Encounter
(Vol.2, No. 1, 2000; Webpage issue
7)
Encounter
(Vol.2, No. 1, 2000; Webpage issue
7)The web journal of Godsearch, Inc. (journal formerly entitled Point/Counterpoint).
The skeptic and seeker's guide for investigating religions and world-views through debate, interview, analysis, and discussion.
(6-8 pm, weekdays, MST)
Godsearch call-in phone line. Call in response to anything we have said on this web page or call to share your point of view. Call with your thoughts, arguments, questions, reflection, concerns, and intellectual contributions. (Note: if the lines get too busy and you just want to vent, you will have to call us back or we may be able to call you back.) You can even call if you just want to hear what we have to say. We think biblical Christianity is true and we'll tell you why.
Or email us at enc11@earthlink.net
Evil Christians:
Tooley/Craig Debate
Part 1: Cosmological Argument (with discussion following)
Part 2: Is Theism or Naturalism a Simpler Explanation? Discussion with Swinburne and Tooley
Part 3: God's Hiddenness as Evidence Against God and the Problem of Hell
Part 4: Religious Experience Argument for Christianity
Part 5: The Default Argument for Atheism
Part 6: The Argument from Objective Moral Values
Part 7: The Argument from Minds
Part 8: The Fine-Tuning Argument
Part 9: The Argument from Evil
Part 10: The Argument for Jesus' Resurrection
Part 11: A Case Against Christianity
Not Looking for God:
Evil Christians
A Dialogue
A: I know of Christians who have done the most horrible evils. That proves that what you're saying can't be true.
B: So if Hitler said that 2+2=4, would that prove that 2+2 isn't 4? The truth of a claim may have nothing to do with how good or bad the person is who said it.
A: But at least these evil Christians prove that Christianity, and probably any religion, produces greater evil than we would have if there were no religions.
B: No, the fact that there are evil Christian just proves that people will go to any extant to avoid and distort what they do not want to see in the Bible.
Any political power structure will attract evil people; but it will also corrupt many good people, because power does corrupt. It shouldn't be thought strange to find evil people in every conceivable system that wields power, even religious ones that purportedly hold to high moral standards. But at the very least, leaders in such systems have to contradict the teachings of their system. To rationalize such contradictions can never be easy.
When one can do evil and not contradict the teachings of one's system, it is much easier for evil people and policies to be found in that system. So under Hitler's neopaganism it was much easier for him to justify his attempted genocide to his followers. It wasn't at all easy for him to try to do so to those who held an ethic based of Jesus' teachings. Those who have lived consistently with the New Testament teachings have produced the greatest good imaginable for a world like ours.
A: Atheism has never had a chance to prove itself. Get rid of religion and give us a chance and we will show you the kind of good we can produce for the world.
B: It has had its chance. Look at the people slaughtered by Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot. What "Christian" Inquisitions or Crusades have ever amassed numbers even close to any of these?
Secularism just doesn't have any reason to advocate a good ethic rather than a bad one. You're free to choose any kind you want. Even if someone were to choose Hitler's ethic, you couldn't tell them they're wrong. If we start with people and nothing else, why say that they have any worth or value such that they should have any rights whatsoever? What are we anyway? Nothing more than complicated machines, protoplasm produced by chance. Can protoplasm have rights?
(For more on this topic and related issues see Is the New Testament Anti-Semitic? and the following discussion. Also see our discussion with Paul Doland on evil Christians following his critique of Lee Strobel's book The Case for Faith.)
Cosmological Argument
Part 1 Tooley/Craig Debate
p2In November of 1994 Dr. Michael Tooley and Dr. William Lane Craig debated on the campus of the University of Colorado at Boulder. At the invitation of Campus Crusade for Christ, these scholars discussed the evidence for and against the existence of God, presenting some of the most current thinking on the issues. The speakers followed a diverse range of materials, from the most recent scientific findings and theories to the most ancient philosophical arguments to some of the most novel insights imaginable. Encounter has followed this debate portion with a discussion with Dr. Tooley.
The second portion of the debate is, in fact, only a discussion with Michael Tooley and Richard Swinburne with only initial comments from Dr. Craig. It is entitled, "Does Theism or Naturalism Hold the Simpler Explanation for the Universe?" and it directly follows this portion of the debate.
From the philosophy department at the University of Colorado, Dr. Tooley represented the atheist's point of view. Dr. Tooley received a Ph.D. in philosophy from Princeton University and is a noted author. He is a fellow at the Australian Academy of the Humanities, a member of the American Philosophical Association, and he has served on the faculties of numerous universities both here and abroad.
Representing the theist's position was Dr. William Craig. He has a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Birmingham, England, and a doctorate in theology from the University of Munich.
Dr. Tooley had requested an alteration in the length of his presentations by transferring time from his second to his first presentation, but Dr. Craig refused that request.
In this portion of the debate but not in the continuing portions we will present Craig and Tooley's introductory comments indicating some initial definitions and the form they plan their arguments will take. This is Dr. Craig's second argument for the existence of God.
Craig: I want to say how pleased I am to be debating Dr. Tooley. I'm sure that many of you will never hear a more powerful case for atheism than the case you will hear presented tonight. And I only hope I can do as good a job arguing the case for the existence of God.
Now in tonight's debate I'm going to defend two basic contentions:
I. there are no good reasons to think that atheism is true, and
II. there are good reasons to think that theism is true.
Let's look at the first major contention, that there are no good reasons to think that atheism is true. Atheist philosophers have tried for centuries to disprove the existence of God. But no one has been able to come up with a convincing argument. So rather than attack straw men at this point, I'm going to wait to hear Dr. Tooley's answer to the following question: What is the evidence that atheism is true?
Let's turn then to my second basic contention, that there are good reasons to think that theism is true.
Now I'm not claiming that I can prove that God exists with some kind of mathematical certainty. I'm just claiming that on balance the evidence is such that theism is more plausible than not. Let me present, therefore, six reasons why I think it's more plausible that God exists than that atheism is true. [The following is the second argument Craig presented.] . . .
God provides the best explanation of why the universe exists rather than nothing. Have you ever asked yourself why anything at all exists, where the universe came from? Typically, atheists have said that the universe is just eternal, and that's all. But surely this is unreasonable. Just think about it for a minute.
If the universe never had a beginning, then that means that the number of past events is infinite. But mathematicians recognize that the notion of an actually infinite number of things leads to self-contradictions unless you impose some wholly arbitrary rules to prevent this. For example, what is infinity minus infinity? Well, mathematically you get self-contradictory answers. This shows that infinity is just an idea in your mind, not something that exists in reality.
David Hilbert , perhaps the greatest mathematician in this century, states,
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.1
But that entails that since past events are not just ideas but are real, the number of past events must be finite. Therefore the series of past events cannot go back forever; rather the universe must have begun to exist.
This conclusion has been confirmed by remarkable discoveries in astronomy and astrophysics. The astrophysical evidence indicates that the universe began to exist in a great explosion called the Big Bang about fifteen billion years ago. Physical space and time were created in that event, as well as all the matter and energy in the universe.
Therefore, as the Cambridge astronomer Fred Hoyle points out, the Big Bang theory requires the creation of the universe from nothing. This is because as one goes back in time he reaches a point at which, in Hoyle's words, the universe was "shrunk down to nothing at all." 2
Thus what the Big Bang model requires is that the universe began to exist and was created out of nothing.
Now this tends to be very awkward for the atheist thinker. For as Anthony Kenny of Oxford University says, "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."3 But that's a pretty hard pill to swallow. Out of nothing, nothing comes. So where did the universe come from? Why does it exist instead of just nothing? There must have been a cause which brought the universe into being. And from the very nature of the case, this cause must be an uncaused, changeless, timeless, and immaterial being which created the universe.
Isn't it incredible that the Big Bang theory thus confirms what the Christian theist has always believed, that in the beginning, God created the universe? Now, I simply put it to you: Which do you think is more probable, that the Christian theist is right, or that the universe just popped into existence uncaused out of nothing? I, at least, don't have any problem assessing these probabilities.. . .
Tooleyp4: The question of the existence of God is a most important question and I'm very interested in presenting arguments bearing on this matter. The position I'm defending is that it's reasonable to believe that God does not exist.
I want to begin by briefly indicating how I'm going to understand the term 'God' in this next discussion. My view is that the question one should ask is, "What characteristics should an object possess in order to be an appropriate object of religious attitudes?"
I think that the answer to that is that a being to be characterizable as God in that sense should be a personal being, should be a being that is morally perfect, a being that is omnipotent, and a being that is omniscient. And I'm going to claim that it's unreasonable to believe in the existence of such a being.
There are four arguments that I'm going to offer, . . .
[The following begins Dr. Tooley's rebuttal.]
p7Let me begin . . . by addressing the question why anything at all exists. The first point to be made about this is that if you bring God into it, the question then is not why the universe exists but why God plus the universe exists. And it's not clear that one is any better off. Now Craig thinks that one is better off, because of a certain sort of philosophical argument called the Kalam version of the cosmological argument. And the crux of that argument, as he indicated, is the belief that there cannot be an actual infinity of things. He offered no arguments for that claim. He simply appealed to authority. I'm going to offer an argument for the claim that there can be an actual infinity of states of affairs.
The argument can be put in terms of the following two assumptions: Assume, first of all, a realist view of space. That is, assume that space is not just a matter of relationships between objects in space, and that you could have empty space, as Newton thought, and as is compatible with the general theory of relativity. Secondly, assume that space is continuous: rather than being made up of discrete parts, it's characterized by continuity. Then take p8a small stretch of space--take for example the stretch of space that coincides with this distance between my hands. Lets call this a meter.
