William Lane Craig: The Evidence for God. Imperial College, London, October 2011

we're very privileged to have with us this afternoon dr. William Lane Craig he's a renowned philosopher who is in England for just 10 days he's touring debating and lecturing around the area William Lane Craig did his PhD in philosophy in England and then he completed a doctorate in theology in Germany this double doctorate is equipped him to become one of the world's leading defenders of historic Christianity and he has a particular interest in the philosophy of science and has published more than 30 books and around 200 academic papers his most recent book is on God and that's on sale today and on the internet and in this book he goes through some of the arguments and explains them in expansion like he's going to be doing today but in a more thorough fashion his his kind of key work is called reasonable faith and that is also on sale today and on the internet and that's kind of the book that he is most well known for he's debated many contemporary atheists including Christopher Hitchens Daniel Dennett Peter Atkins and most recently Stephen law much of his public work and the topic of most of his debates is the evidence for the existence of God normally in his debates he only has kind of half an hour 20 minutes to present his argument so we've asked him to come talk to us today on those arguments and to expand those arguments for them so that we can evaluate them for ourselves and decide where we stand on the issues so without any further ado I'd like to welcome professor William Lane Craig to come talk to us about the evidence for the distance of well thank you very much I am delighted to have the invitation to speak on the evidence for God here at Imperial College and thank you for coming as a springboard for our discussion today I'd like you to ask yourselves the question is the material world all there is the view that there's nothing apart from the material world goes by a number of different names materialism physicalism naturalism would be a few David Armstrong prominent naturalist philosopher characterizes naturalism in the following way naturalism is the doctrine that reality consists of nothing but a single all-embracing spatio-temporal system according to this view then all that exists is the contents of time and space and the question then before us is is that true is there nothing but the physical objects existing in time and space well today I want to look at some reasons that suggest that this is not the case I believe that there are certain aspects of reality that we encounter in our experience of the world that serve as it were as signposts of transcendence pointing beyond the natural world to its ground in a transcendent reality and apart from some overriding reason to think that naturalism is true I think we've got to be open to the existence of such a transcendent reality we can't justifiably close our minds in advance to the existence of such a transcendent reality as Hamlet put it there may be more things in heaven and on earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy and today I want to sketch briefly 7 aspects of the world which I think suggest that there are indeed more things in heaven and on earth than are dreamt of in naturalistic philosophy now whole books have been written on each of these so what I'll present a brief summary of each argument number one then why anything at all exists this is the deepest question of philosophy why is there something rather than nothing this mystery which according to Aristotle lay at the very root of philosophy is one which even thoughtful naturalist cannot avoid Derek Parfit for example agrees and I quote no question is more sublime than why there is a universe why there is anything rather than nothing now experience teaches that everything that exists has an explanation of its existence either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause this principle seems quite plausible at least more so than it's contradictory imagine that you were walking through the woods and you found a translucent ball lying on the forest floor you would find the claim quite bizarre that the ball exists there with literally no explanation and merely increasing the size of the ball even until it becomes coextensive with the cosmos would do nothing to eliminate the need for or to provide an explanation of its existence according to this first principle then everything that exists is one of either two types the first type is anything that exists necessarily by its own nature examples well many mathematicians believe that numbers sets and other abstract objects exist in this way if such entities exist they just exist necessarily without any cause of their being the other type is anything that has an external cause of its existence examples while mountains planets people galaxies they have causes outside themselves which explain why they exist now it's obvious that the universe exists it therefore follows logically that the universe has an explanation of its existence so what sort of explanation could the universe have well it seems plausible that three if the universe has an explanation of its existence that explanation is an external transcendent personal cause why because the cause of the universe must be greater than the universe think of the universe all of space and time so the cause of the universe must be beyond space and time therefore it cannot be physical or material now there are only two kinds of things that could possibly fit that description either an abstract object like a number or else an intelligent mind that is to say an unembodied consciousness but abstract objects can't cause anything the number seven for example has no effect upon anything and therefore it follows that for the explanation of the universe is an external transcendent personal cause that is to say there exists an unembodied mind which created the universe which is what most people have traditionally meant by the word God so it seems to me that this is a sound argument for thinking that the explanation of why anything at all exists is to be found in a personal transcendent mind which is necessary in its existence and which is the cause of the contingent universe number two the origin of the universe have you ever asked yourself where the universe came from was there a beginning to the universe or doesn't just go back and back forever typically natural ists have said that the universe is just eternal and uncaused and that's all but there are good reasons both philosophical and scientific to doubt that this is the case philosophically the idea of an infinite past is very problematic think about it if the universe never had a beginning that means that the number of past events in the history of the universe is infinite but the existence of an actually infinite number of