in the notion of an infinite series of events so I think again it's an open question as to whether or not the universe began to exist now the second point I'd like to make relates to professor Krays claim that prefer the multiverse hypothesis to the god hypothesis as an explanation of the fine-tuning in physics would be to violate Occam's razor now you'll remember that the fine-tuning argument presupposes that there's only one actual universe with one set of values for the fundamental constants the multiverse based objection says well it might be that there in fact there are in fact multiple actual universes each with a different set of values for the fundamental constants now this idea again seems to be taken very seriously in modern physics if there have been trillions or perhaps even an infinite number of Big Bang's then the probability of at least one universe being able to sustain life would then be very high okay now as Professor Greg pointed out this is the explanation which professor which professor Dawkins finds most plausible professor Craig on the other hand claimed that to postulate a near infinite number of universes in order to explain our own it's contrary to ohms razor which says that other things being equal it's rational to prefer theories that are more parsimonious but here I think we need to draw a distinction between qualitative parsimony or the number or types the number of types or kinds of things postulated and quantitative Parsa parsimony the number of individual things postulated now the default reading of Occam's razor is as a principle of qualitative parsimony that is as the principle that it's rational to prefer theories which committers to smaller ontology x' professor Craig's defense of the fine-tuning argument relies on an unorthodox quantitative reading of Occam's razor yes in a quantitative sense it is of course the multiverse that violates Occam's razor but in the standard qualitative sense of Occam's razor it is theism which is the more extravagant hypothesis on the multiverse hypothesis we are only multiplying individual entities whereas on the gold hypothesis we're multiplying kinds of entities were therefore inflating our ontology so I think it's hard to rule out the possibility of a multiverse just as it's hard to rule out the possibility of an infinite series of events and so we're left not with fears or more a theist but rather agnosticism so in conclusion I just like to say that I think professor Prague and professor Dawkins are too bold as it were in thinking that they know that God does or does not exist it seems to me that we are all profoundly ignorant as to whether God not God exists or not so the permission if position I commend to you this evening then is one of skeptical agnosticism according to which the knowledge of the existence or non-existence of God is beyond our cognitive reach thank you very much [Music] thank you very much Daniel some very good food for thought there now I'm going to ask Stephen priest to respond thank you very much Peter I should say that I have no prior or previous religious commitment whatsoever I'm interested in philosophy I'm interested in trying to solve philosophical problems for decades I was some kind of materialists and reductivist in my thinking now as a matter of fact it's pretty much impossible it turns out to solve the really fundamental problems about the universe without recourse to theology without recourse to the existence of God the immortality of the soul and the freedom of will I don't particularly desire this conclusion like most people in a way recently over the last so many decades I was brought up to be suspicious of religious institutions and sceptical of religious beliefs so I think that the answers to philosophical questions are theological I think that the academic subject called philosophy exists through a lack of spiritual understanding or huge misconceptions about what spirituality is now some of these misconceptions about religion and spirituality are che are shared by fierce as well as atheists now I just mentioned two misconceptions one misconception is that the whole business is a matter of belief or disbelief this is not right it seems to me fundamentally a matter of knowledge there's spiritual knowledge and it's possible to have spiritual knowledge and it's possible to lack spiritual knowledge and the knowledge is of the nature of acquaintance or experience it's not of centrally or parado matically of a propositional nature now the other huge misconception is that if there is spiritual reality or as the Dalai Lama puts its ultimate reality or if there is God the other misconception is that God is a being or in some way a thing but not a physical thing but an immaterial thing now God is being liked or thing like now I'll just very briefly mention three philosophical questions which show that we need to endorse a kind of theology or a kind of spirituality in order to do philosophy adequately or to stand any chance of answering the questions now the first philosophical question is about time the second philosophical question is about existence and the third one is about you now the hardest part contrary to popular belief the hardest part of doing philosophy is not answering the questions it's understanding the questions it's understanding the questions there are very few people even I would say teaching philosophy professionally in the West who understand philosophical questions in their profundity in fact I'd say that philosophy is essentially stuck in the 18th century and and so sort of arguing for and against the existence of being and based on the view that metaphysics is impossible or can't be done Stephen Hawking says that philosophy is dead what if philosophy is dead it committed suicide human can't both commit committed committed suicide but but of course is not dead it's just hasn't reached all that stalled 200 years ago it's within a kind of I mean I mean in the in the in in in this millennium there are two huge pieces of human understanding which have yet to be digested by philosophy which make colossal difference one of these is the philosophical implications of quantum physics which my colleague Daniel Craig mentioned and and and and the other is Heidegger's thinking Heidegger's the thinking of Martin Heidegger which is yes yet to be fully digested and understood