The continuity of space means that space can be divided up into subregions. There's a subregion that ranges from this end to essentially the halfway point. Call that subregion number one. There's another subregion ranging from the halfway point to the three-quarter point. Call that subregion number two. If space is real, both of those regions are real. It is not a matter of any potentiality there; it's not a matter of dividing up, as one might slice a piece of butter into two pieces. The regions exist regardless of whether there's anyone around thinking about it, or anything. Similarly, you have another region ranging from the three-quarter point to the seven-eighth point, and so on. In general, in any finite stretch of space, if space is continuous and real, there will be an infinite number of actual subregions all of finite size. (We're not talking about the points here: we're talking of regions of finite length.) So that's one example of an actual infinity.
Another example is this. People believed for a long while that space was Euclidean. Indeed, some philosophers believed that they could prove that it had to be Euclidean. It was only with the development of non-Euclidean geometry that people came to believe that it was possible for space to be non-Euclidean. In any case, suppose that it is really possible for space to be Euclidean. That means that it has no boundaries. You can take a region that is a meter long, and that region will exist next to another region a meter long, and next to it there will be another region a meter long, and so on. And that's not a matter of potentialities: it's a matter of an actual infinity of spatial regions within Euclidean space. So Dr. Craig would have us believe, without offering any argument at all, that that's impossible.
So that's one argument--a version of the Kalam cosmological argument. Dr. Craig also appeals to the Big Bang. Here my remarks are based in part on a paper, "Should We Believe in the Big Bang," by Mark Zangari and Graeme Rhook read at the Philosophy of Science Association Conference about a month ago. For there are points in their paper which are very relevant to Dr. Craig's argument.
First, the Big Bang theory has recently been criticized by a number of physicists who contend that it suffers some critical anomalies, such as the flatness problem and the horizon problem.
Secondly, there is evidence against the Big Bang interpretation of redshift, since there is evidence that nearby objects have intrinsic red shifts independent of their velocity relative to the earth.
Thirdly, the Big Bang theory is supported in part by its prediction of background radiation. That's one of the main reasons it was adopted. But Zangari and Rhook point out in their article that the Big Bang theory predicts a background radiation of five degrees Kelvin, whereas the measured temperature is not five degrees but two point seven degrees Kelvin. If you take Hoyle's theory, which was published in 1946, it also predicted background radiation, and the method used there turns out to predict background radiation of a temperature of two point eight degrees Kelvin, almost exactly the observed temperature. So it's a theory that does a better job of explaining background radiation than the Big Bang theory.
Fourthly, in order to avoid serious anomalies--such as the flatness problem and the horizon problem--the Big Bang theory had to introduce an additional hypothesis called the inflation hypothesis. But that hypothesis has recently come under serious attack.
Fifthly, the Big Bang theory predicts an enormous amount of matter that hasn't yet been observed--something of the order of ninety-eight percent to ninety-nine percent--so-called dark matter. Physicists have been searching for this dark matter, and haven't succeeded in finding it.
Finally, there are serious inconsistencies between estimates of the ages of the stars and the age of the universe. I noticed that Dr. Craig mentioned that the universe is about fifteen billion years old. According to the New York Times, October 27th, the best estimate now is that it's between eight billion and twelve billion years old. And unfortunately, the best estimate of the age of certain stars is about sixteen billion years old. So the theory is hopelessly inconsistent at the present.
Many philosophers, including William Craig--perhaps especially William Craig--are extremely incautious in their use of physical theories. People like Richard Swinburne--who is Professor of Philosophy of the Christian Religion at Oxford University--are much more careful in this area, and Swinburne points out that this area of physics is in a highly unstable state. The first point about the Big Bang version of the argument is, thus, that one needs to be very careful about relying on scientific theories that are not well established.
The second main point is this--that even if the Big Bang theory is right and our present universe goes back to a singularity, it's just a complete fallacy to think that that means it had to have a non-physical cause. It's perfectly possible that our spatiotemporal world is embedded in a larger spatiotemporal world--a hyperspace--and that within that hyperspace there is a physical explanation--a material explanation--of the origins of the various subuniverses. Dr. Craig thinks he can rule that possibility out on the basis of the Kalam cosmological argument. But as we saw earlier, that depends on the completely unsound claim that there cannot be an actual infinity, the claim that I refuted earlier. So there is nothing in the Big Bang argument. . . .
Craig: p9God is the best explanation of why the universe exists rather than nothing. I was amazed here by Dr. Tooley's attack on the Big Bang model, which is the reigning paradigm in physical cosmology today, as well as some of his other points. Let me just review them.
First, he says that I don't answer the question why God exists. But the underlying premise of my argument is that whatever begins to exist has a cause. Since God doesn't begin to exist, He doesn't need a cause. That's not special pleading for God, since that's what the atheist has always said about the universe: it's eternal and uncaused; it doesn't need to have any explanation. But now that's become untenable in light of Big Bang cosmology as well as my philosophical argument.
Secondly, can an actual infinite exist? I did give an argument against this. I said that self-contradictions result if you have an actual infinite instantiated in reality--such as infinity minus infinity. I could give other specific examples if you would like. But he says, look, if you have a realist view of space, and space is continuous, then there is an actual infinite. Well, I deny the second assumption. I deny that space is continuous in the sense of being composed of an actually infinite number of points. That's just an assumption on his part. It's question begging. I would say that space as a whole or a geometrical line as a whole exists logically prior to any points that you might specify in it. And therefore, while space is continuous in the sense of being potentially infinitely divisible, it is not composed of an actual infinite number of points.
Similarly, he says space could be Euclidean. I don't see any reason to think that. I would deny that physical space could be Euclidean in the sense of being actually infinite because the notion of an actual infinite ultimately results in self-contradictions.
Then he begins to attack the Big Bang theory based on one article. And I think the arguments he gave are simply not enough to overthrow this paradigm. For example, the anomalous redshifts; these have been around for a long time, and they continue to be cleared up as better and better measurements are made of the objects that have these shifts.
He says that it predicts the temperature incorrectly. The temperature background for the microwave radiation is certainly within the margin of error that would normally be allowed for scientific theory prediction. I don't know of anybody who thinks that Hoyle's steady state model and the attempts to explain away the background radiation temperatures are superior to the expansion model.
He says it predicts huge amounts of dark matter which don't exist. That's just incorrect. He's talking about a particular type of inflationary model. But there are many, a wide family, of Big Bang models. In open universes there is no prediction of this kind of dark matter. In fact, I would say the universe is not dense enough to recontract.
He says the universe is dated with an age that is inconsistent with the age of the stars. That's true according to these recent measurements that were made. But what this calls into question is not the expansion of the universe itself, but our theory of galaxy formation, which is admittedly very much inchoate and very much in flux.
From what I understand, the notion of the expansion of the universe is going to be part of any future model of the universe that is developed, even if our theories of galaxy formation and so forth are changed. So unless he's willing to revise things like the expansion of the universe or the Hawking-Penrose singularity theorems, he's going to be positing an origin of the universe.
He says, "But there can be a hyperspace beyond space in which our universe originated." That is a postulate of pure faith which is no more scientific and no more rational than belief in the existence of God. And it is especially questionable in view of the fact that there is no independent reason to think that such a metaphysical hyperspace exists, whereas there are independent arguments for the existence of God.
Tooley: p10. . . Dr. Craig rebuked me for pressing the question, What about God plus the universe? What is the cause of that? The reason that he thoughtp11 that I had made a mistake in raising that issue is that, first, he puts forward a causal principle that says that whatever begins to exist has a cause, and secondly, God, of course, if he exists, always exists.
My view, however, is that it can be shown that Craig's formulation of a principle of causation is an artificially restricted causal principle. I've argued elsewhere that causation is a relation, not between changes, but between states of affairs. So if, for example, you take this table here, Dr. Craig would say that this table could not pop into existence without being caused to pop into existence. Fine, let's assume that's so. But what about the existence right now of a table that hasn't just now popped into existence? I maintain that it must have a cause just as much in that case of the table that pops into existence. What is the cause? The cause is simply the earlier existence of the table. It's a matter of the conservation laws of matter and energy. So, in short, there's a more general causal principle which one must accept, if one accepts the principle Craig accepts. It's that every state of affairs requires a cause. And once that causal principle is accepted, then it is clear that there is no advantage in adding God to the physical universe, and saying that God is timeless and changeless. The existence of God is still a state of affairs, and it requires a cause just as much as the existence of the physical universe. Thank you very much.
Q8:Q&A [To Dr. Tooley.] I noticed a trend in your arguments that you define God in human terms. You use terms like the 'mentality of God' and 'what God thinks' and so on. Would you clarify how you can describe God in human terms?
Tooley: Some people want a deity that cannot be described in human terms. A God who is changeless and timeless, who doesn't have any psychological mental states, who doesn't have consciousness, doesn't have beliefs, desires and so on. There are theologians like Paul Tillich who have contended that to believe in deities that can be described in human terms is just superstition. But it's my view that, on the contrary, if you conceive of a God who doesn't have mental states, moral attitudes--knowledge that certain things are right and certain things are wrong--who is not able to act in the world in various ways, then what you have done is to shift from a being that is of religious interest--very possibly of great religious interest--to a purely metaphysical construct. It's not at all clear to me that the existence of these metaphysical constructs that some theologians put forth in place of God really have any bearing on one's religious life. In short, I think that it is crucial that, in some sense, God possesses a mind. Not necessarily like my mind and your mind, but in the sense that there is knowledge, there are beliefs, there are preferences, there are attitudes which can be attributed to God, and that he is a being that is capable of acting.