things leads to metaphysical absurdities to give one example what is infinity minus infinity well mathematically you get self contradictory answers for example if you had an infinite number of coins numbered one two three and so on to infinity and I took away all the odd-numbered coins how many coins would you have left well you'd still have all the even-numbered coins right or an infinity of coins so infinity minus infinity is infinity but now suppose instead that I took away all of the coins numbered greater than three now how many coins would you have left well just three so infinity minus infinity is three and yet in each case I took away an identical number of coins from an identical number of coins and came up with contradictory results in fact you can get any answer when you subtract infinity from infinity from zero to infinity and for that reason inverse operations like subtraction and division are simply prohibited in transfinite arithmetic but that convention doesn't apply to the real year-old you can give away whatever coins you want this shows I think that infinity is just a concept or an idea in your mind not something that exists in reality David Hilbert who was perhaps the greatest mathematician of the 20th century states and I quote the infinite is nowhere to be found in reality it neither exists in nature nor provides a legitimate basis for rational thought the role that remains for the infinite to play is solely that of an idea but that entails that since past events are not just ideas in your mind but are real the number of past events must be finite therefore the series of past events can't go back and back forever rather the universe must have begun to exist this purely philosophical conclusion has been confirmed by remarkable discoveries in astronomy and astrophysics in one of the most startling developments of modern science we now have pretty strong evidence that the universe is not eternal in the past but had an absolute beginning a finite time ago for all matter and energy even physical space and time themselves came into being at a point in the finite past as the physicist PC W Davey says the coming into being of the universe is discussed in modern science is not just a matter of imposing some sort of organization upon a previous incoherent state but literally the coming into being of all physical things from nothing now of course alternative theories have been proposed over the years to try to avoid this absolute beginning but none of these theories has commended itself to the majority of the scientific community in fact in the year 2003 three cosmologists Arvind borde Alan Guth and Alexander villain were able to prove that any universe which is on average in a state of cosmic expansion throughout its history cannot be eternal in the past but must have a past space-time boundary this theorem applies not only to the standard model but also to semi classical quantum gravity models inflationary models of the universe and higher dimensional brane cosmology the Lincoln pulls no punches he writes it is said that an argument is what convinces reasonable man and a proof is what it takes to convince even an unreasonable man with the proof now in place he says 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 that problem was nicely captured by Anthony Kenney Oxford University when he wrote a proponent of the Big Bang Theory at least if he is an atheist must believe that the universe came from nothing and by nothing but surely that doesn't make sense for such a conclusion is in the words of the philosopher of science belif Connie cheetah in head-on collision with the most successful ontological commitment in the history of science namely the metaphysical principle that out of nothing nothing comes so why does the universe exist instead of just nothing where did it come from there must have been a cause which brought the universe into being we can summarize the argument thus far as follows premise 1 whatever begins to exist has a cause - the universe began to exist 3 therefore the universe has a cause given the truth of the two premises the conclusion necess Cheerilee follows now what sort of cause is this well from the very nature of the case this cause must be an uncaused change less time less and immaterial being which created the universe it must be uncaused because we've seen there cannot be an infinite regress of causes so we must come to an absolutely first uncaused cause it must be timeless and therefore change less at least without the universe because it created time because it also created space it must transcend space as well and therefore be in material not physical moreover I would argue this cause must also plausibly be personal for ask yourself how else could a timeless cause give rise to a temporal effect with the beginning like the universe if the cause were just a mechanically operating set of necessary and sufficient conditions then the cost could never exist without its effect once the sufficient conditions are given then the effect must be given as well for example suppose the cause of waters freezing is the temperatures being below zero degrees centigrade if the temperature were below zero degrees from eternity past then any water that was around would be frozen from eternity it would be impossible for the water just to begin to freeze a finite time ago so if the cause is permanently present its effect must be permanently present as well the only way for the cause to be timeless and for its effect to begin a finite time ago is for the cause to be a personal agent endowed with freedom of the will and whoever has the ability to spontaneously create a new effect without any antecedent determining can for example a man who has been sitting from eternity could freely will to stand up and thus we would have an effect with the beginning arise from an eternal cause and thus were brought not merely to a transcendent cause of the universe but to its personal creator number three the fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life during the last 50 years or so scientists have discovered that the existence of intelligent life depends upon a complex and delicate balance of initial conditions which are simply given in the Big Bang itself scientists once thought that whatever the initial conditions of the universe might have been eventually life like ours might evolve somewhere in the cosmos but we now know that intelligent life is in fact balanced on a knife's edge of incomprehensible fineness the existence of intelligent life anywhere in the cosmos depends upon a conspiracy of initial conditions simply given in the Big Bang itself which must be fine-tuned to a degree that is literally incomprehensible and incalculable this fine-tuning is of two sorts first when the laws of nature are expressed as mathematical equations you find appearing in them certain