in European and North American philosophy of problems system these these two will bring about a revolution in philosophical understanding but rather rather late in rather later today now the three questions is very briefly are why is it now now what is it to be and why is a human being you now if you asked this question why is it now now simplistically or not or naively the answer is well this is as far as the universe has got you know whether it had a beginning or not the these events happening now have unrolled or are unrolling this is as far as universe has got but this is a comparatively superficial answer for many reasons intuitively or essentially this is a superficial answer because in a sense it's always now or it's never not now the future is always in the past and the future is always in the in the future and the past has always turned apart or maybe the future is in the past as well but we we have to do keep it keep it soon soon simply it's certainly true that any presence is somebody else's future in somebody else's past I mean we are in some people's future and when some people's past but never mind about that okay now the point is that there's a sense in which now is timeless as a sense in which it's always now where this always doesn't really pick out duration or a moment or even something that's instantaneous but something that's utterly changeless now if you are sufficiently perceptive you can notice that it's always now I mean members of the public who are not trained in philosophy actually much better at spotting how having these insights than people who've been trained in philosophy faculties the other point is that presence is the presence of God presence is the presence of God if we understand the unchanging nature of now the nowness of now if we understand that thoroughly we'll realize that it has the attributes of God it's if it's immaterial it's it's it's timeless it's a necessary condition for everything that happens in time and so second question what is being there's a distinction between being and beings I mean by beings I mean the Sheldonian theater your head the body and library this ballpoint pen examination scripts - marks on these these are beings or things that are would by being I don't by being or being as being I don't mean another thing like that I mean the existing that all this is doing or what it is for any of this to be or the being of what is whatever is now if you understand Heidegger or if you don't like I do if you read Parmenides you can start at the beginning of philosophy instead of at the end if you like if you understand Parmenides you'll begin to understand that the properties of being thoroughly understood are the properties of God being is largely ineffable necessary for beings it's infinite it's immaterial and so on and the third philosophical question is why is something you now this is again a hard question to understand because we think we already have the answer we think the answer lies in biology physics chemistry evolution so I well I don't want to deny any of those very well-known facts of science let's suppose they're all true even though because science has a history it's very unlikely that can be true now once all those facts are in about you you were born in such a such a place you've got such such a mind you're such a such a mother such as such a father and so on we've not begun to understand why you view the world from this human being this human being who you are we've not begun to understand why all the human beings who are not you are so to speak arranged around you but one of the human beings is inside out or outside in and that's it's being you we haven't begun to understand that it certainly has no materialist or scientific explanation it's a fetus holding up a big sign saying stop so it's quite a small sign but it's got very big writing I managed to resist holding up the sign at the point when you talked about philosophy committing suicide through human can't well maybe it was can't by the human thank you very much for that very provocative contribution Steven and now john Parrington lecturer in pharmacology tutor in medicine at Worcester thank you well when I accepted the invitation to speak today it felt a little bit like I was thinking of some biblical phrases like sacrificial lamb and into the Lions Den because I'm the atheist who is supposed to be I guess we represent in some of the the views of which darkens here but and also as I'm only a scientist and not a philosopher you may find my arguments slightly cruder and not quite as sophisticated but I'd like to try and address what I see as the the main points I think are important in the question of whether we can say is there a god or not okay so we've heard quite a lot about the cosmos and the Big Bang and I think I'll echo some of the things that Daniel said really in that we have to be very careful not to over simplify what we see is a situation about the origin of the universe because certainly it can seem a very straightforward thing Big Bang everything starts in this tiny spot nothing came before it and yet if you look at Li the scientific me the physical scientist community actually if you find a whole range of ideas so even in the Guardian today professor Jeff Foster of the University of Manchester physicist there was saying actually it's a mistake to think of that everything there was Nestle nothing before the Big Bang because that may be true with looking at the visible universe but there's more and more awareness that there may be a lot more to the universe than what we can see around us there's interest in that matter and things like that that may actually have existed before the Big Bang so I do think we've got to be very careful when we assume that there was nothing before the Big Bang so that's one point obviously another key point that it's been raised tonight by Bill Craig is the business about the physical constants that that that govern life the idea that the the precise physical constants that were there at least at the Big Bang are somehow the most compatible with life and yet here again I think we have to be careful not to assume there's there's a consensus on this question for example theoretical scientists like Victor Stenger who have modelled the universe using a different set of physical constants and actually come up with