In Craig's view, God created the universe, even though he was changeless and timeless. That seems to me to be an incoherent combination. The idea of a timeless being that is the cause of the universe is open to serious objections--partly because it seems to me the causal theory of time is correct, and it implies that, if two things are causally related, they both have to be in time.
To sum up, my view is that if you can't describe God in human terms, all that you're left with is a metaphysical and philosophical description that's interesting to metaphysicians and philosophers, but very uninteresting to people from a religious point of view.
Craig: Well, I certainly do think that God must be described in terms of being a mind possessed of intellect and will. I don't see any incoherence in saying that God without the universe, existing alone, exists timelessly, on some relational view of time. There are no events, and therefore there would be no time. With the creation of time God enters into time in order to sustain temporal relations with creatures. So I would say that God's creation of the universe is simultaneous with the origin of the universe in the Big Bang. And I don't see any incoherence in that particular point of view.
Discussion with Dr. Tooley
Encounter: Craig asked why the universe exists and said that God is the best explanation. You responded that this just makes the issue more unexplained because now we need an explanation for God and the universe. Craig's response to your statement is that a changeless being doesn't need a cause but that a changing universe does because it otherwise requires an actual infinity of time past, an actual infinite regress of causes; and an actual infinity, he says, cannot be. To this you argue that a changeless being needs a cause just as much as does anything else, and that there can be an actual infinity. But also you claim that a changeless being cannot begin causation. ("If two things are causally related, they both have to be in time.")
I don't want to add anything to your discussion with Craig about actual infinities. I think this has gone far enough for the readers and listeners to judge for themselves. But I do think that other approaches should be noted that could be used for the cosmological argument. I don't want to get into all of them but there is at least one that I find very persuasive.
An infinite regress of causes is very difficult to imagine. It's very counter-intuitive to think that every cause is an effect that has a prior cause which has a cause which has a cause . . . and so on, going back for ever and ever. Those who accept an infinite regress cannot point to one particular cause which is sufficient in itself to bring about a change or motion. It is always tied to some prior cause of motion. (I'd like to only talk about causes of motion or change or changing beings for the time being, just so we do not confuse the issues.) At first glance this seems to be a kind of eternal-putting-off-of-the-question. The question is, Where do you get something that is sufficient to cause the existence of an effect? Each cause has a prior cause so not one of the causes is sufficient in itself.
Richard Purtrill points out that this is like my asking my neighbor to borrow his lawn mower. Neighbor A says he doesn't have one but he'll ask his other neighbor, neighbor B. But B doesn't have one either so she asks her neighbor C. Well, C doesn't have one and neither does D but the asking continues. If we had an infinite number of neighbors and none of them have a lawn mower, then asking an infinite number of times won't help me; I'm not going to get a lawn mower. If not one of the members of an infinite regress of causes can give existence to an effect then we aren't going to get that effect. An infinite regress of causes is not sufficient to do the job.
This points to the need for an uncaused first cause. And this would have to be a changeless, motionless cause, otherwise it would in turn need a prior cause and we would be facing the same old problem we had thought we had gotten rid of.
Now you have claimed that a cause that is not in time, in the sense of being a changeless, motionless cause I presume, cannot be part of the causal chain. This response would answer the above argument but I do not see that you have given any defense for it. I would be interested in seeing what grounds you bring up to support your claim.
You also claim that a changeless being needs a cause. In some sense we can think that each prior existence of a changeless entity is a cause as you claim. We could enumerate prior states of this entity into arbitrarily determined time segment lengths. This is at least in some ways analogous to temporal causality. (By the way, if causality only applies to entities in time, how can you say that a changeless being needs a cause?) Anyway, it seems to me that we can easily imagine a changeless being as having always existed, at least if it's a simple enough entity. Whether we say this requires an infinite regress of causes or not isn't really a problem because such causation is very different than what we think of when we talk about an infinite regress of causes for changing beings. As far as normal temporal causality is concerned, a changeless being isn't really caused (even coming into existence is a change so it cannot come into existence if it is changeless). But my point is this: It is very difficult to imagine how a changing entity can result from an infinite regress of causes. But it is very easy to imagine a changeless being having always existed. In your way of speaking we could say the changeless being results from its prior states of existence and call these an infinite regress of causes. Now in this very unusual understanding of causation an infinite regress of causes is not at all difficult to accept.
A changeless conscious being can choose to cause temporal entities (and thus time) to come into being (if this changeless being has this creative power). It is difficult to imagine a changeless non-conscious being causing temporal existence to begin however. It cannot choose because it is not conscious and the only way we usually think of a nonconscious entity as being a cause is through temporal causation, that is, through prior causes. You see, we can think of a conscious changeless being as having always existed and timelessly chosen for time to begin. We can imagine a timeless choice. But we cannot think of how a changeless nonconscious being could cause time to begin. Unless it has change within itself, it's not going to bring about change. (Of course, simply because a conscious changeless being chooses does not mean that it is free. Its choice might be determined by its nature.)
Tooley: In response to Craig's claim that God is the best explanation for why the universe exists, I do not, as you indicate, say that "this just makes the issue more unexplained." (emphasis added). What I said was "if you bring God into it, the question then is not why the universe exists but why God plus the universe exists."
One comment about actual infinities. Benardete argues against actual infinities4 by pointing out paradoxes that occur if there could be actual infinities and I don't know of anyone who has answered his arguments. I don't know if Craig knows of these arguments but he does use similar ones.
Concerning causality, let me begin by clarifying some misunderstandings you seem to have of what I have said and perhaps some initial disagreements. First of all, to say that A is changeless is not to say that A is not in time. Electrons are changeless, but they are certainly in time. Secondly, I don't know what you mean by saying that a changeless, motionless entity can be divided into "arbitrarily determined time length segments." But if you are assuming here that time does not involve an intrinsic metric, then I think that assumption is untenable. Thirdly, I do not say that a changeless being cannot begin causation--which does seem to me possible, at least if one admits the possibility of probabilistic causation--but that a timeless being cannot stand in any causal relations. (My reason is the one I indicate: it seems to me a causal theory of time is correct, and such a theory entails that if C causes E, then C is earlier than E, and so both C and E are in time.)
Anything that enters into causal relation is automatically earlier than what it caused. If God created the physical universe then that creation act would be earlier than the creation that results.
Using a thought experiment, (in his paper "Time without Change") Sydney Shoemaker illustrated the point that time does not presuppose change. Imagine that for a year a third of the universe completely freezes up, metaphorically speaking. That is, it possesses no motion or change whatsoever. After a year it starts moving again and a second third of the universe freezes up. Then it begins moving and another third freezes up. We know a year passes for these freezes because we can measure it from the unfrozen part of the universe. This continues until at some point all of the universe freezes altogether and then it thaws in a year also.
Someone might object that if its totally motionless or changeless, what gets it going? But then we could also ask, if you have a being who is changeless from all of eternity, what makes it the case that at some point creation occurs? How does that give rise to states of affairs? The cruder theistic notion of a thinking, changing God makes more sense for causation.
Encounter: It's like the ancient Roman atomist, Lucretius, and his idea of parallel falling atoms. For all of eternity these atoms have been falling, he says, and then one happens to swerve. Well, one hits another which hits another and you get the changes that cause the universe to come into being. The big question is, Where do we get this first swerve? It's the same principle as this objection to Shoemaker: You can't get this change if it hasn't occurred for all of eternity.
Tooley: That's an excellent example. If it were an infinity of time in which there was no swerving, why is it swerving now? "If something is changeless, why would it cause something at one point rather than another? This is Shoemaker's problem. What makes the change begin?"
Concerning my claim that an unchanging state of affairs needs a cause, I would say that conservation laws are causal laws. One ladder leaning against another is a cause for each to remain upright even though there is no motion. Changeless states can be causes. If you have an unchanging God in time then its prior causes are its prior states. You have an infinite regress of causes of a boring sort. An earlier state causes a qualitatively indistinguishable later state.
Offhand, I can't think of any serious philosopher who has held that a different causal relation is involved when one has change from when one does not have change. A very widely accepted account of identity over time involves the idea of causal connections between the temporal parts of and enduring entity. So, there is nothing "unusual," as you say, in this understanding of causation.
Dunns Scotus and Aquinas before him argue for the need for a first mover in a manner like this: Suppose you have boxcars on a train that are all connected and moving. Maybe car 2 pushes car 1. No, 2 doesn't have the power to do so. Well maybe 3 pushes 2 which pushes 1. No, it doesn't have the power to do so either. In fact, an infinity of cars won't produce the needed motion. There has to be an engine to get it going.
Scotus and Aquinas are right if these are objects that tend to slow down and stop as they thought. Something that slows needs something else to keep it moving. In Aristotelian physics rest is the natural state. With Newton rest and motion came to be seen as equally natural states. You don't need an explanation as to why something is moving, it could be moving forever.
If we shift the argument to say that we don't need an explanation for motion but we do for acceleration (as Jacque Maritain does) we should recognize that objects at rest can cause acceleration. They can exert causal influence on each other by gravity or other forces.
Encounter: But these objects aren't really at rest. On a deeper atomic and subatomic level motion is occurring. Gravitons or other subatomic particles or quanta are being shot out. That's what is causing the attraction or repulsion.
