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Where are all the Christian women? Are Christian women ready for marriage?

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I have noticed some very alarming things about single Christian women lately, and I want to write about some of them.

I think that the main thrust of courting from the man’s perspective is that you want to 1) communicate your plan to make the marriage and the children have a positive impact for Christ and his kingdom, 2) you want to demonstrate that you understand the needs of women and that you are capable of meeting those needs, especially the needs for love and companionship, 3) that you understand the roles of a man and you have made preparations and decisions to be ready to fulfill those roles, and 4) you want to ask the kinds of questions that will allow you to ensure that the woman you are courting is ready to fulfill her roles – because she has also made preparations and good decisions.

Well, the problem I wanted to talk about has to do with objective 1). I have communicated my plan to many women and I find that there are particular parts where they resist. The main thing I would like to do is to have four children who all go into different interesting fields and make an impact for Christ. Here are some of the areas I think would be most useful:

  • cosmologist or astrophysicist
  • biochemist/bioinformatics
  • economist to research marriage and parenting
  • lawyer to join the Alliance Defense Fund

The goal here is that the children will be able to pursue their field of study without being persecuted by secular leftists, and be able to earn a living, and be able to make a contribution in an area that matters.

So what I normally do is lay out this plan to the woman and then see if she is supportive and helpful and starts to take action to help with that. But I have had some alarming reactions and I want to talk about some of those below.

1) Several women have told me that children can have as much impact for Christ as a ballet dancer or poet as they could as a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court or as a President. The part of this objection that I find most alarming is not that it is obviously false, but that my authority to lead, which is secured by my role as provider and saver of money, is being denied. I am still expected to bring savings and income into the family, but without any of the decision making authority about how hard the children should study and what fields they should be steered towards.

For me, the whole point of getting married is to serve the Lord – and if my plans to serve are threatened by marriage, then I will not do it. I would rather use the fortune I have to make donations to individual events than to be married and have those resources wasted on ballet dancers and poets. Further on this point about education and careers, I feel that one of the things that a man struggles with is the fear that his children will not be able to grow up and be prosperous and independent in the world. I especially worry that they will feel pressure to compromise their faith because of financial concerns.

Many people think that there is this Santa Claus in the sky who will magically provide money no matter how reckless they are – but I don’t think God is like that. I think he values stewardship, wisdom and prudence – and that’s what I intend to teach my children. I want my children to have enough money so that they can be independent of the state, and resilient against peer pressure. I see many many people who get degrees in fields where they fall under pressure to adopt viewpoints that are non-Christian simply because of financial concerns. Money matters a lot to keeping your convictions, especially when you get married and have children – it’s something that needs to be planned for.

I am afraid of getting overruled by someone who thinks that the world is a safe place for Christians, or that any field is as good as any other for serving Christ. There is a reason why people know who William Lane Craig and Michele Bachmann are – they have the skills. But what I am seeing from Christian women is that Christianity can be reduced to just reading the Bible, singing in church and praying to hear the voice of their emotions. (Which they call the voice of God) There is no thought being put into how to make children achieve at a high level by setting goals and funneling them into areas that matter.

It’s like Christian women think that the children’s happiness is more authoritative in the family than my knowledge and experience about how to build up children who will retain their faith, maintain their financial independence and have an influence in the world. Often, the women who tell me that the choice of career doesn’t matter are themselves riddled with credit card debt. And the ones who tell me that science apologetics doesn’t matter are the ones whose parents and siblings are becoming apostates after reading Richard Dawkins books. If I am the one who is earning the money and providing the savings up front, then I am the one who should be leading on things like education, careers, jobs and so forth. If I was smart enough to study the right things, to work and to save before I got married, then I shouldn’t be overloaded after the marriage by someone else’s feelings, emotions and desire to be her children’s “friend”.

2) Another concern I have is about how these Christian women are moved by liberal sob stories so that they vote against a strong foreign policy, self-defense, deterrence, capital punishment, and men using force to punish evildoers in general. On the foreign policy front, one woman complained to me that American helicopter gunships had used excessive force by attacking Islamic terrorist infantry with the gunship’s machine gun. Now some of you will have caught on that military issues and platforms are an interest of mine because I am a war gamer. I play military simulations ranging from squad-level infantry combat right up to full-scale carrier strike groups. So I am informed about tactics, strategy, weapons, vehicles and so on.

