This audio records a part of the Greer-Heard debate in 2007, between prominent atheist Daniel Dennett and lame theistic evolutionist Alister McGrath. Craig was one of the respondents, and this was the best part of the event. It is a little bit advanced, but I have found that if you listen to things like this over and over with your friends and family, and then try to explain it to non-Christians, you’ll get it.
By the way, this is mostly original material from Craig, dated 2007, and he delivers the speech perfectly, so it’s entertaining to listen to.
Craig presents three arguments for a Creator and Designer of the universe:
the contingency argument
the kalam cosmological argument
the teleological argument
He also discusses Dennett’s published responses to these arguments.
Dennett’s response to Craig’s paper
Here is my snarky paraphrase of Dennett’s reponse: (this is very snarky, because Dennett was just awful)
Craig’s three arguments are bulletproof, the premises are plausible, and grounded by the best cutting edge science we know today.
I cannot find anything wrong with his arguments right now, but maybe later when I go home it will come to me what’s wrong with them.
But atheism is true even if all the evidence is against it today. I know it’s true by my blind faith.
The world is so mysterious, and all the science of today will be overturned tomorrow so that atheism will be rational again. I have blind faith that this new evidence will be discovered any minute.
Just because the cause of the beginning of time is eternal and the cause of the beginning of space is non-physical, the cause doesn’t have to be God.
“Maybe the cause of the universe is the idea of an apple, or the square root of 7”. (HE LITERALLY SAID THAT!)
The principle of triangulation might have brought the entire physical universe into being out of nothing.
I don’t understand anything about non-physical causation, even though I cannot even speak meaningful sentences unless I have a non-physical mind that is causing my body to emit the meaningful sentences in a non-determined manner.
Alexander Vilenkin is much smarter than Craig and if he were here he would beat him up good with phantom arguments.
Alan Guth is much smarter than Craig and if he were here he would beat him up good with phantom arguments.
This science stuff is so complicated to me – so Craig can’t be right about it even though he’s published about it and debated it all with the best atheists on the planet.
If God is outside of time, then this is just deism, not theism. (This part is correct, but Craig believes that God enters into time at the moment of creation – so that it is not a deistic God)
If deism is true, then I can still be an atheist, because a Creator and Designer of the universe is compatible with atheism.
I’m pretty sure that Craig doesn’t have any good arguments that can argue for Christianity – certainly not an historical argument for the resurrection of Jesus based on minimal facts, that he’s defended against the most prominent historians on the planet in public debates and in prestigous books and research journals.
This is a very careful treatment of the arguments that Dr. Craig goes over briefly during his debates. Recommended.
Lawrence Krauss is a Cosmologist at Arizona State University who describes himself as an “anti-theist”. His latest book “A Universe From Nothing” has received both acclaim and criticism for its attempt to answer the question “Why is there something rather than nothing?” Debating the issue with Krauss is Rodney Holder, Course director at the Faraday Institute, Cambridge. An astrophysicist and priest by background. In a lively exchange they debate whether Krauss’ “nothing” is “nothing”, fine tuning and multiverses, scientific knowledge, miracles and the usefulness of theology and philosophy.
This debate is quite entertaining, and do not be intimidated if your don’t understand science. You can understand pretty easily who is arguing based on facts and who is speculating about unobservable, untestable entities. At one point, Krauss actually denies that there is any fine-tuning in the universe, so please see this link to refute that claim as well as this podcast which explains some examples of fine-tuning. Krauss gets a bit angry at the beginning, but calms down.
Quotation marks are for direct quotes, italics is for made-up snark. See below the summary for more posts that are related to this one.
Summary of the discussion: (picked up at 9:30 when they start talking about the book)
Brierley:
explain your theory of how the universe can come into being from nothing
Krauss:
the nothing that preceded the universe is “no space, no time, no universe”
theists say that God is responsible for creating the universe out of this nothing
but the laws of nature can create the universe uncaused out of nothing
Holder:
Krauss sometimes writes that the nothing is really a quantum vacuum, but that is not nothing
He even acknowledges in his book that a quantum vacuum is not nothing
He thinks that the nothing has properties, even though it has no being
It has the property of being unstable
It has the property of being acted on by quantum fields
It has the property of being acted on by gravity
Krauss:
But nothing can have the potential to do things inside it
For example suppose you have an electron, which is not nothing
If it jumps from one level to another, it emits light
There was no potential for the light in the electron, but it was there as part of atomic structure
Holder:
But in cases like that, there is something physical that has the potential
Krauss:
Well, how did God makes the universe then if it had no potential?
Holder:
God existed, and the potential for creating the universe in himself
Brierley:
Consider the critical review of your book in the New York Times
Krauss:
It was written by a philosopher, so I dismissed it
Maybe there is an eternally existing multiverse that we can’t observe or test scientifically
Maybe it has laws that we don’t know about which allow our universe to pop into being
Maybe this popping into being is uncaused
(alarmed) Who made God? Who made God?
Holder:
God is eternal and necessary
Krauss:
(interrupting, angry) What does it mean for something to be necessary?