quite a complex kind of universe not necessarily one that would have a human life but there again we have a potential problem because if we assume that the only kind of life intelligent life is is of the sort that we associate with ourselves in life I think that can show an anthro centric principle in which we can't really think beyond what we know around us so I think again we've got to be careful that we don't see that there's actually all sorts of were the possibilities even even with these different physical constants but you know let's say that there really is a very finely tuned universe I don't quite see why this argument that then you know that the the maybe multiple universities and that kind of thing that have been put forward by Bill Craig at all lead to the idea that the only alternative is is a God I can think I think if anything it shows that there's an ignorance about the whole process and in a sense things are much more backward really and what we know about cosmology compared to what we know about my own field which is which is biology but also I think the big pond my heart with the idea that if we postulate a God to explain all these things that somehow solves the problem is this this being this this being that's outside space and time seems to me because it's so no about it doesn't actually take as any real further in understanding the universe and in a sense I think when it's in a similar position really so what we might have been say 300 years ago if we'd been debating this question it's almost certainly one have been talking about cosmology and I think it's actually a potentially weakness in in religion that we're now debating this mostly on the grounds of cosmology whereas you know 300 years ago it would have been it would have been all really about life around us and the fact that God was supposed to have a hand in that in the creation of life actually would probably would have been having this debate because I'd of Palawan hauled off and burned at the stake theoretical views well let's assume we could about the debate you know we would have been talking about how God had his hand in all the creation of the diverse forms of life around us and yet I as a biologist don't see any real sign at all of that hand of God in the in life that we see around us and I say this is a geneticist something is very used to thinking about the way that genes work within the body and that seems to me a potential problem for religion because oh that you could say well God set everything off but that seems to me a minor well compares the idea this all-powerful god that's my intervenes and and creates life and you know even sort of shapes life along the way and I think there's a problem there for religion because I think Darwin's theory of evolution really had shown that there's no need for a creator to explain all the full diversity of life around us now obviously it's possible again I think one thing I would say even though I consider myself an atheist I don't see it as possible to actually disprove the idea that there's God neither that neither I do think neither do I think that we can prove there is a God but one thing that's one thing you could imagine obviously is that somehow God is is a settle evolution going maybe even intervenes to push evolution along and yet I don't see any sign of that and one of the adverts that might put forward in in favor of the idea is the idea that things are so exquisitely designed life is so exquisite designed that that implies that maybe God did did set evolutional and yeah if you look at life actually one of the Inchon things is how bad the design it can often be so I say this is someone who studies the genome if you look at the genome you know I mean all though it's an incredible thing it our hands together we have this an amazing thing called life that comes out of the genome but there's a huge amount of redundancy and potential problems with the genome and just think about the Dhahran genomes 2 to 3 percent of that genome actually makes up the protein coding genes that make up our bodies apparently ninety you know over 90 to 90 percent is just junk DNA got me a bit careful because we may find out that junks not quite as junky as as all that and I'm quite aware of the dangers of over assuming that things from what we know now but but certainly there's a huge that you know it seems as if the genome is just stuffed full of parasitic elements bits of letter viruses retroviruses all that kind of thing left over I find it hard to reconcile this with with the idea of someone somehow designing this but I think the other problem is that not Darwin's theory of natural selection essentially shows shows that there is no real need for a designer creation Allah see random tramps really can't explain it or an evolution at natural selection itself is a perfectly adequate driver of the process now that's why I want to say in favor of atheism and I guess it's along the lines of what Richard or maybe would have said I just want to end with the last minute and a bit by talking about some of the the problems I have with with Dawkins book and I'm only gonna be a very little about that and one of the problems I have with Dawkins book is the fact that although I think he puts for some very good ideas for despite what Bill has said some very good ideas in against the idea of a god what I find most lacking in his book is any real sense of why why religion has a resonance today and why it's still such a powerful force and that could be seen in in a kind of bad way you know the guys who flew the plane into the Twin Towers could be seen as they watched Arkin Caesar the rational side of religion or it could be seen in the very good way in which people come together and and do good things in the world because their religious beliefs and many of them are I mean quite a political person many of my political heroes Malcolm X Malcolm Martin Luther King you know these are very religious people I think no religion is actually a big part of why they went out and tried to change the world but so the problem I have with Dawkins account real is there's no real sense of that of any material reasons for what I religion is so powerful and why it spreads but as I'm running out of time I will have to leave it at that thank you [Applause] [Applause] well thank you very much John we've