constants like the gravitational constant these constants are not determined by the laws of nature the laws of nature are consistent with a wide range of values for these constants second in addition to these constants there are certain arbitrary quantities which are just put in as initial conditions on which the laws of nature operate for example the amount of entropy in the early universe now all of these constants and quantities fall into an extraordinarily narrow range of life permitting values were these constants and quantities to be altered by less than a hair's breadth the balance would be destroyed and life would not exist now there are only three possibilities for explaining the presence of this remarkable fine-tuning of the universe the fine-tuning of the universe is due to either physical necessity chance or design the first alternative holds that there's some unknown theory of everything or tow that would explain the way the universe is it had to be that way and there was really no chance or little chance of the universe's not being life-permitting by contrast the second alternative states that the fine-tuning is due entirely to chance it's just an accident that the universe is life permitting and we're the lucky beneficiaries the third alternative rejects both of these explanations in favor of an intelligent mind behind the cosmos who designed the universe to permit life and the question is which of these alternatives is the most plausible well the first alternative physical necessity seems extraordinarily implausible because as we've seen the constants and 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 for example the most promising candidate for a tow today super string theory or m-theory allows for a cosmic landscape of around 10 to the 500 power different possible universes governed by the present laws of nature so that it does nothing to explain the observed values of the constants and quantities and to render them physically necessary so what about the second alternative that the fine-tuning of the universe is due to chance well the problem with this alternative is that the odd against the universe's being life permitting are so incomprehensible great that they cannot be reasonably faced even though there will be a large number of life permitting universes lying within the cosmic landscape nevertheless the proportion of life permitting worlds will be so unfathomably tiny compared to the landscape as a whole that a dart thrown randomly at the cosmic landscape would have no meaningful chance of striking a life permitting world so in order to rescue the hypothesis of chance its proponents of therefore been forced to adopt the extraordinary hypothesis that there exists an infinite number of randomly ordered parallel universes undetectable by us composing a sort of world ensemble or multiverse in which finely tuned universes will appear simply by chance alone and we happen to be in one such world there are however at least two major failings with the world ensemble hypothesis first there's no evidence that such a world ensemble exists no one knows if there are other universes at all much less that they are randomly ordered and infinite in number moreover recall that board Guth and Vilenkin proved that any universe which is in a state of continuous cosmic expansion cannot be infinite in the past their theorem applies to the multiverse as well therefore since its past is finite only a finite number of universes may have been generated by now so there's no guarantee at all that a finely-tuned universe will have appeared anywhere in the ensemble secondly and more fundamentally if our universe is just a random member of an infinite world ensemble then it's overwhelmingly more probable that we should be observing a much different universe than what we in fact observe Roger Penrose has calculated that it is inconceivably more probable that our solar system should suddenly form in an instant through the random collision of particles than that a finely tuned universe should exist in fact Penrose calls it utter chicken feed by comparison so if our universe were 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 for they're far more observable universes in the world ensemble in which our solar system comes to be instantaneously through the accidental collision of particles than universes which are finely tuned for the existence of embodied observers like ourselves or again if the universe were just a random member of a world ensemble then we ought to be observing highly extraordinary events like horses popping into and going out of being through the random collision of particles since such things are vastly more probable than the existence of a finely tuned universes of all of nature's constants and quantities falling by chance alone into the infinitesimal life-permitting range observable universes like those with the horses popping in and out of being are vastly more plenteous in the world ensemble than ours and therefore ought to be observed by us and since we do not have such observations Penrose argues that fact strongly disconfirms the world ensemble hypothesis on naturalism at least therefore I think it is highly improbable that such a world ensemble it seems then premise 2 that the fine-tuning is not due to physical necessity or chance from which it follows logically therefore it is due to design and thus this argument gives us a cosmic designer of the universe number 4 objective moral values and duties in the world if naturalism is true then objective moral values and duties do not exist now to say that there are objective moral values is to say that something is good or evil right or wrong independently of whether people believe in it or not it's to say for example that Nazi anti-semitism was wrong even though the Nazis who carried out the Holocaust thought that it was right and it would still have been wrong even if the Nazis had won world war 2 and succeeded in exterminating or brainwashing everyone who disagreed with them so that everyone thought that the Holocaust was right and the claim is that in the absence of God moral values and duties are not objective in that sense so premise 1 if God does not exist then objective moral values and duties do not exist many theists and atheists alike concur on this point for example the late JL Mackay of Oxford University one of the most influential atheist philosophers of our time admitted and I quote if there are objective values they make the existence of a God more probable than it would have been without them thus we have a defensible argument from morality to the existence of a god but instead of inferring to God's existence Mackay chose instead to deny that objective moral values exist he wrote it is easy to explain this moral sense as a natural product of biological and social evolution Michael ruse who is an agnostic