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William Lane Craig debates Arif Ahmed: Does God Exist?

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I thought that I would summarize a debate that occurred at Cambridge University between Dr. William Lane Craig and Dr. Arif Ahmed. Everyone knows Dr. Craig, but I should say that Arif Ahmed is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Philosophy at Cambridge University.

The full MP3 is available here.

Below, I’ve summarized the two opening speeches from each debater.

Here is Dr. Craig’s opening speech: (1:24)

Craig’s case for God.

1) The origin of the universe (3:10)
– an eternal universe is not compatible with mathematics
– the impossibility of an actual infinite in nature (cites David Hilbert)
– an eternal universe is not compatible with science
– the big bang theory requires space and time to come into being out of nothing (cites PCW Davies)
– even radical alternative theories require an absolute beginning (cites Stephen Hawking)
– atheists must believe that the origin of space and time came from nothing and by nothing (cites Anthony Kenny)

Argument:
P1.1) Whatever begins to exist requires a cause
P1.2) The universe begin to exist
C1.3) Therefore, the universe requires a cause

What can the cause be:
– it must be eternal, because it caused time to exist
– it must be non-physical, because it caused space to begin to exist

Why must the cause of the universe be a person instead of a force?
Only minds can exist non-physically
– the only non-physical entities we know of are abstract objects and minds
– but abstract objects can’t cause physical effects
– therefore, the cause universe is a personal mind

Only minds can cause effects in time without antecedent conditions
– causally prior to the universe’s beginning, there were no antecedent conditions
– the only entity capable of acting freely, not based on antecedent conditions, are free agents
– therefore, the cause of the universe is a free agent

2) The fine-tuning of the initial conditions of the universe (9:15)
– the fine-tuning of the universe is supported by science
– the constants and quantities given in the big bang can take any of a range of values
– the actual values are within a extremely narrow range that supports the requirements of life
– he gives the example of the fine-tuning of the gravitational constant
– he gives the example of the fine-tuning of the weak force

Argument:
P2.1) The fine-tuning is either due to law, chance or design
P2.2) It is not due to law, because the numbers are independent of the law
P2.3) It cannot be due to chance, the life-permitting band is tiny compared to the possible values
C2.4) Therefore, the fine-tuning is due to design

3) Objective moral values are plausibly grounded in God (12:41)
– objective moral values are values that exist and are binding regardless of what individuals think
– objective moral values cannot be rationally grounded on an atheistic worldview (cites Michael Ruse)
– atheists can recognize moral values and act on them, but they cannot explain their origin and existence
– atheists can only appeal to personal or cultural preferences to say what is right and wrong
– the existence of objective moral is undeniable

Argument:
P3.1) If God does not exist, then objective moral values do not exist
P3.2) Objective moral values do exist
C3.3) Therefore, God exists

4) The resurrection of Jesus implies that God exists (16:04)
– if the resurrection of Jesus happened, then it would be a miracle, implying that God exists
– three facts are recognized by the majority of scholars
– the tomb was found empty after his death (cites Jacob Kramer)
– individuals and groups saw Jesus after his death (cites Gerd Ludemann)
– the belief in the resurrection of Jesus was totally unexpected (cites N.T. Wright)
– naturalistic explanations of these facts have been rejected by the consensus of scholars

Argument:
P4.1) The 3 minimal facts are established
P4.2) The hypothesis that God raised Jesus from the dead is the best explanation for these facts
P4.3) The hypothesis that God raised Jesus from the dead entails that God exists
C4.4) Therefore, God exists

5) God can be known directly by personal experience (20:02)
– God can be experienced just like you experience a relationship with human persons

Dr. Ahmed’s first opening speech: (22:10)

Rebuttal to Craig’s case for God.

0) Craig is wrong about faith and reason (25:20)
– Craig’s book Reasonable Faith, he makes a number of statements about faith and reason
– He writes that Christianity is not accountable to reason if reason goes against Christianity
– He writes that the truth of Christianity is knowable without rational arguments
– He writes that even if there are no reasons to believe, and many reasons to disbelieve, humans are still obligated to believe
– Question for Craig: is Christianity reasonable or isn’t it? Do reasons matter or don’t they?

1) Response to Craig’s first argument: the origin of the universe (28:27)
– what mathematicians say about the contradictory nature of subtraction and division for actual infinities is wrong
– what cosmologists and physicists say about the beginning of time is wrong, every event follows another one, there is no first event
– even if the universe is 15 billion years old, the act of Creation requires time and there was no time prior to the supposed beginning of the universe for God to act in
– the cause of the universe need not be a personal agent
– all minds are made of matter so a mind cannot be the cause of the universe, because all the people who pre-suppose materialism like me think that minds must be made of matter
– it is impossible for a person to act outside of time,because all the persons I know act in time
– why did God wait 15 billion years before creating humans and relating to them? – i wouldn’t have done it that way

2) Response to Craig’s second argument: the fine-tuning of the creation (32:38)
– where do these probabilities that Craig is using come from?