Tooley: Now I don't really want to say that a changeless being needs a cause. I'm perfectly happy with the idea that there is something that is eternal and unchanging and in time. If there is such a thing, it doesn't need a cause just as something that is changing and eternal doesn't need a cause. I do want to insist that for an everlasting, changeless thing, its later stages are dependent on its earlier stages.
Suppose a conscious but changeless being creates the physical universe out of an act of will. You first have to face the Leibnizian question, Why did this 'willing' take place at this time rather than an earlier or later time? Is this just a random process?
Quantum mechanics is a world of uncaused changes. Why did the radioactive atom decay now rather than in five seconds? There's just no answer to that. It's not that we don't know the answer. Even God cannot answer that because it's all just a probabilistic process. A changeless nonconscious being could exist forever and then just bring about some random change.
One possible answer to this would focus on the issue of probability. If there is any probability that a quantum event would occur, then no matter how small that probability might be, it would be incredibly improbable that an infinity of time should pass before this event takes place.
Are things different on the theological front? Yes, there no probability process is involved. God at some point decides to create the world. It's just ultimately a matter of free choice and there's nothing more to be said about it.
A plausible metaphysic without God must be one in which change goes on forever. It doesn't have to be confined to this space-time. We can think of there being a hyperspace which contains space-time worlds. And that hyperspace had better not be an eternally unchanging being. [This follows from Tooley's earlier point that something cannot go on changelessly for an infinite amount of time and then bring about change.]
In your critique you seem to say that an eternal and constantly changing world is problematic and that there is good reason for accepting an uncaused cause. My intuition would go in a different direction. Arguments for an uncaused first cause don't work.
Encounter: You say that "anything that enters into causal relation is automatically earlier than what it caused." If this is what you mean by a cause needing to be in time, then I would agree. It does have to exist prior to the effect it causes. (Now technically we have no cause until an effect is produced, so cause and effect occur at the same time. But we can say that the entity that will produce the cause exists prior to the effect it causes.) In this sense the unmoved mover is in time. In Shoemaker's frozen universe, even if there isn't anything else in the universe, it's still prior to some future events that occur when the universe is unfrozen and moving again. Yet we might, in some sense, say that it is outside of time or 'timeless' since there is no change to measure.
You say that we don't need a cause for motion. Something could be moving forever. I think I was wrong in saying that this particular cosmological argument needs a cause of motion; it needs a cause for change. We can imagine Lucretius' atoms falling forever. It's the first swerve that we cannot imagine. (I do think that the idea of an uncaused particle or entity that has eternally been moving is more difficult to imagine. That there could be such a thing is at least more counterintuitive. The existence of an eternally motionless being is much more intuitive. Also, there are other rational problems with Lucretius' model.)
You mentioned that after Newton the argument has been shifted (by Maritain, specifically) to claim that there is a need for a first cause for acceleration rather than motion. Perhaps that is an example of what I'm talking about here when I say that there is a need for an explanation of change. Acceleration is the changing increase in the speed of a moving object.
I don't see that motionless objects accelerating each other, by gravitation say, answers Maritain's argument. They cannot produce change. [Objects that are truly at rest, that is changeless and motionless, cannot cause any other change or motion.]
We need to begin with an eternally unchanging state such as falling atoms or motionless objects. If we have two motionless objects that have been sitting next to each other forever (or falling next to each other forever) what makes them suddenly attract each other? We have Shoemaker's unanswered question of how change can begin.
The next possibility is an eternally changing universe. You say that there can be something eternal and changing that doesn't need a cause. But if that is so then we have an infinite regress of causes [since each change needs a cause]. But you admit that you would agree with Purtrill's lawnmower argument (which, I think, is essentially the same as the box car argument you had mentioned). Wouldn't that mean that you admit that there cannot be an infinite regress of causes of change in the universe and thus that there cannot be an eternal but constantly changing universe?
I agree with you that an uncaused first cause does not work and for the same reasons you had presented. It's Shoemaker's problem of the frozen universe. What caused it to begin to move again if it--that is, everything--was truly motionless? It's Lucretius' falling atoms. If they were falling forever, what caused one to swerve?
So an uncaused first cause does not work--with one exception. It is the uncaused first cause which is not conscious that doesn't work. A conscious being, a person, who always has and had the same awareness and choice has always and changelessly chosen that change would occur (thus time would begin) and diversity would come into being. The near absolute monism of God was once all there was. By God's choice there is now a world of multiplicity and change. And it is not the case that God could have chosen this sooner but did not or that God could have chosen it at a later time but did not. If God was truly changeless then God has always and forever made that same choice. The choice was actualized when time (change) began.
Concerning the claim from quantum mechanics that uncaused events can occur, you have pointed out that this is subject to very serious criticism from the probability considerations. I wonder if another way of stating this criticism is to point out that if a definite probability can be assigned to an event's occurrence, then it cannot be uncaused. If something is truly uncaused or purely random, how can it be any more or less likely to occur?
In summary, the world cannot have always been a world of change. Purtrill's argument shows us that. Likewise a (nonconscious) uncaused first cause--an eternally motionless entity suddenly and for no reason beginning to move or cause motion--is not acceptable (as Shoemaker's critics show us). The only way we can get a changing universe going is with a conscious uncaused cause, a person.
Tooley: Concerning causes of motion or change you say, "Each cause has a prior cause so not one of the causes is sufficient in itself." By cause in this context I mean "causally sufficient condition." So for any instantaneous state of affairs where there is an infinite regress of causes, so far from it being true that there is no causally sufficient condition, there are an infinite number of causally sufficient conditions of the existence of that state of affairs.
Consider now the statement you made. It now becomes: "Each causally sufficient condition has a prior causally sufficient condition, so not one of the causally sufficient conditions is causally sufficient in itself." This is incoherent.
I think what may be going on here is that you may be failing to distinguish between what are sometimes referred to as (1) accidentally ordered causal series and (2) essentially ordered causal series. (My own preferred terminology for the distinction in question is (1) sustaining causes versus (2) originating causes.) What is true, I think--and here I agree with Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus, among others, is that, while an infinite regress of originating causes is logically possible, an infinite regress of sustaining causes is not. (Where Aquinas and Scotus went wrong was in not recognizing that the causes that we see in the world are all, at bottom, originating cause. Because of this, the causal argument doesn't even get started.)
Purtrill fails to make precisely the distinction just mentioned. Chains of sustaining causes, if such existed, would need a first cause whose causal activity was not sustained by anything else. Originating causes are precisely causes whose causal efficacy does not depend on anything earlier.
Encounter: A cause of change is, in one sense, sufficient to bring about an effect once that cause comes into being. But if a cause cannot exist without prior causes bringing it into being, then that cause is not alone sufficient to bring about its effect. So in this sense it is quite appropriate to say that any cause that has prior causes is not sufficient to produce an effect.
I see that you do not accept Purtrill's argument after all, at least as it speaks to what you call originating causes, causes that need not continue to exist for their effect to continue to exist. The causal efficacy of such causes does depend on earlier causes. You cannot get an originating cause A to produce an effect B if there were no prior causes for A.
Tooley: I don't see any problem in saying that a changing entity can result from an infinite regress of causes. Consider, for example, the Newtonian world. The laws of Newtonian physics entail that what one has is a constantly changing arrangement of particles, going back without limit into the past. (Perhaps what's happening here is that you are thinking again in terms of sustaining causes, or an essentially ordered causal series, rather than in terms of originating causes, or, an accidentally ordered causal series.)
Encounter: No, I'm speaking of originating causes. I question whether Newtonian physics entails such an infinite past of change. If it does, it is clearly wrong because of the reasons Purtrill has given.
Tooley: Concerning your claim that a changeless conscious being can choose to cause temporal entities to come into being: To choose involves coming to have an intention that one did not previously have. It involves acquiring an intention that one did not previously have. So if a conscious being has made a choice at some point, then it has an intention immediately after it has chosen that it did not have immediately before it made a choice. So any being that makes a choice must ipso facto be in different states at different times, and so it cannot be changeless. In short, the idea of a changeless conscious being that makes choices is incoherent.
While one can avoid this problem by speaking instead of an unchanging being's having the desire, or eternally willing, to create a certain type of universe, once it has been conceded that there are causal relations between slices of God, God is in time, and so the question arises: Create when? The eternal desire that God had would have, therefore, to be a desire to create a physical universe at one time rather than another.
Changeless does not entail timeless in any sense of 'timeless.' To think that it does is simply to repeat an error of Aristotle's.
Encounter: To choose need not involve coming to have an intention one did not have before. We can conceive of a choice as being timeless in the sense of its having always been made. Intention and choice can be simultaneous.
If there is no change, there clearly is a sense in which there is no time. How can there be time if there is nothing to be measured? But without repeating why I think there is a sense in which God always has been in time, it still does not make sense to ask when God created--at least in relation to the infinity of time past.
If the big bang originated this universe and there were no universes before it, then we might think that in the eternality of God there was a time, say a trillion and one years ago, in which God's existence was the cause of his existence a trillion years ago. At least that's how I think you might think of it. This would not affect God's eternal desire to create because God would not yet be aware of time. God would simply have a changeless desire and choice to create as he has always had. And because God was not aware of time, no choice could be made to create at one time rather than another.
Time occurred "back then" only in the sense that we project it onto the past. In a more realistic sense there was no time. There was no change and so God was not aware of any difference between a trillion years ago and 17 billion years ago just before the universe began. God timelessly chose to create and thus time or change began.