philosopher of science agrees he explains that I quote morality is a biological adaptation no less than our hands and feet and teeth considered as a rationally justifiable set of claims about an objective something ethics is illusory I appreciate that when somebody says love thy neighbor as thyself they think they are referring above and beyond themselves nevertheless such references truly without foundation morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction and any deeper meaning is illusory end quote Friedrich Nietzsche be great 19th century atheist who proclaimed the death of God understood that the death of God meant the destruction of all meaning and value in life I think that Friedrich Nietzsche was right but we've got to be very careful here the question here is not must we believe in God in order to live moral lives I'm not claiming that we must nor is the question can we recognize objective moral values without believing in God I certainly think that we can rather the question is if God does not exist do objective moral values and duties exist and like Mackay and Roose I honestly don't see any reason to think that in the absence of God human morality is objective after all given a naturalistic view what's so special about human beings they're just accidental byproducts of nature which have evolved relatively recently on an infinitesimal speck of dust called the planet earth lost somewhere in a hostile and mindless universe in which are doomed to perish individually and collectively in a relatively short time the naturalistic view some actions say rape may not be socially advantageous and so in the course of human development it's become taboo but that does absolutely nothing to prove that rape is wrong such behavior goes on all the time in the animal kingdom on the naturalistic view there's nothing really wrong with raping someone and thus without God there is no absolute right and wrong which imposes itself on our conscience but the problem is premise 2 objective moral values and duties do exist in moral experience we apprehend a realm of objective moral values and duties which impose themselves upon us there's no more reason to deny the objective reality of moral values than the objective reality of the physical world the reasoning of Michael ruse at best proves that our subjective perception of moral values has evolved but if moral values are gradually discovered rather than invented then our gradual and fallible perception of the moral realm no more undermines the objectivity of that realm then our gradual and fallible perception of the physical world undermines the objectivity of that realm most of us recognize I think that in moral experience we do apprehend objective moral values and duties Bruce himself confesses in another context and I quote the man who says that it is morally acceptable to rape little children is just as mistaken as the man who says two plus two equals five some things at least are really wrong similarly love equality tolerance self-sacrifice are really good but if objective values and duties cannot exist without God and objective moral values and duties do exist then it follows logically and in a capably that 3 therefore God exists and thus I think we have good moral grounds for affirming the existence of God number 5 the possibility of God's existence I've rarely shared this argument in a public lecture not because I think it's unsound but because it's so abstract that students are apt to either think it's a trick or not to understand it but I'm going to go out on a limb and share it with you this afternoon now in order to understand this argument you need to understand what philosophers mean by possible worlds a possible world is just a way the world might have been it's a complete description of reality so a possible world is not a planet or a universe or any kind of concrete object it's just a world description the actual world is the description that is true other possible worlds are descriptions that are not in fact true but which might have been true to say that something exists in some possible world is to say that there is some possible description of reality which includes that entity in the description to say that something exists in every possible world means that no matter which description is true the entity will be included in the description for example unicorns do not in fact exist but there is some possible world in which unicorns exist on the other hand many mathematicians think that mathematical objects like numbers exist in every possible world now with that in mind consider the ontological argument which was discovered in the year 1011 by the monk and selm of Canterbury God and some observes is by definition the greatest being conceivable if you could conceive of anything greater than God then that would be God so the very concept of God is of the greatest conceivable being a maximally great being so what would such a being be like well he would be all-powerful all-knowing all good and he would exist in every logically possible world a being which lacked any of those properties would not be maximally great we could conceive of something greater but what that implies is that if God's existence is even possible then it follows that God must exist for if a maximally great being exists in any possible world he exists in all of them that's part of what it means to be maximally great to be all-powerful all-knowing and all good in every logically possible world so if God's existence is even possible then he exists in every logically possible world and therefore in the actual world we can summarize this argument as follows premise one it's possible that a maximally great being aka God exists two if it is possible that a maximally great being exists then a maximally great being exists in some possible world 3 if a maximally great being exists in some possible world then it exists in every possible world 4 if a maximally great being exists in every possible world then it exists in the actual world 5 therefore a maximally great being exists in the actual world 6 therefore a maximally great being exists 7 therefore God exists now it might surprise you to learn that steps 2 to 7 of this argument are relatively controversial most philosophers by far would agree that if God's existence is even possible then he must exist so the whole question is premise one is God's existence possible well what do you think the Atheist has to maintain that it's impossible that God exists he has to say that the concept of God is incoherent like the concept of a married bachelor or a square circle but the problem is that the concept of God just doesn't seem to be incoherent in that way the idea of a being which is all-powerful all good and all-knowing in every logically possible world seems to be perfectly coherent moreover as we've already seen there are other