3) Response to Craig’s third argument: the moral argument (34:07)
– I have personal preferences about what counts as right and wrong, and they are superior to God’s preferences
– moral intuitions are not a good way of discovering objective moral values, so therefore objective moral values don’t exist

4) Response to Craig’s fourth argument: the resurrection (36:00)
– the number of eyewitnesses is not enough, because groups number of eyewitnesses can be fooled by illusions, as in David Copperfield illusions
– the Gospels contradict themselves, e.g. – the story of Matthew’s earthquake and walking dead isn’t in Mark – so that’s a contradiction, so the Gospels are not reliable sources for Craig’s 3 minimal facts

5) Response to Craig’s fourth argument: personal experience (37:30)
– there are many different religious experiences because there are many different religions
– if lots of people disagree about something, then no one can be right

Ahmed’s case against God.

1) Absence of evidence is evidence of absence (39:00)
– if there is are no reasons to believe in God, then this alters reality to make it true that he doesn’t exist

2) The inductive argument from evil (40:04)
– some evil is gratuitous – events cause people to suffer, and has no benefit that I can see, based on my limited knowledge in time and space and my personal preference of what counts as a benefit and what doesn’t
– God would not have allowed people to suffer, because God’s job is to make us feel happy in this life

3) Belief in God makes people evil (41:52)
– all genuinely religious people are very immoral, according to my personal preferences about what counts as right and wrong

Further study

In case you are wondering about his inductive argument from evil, please read this summary on the problems of evil and suffering, which is taken from my list of arguments for and against Christian theism.  Keep in my mind that I am a software engineer with two degrees in computer science… not philosophy!

Craig mentions a paper by the late William P. Alston of Syracuse University in his rebuttal to the inductive problem of evil. The paper lists six limitations on human cognitive capacities that make it difficult for humans to know that some instance of  apparently gratuitous evil really is gratuitious – that God has no morally sufficient reason for permitting this specific instance of evil.  Since Ahmed is making the claim that some evil is gratuitous, he bears the burden of proof.

Podcasts

A Christian and a postmodern relativist debate atheism and Christianity

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I listened to an episode of the the radio show “Unbelievable”, which is broadcast in the UK by Premier Christian radio.

Details:

“The Atheist’s Bible” (Duckworth & Co) has been a bestseller in the USA. It brings together a mass of quotes from atheists, agnostics and more. Its compiler Joan Konner speaks to Justin Brierley about why she put it together and her own thoughts on atheism. She interacts with Christian apologist Peter Williams whose own book “The Sceptic’s Guide to Atheism” (Paternoster) has just been published.

Joan and Peter debate whether atheism has some fundamental faith assumptions of its own, as Peter argues that atheistic naturalism is a self-defeating notion. Joan argues that Christianity is arrogant in its exclusive claims.

The MP3 file is here.

Some people in our society believe that moral rules and the purpose of life should be decided based on an individual’s feelings and intuitions, and not by any external state of affairs that can be reasoned about or proven. I call these people postmoderns. Postmoderns are opposed to organized religions as well, because they usually come with set ideas of what’s right and wrong. Some organized religions, like Christian theism, try to show that their system of morality and their ideas about meaning and purpose in life should be accepted because their system is true – i.e. – because Christian claims about the way the world is are true, and therefore humans are obligated to act based on Christian morality and Christian ideas about the purpose of life. Postmoderns are especially hostile to these truth-claiming religions, and they attack them in several ways.

What postmoderns believe about religion

1. Postmoderns think that truth claims made by a religion cannot be proven true or false using public, testable evidence, because then people in some religions that contradict history or science would feel bad. I.e. – they think that claims made by a religion, like “the physical universe came into being out of nothing” cannot be tested using scientific experiments and shown to be true or false, because if you tested it and found that the universe did begin to exist, then people like Mormons who think that the universe is eternal would feel bad. So the safest thing for a postmodern to do is to assert that religions are all neither true nor false, and cannot be tested. This is, of course, not the view of religion that many religious people have – we think that morality and purpose are true objectively because we are able to make a case that the religion that defines them is true.