Anyway, I took a look at the full guncam footage she linked me and read the AARs and noticed that there was a convoy of BLUFOR Humvees coming into range of the OPFOR infantry, and that the OPFOR infantry was armed with RPGs. I asked her to tell me what she thought an RPG could do to a Humvee. She had no idea what an RPG was or what it could do to a Humvee. I explained that RPGs are ROCKETS that explode and it would kill all the occupants of Humvees. It seemed to me that her only reason for complaining about it was that her friends had sent it to her, and she felt pressured to agree with them. She had no understanding of the capabilities of the arms and vehicles at all, yet she felt qualified to make judgments about unnecessary violence. In fact, it became clear that she was taking this position because she thought that it made her look morally superior. She felt “compassion” for the poor Islamic terrorists. It’s so easy to second guess American military forces when you know nothing at all about war in general, or Islamic extremism in the Middle East in particular.

This terrifies me. I do not want to be overruled by someone who makes decisions based on ignorance, emotions, intuitions and peer pressure. This person went on to assure me that shooting terrorists was the same as blowing up busloads of children, and that killing convicted serial killers was the same as killing unborn babies. Because killing is killing, right? That scares me. Who would want to be a passenger in a car with someone who was drunk and color-blind? Not me. It’s hard to consider someone for marriage who can’t see the difference between good and evil or guilt and innocence, but instead tries to lift up evil and bash down good. (Not only was she anti-capital punishment but also anti-self-defense – all without having done a moment’s worth of research on the peer-reviewed studies showing how capital punishment deters crime, and how concealed-carry laws reduce rates of violent crime).

Should I marry someone who is uncomfortable with the male role of making moral judgments and exercising force against evil? Someone who takes positions without knowing anything about the details of what she is talking about? Of course not. No one can be happy married to someone who takes positions on moral issues based on ignorance, emotions, vanity and peer pressure. And some Christian women are unwilling to learn anything about war, or even to come to the firing range to fire a handgun. They have opinions, they make pronouncements about how they will overrule you if you get married to them, they vote to undermine national security and world peace by emboldening aggressors and then they refuse to learn anything about the issues. All they need to know are their feelings. And they vote based on those feelings, not based on studies or history or anything factual.

3) A final example has to do with Christian women embracing socialism because it is “compassionate”. Believe it or not, some women do not really understand the effect of having the government spend more and more money equalizing life outcomes. Most of the Christian women I spoke to had enormous difficulty understanding how single motherhood by choice creates child poverty. They wanted to believe that child poverty was just spilled milk – it just happened, and wasn’t anyone’s fault, and that subsidizing it wouldn’t create more of it.

One Christian pro-life activist wrote to me that she was “great with kids” and was going to have one out of wedlock and raise it with money from the government. This woman never finished college and had not held any sort of serious job. She complained that no men were marrying her (note: this woman was completely irresponsible and penniless and unsuitable for marriage) and blamed the men. I told her that the reason why men were not marrying her was because they were paying a third of their income in taxes and looking at the 1.65 trillion deficits and 14.5 trillion national debt. She said that men didn’t really care about money and numbers and that if they loved her, they would marry her anyway, but they were just selfish lazy cowards. She was willing to inflict fatherlessness and day care on a child, but she was “great with kids”.

Another Christian woman told me that the government should provide free meals to children so that they were all equal regardless of whether their mothers had married or not. I explained that every time that government takes a responsibility away from men, that our household income would go down because of higher taxes, and my job would be put in jeopardy because of government debt. I also explained that the more government does, the less control there is inside the family – like when Christians have to pay for public schools so that all the children will be equal. Equally illiterate and innumerate. Instead of proposing free market solutions to poverty that retain family integrity – like school voucher programs – they always seem to leap to the big government solutions first.

But you can see how this idea of economic equality captures the emotions of some Christian women and they don’t even realize how they are undermining men’s desire and ability to achieve their goals for the marriage. They don’t read economics and they don’t realize that Christian marriage plans cost money. Men need money in order to put their own children through college. Men need money for homeschooling, stay-at-home moms and private schools. And men need money for apologetics books and to take children to apologetics conferences. It’s amazing because this woman expected me to keep her at home as a stay-at-home mom, but she wanted my salary to go to subsidize the single mothers by choice in the next neighborhood over.