arguments for God's existence which at least suggest that it's possible that God exists so I'll simply leave it with you this afternoon do you think as I do that it's possible that God exists if so then it follows logically that he does exist number six the historical facts concerning the life death and resurrection of Jesus the historical person Jesus of Nazareth was by all accounts a remarkable individual New Testament historians have reached something of a consensus that the historical Jesus came on the scene with an unprecedented sense of divine authority with the claim to stand and speak in the place of God himself that's why the Jewish leadership instigated his crucifixion on the charge of blasphemy he claimed that in himself the kingdom of God had come and as visible demonstrations of this fact he carried out a Ministry of exorcisms and miracle working but certainly the supreme confirmation of his claim was his alleged resurrection from the dead if Jesus really did rise from the dead then it would seem that we have a divine miracle on our hands and thus evidence for the existence of God now most people would probably think that the resurrection of Jesus is something you just believe in by faith or not but in fact there are actually three established facts which are recognized by the majority of New Testament historians today which I believe are best explained by the resurrection of Jesus the empty tomb his post-mortem appearances and the origin of his disciples believed in his resurrection let me say just a very brief word about each of these fact number one Jesus tomb was in fact discovered empty by a group of his women followers on the Sunday morning after the crucifixion according to Jakob Kramer who is an Austrian specialist in this area and I quote by far most scholars hold firmly to the reliability of the biblical statements about the empty tomb according to D H van Dahlen is extremely difficult to object to the empty tomb on historical grounds those who deny it he says do so on the basis of theological or philosophical assumptions fact number two on separate occasions different individuals and groups of people experienced appearances of Jesus alive after his death according to Garrett Ludum on a prominent German New Testament critic it may be taken as historically certain that Peter and the disciples had experiences after Jesus death in which Jesus appeared to them as the risen Christ these appearances were witnessed not only by believers but also by skeptics unbelievers and even enemies of the early Christian movement fact number three the original disciples suddenly and sincerely came to believe in the resurrection of Jesus despite every predisposition to the contrary think of the situation that the disciples faced following Jesus crucifixion number one their leader was dead and Jewish messianic expectations included no idea of a messiah who instead of triumphing over Israel's enemies would be shamefully executed by them as a criminal secondly Jewish beliefs about the afterlife precluded anyone's rising from the dead to glory and immortality before the general resurrection at the end of the world nevertheless the original disciples suddenly came to believe so strongly that God had raised Jesus from the dead that they were willing to die for the truth of that belief Luke Johnson who is a New Testament scholar at Emory University States some sort of powerful transformative experience is required to generate the sort of movement earliest Christianity was an NT right who is an eminent British scholar concludes that is why as a historian I cannot explain the rise of early Christianity unless Jesus rose again leaving an empty tomb behind him attempts to explain away these three great facts like the disciples stole the body or Jesus wasn't really dead have been universally rejected by contemporary scholarship the simple fact is that there just is no plausible naturalistic explanation of these facts and therefore it seems to me the Christian is amply justified in believing that Jesus rose from the dead and was who he claimed to be but that entails that God exists and we can summarize this argument as follows number one there are three established facts concerning Jesus of Nazareth the discovery of his empty tomb his post-mortem appearances and the very origin of the disciples belief in his resurrection to the hypothesis raised Jesus from the dead is the best explanation of these facts 3 the hypothesis God raised Jesus from the dead entails that the God revealed by Jesus of Nazareth exists 4 therefore the god revealed by jesus of nazareth exists and thus we have a good inductive argument for the existence of the God of Israel who was proclaimed and revealed by Jesus of Nazareth finally number 7 the personal experience of God now this 7th point isn't really an argument for God's existence rather it's the claim that you can know that God exists wholly apart from arguments simply by personally experiencing him this was the way that people in the Bible knew God as Professor John hick of Birmingham University explains and I quote God was known to them as a dynamic will interacting with their own wills a sheer given reality as inescapably to be reckoned with as destructive storm and life-giving sunshine they did not think of God as an inferred entity but as an experienced reality to them God was not an idea adopted by the mind but an experienced reality which gave significance to their lives philosophers call beliefs like this properly basic beliefs they are based on some other beliefs rather they're part of the foundations of a person's system of beliefs other properly basic beliefs would include things like belief in the reality of the past the existence of the external world and the presence of other minds like your own when you think about it none of these beliefs can be proved how can you prove that the world was not created five minutes ago with built-in appearances of age like a food in our stomachs from the breakfast we never really ate or memory traces in our brains of events we never really experienced how could you prove that you're not a brain-in-a-vat being stimulated with electrodes by a mad scientist to believe that you're studying here at Imperial College and listening to this lecture right now how can you prove that the people sitting around you are not really androids who exhibit all of the external behavior of persons with an interior life but in reality they're just soulless robot like entities well although these beliefs are simply basic for us that doesn't mean that they're arbitrary rather they're grounded in the sense that they are formed in the context of certain experiences in the experiential context of seeing and feeling and hearing things I naturally form the belief that there's a world of physical objects around me and thus my basic beliefs are not arbitrary but