Holder:
Basically, you have to decide whether there is more evidence that the necessary being God or a multiverse
Brierley:
So Dr. Krauss are you willing to say that the universe is a brute fact, in some sense, and requires no explanation
Krauss:
(angry) Religious people are stupid because they just assume brute facts, not like me and my unobservable, untestable multiverse
(angry) Religious people are against the progress of science, they don’t want to figure out how things work
Brierley:
But isn’t it possible that naturalists can be opposed to the progress of science?
What about the way the Fred Hoyle opposed the Big Bang because he wanted an eternal universe
Krauss:
(angry) But naturalists like me let the facts determine our beliefs, like the facts about the eternal unobservable, untestable multiverse
(angry, shouting) Philosophers are stupid, they know nothing!
=== Break ===
Brierley:
Do you see any evidence of purpose in the universe?
Krauss:
Well maybe I would believe if the stars lined up to spell out a message from God
Brierley:
Actually no, that wouldn’t be evidence for God on your multiverse view
if there an infinite number of universes existing for an infinite amount of time, then anything can happen no matter how unlikely it is
therefore, no evidence could convince you that God exists, since the unobservable, untestable, eternal multiverse can make anything it wants
Krauss:
That’s a true statement, and very convenient for atheists who don’t want to be accountable to God, don’t you think?
Brierley:
Back to the multiverse, how does it solve the fine-tuning?
Krauss:
“We have no idea if the universe is fine-tuned for life”, even though the atheist Martin Rees who endorsed Krauss’ book wrote his own book about the fine-tuning of the universe called “Just Six Numbers”
But this theory is still very much a hypothesis, isn’t it? We can’t observe or test this hypothesis can we?
Krauss:
“No, and that is really important to state”
“I’m an empiricist, so if you can’t falsify it and if you can’t test it then it’s not science”
In my book, I speculate about a way that we could test the multiverse theory
Holder:
Yes, in principle, the multiverse would be scientific if you could test it through other theories like inflationary theory
There are a lot of speculations about multiverse theory, but no evidence from predictions that were validated in the lab
Krauss:
“I agree completely with everything you just said”
Brierley:
Roger Penrose agrees with Holder that the multiverse theory is too speculative
(To Holder) Isn’t the multiverse theory better than positing a completely different kind of being, which is God?
Holder:
The multiverse theory is extremely speculative
Even if the multiverse were true, you would still need to explain the multiverse
Krauss:
People don’t oppose my book because it’s full of self-contradictory speculations
People oppose my book because they are stupid and ignorant
Holder:
There are things that exist that science cannot measure, like objective morality
It’s possible to give explanations for moral behavior by appealing to evolution
But that does not ground self-sacrificial morality, such as what occurs in the Christian life
Brierley:
Dawkins says there is no purpose or morality in in the universe, do you agree?
Krauss:
“There is certainly no evidence of any of that”
Brierley:
In the book, you talk about how we live in a special time in the universe’s history to be able to do science, (i.e. – The Privileged Planet hypothesis)
You also write about how all the discoveries were are making will not be communicated to anyone in other places in the universe
So what is the meaning of doing science on your view? And why are you sad at the knowledge that will not be available to people in the future?
Are you longing for some kind of purpose?
Krauss:
No, I just get enjoyment from studying the universe with science to gain understanding
Holder:
What do you make of Einstein’s statement about the unexpected comprehensibility of the universe
Theists would say that this is because God wanted us to study and understand and gain knowledge
Krauss:
“It is remarkable that the universe is comprehensible”
Brierley:
Why is the universe comprehensible?
Krauss:
Well, maybe the universe just has to be that way
Brierley:
What do you make of the heat death of the universe, when all life in the universe will die out?
Krauss:
That’s the way the universe is
=== BREAK ===
Krauss:
I wouldn’t want to live in a universe where there was a God
God is a cosmic Saddam Hussein
“Religious people turn their minds off” and believe in God for consolation
Holder:
First, Jesus is the revelation of God and he is no Saddam Hussein
Second, the Christian life is anything but easy, we are facing some persecution already in the UK
Third, there is also the problem of being accountable to God when we die
It’s very much like science – Christianity is the way it is, not the way we want it to be
Krauss:
“If you don’t believe in him, you don’t get any of the benefits, so you have to believe”
“And then if you’ve done something wrong, you’re going to be judged for it”
“So I don’t want to be judged by God, I want to be… that’s the bottom line”
Holder:
Well, Jesus has died to pay the price for those things we’ve done wrong
Although we will have to face the charges for what we’ve done, believers will ultimately be forgiven
UPDATE: Peter Sean Bradley note that Krauss is now walking back his rhetoric in response to criticisms from people like atheist John Horgan.
I had an interest in science and theology, so in 1977 I chose to go to Biola University where I could study both subjects in detail. I thoroughly enjoyed college and participated in intramural sports, was elected to student government, served as a resident assistant, competed in forensics, and studied a lot. As I neared college graduation my dual interest continued so I applied to seminary and to graduate school. After graduating summa cum laude from Biola, I decided to pursue a graduate degree in physics at UCLA.