heard three very interesting contributions there and I'm now going to invite Bill to respond to them thank you when I was told that if Richard Dawkins didn't show up for this debate I would have three Oxford panelists responding to me instead I was wishing and hoping the Richard Dawkins would show up three on one seemed to be much worse odds than no one on one and I think you could see why but I thank the panelists for their interesting and provocative responses two of the arguments that I discussed were mentioned by the panelists the cosmological argument and the fine-tuning argument let me say in response to Daniel came that if I do sometimes to seem too bold in my assertion of these arguments it's simply because I am really convinced that the premises are true I think that the evidence for these premises is very good but that doesn't mean you need to have that sort of boldness you can simply say that these arguments make it reasonable to believe that a personal creator and designer of the universe exists and that's enough now what about the premise that the universe began to exist here both doctor came and doctor Parrington object that there may be and our models of the universe in which there is a prior contracting phase to this MA this present expansion but the problem with those sorts of oscillating theories are at least two full first thermodynamically they face a very difficult problem namely entropy is conserved from cycle to cycle and that has the effect of generating a longer cycle time and a larger expansion radius with each cycle so that as you trace the cycles back in time they get smaller and smaller and smaller until you finally come to a beginning so that such a model has an infinite future but not an infinite past secondly as the universe recon tracks it encounters quantum fluctuations this is called bkl chaos which would prevent the subsequent expanding phase here's what Alexander Vilenkin says about this he says you can avoid the theorem by postulating the universe was contracting prior to some time this sounds as if there is nothing wrong with having contraction prior to expansion but the problem is that a contracting universe is highly unstable small perturbations would cause it to develop all sorts of messy singularities so it would never make it to the expanding phase and that's exactly why infinitely precise fine-tuning is required on these oscillating models so I don't think that these really do help to restore a plausibly tenable model of an infinite past now dr. Kim also interacts with the philosophical argument for the finitude of the past how can we get to today if there has to be an infinite number of prior events occur first notice he doesn't ever answer that question he just says that sometimes our intuitions fail well sure sometimes but it seems to me that it's quite reasonable to go with your intuitions unless and until you have some defeater for them some reason to think that that's not the case and we don't have that sort of a defeater now he says but you can have an infinite series of negative numbers how is that any different well the critical difference between numbers and events in time is the tense of the events as dr. priests emphasized there's a property of nowness or present as there's temple becoming whereas numbers just exist tense lessly timelessly as it were so there is no successive synthesis to get to a certain number by enumerate them first in fact it what it would be more like would be someone who claims to have counted down all the negative numbers ending at zero today negative 3 negative 2 negative one and such a task it seems to me is absurd because before any number could be counted there would always be another number that would have had you been counted first so the problem lies in temporal becoming he says but don't we have examples of actual infinite's in this the spatial continuum I would say no there's no reason whatsoever to think that space is really continuous it can be modeled as continuous mathematically but there's no grounds for thinking that space really is continuous in the way described I would agree with Aristotle that a line or a distance is logically prior to any subdivisions that we make on the line so that this is merely an infinity and potentiality not an actuality by contrast an infinite past would be an infinite series of actual events of similar duration piling up without beginning and then it really does occasion all sorts of interesting problems I'd love to give some more examples but time is fleeting so I don't think we've got any good reasons for denying either the philosophical or scientific evidence for the beginning what about the fine-tuning of the universe here it was suggested that we can appeal to multiverse models but I dealt with that in order to be qualitatively simple you need to have a single simple mechanism that generates the many-worlds otherwise it's not simple and I examine the mechanisms Dawkins proposes and showed that they're inadequate so the world ensemble is not qualitatively simple in the absence of some simple mechanism doctor came also mentions that we would be positing a new kind of entity by positing an intelligent designer well that's clearly not true we posit intelligent designers and minds all the time for artifacts that we discover in this case we would simply be saying that there's a cosmic intelligence or designer but it's a familiar inference that we make all the time now dr. Parrington says we'll Vic stinger tries to deny fine-tuning with all due respect to professor stinger whom I have debated on this subject I think his conclusions about the fine-tuning are erroneous and frankly they are rejected by the vast majority of physicists Sir Martin Rees the astronomer royal says that everywhere physicists look they see more examples of fine-tuning this is highly unlikely to disappear with any future physics dr. penguin says it well but you could have some non-human life certainly you could we're talking about any kind of interactive life and in the absence of fine-tuning what you need to understand is you wouldn't even have matter you wouldn't even have chemistry much less planets or life of any sort could could evolve that in the absence of fine-tuning you have just utter waste he says well this is an appeal to ignorance no it's not it's an appeal to which of these