That is the level of self-destructive economic ignorance I am seeing from some Christian women. They look at social problems like child poverty, and the only solution they can come up with to these problems is government-controlled redistribution of wealth by a secular government. (Together with all the high unemployment that this deficit spending creates). Why are they so opposed to men and marriage and family? Because they have never taken the time to read even a basic book on economics. Newsflash: free market capitalism is better for the poor than socialism – that’s why the poor are wealthier in the United States than in any other country, and their standard of living has gone up over time.

For example, take health care. I know another Christian woman who complained to me about some poor child of a single mother who could not get treatment for some condition or other. Notice how there was no emphasis on what this single mother chose to study, whether she chose to work, whether she chose to save, or whether she married a good provider. No. The problem is taken as is – as a case of spilled milk and all questions of responsibility and accountability are dismissed. I was asked how capitalism can solve the problem.

Well the first thing to point out is that her solution is to defund the family, grow government, reward irresponsibility, undermine my plan by diminishing the earnings I save that fund my plan. And why? So that she could feel better and see God’s aim of making us all happy achieved. It is very important to understand this point. Women who claim to be Christians may not actually be Christians. If a woman thinks that God’s job is to make his human pets happy, then she is not a Christian at all, but a socialist-to-be, with an unnecessary Santa Claus riding on top of her emotional delusions. These are the people who claim to be opposed to abortion and then vote for single-payer health care which provides… taxpayer-funded abortion. Don’t believe a word of it. No one can be a Christian who is a socialist, and if they don’t know anything about economics, that’s what they are. No matter what a woman says, if her solution to poverty is the secular government taxing your family and your employer, and reducing the family’s earnings and destabilizing the family’s revenue stream, then she does not have a Christian view of family, government and charity. She will undermine your role as provider because she values socialism MORE than she values marriage and family.

Secondly, there are solutions to poverty that are compatible with the Bible and capitalism that she ought to know about, if she had actually done any reading about it. The first thing that should have come into her mind is private charity. If the government has any role at all, it should be to provide tax credits for private charity. It is important for government not to crowd out the virtuous character of the people by taking over the job of helping neighbors. But even more than that, every Christian woman should be familiar with the horrors of socialized medicine in countries like Canada and the UK, and the alternative to socialized medicine – consumer-driven health care. If a woman is not well-read on consumer-driven health care policy, then she is at risk for being taken in by this socialist undermining of the family. Real Christian women choose policy based on economics, not based on their emotions and their ridiculous theology of God making his human pets happy regardless of what they believe about him. Our job as Christians is not primarily to make people have equal net worths regardless of their personal decisions. Our job is to make them know about God’s existence and character, and we can do that better with private charity – certainly better than any secular government can. Your money is your voice. Don’t give it to a SECULAR government that will turn around and enact taxpayer-funded abortion, taxpayer-funded IVF, taxpayer-funded day care, taxpayer-funded fatherlessness welfare, and so on.

And more

I’m going to stop now, but I could go on and on about how some Christian women neglect to study Christian apologetics or theology, but instead learn about trendy secular practices like yoga, vegetarianism, recycling, etc. Or how they think there is no Hell. Or how they think that the Bible was written by men and that they can just pick the verses they like. Or how they think that science is not worth studying to confirm the Bible. Or how they know nothing at all about how premarital sex and cohabitation decrease the stability of marriage. Or how they think that same-sex unions are no different than married couples when comparing stability, domestic violence, promiscuity, and so on. Or how they want to subsidize single motherhood by choice because fathers are not really important to children and can easily be replaced by taxpayer-funded welfare and taxpayer-funded IVF. Or how they think that single-payer payer health care is good, even though it means taxpayer-funded abortion, in practice. Or how they think that taxpayer-funded day care is good for children. Or how they think that public schools need to be funded with more family money, so that all children will be “equal”.

I could go on forever with examples of how woefully unprepared some single Christian women are for marriage. But I’m going to end by explaining what the underlying problem for all of these symptoms is, and then you can leave your comments.

Conclusion

Basically the underlying problem is this: when some Christian women say they want marriage, they actually don’t want marriage at all – not a marriage to a man who is going to take on the traditional male roles anyway. The reason why men work is so that they are the sole or primary breadwinners – so that they have the authority to make decisions and lead in the home. Men want to have children who are self-sufficient and morally upright, and who can have an influence for Christ and his Kingdom. And they know that although the compassion of their wives is useful in the early years of a child’s development, that moral responsibility and accountability are needed later on to change children into adults.