they're grounded in experience there may be no way to prove such beliefs but it's perfectly rational to hold them in fact you'd have to be crazy to think that you were really a brain-in-a-vat or that the world was created five minutes ago such beliefs are not merely basic they are properly basic now in exactly the same way God is for those who know him personally a basic belief which is grounded in our experience of God and we can summarize this consideration as follows one beliefs which are appropriately grounded may be rationally accepted as basic beliefs not grounded on argument to belief that the biblical God exists is appropriately grounded three therefore believe that the biblical God exists may be rationally accepted as a basic belief not grounded on argument now if this is right then there's a danger that arguments for the existence of God could actually distract one's attention from God himself we could be sunk come so focused on the external arguments that we fail to hear the inner voice of God speaking to our own hearts the Bible says draw near to God and He will draw near to you we mustn't so concentrate on the external proofs that we fail to hear the voice of God speaking to our own hearts for those who do listen God can become a personal reality in their lives so in summary we've seen seven features of the world around us that point beyond the world to its ground in a transcendent reality number one why anything at all exists number two the origin of the universe number three the fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life number four the existence of objective moral values and duties in the world number five the very possibility of God's existence number six the life death and resurrection of Jesus and number seven the immediate personal experience of God is the material world all there is well I think on the basis of the seven reasons that I presented we have a powerful cumulative case for thinking that the answer is No thank you very much professor Craig for coming and sharing with us today just before we go I was wondering you've given us a lot to think about you've given us these seven arguments I was wondering if you wouldn't mind telling everyone which your favorite of these arguments is which you think is the most powerful argument of the seven my doctoral work at the University of Birmingham was done on the second argument the cosmological argument based on the finitude of the past at the beginning of the universe and I continue to find this to be such a powerful and engaging argument and so although I realized that I think it may not be the most existentially gripping argument it is and remains for me the most important argument for God's existence brilliant thank you very much if you have to go to lectures now please enjoy your afternoon and thank you for watching on the Internet we've got a first question here so would you like to ask your question for professor gray hello my question is that they are being prophets around the Middle East and be you know telling about God so how come in China on Australia or the places in the world have there not been prophets saying the same thing that there's one God why is only one one one place God should influence all the people of the world but isn't just one I'll repeat the question for those who couldn't hear it he points out that in the Middle East and particularly in the Jewish tradition there have been prophets sent by God to communicate his message to mankind why aren't there similar prophets sent by God in China or Latin America or someplace of that sort and I would answer the question from a biblical perspective in the following way the New Testament says that God has both a general revelation of himself which is available to all mankind no matter where and when they live and then there's a special revelation of God which is made to Israel and through the that tradition culminating the person of Jesus of Nazareth God's general revelation while mankind is through nature and conscience what comes to expression in the cosmological and moral arguments that I've discussed today so that all persons everywhere at any time in history can know that there's a creator god of the universe and they can sense their moral responsibility to this person or this being and that general revelation is available everywhere but God through his special revelation of Israel has sought to reveal himself in such a way culminating the person of Jesus that this message will eventually then be proclaimed throughout the world and will be made available to all persons but by the very nature of a historical revelation this is a process that begins at a particular geographical locale and time and then spreads throughout the world and so you have a difference between general and special revelation yes how come you can't kind of at the heart of the person there is only one God rather than several gods well I think through God's revelation in nature you can sense that there is a creator of everything that exists and so monotheism I think would be the simpler default position in fact that the New Testament says that people refusing to recognize the creator of the universe begin to worship objects that are made in the image of animals and beasts and human beings and so forth so that this kind of idolatry and polytheism really reads that represents a kind of degeneration from refusing to accept the general revelation of the creator of the universe you said that only a finite number of multiverses would have been generated by now so that you wouldn't have every possibility but is that not based on the idea that the multiverses are coming from somewhere with time if they if there was no time before the universe then they all exist they don't exist on a basis of starting now and ending well on the contrary I think what I indicated is the board Guth flankin theorem applies not only to our universe but it applies to the whole ensemble the whole multiverse it had to have an absolute beginning so it has a finite age it has only existed for a fine mine amount of time and therefore the only way you could get an infinite number of universes in the ensemble would be if it's spatially infinite but if it if these are generated say you know a few at a time then given its finite past there's no guarantee that there are an infinite number of these things but I'm talking about each universe is contained in itself outside of our universe then for another universe they're not in a space-time there they are they exist independently not in a space-time so they can't start at a specific time or occupy a certain space well that depends on what sort of multiverse model you adopt what I'm thinking of here would be the type of model that thinks of a sort of mother universe which is an expansion and it's in a false vacuum state and there appear bubbles in it of true vacuum