three alternatives physical necessity chance or design is the best explanation I think there are substantive objections to physical necessity or chance this is by no means simply an appeal to ignorance he says but this being is unknowable why I think that it's God note that I didn't infer to God I said there's a designer of the universe whether or not that designer is God is going to be a further step moreover I think we do know some of the attributes of this cosmic intelligence it would clearly be an intelligent being it would therefore be a personal being it would be an enormous ly smart being in order to design the laws of physics and the constants and quantities of nature that gives us part of a cumulative case for theism dr. Parrington says Darwin showed that we don't need a creator even if that were true for biological complexity the thing about the fine-tuning argument is that it doesn't end run about by Allah around biological evolution and goes right back to the cosmic initial conditions in order for Darwinian evolution to take place you have to have this incomprehensible complex balance of initial conditions and constants given in the Big Bang itself and any improbability of life arising through genetic mutation and natural selection just layers on more improbability so this argument is immune to all of the emotionally Laden debates concerning creationism and evolution so I think this argument also is is a very plausible argument I don't know of any good reason to think that physical necessity or chance are better explanations than design finally doctor priests interesting comments he thinks that philosophy exists through a misconception of spirituality and that philosophy is stalled and here I have to simply beg to disagree I think that philosophy and particularly from a Christian point of view is an exercise in which Christians should be deeply engaged I take it that and some was right in affirming fides cuarón's intellect 'im faith seeking understanding and philosophy is rightly a handmaid of theology which can be very useful and I would note that over the last 50 years in anglo-american philosophy there has been a veritable renaissance of Christian philosophy that is changing the face of this discipline so that philosophy far from being stalled I think is is being renewed and I'm very enthusiastic about what is happening in that regard one of the other important well yes why is it now now now it seems to me that that question is trivial that's like saying why is it here here why is it now now it has to be now now that's a trivial question the more interesting question is why is it now I think that is a philosophically significant question and I've written an article on this actually and I think that the best mileage you can go toward answering that is that there was a beginning at a time that there was a beginning to the universe otherwise it becomes inexplicable why out of all the infinite moments of past time it's now why this moment why 2011 is now so I think this is one more reason to think the past is finite he asked what is being and contrasts being with beings but here I have to respectfully disagree and say I do think that God is a being God is a personal being who is the creator and designer of the universe and the locus of absolute goodness whom we can know by acquaintance as he said but there's no reason to think that one compromises God's necessity or sanity by affirming that God is a literal being now he's not as one British journalist remarked a chap I think that's right we shouldn't think of God as a sort of chatter but nevertheless he is a necessary being who is timeless spaceless immaterial uncaused perfectly good omnipotent omniscient and all of the rest of these superlative attributes and finally yes why is something you and I would take this to be equivalent to the question why do you exist why is something you is the same as saying why do you exist and I would find the answer to that question in God's providence and purpose he has a plan for your life and it's important as we go through life that we not miss that purpose for which God created us thank you thank you very much bill we've got some very interesting questions I haven't yet finished reading all of them but I will try to get through them and pick out what seemed to be the ones likely to provoke a particularly interesting discussion and I noticed that they're coming in the directions of several of our speakers so I'm going to start with a question to Daniel what is your opinion of the moral argument which is an argument that they'll put but which wasn't dealt with by any of the panelists did yeah okay so just a recap on the moral argument the moral argument states first of all that if objective moral values turned on if objective moral values exist then God exists it's the first premise premise two is objective moral values exist therefore God exists now I suppose I'd main thing I want to say about this argument is that it seems to presuppose that theism is the only possible foundation for objective moral values and I don't think that is clearly the case the existence of objective moral values don't it seem to me depend for their existence on the existence of God there are other possibilities that we can think of as a foundation of objective moral values I mean first of all we might be platanus yes who think that objective moral values constitute an entirely separate realm of reality alternatively what we might be duelists who think that in addition to the realm of matter there is a realm of mind or spirit a non-physical dimension to reality objective moral values it might be said exist in this non physical realm or thirdly and this is the view which is endorsed by most contemporary moral philosophers who would adhere to a form of moral realism a form of moral objectivism we might be what's called we might endorse a view that's known as non reductive materialism according to which the world is composed of fundamental constituents which are material or physical entities but these aren't the only parts of the universe these aren't the only parts of reality reality also consists of non-physical entities which are causally but not ontological irreducible to the to matter to the fundamental constituents of matter now contemporary moral philosophers who endorse a form of moral realism ghent tend to