During my first few years of graduate school, I developed an increased interest in quantum mechanics and subatomic physics and decided to do research in a field that dealt with these subjects. I joined a High Energy Physics experimental group doing research at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) and moved to the San Francisco Bay Area to actively participate in research at SLAC. I graduated in 1988 with my Ph.D in High Energy Physics (a.k.a. Elementary Particle Physics). If you would like to know more about High Energy Physics, the Particle Data Group at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory has a very nice interactive adventure that teaches you all about the subject. My research advisor was professor Charles Buchanan and my disertation was titled “A Study of Lambda Polarization and Phi Spin Alignment in Electron-Positron Annihilation at 29 GeV as a Probe of Color Field Behavior.”
After graduation, I accepted a post-doctoral research position with the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. I continued to do research at SLAC where I joined the SLD experiment. My research interests centered on the SLD silicon pixel vertex detector. I wrote most of the offline software for this device, and did physics analysis which used the vertex detector, including tagging b quark events for flavor specific QCD (Quantum Chromodynamics) analysis. In the seven years I was employed by UMASS, I only spent 3 days on the Amherst campus. The rest of the time was spent in California.
[…]In August 1995, I accepted a job as an Assistant Professor of Physics at the University of Oklahoma (OU) in Norman, Oklahoma. The University of Oklahoma has a vibrant high energy physics research group involved in experiments at the Fermi National Accelerator Center (Fermilab), and CERN. I joined the DØ experiment at Fermilab where I continue to do research in elementary particle physics. As a member of the DØ collaboration I have made contributions to the testing of silicon sensors for the upgraded vertex detector, to the track finding algorithms, to a measurement of the photon production cross section which probes the gluon content of protons, and to other QCD measurements. I am currently studying properties ofB mesons that contain a b-quark, the production cross section of jets coming from quarks and gluons, and other QCD analyses. At CERN, I am a collaborator on the ATLAS detector.
I received tenure in 2001 and was promoted to the rank of Professor in the summer of 2010. Most of the time at OU I have taught introductory physics classes to physics majors, engineers, and life science majors. In these classes I have used a number of interactive techniques to facilitate student participation and learning. I have been privileged to win a few awards for my teaching. In 1999, the Associated Students selected me as the Outstanding Professor in the College of Arts and Science, and in 2000 I was awarded the BP AMOCO Foundation Good Teaching Award. In 2002, I was given the Regents Award for Superior Teaching. I received the Carlisle Mabrey and Lurine Mabrey Presidential Professorship in 2006 which is given to “faculty members who excel in all their professional activities and who relate those activities to the students they teach and mentor.”
He seems to have done a fine job of integrating his faith with a solid career in physics research.
Summary:
It used to be true that most of the great scientists were believers in God
But now science has advanced and we have better instruments – is it still true?
Today, many people believe that science has shows that the universe and Earth are not special
We used to believe that the Earth was the center of the universe, and Darwin showed we are not designed
The problem with this view is that it is based on old science, not modern science
Three topics: origin of the universe, fine-tuning of the universe, the Rare Earth hypothesis
Experimental evidence for the origin of the universe:
#1: Hubble discovered that the universe expands because of redshifting of light from distant galaxies
#2: Measurements of the cosmic microwave background radiation show the universe had a beginnning
#3: Measurements of the light element (hydrogen and helium) abundances confirm an origin of the universe
The best explanation for an absolute origin of space, time, matter and energy is a supernatural cause
Experimental evidence for the design of the universe:
#1: The amount of matter: a bit less = no stars and galaxies, a bit more = universe recollapses
#2: The strong force: a bit more = only hydrogen, a bit more = little or no hydrogen
#3: Carbon resonance level: a bit higher = no carbon, a bit lower = no carbon
Experimental evidence for galactic, stellar and planetary habitability:
#1: Galaxy: produces high number of heavy elements and low radiation
#2: Star: long stable lifetime, burns bright, bachelor star, third generation star (10 billion years must elapsed),
#3: Planet: mass of planet, stable orbit, liquid water, tectonic activity, tilt, moon
Naturalistic explanations:
Humans evolve to the point where they reach back in time and create finely-tuned universe
Eternally existing multiverse
Hawking and Mlodinow response to Rare Earth:
There are lots of planets so one must support life
Odds of a planet that supports life are low even with 10^22 planets
Hawking and Mlodinow proposal of M-theory multiverse:
There is no experimental evidence for M-theory being true
M-theory is not testable now and is not likely to be testable in the future
But science is about making testable predictions, not about blind speculation
Hawking and Mlodinow no-boundary proposal:
This theory requires the laws of physics to exist prior to the universe
But where do you get laws of physics before there is any physical world?
There is no experimental evidence for no-boundary proposal
All the evidence we have now (redshift, CMBR, H-He abundances) is for Big Bang
What science has revealed provide abundant evidence for a transcendent Creator and Designer
WINTERY KNIGHT 