that percolate throughout this expanding false vacuum and so these are in a kind of wider reality that's the most plausible and popular multiverse scenario that's scientifically out there today okay we should go to your second question so others can have a chance how do you object it objectively and measure the morals their objective how do you know that you're not measuring a biological moral and you know that it's objective right that's the the support for the second premise that objective moral duties and values exist and what I would do here is simply appeal appeal to your moral experience don't you think as you reflect on it that certain things are genuine genuinely evil for example don't you think that it's wrong to torture a little child for fun as opposed to loving that little child don't you think that that is a more plausible account of your moral experience than just saying well this is just a biological spin off of social and biological evolution so it's kind of like belief in the external world of objects this is a properly basic belief grounded in your experience and unless you're given some sort of a defeater for it you've got no reason to deny what experience teaches you in the one case that there is a world of physical objects in the other that there's an objective moral realm so again I'll leave it up to you which do you think is more plausible do you think that there are objective values and duties if you do then I think you should believe that God exists just because wouldn't be verbal things that break is objectively bad doesn't necessarily mean that it's objectively bad there's not because of biological and social anticipation a party yeah well I would just be repeating myself here at this point I see no reason to think such a thing and to deny what my moral experience tells me you mentioned a few times a god as good that I mentioned what II that God is good yes the God must be good but why can he be evil in your in your framework that you just argued to us by definition the concept of God is of a being that is worthy of worship that's what it means to be God and to be worthy of worship entails perfect goodness any being that was morally defective would not be worthy of worship and that's why absolute goodness is part of a maximally great being what it means to be maximally great so if there is such a being I think necessarily it has to be good and the moral argument gives us grounds for thinking that there is such a being because we need some sort of transcendent foundation for objective moral values and duties and apart from God we're just lost in in relativism yes as awful as it is if I was raised as a feral animal somewhere you know and I was not brought by my parents and a society and maybe it's just I wouldn't have the moral compass I do have so I'd say it's a lot about environment and the people you are amongst as well as you know biological you know as a collective biologically it's how we've evolved but it's also on an individual basis about your upbringing in my experience here we have to be very careful not to confuse moral epistemology with moral ontology Morley pista mala Jie asked the question how do we come to no moral values and duties moral ontology concerns are there objectively such things and to think that because we come to know them through parental influence and societal conditioning that therefore they don't objectively exist is to commit what's called the genetic fallacy which is trying to invalidate a point of view by showing how the person came to hold it I might believe that for example the earth is round because I read it in a comic book and that wouldn't be very good justification but that wouldn't mean that that belief is false to think so would commit the genetic fallacy so the questions you're raising about how you were raised and so forth are really quite irrelevant to moral ontology which is what I'm dealing with and as I said in my talk if moral values are gradually discovered rather than gradually invented then our fallible and gradual and conditioned apprehension of the more realm just doesn't do anything to undermine the objectivity of that realm and to think that it does would be to commit the genetic fallacy okay I think it was more than I was saying that I'd feel that maybe is evidence for why it isn't objective that we could live in a world where we we hadn't arrived at this point and I would say that's maybe evidence for it but so my main question was actually that if M Jesus performed his miracles that was evidence for a transcendent realm that was beyond our understanding why didn't he perform any miracles which would have been miracles of all the miracles seemed grounded in there in the time you know he turned water into wine but he never explained that everything in the universe was attracted to everything else he never revealed any of the true like elegance of the universe he just kind of performed very grounded miracles that people of the time would find amazing but nothing that would truly be amazing you know I mean well I don't see any reason to think that Jesus of Nazareth should have been a natural scientist he was a Jew and we need to recover the genuine portrait of this first century Palestinian Jewish man and the miracles that he performed were part of a Jewish context they were signs of the in breaking of God's kingdom and the kind of physical healing and exorcisms demonic exorcisms that he did were symbolic of the the moral and spiritual healing that his message brought so the miracles we're not to sort of show pieces or wonders they were visible demonstrations of the advent of God's kingdom in his own person you probably won't find this at all surprising but there's something that's puzzling me about the ontological argument and basically it's an it relies on their being great making property yeah you need to appeal to those toward in order to make the argument work right now I gather that those are supposed to be objective right in a sense not just subjective things a bit but an actual objective measurement of what it is to be great to a certain degree now am i right in thinking that in order to avoid the ontological argument being circular and saying that these great making properties could only exist because God exists and they would need to be grounded in something other than God to justify that there are such things as great making properties would they have to stand independently from God because for example in the moral argument you say that moral values and duties only exist if God exists but of course one of the great making properties is moral goodness and that that's one of the categories so I'm just wondering you know if you were to need to justify to somebody that there is such a thing as great making properties do you need to do that independently of saying that they depend on God yes I don't think so