subscribe to some form of non reductive materialism according to which value supervene on material reality so bill's argument it seems to me presupposes that theism is the only possible foundation for trinsic that moral values but there are several other possible foundations it seems to me thank you incidentally obviously it's very completely impossible to give an adequate treatment of any of these issues here there's there's lots of interesting stuff to read on this not least on the on the web so I hope you will be encouraged to do that to Bill um surely if everything that begins to exist is true then it's true in space and time yet the universe isn't in space and time that is space and time so why does it need to be subject to a law inside itself I think you get the idea I do I I think that this is a very common mistake of thinking of the principle of causality as a sort of physical law which holds only in the universe but not of the universe sort of like the law of gravity or the laws of thermodynamics but the causal principle that whatever begins to exist has a cause is not a physical principle it is a metaphysical principle that basically says being doesn't come from non-being being only arises from being and that seems to me to be an extraordinary really plausible principle that's been recognized from the time of Parmenides non-being has no properties no potentialities no powers for the idea that being could arise from non-being is really worse than magic when you think about it so it seems to me that Parmenides and these other Greek philosophers like Plato were quite right in thinking that being only arises from being so that there's something it begins to exist there needs to be some other actual being that is responsible for bringing it into existence and that's a metaphysical principle that would certainly apply to the universe as a whole if the universe began to exist and came into be it surely has some sort of transcendent cause which would explain why it came into existence and therefore exists rather than nothing [Applause] and now a perhaps slightly cheeky question for Stephen if philosophy has gone so wrong why you still a philosopher and if varsity is based on spiritual misunderstandings why aren't you a spiritualist well because I hope to put philosophy right I mean as a finite and fallen being in my own small way I do attempt some spiritual understanding I would I would like to be a theologian but I'm only a philosopher I think in a sense the theater theologians are the other fundamental problem solvers and in philosophy we tend to sketch skate around the surface I mean despite what I mean I admire the clarity of argument the pure intelligence the honesty and the rigor with which the philosophy has been done this evening but if we really did have spiritual lives we wouldn't need to be arguing for and against the existence of God if we lived in the presence of God if we knew beyond the shadow of doubt through direct acquaintances that God is all around us and pervades us and in a fundamental way there's nothing but God God and creation we wouldn't need to engage in philosophical arguments for and against the existence of a being that's well that's what I mean by by spirituality making philosophy redundant [Applause] you won't be surprised to know that the vast majority of the questions are to bill I'm going to put these ones together bill because they're somewhat similar how can you reconcile God's unchangeable nature with his inconsistent dealings with humankind how do you reconcile the doctrine of the Trinity with divine simplicity so the issue God's immutability simplicity are they consistent with other characteristics attributed to God hope to you I don't think that God is unchangeable a soul the question is based on assumption I don't hold what I argued was that without the universe we must get back to an less first cause but notice I didn't say unchangeable just defacto change less but in fact I think at the moment of creation God enters into time in virtue of his causal relationship with the world and then sustains relationships with the world from that moment on so my own study view is that God is changeless and timeless without the universe but changing and temporal since the beginning of time and the creation of the universe now I don't think God acts inconsistently in a moral sense it seems to me that he is always acting consistently with his own nature so that's not a problem but I do think God changes in his activities in his knowledge as time goes on again with respect to the Trinity I don't hold to a strong doctrine of divine simplicity you need to understand that the doctrine of divine simplicity advocated by the high medieval theologians was a radical doctrine which says that God literally has no properties that there is no distinction in him between his essence what he is in his existence that he is and I don't hold to that sort of radical view I think that God is simple in the way that I described in response to Richard Dawkins namely he's not a physical object made of parts but I would say that God has a diversity of properties omnipotence omniscience moral perfection these are not the same property and I think that God is a Trinity of persons so I don't hold to the doctrine of divine simplicity that the medieval did and I don't think that this is a doctrine that's biblical in any case this is an imposition on biblical theology that Springs out of Neoplatonism and the conception of God is the one who is beyond all diversity and complexity so those would be simply some theological views that I don't share [Applause] don't make yourself too comfortable if consciousness is just the material phenomenon does it disprove God or at least the soul another question in the same spirit aren't your arguments misleading when it comes to unembodied Minds doesn't science tell us tell us that there are only embodied Minds for science certainly doesn't tell us that there are only embodied minds what scientific evidence is that there are no unembodied Minds you would have to have scientific evidence against the existence of God because that's what God would be if he exists would be an unembodied mind there is no such evidence so certainly science doesn't disprove the reality or the possibility of unembodied minds or even disembodied minds say people when they