2. Postmoderns try to argue that changing their actions to comply with an objective moral reality or an object purpose, even if it has been shown to be true using logic and evidence, is “coercive” and opposed to individual freedom. I.e. – they think that even if a religion like Christian theism is shown to be true using science and history, they shouldn’t have to care about it, they should just be able to do whatever makes them feel good without caring about what’s true. It’s not that they have considered the case for Christian theism, it’s that they decide, in advance of considering the evidence, that they will not let the real state of affairs in the universe determine what is right or wrong, or what they are supposed to do with their lives. They don’t want to let what can be demonstrated about reality “coerce” their search for happiness.

3. For postmodernists, the purpose of religion cannot be to hold true beliefs about the external world. If the purpose of a religion were to have true beliefs, then religions that were false would be excluded, and that would make people in those false religions feel bad. So, the purpose of religions must be to make people behave well, because then they are all equivalent, and no religion is excluded. It is irrelevant to a postmodern that Christians claim that their religion hinges on a historical event, (the resurrection), which either happened or didn’t. Postmodernists refuse to assess the case for or against a religion by studying whether a religion’s claims are true. The want to treat them all as equal independently of truth, because, they claim, all religions are equally good at making people behave nicely. Postmoderns also like this view because it means that they do not have to waste any time assessing whether religions are true or false.

4. Tolerance, to a postmodernist, means that everyone has to behave as if morality is not real and that life has no objective meaning. If you think that the universe is any one way, or that people ought to act any particular way, then you are “intolerant” according to a postmodernist – because you think that your view of morality and purpose is real, and that it applies to others. Postmodernists want everyone to just arbitrarily decides their likes and dislikes, as well as the goals that give them significance. Postmodernists disagree with those who think that morality and meaning are objective – that they are set up by a Designer, and not up for individual humans to decide however they like.

Responding to postmodernism

I think that many people who have this postmodern/subjectivist/relativist view of morality and purpose are people who have been raised in strict religious environments that were focused more on rituals and compliance, and less on debate and truth. It’s a lot easier to persuade a postmodernist when you 1) express a genuine interest in them as a person, and 2) take the time to try to show them why you think that your religion is true. Trying to ram moral rules and a purpose to life down someone’s throat without settling the truth question is stupid and counter-productive. Never talk about religion and theology unless you can link it to analytical philosophy, history or science. When talking to a postmodern, try to avoid sounding like a pastor. Don’t sound mystical. Don’t speak Christianese. Try to show them that evaluating a religion’s claims is no different than evaluating any other testable claim.

It’s especially important to argue that religion is about truth, because no one is going to be able to defend morality and purpose in the context of a religion unless they can argue that the major claims of that religion are true. These days, most people are postmodern, and they’ve been trained to be offended by anyone who tells them that what they are doing is wrong or that what they are believing is false. If you aren’t coming from a truth perspective, with all your arguments and facts in order, then it is tremendously difficult to withstand the sobs and victimhood of an aggrieved postmodern. Pointing out the selfish motives of postmodernists is not a bad idea either – show how they care about truth in technical areas, say, but have a selective dislike of truth in religious and moral areas.

Videos

What is the best debate on the resurrection of Jesus?

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This one is my favorite of all.

And the MP3 file is here. (H/T Apologetics 315)

Details:

Was Jesus Bodily Raised from the Dead?
William Lane Craig vs. Dr James Crossley

7.30pm, Tuesday 6th March, SHEFFIELD
University Student Union Auditorium, Western Bank,
S10 2TN

Dr. James Crossley is an expert in the gospel of Mark, the earliest gospel. Dr. William Lane Craig is the ablest defender of Christianity active today.

ECM is the reason

I am posting this for ECM, because he is a deist, but he’s been acting very strangely lately. He thinks “the divinity of Jesus can’t be proved because we can’t test it and only have fragmentary, historical, evidence for it”. He accepts that Jesus existed, but not that the bodily resurrection occurred as an event in history.

He also seems to subscribe to an empiricist epistemology. He writes:  “I’m totally content with not being able to know it all, and with knowing that our knowledge of such things will not be, and can never be, perfect.”

And, he adds “my skepticism of historicity as proof, extends to most anything that has such fragmentary records, so that it doesn’t seem like I’m inconsistent, because I’m not. For example, everything we know about alexander the great is based on writings by people 500 years after his death.”

And he has no problems with Christians or what we believe. He believes in all the arguments for a Creator/Designer from science, including intelligent design, and he thinks that practicing Christianity leads to an objectively good life, whereas other religions like Islam do not. He just doesn’t think that the evidence for the resurrection is sufficiently good. He requires more proof before he submits himself to the demands of a personal deity.

What would you guys say to ECM if you had a chance to say anything to him?