Men need to be providers SO THAT they can be respected as protectors, when they set out moral boundaries and push their children to know truth from lie, right from wrong, and practical from impractical. Men also need to be able to make arguments about theology and apologetics using evidence, and not to be overruled by emotions, intuitions, and even e-mails that are debunked on snopes.com (yes, one woman told me that Splenda was not safe – I sent her 100 peer-reviewed studies from the NCI web site and she responded with a CONSPIRACY E-MAIL that was debunked on snopes.com).

So the real problem is that some Christian women say they want marriage, but what they actually want is a Stepford husband who will perform none of the traditional roles of a man, which they find icky and mean. They want the money to be brought into the home and the wedding to be photographed and the babies to play with, but they don’t want the men to act in the traditional male role of protector, provider and moral/spiritual leader. It is very important for men to get this out there and in the clear during the courting process. And I also really recommend that men avoid sex before marriage, because sex makes you stop caring about male roles and serving God. If you want to serve God by executing a plan, then stay away from premarital sex. I have had to play defense against women trying to push me too far physically when I was not satisfied with them from a Christian point of view. Just say NO.

Please see this post for questions you can ask a woman to verify whether a woman is an authentic Christian. And the most important thing to do is to give her books to read and tasks to perform to see if she is willing to follow your lead. Science apologetics and fiscal conservativism are key. If the person is not talking about the Big Bang, the fine-tuning and biological information, you cannot even be sure she is a Christian – it could all just be emotions and youth. Some women I know just give the name “Christianity” to their feelings of happiness and goodness and pacifism and postmodernism and relativism and socialism and universalism. They do not actually KNOW that there is a Creator and Designer of the universe who raised Jesus from the dead independent of their feelings of happiness and goodness and pacifism and postmodernism and relativism and socialism and universalism. They just think that the world is a place where people feel good and only good things ever happen and they agree with everyone else’s religion so that more people will like them. The thing about Christian women that you need to fear most is this emotional happy-clappy intuition they have that the world is a happy, safe place and that people can do whatever they want and that God’s job, (and later government, as they drift into atheism), is to make everyone happy and prosperous. That is completely incompatible with a marriage designed to serve God.

Note: for those who think I am too critical of Christian women, Michele Bachmann has none of these flaws and I am backing her to be President. So there are Christian women who do know what they are doing, and I would like them to run for President and win. There is nothing in what I wrote that opposes smart, strong women being in control at the very top.

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Videos

Michael Licona debates Dale Martin on the divinity of Jesus

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Dr. Michael Licona and Dr. Dale Martin discuss the question “Did Jesus Believe He Was Divine?” The second evening of the 2012 Religion Soup discussion took place Oct 19, 2012 at Acadia University.

Michael R. Licona (PhD University of Pretoria): is Associate Professor in Theology at Houston Baptist University. He was interviewed by Lee Strobel in his book The Case for the Real Jesus and appeared in Strobel’s The Case for Christ. He is the author of numerous books including The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach.

Dale B. Martin (PhD Yale University): is the Woolsey Professor of Religious Studies at Yale University. He specializes in the New Testament and Christian Origins. His books include: Slavery as Salvation: The Metaphor of Slavery in Pauline Christianity; The Corinthian Body; Inventing Superstition; and Sex and the Single Savior: Gender and Sexuality in Biblical Interpretation.

The video is here:

Here is the MP3 file. (79 Mb)

I did not summarize this, but I watched Licona’s opening speech. It was awesome! Both speakers are easy to listen to.

Dale Martin is openly gay, so he’s not conservative on what the Bible teaches, for sure, and strikes me as one of these postmodern Jesus Seminar people who uses religious words, but is a naturalist who believes in a liberal Jesus as a nice idea, but doesn’t believe in the conservative historical Jesus at all. He seems to be more like these John Dominic Crossan / Marcus Borg types. I looked at some of his publications, and I think it’s a situation where the liberal sexual practices he advocates constrain his theological and historical views. Sort of like John Dominic Crossan’s atheism and pluralism and political liberalism constrain his historical work. Still though, smart guy and in a debate he addresses the evidence, so it’s good to hear another voice.

The one annoying thing about this is that you should skip ahead about 7.5 minutes to get to the start of the debate. I would like to see churches get involved in doing these sorts of events. We need to get used to discussing these things with evidence.