die and the soul is separated from the body there's nothing that proves that there are no such things as disembodied souls after death so know it that doesn't disprove it now if consciousness were shown to be either merely a physical phenomenon or something that was dependent upon a physical substratum would that disprove God there are Christian materialists actually like peter van inwagen and nancy murphy who are not duelists as i am i am a substance duelist who thinks there's a difference between the soul and the body but there are Christian philosophers and theologians who are materialists when it comes to human being and they would say that God is of a different order than human beings that God in fact is a an immaterial spiritual being but that he's quite different from human beings that's not my own view but I think we have to make room for such people because they do exist there are Christian materialists whether they're right or wrong they're out there and so I don't think you can say it's flatly inconsistent but you would have to allow on that view that human beings and God would be radically diverse from each other because God would be an example of a consciousness that doesn't have a material substratum where these philosophers would think that human beings are I would prefer to say that in fact you cannot offer a reductive materialist or even a sort of supervenient non reductive materialist view of the soul the mental life intentionality mental causation and so forth and so I would hold that God and human beings are similar in the sense of being spirits in one case embodied in the other case unembodied [Applause] now a couple of questions representative of some others on the problem of evil and one why did your infinitely smart designer invent is it evil you get the idea and another one Dawkins accuses you of saying that genocide would be acceptable in some contexts have you ever said anything which warrants this view and what do you actually think and I take that to be related to the problem of evil in that the claim would be that if you take the Bible as representing the Word of God it suggests that he might be evil rather than good if he in fact did advocate genocide I am a Christian theologian and so we'll answer this from a Christian perspective from a Christian perspective God didn't invent evil rather he created free moral agents who have the ability either to obey God and do his will or to seek lesser goods rather than have their wills oriented toward God as the supreme good and evil as I understand it is a privation of right order in the creaturely will it is a absence of being correctly ordered toward god as the supreme good and focused instead on and unless or good so evil is the byproduct of the misuse of human freedom which is necessary for us to be moral agents who make significant moral choices apart from that we would be mere animals or robots or puppets and that's not the kind of being that God wants now I have not in any way ever said that God has commanded or could command genocide that's an unsympathetic misrepresentation of what I said what I was dealing with are these narratives in the Hebrew Bible concern God's commands to Israel to go into the land of Canaan or the modern-day land of Palestine and to drive out the Canaanite clans or tribes that were inhabiting the land and in the Hebrew Bible God commands Israelites to go in there and to slaughter any of the Canaanites that oppose them whether man woman or child they are to be exterminated now anybody who takes the Bible to be historical has got to wrestle with these difficult texts the question is how could a God who is all loving all good and all holy issue such commands and why would he do so how is there some kind of internal tensed inconsistency here and what I argued was that when you look into these in the context of the narrative you find that God held his people Israel in Egypt for 400 years before bringing them into the land of Canaan because he said the iniquity of the Canaanites is not yet complete these people were not yet so DeBarge so reprobate that God would judge them and so he held his people in abeyance until the iniquity of these Canaanite tribes was so pronounced so they were so vile and so evil that God finally used Israel as his means of bringing judgment upon these tribes in the same way that God would later use pagan nations like Babylon and Assyria to judge his own people Israel by allowing them to come in and sweep through the land and conquer the people so that this represented God's judgment upon the these Canaanite tribes and when you read the ancient non biblical literature about these tribes this was a culture that was incredibly evil Clay Jones has written an article on this in Philadelphia Christie in which he looks at some of these ancient texts and the sort of the bestiality and human sacrifice and the mockery of of God that characterized this culture was really really vile and and it it raises the hair on your neck to read these texts of what these people were like and it this story of the conquest of Canaan only comes after the story of God's judgment on sodom and gomorrah and you may remember in that story abraham argues with god and says god if there are fifty righteous people in these cities will you will you destroy them will you destroy the good along with the unjust and God says no for the sake of the fifty I will not destroy them and then like a middle-eastern merchant Abraham bargains with God well God if there are 40 in the city will you destroy it God says no for the sake of the forty righteous people I will not destroy it and God says Abraham says oh god don't be impatient with me but if there are ten righteous men in the city will you destroy it God says no for the sake of the ten I will not destroy Abraham doesn't dare to argue any further with God but the purpose of this story which comes in the narrative prior to the conquest of Canaan I think is to emphasize that God is not going to judge these people until they are utterly utterly deserving of judgment because they are so debauched so that the story of Sodom Gomorrah is is a lustrum of why God held his people for 400 years before bringing them into the land and when he brought them into the land to judge Canaan what was that judgment it was not to commit genocide that is an utter misrepresentation