Tooley: It is logically possible for there to be temporal worlds that do not involve an intrinsic metric, but it is a mistake to think that the absence of change implies the absence of quantitative temporal relations. Thus, in Shoemaker's argument, he shows that even though there was no change at all in the universe as a whole in a certain stretch of time, there would be good reason for saying that that frozen state existed for exactly one year.
Encounter: If the universe is frozen such that nothing moves or changes, then no time passes at all. Shoemaker has no grounds to even claim that the hypothetical universe was frozen for a year.
Tooley: You said that an eternally moving uncaused particle is less intuitively likely than and eternally motionless being. Given that something like an electron is much simpler than a mind--and much more so than an omniscient mind--your intuitions here do not seem at all plausible.
Encounter: I was comparing an uncaused motionless object with an uncaused moving object. I didn't say anything about a mind. So of two objects of the same simple makeup (say electrons if we assume electrons are simple) a motionless one is more intuitively likely to be self existent.
But even if you have a perfectly simple object, can you claim it to be simpler than a perfectly simple, monistic mind?
Tooley: [How is it that you don't see that Maritain is answered by the example of objects accelerating each other?] The gravitational force that one object exerts on another typically causes the other to accelerate, and so one has a change in the arrangement of the objects. How then can it be true that there is no change produced?!
Why do you say we need to begin with an eternally unchanging state to explain acceleration? A Newtonian world appears to be perfectly coherent, and given most arrangements of matter, what follows for such a world is that change will be taking place at every time, past, present, and future. All of these changes, moreover, will have causes. Indeed, for any time, there will be, for the state of the universe at that time, a causally sufficient condition--namely, the complete state of the Newtonian universe at any earlier time.
Encounter: The Newtonian world you envision just doesn't work. No prior state of that universe is sufficient in itself to produce the next since each state is dependent on its previous one. Because the totality of all previous states cannot produce the present effect, the present form of the universe cannot occur. This was Purtrill's argument.
Now objects might have just been around forever; we can imagine that. So I can't argue that material objects in themselves need a cause. Likewise we might be able to imagine objects in motion--always being and having been in motion like the eternally falling atoms. So neither can I argue that motion in itself needs a cause. So far we've been able to avoid Purtrill's argument because we don't yet need causality. Now to get to your objection, instead of talking about change very generally as I have done already, lets just talk about one special form of change, namely acceleration. Can we imagine one object with nothing else influencing it, moving forever and constantly being accelerated? No. We should see that acceleration, because it needs changes in speed, needs causes to produce those changes. Eternal acceleration cannot be an eternally unchanging state. Once you need changes you need causation and once you need causation you need either an infinite regress of causes or an eventual uncaused first cause. And since an infinite regress of causes doesn't work. . .
(For further discussion concerning the claim that God makes sense of the origin of the universe: The response to Doland's critique of Lee Strobel's The Case for Faith in Issue 9.)
Encounter: Dr. Tooley, you made the following statement but then provided an answer to it at least in regards to using quantum mechanics as an example of uncaused events that could give a beginning to the universe (the implication of your last sentence here). I commented on how I agreed with your answer but more should be said about quantum mechanics as involving uncaused events and how such a notion relates to science. You stated:
Quantum mechanics is a world of uncaused changes. Why did the radioactive atom decay now rather than in five seconds? There's just no answer to that. It's not that we don't know the answer. Even God cannot answer that because it's all just a probabilistic process. A changeless nonconscious being could exist forever and then just bring about some random change.
Quantum physicists who say that an event or change can occur uncaused are simply mistaken in their assessment of the evidence. All of our experience assumes causality and no one has yet given us any reason to believe that subatomic particles are an exception. Just because one school of thought speaks of uncaused events doesn't mean that all quantum physicists do or that there is any good evidence for the claim.
I would want to claim that any notion of an event occurring uncaused or of something popping into existence out of nothing must be considered unacceptable to any truly scientific thought.
If you've ever seen Sidney Harris's cartoons in American Scientist magazine you may remember one in which one scientist is explaining an equation to another on a blackboard. In the middle of the equation is the statement, "And then a miracle occurs." The second scientist says something like, "I have a problem with just one point in your argument." Harris is touching on the scientific mindset that cannot allow that an event can be truly without explanation. That some scientists and scientifically minded philosophers are now actually saying that an event can occur uncaused or that something can come into existence uncaused out of absolutely nothing shows that they don't see how very unscientific their thinking is. They are like the first scientist in the cartoon who has to resort to a "miracle" to explain a phenomenon.
Now scientists do not usually understand the theistic concept of miracles. As in Harris' cartoon, to them it just means an unexplainable or uncaused event. To say that "then a miracle happened" means to them that something they are trying to explain has no explanation or cause.
This is not the theistic concept of a miracle. It might, however, fit some definitions of magic. A theistic miracle is an event caused by God. It need not contradict any law of nature. Imagine a High School science teacher who has demonstrated a chemistry experiment for her classes for the last ten years. Every time the outcome of the experiment is the same. Imagine that this year she adds a new chemical to one of the test tube. Even though the experiment had uniformly produced the same effect every time previously, we do not think of it as scientifically unacceptable to believe that the outcome of the experiment would be different this time. Likewise we shouldn't think it unacceptable to believe that there could be a person outside of our normal three spatial dimensions (or even our space-time dimensional universe) who could act into our world. (To imagine this the reader might need to read Edwin Abbott's classic Flatland which talked about how a three-dimensional person might produce effects--insert objects or actions--into a two-dimensional world.)
Science should seek to explain all that it can and to trace causes to their origin so far as it is able. Simply because science cannot do so in certain areas or after a certain point in a given investigation does not mean it has failed. The considered event is not without explanation, it is simply beyond our capacity to investigate any further. Science cannot investigate dimensions beyond the four we know of though scientists are fairly sure that those other dimensions are there.
Another example might be quantum physics. Scientists feel that they cannot investigate causes any further in some areas here and thus they must often resort to probability statements only. They believe that some things are simply in principle uninvestigatable to us. Likewise a theistic miracle would be uninvestigatable to scientists after a certain point. That does not mean that quantum mechanics or (claimed) miracles should not be investigated to whatever degree they can be. It does not mean that a miracle does not have its own evidential value.
At any rate, my point is that the theistic view of miracles need be no different in principle than the action of the High School chemistry teacher. What is very different and what is scientifically unacceptable is to say that an event can occur uncaused or that an absolute nothingness can of itself produce something.
[Dr, Tooley has not responded to these final comments.]
Lee Strobel interviewed William Lane Craig about the relationship of science and religious claims in his book, The Case for Faith. Specifically they discussed the claim that miracles contradict science. Paul Doland critiqued Craig's claims in a web article, "The Case against Faith." A response to Doland in defence of miracles can be found in issue 9 of the Encounter.
References
1 David Hilbert, "On the Infinite," in Philosophy of Mathematics, ed. with an Introduction by Paul Benacerraf and Hillary Putnam (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1964) 139, 141.
2 Fred Hoyle, Astronomy and Cosmology (San Francisco: W.H. Freeman, 1975) 658.
3 The Five Ways: St. Thomas Aquinas' Proofs of God's Existence (New York: Schocken Books, 1969) 66.
4 José Benardete, Infinity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964).
The entire debate, without questions from the audience or additional discussion, is available on the Internet at http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billcraig/docs/craig-tooley0.html. It may be purchased for $2 plus shipping from Integrated Resources, 4307 E. 3rd St., Bloomington, In 47401; 1-800-729-4351 (US only), 1-812-339-8388 (others). The debate is entitled A Classic Debate on the Existence of God. To locate a passage in the unabridged debate, the numbers or letters that appear in the above text as footnotes and are preceded with a 'p' indicate the page number in the unabridged text.
The Simplicity Argument
Discussion with Michael Tooley and Richard Swinburne:
Does Theism or Naturalism Hold the Simpler Explanation for the Universe?
In our last section we presented and discussed a portion of a debate between Dr. Michael Tooley and Dr. William Lane Craig (see the speakers' credentials in the first portion of the debate), focusing on the cosmological argument for God's existence. Dr. Tooley now discusses with Encounter an issue only alluded to in passing in that debate, the question of whether the theist or the atheist can provide the simpler explanation for the existence of the universe.
In a more recent debate involving Dr. Craig, Dr. Peter Atkins from Oxford more than once claimed that the theist's view can never be simpler than a naturalistic view.1 No matter how unlikely the possibility of the occurrence of a universe that could allow for life, let alone one that would produce life, he says, it is still more likely that it would occur even by chance than that there could exist for eternity the enormously complex, omnipotent entity called God. And it is more likely that there are even an infinite number of other universes if that is necessary for the occurrence of even one that would produce life such as ours has produced. In that debate, I believe Dr. Atkins admitted that the increase in the number of such universes increased their unlikelihood.
Richard Dawkins, another Oxford professor and scientist, presented the simplicity argument as just about his only explicit argument against God in his book 2 (I don't remember any other explicit argument there against God's existence though he obviously had much to say about why he didn't think God was necessary for life.) He says, "A deity capable of engineering all the organized complexity in the world . . . must already have been vastly complex in the first place." 3 If we need a God to explain the extreme complexity of biological life, don't we need an explanation for this God who must be at least equally complex?
Adding to our previous conversation is Oxford philosophy professor Richard Swinburne. He has done extensive work on the question of intrinsic probability and God's simplicity. For this reason we are pleased to include comments by Dr. Swinburne in closing our discussion. Swinburne is a Fellow of the British Academy. From 1985 until 2002 he was Nolloch Professor of Philosophy of the Christian Religion at the University of Oxford.