Videos

Video: William Lane Craig debates Peter Millican on the existence of God

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Which debate would I consider to be the best to show an intelligent skeptic?

This one, between William Lane Craig and Peter Millican.

The debate was held at the University of Birmingham, England in 2011. I would put this debate in the top 3 Craig debates ever, along with his debates against Austin Dacey and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong.

My summary of the Craig-Millican is below. This debate is really meant for advanced students, but if you read my post “What you need to know about the BVG Theorem” before watching the debate, it should help you to follow along.

Dr. Craig’s opening speech:

There are good reasons to believe that God exists.

There are no good reasons to believe that God does not exist.

A1) The origin of the universe

  1. The universe began to exist
  2. If the universe began to exist, then the universe has a transcendent cause.
  3. The universe has a transcendent cause.

The origin of the universe is confirmed by philosophical arguments and scientific evidence.

There cannot be an actual infinite number of past events, because mathematical operations like subtraction and division cannot be applied to actual infinities.

The Borde-Guth-Vilenkin (BGV) proof shows that every universe that expands must have a space-time boundary in the past. That means that no expanding universe, no matter what the model, cannot be eternal into the past.

Even speculative alternative cosmologies do not escape the need for a beginning.

The cause of the universe must be transcendent and supernatural. It must be uncaused, because there cannot be an infinite regress of causes. It must be eternal, because it created time. It must be non-physical, because it created space. There are only two possibilities for such a cause. It could be an abstract object or an agent. Abstract objects cannot cause effects. Therefore, the cause is an agent.

A2) The fine-tuning of the universe

  1. The fine-tuning of the universe is either due to law, chance or design.
  2. It is not due to law or chance.
  3. Therefore, it is due to design.

The progress of science has revealed that the Big Bang was fine-tuned to allow for the existence of intelligent life.

Type 1: Constants like the gravitational constant are finely-tuned, and are not dependent on the laws of physics.

Type 2: Quantities like the amount of entropy in the universe, are not dependent on the laws of physics.

The range of life-permitting values is incredibly small compared to the possible values of the constants and quantities. (Like having a lottery with a million black balls and one white ball, and you pick the white ball. Even though each individual ball has the same tiny chance of being picked, but the odds are overwhelming that the whichever ball you pick will be black, and not white).

Not only are the numbers not due to laws, but they are not due to chance either. It’s not just that the settings are unlikely, it’s that they are unlikely and they conform to an independent pattern – namely, the ability to support complex life.

A3) The moral argument

  1. If God does not exist, then objective moral values do not exist.
  2. Objective morality does exist.
  3. Therefore, God exists.

Objective moral values are values that exist independently of whether any humans believe them or not.

Michael Ruse, an atheist philosopher agrees that if God does not exist, then there is only a “herd morality” that is determined by biological evolution and social evolution. There no objective moral standard, just different customs and conventions that vary by time and place. Anyone who acts against the herd morality is merely being unfashionable and unconventional. On the atheistic view, there is nothing objective and binding about this evolved “herd morality”. However, people do experience objective moral values, and these cannot be grounded on atheism.

Furthermore, God must exist in order to argue that there is evil in the world. In order to be able to make a distinction between good and evil that is objective, there has to be a God to determine a standard of good and evil that is binding regardless of the varying customs and conventions of different people groups. Even when a person argues against God’s existence by pointing to the “evil” in the world, they must assume objective moral values, and a God who grounds those objective moral values.

A4) The resurrection of Jesus.

  1. There are certain minimal facts that are admitted by the majority of historians, across the ideological spectrum: the empty tomb, the appearances and the early belief in the resurrection.
  2. Naturalistic attempts to explain these minimal facts fail.
  3. The best explanation of these facts is that Jesus rose from the dead.

A5) Religious experience

People can know that God exists through experience. In the absence of defeaters for these experiences, these experiences constitute evidence for God’s existence.

Dr. Millican’s opening speech:

Dr. Craig has the burden of proof because he claims that God exists.

The Christian God hypothesis:

  1. An omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent God created the universe.
  2. This God cares about humans.
  3. This God has acted in history though the life of Jesus of Nazareth.

This is a factual claim, and we are discussing the evidence for whether these claims are true or false. We are not interested in religious practice, or the consolation of religious belief, nor any other religions.