there was no racial war here there was no command to pursue and hunt down the Canaanites and exterminate them all what was the command the command was to drive them out of the land the land is what is was and remains so all important to these middle-eastern people who has the land and what God was doing was destroying these Canaanite petty kingdom as nation-states he was destroying these nation-states in effect by dispossessing of the them of their land and bringing in the Israelites and giving the land over to Israel as the Land of Israel the promised land and if these Canaanite tribes had simply fled before the advancing armies of Israel no one would have been killed there was no command to hunt down the Canaanites no intention to kill them all off and eliminate them it was only those who stayed behind a fight that would be killed and in fact there is nothing in the narrative to suggest that any women or children were killed there is no narrative whatsoever that says that anybody other than combatants were killed in this cleansing of the land and we really don't know how many actually were killed this was apparently a gradual sort of dispossessing of the land that these tribes occupied so the question is then well how could a God who is all holy and just and loving command such a thing and I think you can make sense of this through a divine command morality which says that our moral duties are constituted by God's commands so that when he issues commands to us these become our moral duties so Israel and the armies of Israel became in effect the instrument by which God judged these Canaanite peoples the adults deserved the judgment that they they received if they stayed behind now the more difficult promise the children how could God command that the children be killed because these are innocent and I think what I would want to say there is that God has the right to give and take life as he sees fit children die all the time every day people's lives are cut short God is under no obligation whatsoever to prolong anyone's life another second so he has the right to give and take life as he chooses moreover if you believe as I do in the salvation of infants or children who die what that meant was that these the the death of these children meant their salvation they were the recipients of an infinite good as a result of their earthly phase of life being terminated the problem is that people look at this from a naturalistic perspective and think life ends at the grave but in fact this was the salvation of these children and would be far better for them then continuing to be raised saying this reprobate Canaanite culture so I don't think God wronged anybody in commanding this to be done he didn't wrong the adults because they were deserving of capital punishment he didn't wrong the children if there were any that were killed which we don't know because God has the right to take their lives and he in fact in fact they were the recipients of a great good so I don't think there was anybody that was morally wrong in this affair so it seems to me that it is possible for God to do so I think only one thing needs to be added and that is that God had morally sufficient reasons for issuing such an extraordinary command it needs to be understood as how extraordinary and out of the ordinary this this command was it is associated with the conquest of of Canaan and the dispossession of the land and giving it to these people and God I think had morally sufficient reasons for doing this because these people were due for judgment and by issuing so harsh an object lesson to Israel by using them as his instruments for bringing judgment in this way he emphasized to them as nothing else could do how they were to be a holy people set apart for God himself and not to follow after the pagan deities of Israel's neighbors not to betray their faith and and apostatize and follow these Canaanite gods like bale and and Moloch and others this was an an object lesson to them to preserve Israel and theirs and the salvation of these people through which of course the instrumentality of Israel he would eventually bring the Christ into the world and affect the salvation of the entire world through Christ so I think God had morally sufficient reasons for doing such an extraordinary a thing which is really unique and not something to be repeated or expected in any other time or age but I was going to finish with another couple of questions for bill but I think I'm going to answer them for him how did you come to believe in the Christian God philosophy theology personal experience is there a single religion or are you a Universalist if you're interested in these go and listen to Bill's various debates on the web because you have talked about these things in those debates for example against Islamic scholars and also bill said quite a lot about what brought him to Christianity unfortunately we are out of time but I'm just as a final thing one of the questions is by show of hands could we find out how many people here a put up your hands believe strongly in a Creator God who made the universe gosh that's a lot be are convinced that there is no God where are you humans see have not made up their minds D don't give a damn bothered to put the hands up all right well I'd like to end by thanking all of our participants but especially bill of course for making time to come and speak to us tonight and had a very busy indeed grueling schedule I hope you've enjoyed tonight and learned a lot from it as I've said there's lots more to be read out there including a lot of interesting stuff from Bill and lots of interesting debates including shortly hours from last Friday so thank you Bill and thank you [Applause] you you

Channel: ReasonableFaithTour

Views: 90,825

Rating: 4.2086644 out of 5

Keywords: Sheldonian, Theatre, william lane craig, Church, christianity, the God Delusion, Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, Reasonable, Faith, Tour, Daniel Came, John Parrington, Stephen Priest, kalam cosmological argument, moral argument, ontological argument, teleological argument, fine tuning, OICCU, Christian Union, UCCF, Damaris, Bethinking, Premier Christian Radio, Philosophy, Apologetics, There's probably no Dawkins

Id: fP9CwDTRoOE

Length: 119min 48sec (7188 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 07 2011