We will begin the discussion with some comments by Craig and Tooley as they were given during their debate.
Craig:p2 God provides the best explanation of why the universe exists rather than nothing. . . .
As Anthony Kenny of Oxford University says, "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."4 But that's a pretty hard pill to swallow. Out of nothing, nothing comes. So where did the universe come from? Why does it exist instead of just nothing? There must have been a cause which brought the universe into being. And from the very nature of the case, this cause must be an uncaused, changeless, timeless, and immaterial being which created the universe.
Isn't it incredible that the Big Bang theory thus confirms what the Christian theist has always believed, that in the beginning, God created the universe? Now, I simply put it to you: Which do you think is more probable, that the Christian theist is right, or that the universe just popped into existence uncaused out of nothing? I, at least, don't have any problem assessing these probabilities. . . .
Tooley:p7 The first point to be made about this is that if you bring God into it, the question then is not why the universe exists but why God plus the universe exists. And it's not clear that one is any better off. . . .
Q&AIn Craig's view, God created the universe, even though he was changeless and timeless. That seems to me to be an incoherent combination. The idea of a timeless being that is the cause of the universe is open to serious objections--partly because it seems to me the causal theory of time is correct, and it implies that, if two things are causally related, they both have to be in time. . . .
Craig: I don't see any incoherence in saying that God without the universe, existing alone, exists timelessly, on some relational view of time. There are no events, and therefore there would be no time. With the creation of time God enters into time in order to sustain temporal relations with creatures. So I would say that God's creation of the universe is simultaneous with the origin of the universe in the Big Bang. And I don't see any incoherence in that particular point of view.
Discussion with Dr. Tooley
Encounter: Craig asked why the universe exists and said that God is the best explanation. You responded that this just makes the issue more unexplained because now we need an explanation for God and the universe. But if God is a simpler entity than the universe, then a universe that comes from God would be a simpler explanation of the universe. The universe would not be compared to God plus the universe but only to God.
Tooley: Suppose you go back to the big bang as your starting point. Whatever complexity you have in terms of the amount of matter and the arrangement of matter, if you explain that in terms of God, you must have a plan in the mind of God to create this universe with its distribution of matter and energy. And there will have to be certain laws that govern the development of that universe. However complex the universe was at the point when it was created, the plan must have been precisely as complex. The plan, however, was in the mind of God, and so the mind of God must have been at least as complex as the universe that was created. The complexity of the universe gets transferred back to the mind of God. So it is impossible for God to be simpler than the universe he created.
There might be an argument that ultimately it all flows from something very simple. It might be like a mathematical system where you begin with some simple axioms and you get derivations and then a complex set of theorems. But even then you are going to go through complexity. But here one would need to sketch why the world is one way rather than another. You need to fill out the story. What is the explanation in terms of the mind of God? It need not be in great detail but it needs to be at least sketched or there would be no grounds to conclude that it is a simpler story that you are left with.
Also, notice that in response to Craig's claim that God is the best explanation for why the universe exists, I do not, as you indicate, say that "this just makes the issue more unexplained," (emphasis added). What I said was "if you bring God into it, the question then is not why the universe exists but why God plus the universe exists."
Encounter: Well, I can think of a couple of possible scenarios that might answer your claim. One is to say[, first of all,] that there could exist (and could always have existed) a pure, changeless person of infinite worth. By a person I mean a consciousness or awareness; perhaps I should say a center of consciousness. There might be more to personhood than this but there cannot be less.
Changelessly (and in this sense, timelessly) this person chose to create beings in time, to become more than one in person, and to cause at least one facet of this person's being to enter time when time (change) begins. (Note: obviously, the second timeless choice above would very likely be omitted in non-Christian theistic variations of this scenario.)
To say that God chooses this timelessly is to say that God has always chosen it. God timelessly chooses to cause a diverse and changing creation to begin. Now that time or change has begun, God changes (or rather, a facet of God's being changes) from a being who knows only the pure oneness of God and the knowledge of the timeless decision to cause changing creation to originate, to a being who has knowledge of the complicated, changing universe. There is a progression in time from one to the other, but this is a change that occurs by God's choice.
God's nature is extremely simple from eternity past. It consists of an eternal awareness of oneself and an eternal choice to become more than one in person and to cause changing creation (and thus measurable time) to come into being. It also consists of the ability to carry out this choice and the ability to have all of the knowledge of that which it will choose to come into being. The full specific detailed knowledge of how the universe will work and what it will consist of is not present at first. This knowledge comes as it is chosen to be known and thus it occurs in time.
So we begin with a very simple entity and from this the material universe (and possibly other kinds of universes) originate. I believe that theists usually hold that belief in God is a simpler, more intuitively obvious explanation for the existence of the universe because of some kind of thinking like this. It seems much simpler than the idea of a complex, changing universe having always existed on its own.
Note: I might mention one minor variation of the above scenario. It might also be that the change in God's nature occurs in a unique time dimension God alone inhabits and has timelessly caused to come into being. Thus, in the Christian view, to someone who would directly perceive God and God's eternal nature (say in a Beatific Vision) it would appear that God has always been three in nature though in fact there is a temporal priority of the absolute oneness of God. Also, God's knowledge of the complexity of the universe would appear to have always been present while in fact it hasn't. This would be the case unless the Beatific Vision could allow one to perceive even into God's own unique temporal dimension.
Tooley: First of all, it is an error to connect "measurable time" with the presence of change. As Newton quite clearly recognized, laws presuppose quantitative time that has an intrinsic metric. (I have put the expression in scare-quotes because it suggests a lurking verificationism. What one should really be speaking of here are quantitative temporal relations.)
Secondly, how can you claim that God could possibly be simpler than any physical universe that he creates: the desire to create a universe of a certain specific sort involves precisely the same complexity as the universe that is to be created?
You seem to be saying that God does not know what he is creating. Does he not know what types of material particles will be present? Does he not know how he is going to arrange them initially? Does he not know what laws of nature the universe will involve? Is it really credible to answer "yes" to any of these questions? But if it is not, then how is his knowledge limited with regard to what he is creating, at the time that he creates it?
Encounter: Possibly God planned the intricate order and makeup of the universe when he entered his own unique time dimension. Possibly it began when God entered our created time dimension (which could have been before singularity--the source of the big bang--was created). In either model, God's goal has always been known. The plan to achieve that goal was only chosen and known once God entered some type of temporal dimension before he created. So it is, indeed, credible to answer yes to your question. God's knowledge is not limited at the time he creates but it was limited to the pure simplicity of his being before he entered his temporal dimension. And still, we can say that before there was anything other than God that God knew all that there was.
I think this model answers the non-theist's objection that questions the intrinsic probability of God over the universe. It is much more intrinsically plausible for us to believe that there could be a God like this than that our enormously complex universe could exist on its own. And I think this view is adequate theologically. But I don't know that I am completely satisfied with this explanation. I wonder if some, like the Thomists who also see the need for God's pure simplicity, might not be able to give a better explanation.
Tooley: For the reason I had mentioned earlier, whatever complexity is present in the universe that God initially creates must be matched by complexity that is at least as great in the relevant divine intention. And so the mind of God must be at least as complex as the physical universe that is created.
Encounter: No, God's mind can have a very simple content at one time, and then, by God's choice, be developed in extremely great complexity. Only when God creates does his mind have to be so complex.
Tooley: This is certainly a possibility. But unless you can show--as you have not--that the simpler, earlier state of God causally gives rise to the later state whose complexity is as great as that of the universe that God then creates, you have not shown that the simpler state explains the latter, more complex state of God, and thus the physical universe that God creates. So you have done nothing to show that the hypothesis that God created the physical universe provides a simpler explanation.
Moreover, it is not merely that there is something that you haven't done here. For what has not been done is to show how the latter complexity in the mind of God could be explained as arising from the earlier, postulated, greater simplicity. But how could that be explained? If this world had the look of the best of all possible worlds, perhaps one could, following Leibniz, say that initially God wanted to create the best of all possible worlds, and he then came to the belief that he should create a world just like ours, since it is the best of all possible worlds. But, especially given the problem of evil, the prospects for that explanation do not look at all bright, and it is not easy to see what other alternative one might attempt to advance.
In short, you have not shown how the later complex state of the mind of God, at the time of creation, is to be explained in terms of an earlier simpler state, nor is there any reason for thinking that this is something that one could do. Consequently, you have not given any reason for thinking that the hypothesis that God created the physical universe provides one with a simpler explanation of what exists.
Encounter: Now I don't see how your comments about Leibniz' "best of all possible worlds" really has anything to do with the problem of the production of plurality from monism or simplicity. Was God's original intention of creating the best of all possible worlds somehow simpler than his later intention to create this particular world? If you are suggesting that it is, then you haven't mentioned any problem with a movement from simplicity to complexity in this context. You have merely claimed that our present world doesn't fit the original intention and definition. Suppose our present world were to fit your definition of the best of all possible worlds. Would you then admit that there is no problem in producing such a world from a simple intention in the mind of God? So in order to avoid chasing after a red herring, let's get back to the question at hand. (Evil is a significant problem for theism in the view of many philosophers and we will deal with this later, so it is only in the context of the question of simplicity and complexity that it appears to me to be a red herring.)
But to your claim: You say that I need to show "that the simpler . . . state . . . causally gives rise to the later" complex state in order to show that it explains it.
Now I cannot show that my scenario actually occurs by any empirical or inferential evidence any more than you can in the same way show that your naturalistic scenario occurs. If you claim that your view has probability support, then I would claim that mine has no less and that it also has the probability advantage of being a far simpler explanation.