A1) Religious pluralism and epistemology

Human beings are purpose-finding creatures – we are prone to prefer explanations that involve purpose.

Human beings are pattern-finding animals – we tend to find designs in states of affairs.

Human beings have an interest in maintaining religious hierarchies because of the power it gives them.

Religious beliefs are not determined by rational considerations, but are determined by geographic location.

The same non-scientific method of generating religious beliefs (purpose-finding, pattern-finding, geographic location, parental teaching, charismatic speakers, praise songs and worship, religious education, ancient holy books) is being used in several religions, and it leads to different, contradictory truth claims. So at least some of those conflicting claims are false. And if the method is generating some false claims, then it’s not a good method, and it undermines all the religions that use those methods.

A2) Absence of evidence is evidence of absence

There is no scientific evidence for God.

A3) Mental processes depend on physical systems

There is no scientific evidence for a disembodied intelligence.

Our universal human experience is that intelligence and mental operations require a physical brain.

The quality of our thinking depends on physical conditions, like being tired or on drugs.

But Christian theists believe that mental processes can exist independently of an underlying physical reality, unimpaired by the death of the physical body and the brain.

R.A1) The origin of the universe

1. There is no evidence that whatever begins to exist requires a cause. All the evidence we have of things beginning to exist are when something is created from rearrangements of other things that already existed.

The closest analog we have to something coming into being from nothing is quantum particles coming into being from nothing, and that causation is random.

There is no evidence that thoughts can bring about physical effects, and Bill is arguing for a mental cause to the origin of the universe.

Even if things that begin to exist IN the universe have causes, it doesn’t hold for the universe as a whole. Bill is committing the fallacy of composition.

Time begins with the universe, but our experience of causation is that it is a temporal process. So if there is no time “prior to” the universe’s beginning, then how can there be a cause to the universe?

It’s possible that there could be something outside our universe that is eternal.

It’s also possible that the Big Bang could be wrong, and this universe could oscillate eternally and not require a beginning.

2. There are cosmological theories that avoid the beginning of the universe by positing a prior period of contraction prior to the Big Bang.

The beginning of this universe depends on general relativity, and that theory breaks down at the level of quantum mechanics.

3. There is no evidence that minds can exist without an underlying physical system. So even if there is a cause of the universe, then it is neither an abstract object nor a mind. It would have to be something else, and not something we are familiar with – we are just not in a position to speculate of what it could be.

R.A3) The moral argument

Atheists do believe in a standard of morality that is not based on what groups of humans believe.

Utilitarians think there is a standard of moral values that is objective, because the measure of human happiness (for the greatest number) is objective, even if people are mistaken about what promotes that happiness.

Kantians have a rational process for determining which moral imperatives should be universalized.

Humeans have a system that is rooted in natural human sentiment.

Dr. Craig’s first rebuttal:

I do not have the only burden of proof. The topic is “Does God Exist?”. If Dr. Millican answers “no” then he has a burden of proof, otherwise we are left with agnosticism.

R.A1) Religious pluralism and epistemology

First, there is no single common method of adopting a religion.

Second, MY method this evening is logic and evidence and personal experience – which is the same as his method. So his comments about how people in different religions adopt their religion through parents, church, singing, etc. have no bearing on the arguments I will be making.

R.A2) Absence of evidence is evidence of absence

Absence of evidence is only evidence of absence if we can reasonably expect that there should be some evidence that is not present. He would have to show that there should be more evidence for God’s existence that the 5 arguments that I already presented – something that we should expect to see that we don’t see.

R.A3) Mental processes depend on physical systems

No response by Dr. Craig. (but see below)

A1) The origin of the universe

1. He says that there are speculative cosmologies like the multiverse that escape the need for a beginning, but that’s false, the BGV proof applies to them, and they do need a beginning.

He says that you can escape BGV by positing a contraction prior to the expansion. However Vilenkin says that any contraction phase is unstable and would introduce additional singularities that would hamper any later expansion phase.

He  says that we need a theory of quantum gravity in order to describe the early universe. But Vilenkin says that the BGV proof is independent of gravity as defined by general relativity.

He did not respond to the philosophical arguments for a beginning of the universe.

2. He says that we don’t have experience of things coming into being except from material causes. However, it would be even more difficult to explain the universe coming into being on atheism since you can’t appeal to a material cause nor to an efficient cause. Even Hume recognizes that things can’t pop into being without causes.