in the same way that one wouldn't need to appeal to God to justify premise two of the moral argument that objective moral values and duties exist that again is this confusion between epistemology and ontology these properties might be grounded on illogically in God as you say but epistemological II I think we can have access to these readily without believing in God and we know for example that it's greater to be more powerful than to be weak and impotent it's greater to be all-knowing than to be ignorant it's greater to be morally perfect than morally flawed and evil and you don't need to believe in God I think to sense those differences yeah so all you need is just the awareness of yes there are great making properties and then you just let the argument flow I don't need to worry about sort of you know where necessarily where the great making properties all because it's not that they're doesn't that's not part of the the question yeah okay that's good right unfortunately we've got to start packing up soon so if we could have one more question right and then after that we'll wrap it up good afternoon doctor quick really excellent arguments this approach I think it's very good improving the evidence for God and so on mmm-hmm so it can you know it's just speak into the mic yep so um I'd like to suggest that with these arguments that especially the the ontological argument the special case that you proposed that you would actually strike lows to the Muslim perspective on on God which is his absolute transcendence so where where you state as Christians that God becomes Jesus and has you know lives on the earth yeah I'd like to suggest that some of the attributes I mentioned in particular all-knowing all-powerful and other other such attributes that these do not sit well so well with I mean there's a certain degree of irrationality in this assertion that he becomes mmm incarnated in Jesus yeah so what would you look yes that's a very interesting question and I think that what Muslim theology is failed to understand about the doctrine of the Incarnation is the doctrine of the two nature's of Christ as Christians we believe that Jesus Christ is one person but that he has both a divine nature and a human nature and in His divine nature he is omnipotent all-knowing timeless spaceless or whatever it is his human nature that is like ours that is spatially located weak limited in power and and so forth and therefore his these limitations on his human nature have simply no effect whatsoever on his divine nature indeed I would think of being is greater who has the ability to take on a human nature and be incarnate as a human being now where my critique of the Muslim concept of God would come in at this point is that I think that the Muslim concept of God is not the greatest conceivable being I would in I have pre criticized the Muslim concept of God precisely because it isn't the greatest concept and in what way would I say that I think the greatest conceivable being would be an all-loving being his his love would be unconditional impartial and universal and this is the kind of love that Jesus revealed of our Heavenly Father by contrast the god of the Quran is partial his love is conditional you have to earn it and it is a not universal he does not love sinners over and over again the Quran says God loves not the unbelievers he loves not sinners he loves not the hard neck he only loves believers and so for that reason I couldn't be a Muslim I think that the concept of God in Islam is morally inadequate first of all going back to the initial points all right we're going Jesus so I mean I'd suggest that there's not a spective pagan idolatry and saying that there's a as a man because because because of the fact that any any any other person of any other polytheist could say that this Idol that is worshiping has as much of it as a much representation of God's you know temporal and physical reality else's transcendent reality any any polytheists could argue that therefore what he could say that but now regarding the second points regarding God does not love so-and-so God does not so love so so I like suggest that this is an important aspect of this realm which in really in which we live which is the the temporal life which once this ends there's the day of judgment which you also believe in you I'd like to say that since we both believe in the day of judgment then it becomes irrelevant if you say that God must love everyone because one more criteria job God dodging people on it's it's the criteria of their obedience to him and their servitude towards him see in the Quran in the Quran we say that God's mercy envelops everyone we don't say that his love envelops everyone we say that he loves certain slaves of his by his mercy and his justice prevail over everyone yeah are the other attributes there's 99 attributes in total and these need to be understood in their full contest context then you realize that this is truly the the most supreme AUM the supreme living everlasting ly hid the one that I'll parted the Vanquisher saw the absolutely merciful and the Latif the subtly gentle with his slaves and the harlot the original creator and other attributes I could go on to all of the attributes but you need to understand the full Heat understand the full the full context and then you realize that this is truly the the being who created this war who is our creator and worthy of worship yeah I I guess I just don't agree I specialized in Islam during as one of my side areas at the University of Munich when I did my theological studies and it seems to me that it is vitally important on a huge difference between the god of the new test who loves sinners who loves unbelievers and even those who are under his judgment he loves them where is the god of the quran has no love for sinners the quran says is over and over again and his mercy is only extended to those who seek him and do what is required his mercy means that he will give you what you have earned that God can be dependent upon to give you what you have earned plus a bonus on the Judgment Day and that not not ok we can't we can't continue to debate this I'm afraid we need to start getting the room packed up if you want to continue this discussion feel free to but thank you very much again dr. Craig for coming and speaking to us and thank you you you

Channel: ReasonableFaithTour

Views: 59,219

Keywords: william lane craig, Church, christianity, Richard Dawkins, Reasonable Faith Tour, kalam cosmological argument, moral argument, ontological argument, teleological argument, fine tuning, OICCU, Christian Union, UCCF, Damaris, Bethinking, Premier Christian Radio, Philosophy, Apologetics, William Lane Craig, London, educational, talk, Church (building), Debate, Darwin

Id: KbbE8ZLzcRk

Length: 71min 25sec (4285 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 07 2012