The second and third paragraph (in your last response) suggest that what you really mean to ask is not that but how the simple can give rise to the complex in the mind of God. Only thus, you appear to say, can the simple explain the complex in this situation. At last I think we are getting to your real contention. And I admit that I cannot show how this occurs. But I don't think I should need to.
If you think that theism fails to offer a simpler explanation of the universe because we cannot say how God can change his simple and changeless thought to complex, changing thought, then I should assume you also find the claim that God can create also fails. No one can say how God created. Perhaps we can claim it to be ex nihilo or ex deo, or whatever, but we cannot say anything more than that. Is it thus an inadequate explanation for the existence of the universe? And if naturalism fails to give a sufficiently detailed explanation of how the universe came into being, is it inadequate to the same degree?
I admit that I cannot say how God's choice to cause diversity and change came into being. But isn't it an equally great mystery, one that might be in principle inexplicable, to understand how any human choice can be made that can bring about a physical result. How does my conscious choice to raise my hand result in that act? I hope the reader is aware that I'm not talking about the interaction of brain, nerves, muscle, etc., but of the prior contact between mind and brain, of consciousness affecting the physical world. We cannot explain such mind/body events in any greater detail and yet we can say that such events are to this degree "explained." So likewise, God's choice of diversity and change can be called their explanation. Can you show that in either case this is an inadequate explanation or that it should not be called an explanation?
That is just the first facet of the problem. The second is the creation of change and diversity from that choice. You find difficulty seeing how a changeless choice can be made that will result in change in time. I do not and, more importantly, I don't think you can show any incoherence in the concept. Change began as it was chosen. It has always been chosen and thus it occurred.
Before closing let me touch on another problem that might keep some from seeing the absolute oneness of God. How can Theism begin with an absolute monism if God has at least being, knowledge, goodness, and power? How can something be absolutely one and yet have these different attributes?
We can conceive that something could be intrinsically valuable. If it is conscious, it could be aware of itself and its value. Complete self-knowledge by this pure and simple being is also not hard to imagine. It values itself as completely as it deserves. Nothing else exists and so nothing else can be valued. It possesses complete value and thus, in theological terms, infinite value. When entities that possess value come into being from God and exist distinctly from God, then they would possess their value only from their relationship with God.
Power is the ability to act, to cause something to be or to be changed. How this self-knowing being is able to do anything, we do not know. But then we do not know how any mind can cause effects in the world. But if this being has the power to do something, it is not difficult to imagine that it can do anything that can be done, anything not limited by logic. It has, in the beginning at least, only the simple "substance" of itself to work with.
So we begin with a purely simple consciousness--something conscious of itself--that has value and the power to bring about change within itself to any degree not limited by logic and a being which values itself to the degree it deserves. But we also begin with a changeless choice within this being, the choice for diversity to begin. This being has always changelessly existed. There has thus eternally been this eternal seed of change or diversity within the absolute one. "Seed" might not be a good word because it suggests potentiality. If there is no time, no change, then the choice has always been made. It is time that came into being. The created universe came from God; God values that to which God gave value and has power over just as God has power over the original substance of God's self.
With this enumeration of abilities and attributes it might seem difficult to imagine that this is the one who is truly, absolutely one. But notice that if being and consciousness might be seen as one and the same, or if pure consciousness possess in itself the ability to act, might not the other attributes also be diverse only because of our inability to see their oneness? Many scientists believe the four forces of nature are truly one. Because the unity of two or three have been demonstrated, they feel sure that the others are also one even though we do not yet see how.
With all of the previous considerations there might still be some difficulties at least imagining a changeless, eternal, conscious, powerful being who is absolutely one and who is the source of the diverse existence we experience. But even if I cannot demonstrate unquestionably the absolute monism of the primordial God, how much more unlikely is the uncaused existence of a vastly complex, ever changing universe? Surely theism is a much simpler and more intrinsically likely explanation of the universe. In the notion of God's primordial changelessness particularly we see the intuitive advantage of theism over naturalism. Changelessness is certainly more intrinsically likely than change.
In summary, I have claimed that God's purely monistic mind has always and changelessly existed and that God has thus always chosen change and diversity to come into being. The choice to create occurred as part of that changeless choice or it occurred as diversity came into being in the mind of God. I have claimed that this is a simpler explanation than the naturalistic claim that our complex, constantly changing universe has always existed. I have not argued that this theistic model is actually true (other than by showing it to be the simpler explanation) but rather that as a true possibility it is better than any naturalistic model. And I have claimed that it is not necessary to have any further explanation concerning how God chose change and diversity to come into being. In response, you have claimed that it is necessary to have some explanation as to how God could have caused such change and diversity if we are to call this an explanation.
Swinburne: Tooley seems to assume that if some entity causes a complex state of affairs, then in virtue of so doing that entity must itself be complex (since it would have to have built into it all the complexity of the resulting state of affairs). This assumption must be mistaken, since it would rule out all science. For example, scientists at the beginning of the nineteenth century were aware of very many different chemical substances which interacted in very many different ways with other substances to produce third substances. This was thought to be explained in due course by supposing that there were only a hundred or so different elements, with different valences, whose combination and recombination led to all the observable interactions of substances which had previously been known. But if the very fact that the data were complicated entailed that any cause of them would have just as much complexity, this hypothesis would not have been accepted. The grounds for accepting it was that it was (compared to the data) relatively simple and the complexity of the data followed from the simplicity of the hypothesis. The simplicity of the hypothesis cannot therefore be a matter of whether it has complicated consequences. It must be something intrinsic to it. You will find my latest account of this matter on pages 86 and following of my recent book Epistemic Justification.5 But fewness of entities, and those entities having simple degrees of properties are clearly facets involved in the simplicity of the hypothesis. God is just one entity, and he is supposed to have zero limits to his power, knowledge, and freedom, from which follow all his other properties (including perfect goodness)—I have argued elsewhere. God is supposed to be a personal being, and in virtue of his perfect freedom, can bring about any of very many good states. There is no cause of his choosing this good state rather than that good state—he just chooses; we have experience of such choice in our own human case (where, it seems to us, we are choosing between alternative goods by a "mental toss-up"). God's choice is of course limited to good states, and it therefore does need to be shown that the world as a whole is such a good state (anything bad in it being logically necessary for a greater good).
So God does not have to have built into him the whole divine plan to start with (as you say); all that is necessary is that he has the divine properties, and various alternative choices may result from that nature (nothing, I emphasize, determining him to make this choice rather than that one).
For more on the simplicity argument, see our debate with Paul Doland on God as the simpler explanation of the origin and complexity of the universe.
References
1 What is the Evidence For/Against the Existence of God, The Faith and Science Lecture Forum, audio or videocassette (P.O. Box 2901, Decatur, Ga. 30031-2901, April 3, 1998).
2 The Blind Watchmaker (New York: W.W Norton and Co., 1986).
3 Watchmaker, 316.
4 Anthony Kenny, The Five Ways: St. Thomas Aquinas' Proofs of God's Existence (New York: Schocken Books, 1969) 66.
5 Richard Swinburne, Epistemic Justification (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001).
The Hiddenness of God and the Problem of Hell
Part 3, Tooley/Craig Debate
Continuing a debate between Dr. Michael Tooley and Dr. William Lane Craig, (see the speakers' credentials in the first portion of the debate), we will here present and discuss Dr. Tooley's argument against Theism following the apparent "hiddenness" of God. Because Dr. Tooley's argument merged so much with his comments concerning the problem of hell, of eternal punishment, we will here present both arguments together.
This is part three of the debate. This part presents and follows Dr. Tooley's third argument against the existence of God.
Tooley:p5 My third argument is the argument from the apparent hiddenness of God, and it turns upon two claims. The first is that if it's true that God exists then that is a very important truth. The second is that if God exists, his existence is by no means as evident as it could be. So if God exists, he is to some extent hiding himself.
Now the first claim probably requires little in the way of defense since most people, I think, will readily grant that, if God exists, then that is a very important piece of information. And it is easy to see why people should take that view. For if God is defined as above, and God exists, then in the end justice will be done and good will triumph. Moreover if God exists then there's a real possibility that death is not the end of the individual's existence. And given that the existence of God has these other consequences, it seems only reasonable to hold that if God exists, that fact is a very important one.
What about the second claim--that is, the claim that if God exists, his existence is not as evident as it could be? Even most people who believe in the existence of God will grant that God's existence is not exactly obvious, since, if it were, people would be no more inclined to doubt or reject the claim that God exists than they would be to question the existence of tables and chairs, trees and the flowers, people and animals.
But while granting this, believers attempt to respond that there's nothing surprising about this. After all, God is immaterial; he has a mind and no body. This response, however, does not meet the point. The relevant claim was not that God's existence could be as evident as that of physical things. It was rather that the existence of God--or, at least, the existence of an omnipotent and omniscient person--could be more evident, indeed, much more evident than it presently is. And this latter claim can, I believe, be given very strong support, for it's easy to imagine events that could occur, and which are such that if they did occur, would be sufficient to convince any rational person of the existence of God--or at least of the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient person, if not a morally perfect one.
For example, we can imagine either a voice in the sky speaking different languages over different countries, or else a telepathic communication for all who request it, where the content of the communication involves information that is far in advance of what we now possess. It might involve, for example, solutions to problems that mathematicians have been working on unsuccessfully for centuries.