He talks about how in quantum physics virtual particles appear out of nothing. But that’s false, because the quantum vacuum in which virtual particles appear is not nothing, it is a sea of subatomic particles and energy. Quantum physics is not an exception to the idea that things that come into being require a cause.

He mentions the fallacy of composition. But I am not saying that everything in the universe has a cause, therefore the universe as a whole has a cause. I am saying that non-being has no capacity to bring something into being. Non-Being doesn’t even have the potential to bring something into being.

3. He says that there are no unembodied minds, so the cause of the universe can’t be an unembodied mind. But the argument concludes that there is a non-material cause, and it can’t be an abstract object, so it would have to be a mind.

In addition, we ourselves are unembodied minds.  This is because physical objects cannot have the properties that minds have, like the property of having feelings.

Material conceptions of mind don’t explain identity over time.

Material conceptions of mind don’t explain free will.

Material conceptions of mind don’t explain intentional states (thinking about something).

Material conceptions of mind don’t explain mental causation.

The best explanation for our own first person experience of the mental realm is a substance dualism. We are non-material minds, and we can cause effects in the physical world. And God does the same thing. He is a mind, and he causes physical effects.

A2) He gave no response.

A3) He says that there are atheistic theories of morality that don’t depend on the opinions of groups. But these theories all depend on the idea that human beings have instrinsic value – that they are the sorts of things to which moral considerations apply. Naturalism cannot ground this moral value – human beings are no more valuable any other animal.

Also, there are no objective moral obligations in naturalist systems of morality, because there is no one in authority to command them. Moral prescriptions require moral prescribers.

A4) He gave no response.

A5) He gave no response.

Dr. Millican’s first rebuttal:

R.A2) The fine-tuning argument

We have to be careful not to judge what counts as finely-tuned through our intuitions.

We have to be careful about reasoning for a sample size of this one observable universe.

We don’t really know about the full range of possibilities for these constants and quantities.

There might be other universes that we can’t observe that aren’t fine-tuned, and we just happen to be in the one that is fine-tuned.

The fine-tuning might be solved by future discoveries, like the inflationary cosmology removed some of the fine-tuning.

There might be a multiverse that we don’t have evidence for right now.

We need to be careful about using science to prove God because science might change in the future.

The universe is very big and mysterious.

This argument doesn’t prove that God is good. He could be evil = anti-God.

God created the universe inefficiently if his goal was to produce life.

God created the universe too big.

God created the universe too old.

God created too many galaxies and stars that are not hospitable to life.

If the universe were fine-tuned for life, then there should be more aliens.

If the universe were fine-tuned for life, then there are probably lots of alien civilizations. But then Jesus would have to appear to all of the aliens too.

R.A1) The origin of the universe

2. It’s not a big deal that you can get multiple solutions to equations involving subtraction of actual infinities. For example, the equation 0 x y = 0 has many solutions for y, but that doesn’t mean that multiplication doesn’t work in the real world.

A2) Absence of evidence is evidence of absence

I would expect that there would be more evidence than there is.

R.A1) The origin of the universe

2. The BVG proof might be overturned by future scientific discoveries. We have no reason to be confident in current physics.

I agree that the quantum vacuum is something and not nothing, but it’s similar to nothing.

We don’t have any reason to believe that things that come into being require causes – except for our universal experience that this is always the case.

3. As to the cause of the universe coming into being, you said that it could only be an abstract object or a mind, and it can’t be an abstract object because they don’t cause effects, so it must be a mind. But there are all sorts of things we’ve never thought of that it could be other than a mind.

I agree that mental properties are not physical properties and that epiphenomenalism is incorrect. Physical objects can have “algorithmic properties” as well as physical properties, it doesn’t mean that computers have minds.

Dr. Craig’s second rebuttal:

R.A2) Absence of evidence is evidence of absence

He expressed his personal opinion that there should be more evidence, but that’s not an argument.

God knows how people will respond to getting more evidence or less evidence and he has to be careful not to take away their free will to disbelieve by piling them up with coercive evidence. God’s goal is not just to convince people that he exists. God’s goal is to have people respond to him and pursue him.

A1) The origin of the universe

2. He said that multiple answers to equations are no problem. But the problem is that you can’t translate multiple answers into a real world context.

The problem is that you are subtracting an identical number from an identical number and getting contradictory results, and that cannot be translated into the real world, where subtraction always gives a definite single result.

He talks about how you can get multiple answers with multiplication by 0. But 0 is not a real quantity, it is just the absence of something, and that cannot translate into the real world, because it has no being.

He says that I am only using evidence from current physics. But that is the point – the evidence of current physics and cosmology supports the beginning of the universe.

3. He said that an umembodied mind can’t be the cause, but we are minds and we cause effects on our physical bodies.

In addition, the design argument supports the idea that the cause of the universe is intelligent.

A2) The fine-tuning of the universe

He says we should be cautious. Of course.

He says the probabilities can’t be assessed. But you can just take the current value and perturb it and see that the resulting universe loses its ability to support life, and you can test an entire range around the current value to see that that vast majority of values in the range don’t permit life.

He says that the current physics is not well-established, but there are so many examples of fine-tuning across so many different areas of science that it is not likely that all of them will be overturned, and the number of finely-tuned constants and quantities has been growing, not shrinking.

He says it doesn’t prove that God is good, and he’s right – that’s what the moral argument is for.

He says that God isn’t efficient enough, but efficiency is only important for those who have limited time and/or limited resources. But God has unlimited time and resources.

He says that the universe is too old, but the large age of the universe is a requirement to support intelligent life – (i.e. – you need third generation stars to provide a stable source of energy to planets, and those stars require that two generations of stars are born and die).

He said what about aliens, and theists are open to that, and God can certainly provide for the salvation of those beings, if they have fallen into sin.

Dr. Millican’s second rebuttal:

R.A1) The origin of the universe

3. Just because epiphenominalism is false, it doesn’t mean that substance dualism is true.

The majority of philosophers of mind do not accept substance dualism.

R.A3) The moral argument

The majority of philosophers are moral realists, but a minority of philosophers are theists. So that means that there must be some way of justifying morality on atheism, which I will not describe right now.

Atheists can express their opinion that humans have intrinsic moral value.

He grants that atheists can perceive moral values. But if atheists can perceive moral values, then why is God needed to enable that?

Atheists can express their opinion that humans are special. We can be rational, and that makes us special.

Atheists can express their opinion that it is good to care about other humans because they are of the same species.

R.A4) The resurrection of Jesus

We don’t have any reasons to believe i the supernatural.

The gospels are written late for the purposes of evangelism.

The gospels are not independent, e.g. Matthew and Luke depend on Q.

John is the latest gospel, and the Christology of John is the highest of all.

The four gospels agree because the early church rejected other (unnamed) gospels that didn’t agree.

Matthew 27 – the earthquake and the raised saints – is not recorded in any other contemporary non-Christian source.

Dr. Craig’s final rebuttal:

A3) The moral argument

He says that human beings are rational, and that gives them value. But atheists like Sam Harris prefer the flourishing of sentient life. He includes non-rational animals as having moral value. So without God, we see that the choice of who or what has moral value is arbitrary. And where would objective moral duties come from if there is no moral lawgiver?

The fact that most atheists accept objective moral values doesn’t mean that they can rationally ground those values on their atheistic worldview. You can’t provide a basis for moral values on atheism by counting the number of atheists who accept objective morality. It’s not surprising that atheists can perceive objective moral values IF they are living in auniverse created by God who grounds these objective moral values and duties that atheists perceive.

A4) The resurrection of Jesus

He cites Geza Vermes and Bart Ehrman as authorities on the historical Jesus, but both of them accept all three of the facts that I presented as minimal facts. Ehrman doesn’t accept the resurrection of Jesus because he presupposes naturalism. He rejects the resurrection on philosophical grounds, not historical grounds.

Dr. Millican’s final rebuttal:

R.A5) Religious experience

Religious experience is an unreliable way to test the claims of a religion, because lots of religions have them and they make contradictory truth claims. In the future, we may discover naturalistic ways of explaining religious experience.

R.A4) The resurrection of Jesus

Even if you can make a case for the resurrection based on these3  minimal facts, there are other stories in the New Testament like Matthew 27 that are quite weird and they undermine the 3 minimal facts that even Geza Vermes and Bart Ehrman accept.

R.A1) The origin of the universe

Bill hasn’t shown that there is any reason for thinking that things don’t come into being, uncaused, out of nothing.

A4) The problem of evil

Theists can’t explain what God’s specific morally sufficient reasons are for permitting the apparently gratuitous evil that we see.