You could also imagine impressive displays of great power. A voice from the sky announces that the earth will disappear in exactly five minutes and then reappear on the other side of the solar system. This occurrence then takes place. If this sort of scenario were appropriately fleshed out, surely it would be true both that one would have excellent reason for believing that there is a being with unlimited knowledge and unlimited power, and that one would thereby have better evidence for the existence of God than one presently possesses.
The argument can now be put very briefly as follows. It is agreed that if it is true that God exists, this is a very important truth. It has been shown that the world could be such that the existence of God would be much more evident than it presently is. So if God exists, he is to some extent hiding his reality from us, and, thereby, is depriving many people of firm knowledge of a very important truth.
The crucial question is, "What explanation could be offered for this fact?" Various answers have been proposed--such as the idea that it is somehow crucial for there to be epistemic, or cognitive distance between ourselves and God. I believe that it can be argued that none of those answers is satisfactory. If that's right, then if God does in fact exist, his hiddenness is an extremely puzzling fact. In contrast, if God does not exist, there is of course no problem why the existence of God is not as evident as it might be.
The conclusion, accordingly, is that one should accept the belief that God does not exist, since that is the hypothesis that provides the best explanation of the fact that God's existence is much less evident than it could be. . . .
Craig: p6What about the apparent hiddenness of God? He argues that it is deeply puzzling that God is hidden. Well, here I would simply agree with Pascal, the French philosopher, who said that God has given evidence which is sufficiently clear for those with an open mind and open heart, but sufficiently vague so as not to compel those whose hearts are closed.1 I think that those who are seeking for God, who are open to God, will find the evidence satisfactory. In fact the New Testament says that God's existence is evident to all persons through the created order around us and by the moral law that we sense in our hearts (Romans 19-20; 2.14-15). Moreover, the New Testament says that God hasn't simply left us to work out by evidence whether He exists. His Spirit also speaks to the heart of every person drawing us to Him (John 16.8-11). That was my sixth point. If we respond to His drawing, I think that we can come to know God in a personal way and have that experience of Him immediately. So this apparent hiddenness, I think, is just God's not being coercive.
Tooley: p10Let me now indicate why I believe that Dr. Craig has not satisfactorily responded to the . . . argument that I gave. . . . His response was the one that I had expected from him, although it was also one that I was disappointed to hear--namely, that involved in Pascal's view that "there is enough light for those who wish to see and enough darkness for those who wish to remain in darkness." For what Craig is saying is that if people of good will really make an effort to arrive at a knowledge of God, then they will do so. I suggest that that claim is simply, empirically false. I suggest that there are people who would like to be convinced that God exists, at least if 'God' is defined in the way I defined it--rather than in the way that Craig might define it, where the deity is the creator of heaven and hell, and where hell is a place where many--indeed the majority of people--are going to end up spending eternity. But if one focuses upon the concept of God as I defined it, then it seems to me that anyone who is thinking clearly would hope that there is such a God. And it also seems to me that I know many people who would like to have that belief, but, having looked at the evidence--including the arguments that I have put forward--are convinced that that belief, unfortunately, is one that is not likely to be true. So I think that Craig's response to my third argument was very unsatisfactory.
Q6:Q&A [To Dr. Tooley.] For theists the existence of supernatural phenomena is enough to prove God's existence. It seems to me that atheism is an excessively skeptical viewpoint. What would God have to do to prove his existence beyond a shadow of a doubt to an atheist?
Tooley: It's easy to describe something very spectacular and in my presentation I mentioned the possibility that we could hear voices from the sky in every language over every country. Suppose the voice were to say, "Yes, Andrew Wiles has, at last, proved Fermat's last theorem--he got it wrong the first time but he's got it right this time. But let me tell you the proof that Fermat had in mind--which was a much shorter, and more elegant proof." And the voice rattles off this proof. And you can imagine that being done for a number of unsolved problems. However, someone might respond, "Well, perhaps you know a great deal, but what about power?" The voice might then say, "How would you like me to transfer the earth from this side of the solar system to the other side of the solar system?" You then look through your telescope and you find that your situation in the solar system is very different than it was. I think that things much less impressive than that could be evidence for the existence of an omnipotent and omniscient person. But it seems to me that if you had events of that sort, any atheist that I know would conclude that there was an omniscient and omnipotent being.
Now there is still the problem of evil. But even here it might be possible to imagine some sort of dialogue that was at least helpful. You might say, "This world doesn't look like such a great place--with cancer in it, for example. If I had a cure for cancer, I'd try to get cancer out of the world. If you're omniscient, you must know the cure for cancer. Why don't you get cancer out of the world?" If the voice responded with some sort of plausible story, then perhaps it might be reasonable to believe that the being in question was not only omniscient and omnipotent but also morally perfect. In any case, at the very least there could be evidence that would make the existence of God much more evident than it presently is.
Craig: I think that the detail in those kind of conditions shows how vacuous this argument from the hiddenness of God is. I mean if God would have to do those sorts of things for every individual person in order to convince him of His existence, I think you can see just how irrational it would be to expect God to have to do that. That would be a world that would be so massively irregular, so bizarre. The argument based on God's hiddenness just looses all force. God has given sufficient evidence for those who want to believe, but it's not going to be coercive evidence. If you don't want to believe, it's not going to coerce you. But you're certainly not going to get voices from heaven and things of that sort in order to compel you to believe in God.
Q9: [To Dr. Craig.] In your rebuttal to the hiddenness of God you stated that humankind must seek out God because God is not coercive. But everyone, atheist and theist alike, knows that if you don't find God and accept him into your heart you won't go to heaven and thus you will go to hell. Is that not coercion? The same question applies to happiness as being connected to acceptance of God. It seems to imply that we must seek and believe or else.
Craig: I don't think it is coercive because obviously there are a lot of folks in this room, including Dr. Tooley, who don't feel coerced. So it's clear that people are not coerced, I think. They have the freedom to reject God, to reject His grace, and I believe that God's will and desire is that no one be separated from Him forever. In one sense, God doesn't send anyone to hell. I believe that people separate themselves from God by rejecting His love, His grace. And so in a sense they create their own destiny. God will not force Himself upon anybody. There is ample evidence for those who want to believe. His Spirit speaks to our hearts; He draws us to Himself. And I think in the end of the day no one rejects God out of their life because of lack of evidence or arguments. They ultimately reject God because they prefer themselves and to be without Him, basically; to separate themselves from Him.
Dr. Tooley said that people seek for God, but they don't find him. But it was only a God such as was created in his own image, a God who was not a holy God, who would never send anyone to hell. Well, again, if you only seek a God who fits your description of what you want to find, then you may not find God. But if there is a God who loves us and has sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to redeem us from our evil, who offers us forgiveness and moral cleansing, then when we reject His grace we reject His forgiveness. Then there is no one else to pay the penalty for the moral wrong and evil that we have done. God has no choice but to give us the punishment that we deserve. So we separate ourselves from Him forever. And I don't think of that as being anything that's unjust, if we've chosen it ourselves.
Tooley: William Craig has constantly asserted that people who do not know that God exists are people who do not earnestly seek to find out whether God exists. I think that this is an incredible claim. I would suggest that, if we did an empirical study, we would find lots of people who are earnest seekers, and who would genuinely like to come to know whether God exists, and who do so in good will, but who conclude, reluctantly, that there isn't good evidence for the existence of God. So to put it very plainly and simply: Craig's claim is empirically false.
I would also say that Craig's contention seems to betray a certain inhumanity--because Craig is suggesting that those who don't believe really deserve whatever they get. And what they are going to get in Dr. Craig's view is very dramatic indeed: it's eternal torment in hell. And if it is said, in response, that each person chooses hell, then one of the problems is that hell is eternal. It's not that people can sort of try hell out and then get a second chance. For one primary objection to the doctrine of hell is precisely this: once the door is shut, it's shut for eternity. And as a number of philosophers like Santayana have argued, this is really a very unsatisfactory conception.
Note: the following discussion is presented in a basically chronological order. However, some statements have been repositioned to be followed more directly by their appropriate responses and continued discussion. E1 is Encounter's first statement, T1 is Tooley's first statement or response, etc.
Discussion with Dr. Tooley
The Problem with Hell.
Can Hell be Just?
The Problem of Eternal Decisions.
E1: At this point you and Dr. Craig seemed to be stalled over the issue of hell. Craig says the seeker may not find God if one seeks a God who is not just. You, in essence, respond that a God who created an eternal hell doesn't deserve to be searched after. I wonder if we can get over this impasse by just talking about justice instead of hell. I usually find that when the objection of hell comes up the real objection is not that God should not punish evil, but that this--eternal torment--is simply not just. So on the possibility that there is an afterlife, do you object to the idea of God justly giving us what we deserve for any evil we've done?
T1: Philosophers have advanced a number of objections to the Christian doctrine of Hell, as found in the New Testament, in passages that represent themselves as containing sayings of Jesus. Here, I think, are the most important objections:
(1) It has been objected that no person, in a life of finite length, can possibly inflict harms upon others that make that person deserving of eternal torment.
(2) There are clear passage in the New Testament that indicate that the majority of the human race will wind up in Hell. For example, Matthew 7.13-14 has Jesus saying: "Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it." Here the objection is that even if, contrary to the first objection, there are some human beings who should suffer eternal punishment, this is so in the case of most human beings.
(3) The New Testament attributes to Jesus the view that certain beliefs are necessary in order to be saved. For example, Mark 16.15-16 has Jesus saying: "Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature. He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned." Here the objection is that, if there is an afterlife, how one fares in that afterlife should depend only on how morally one has behaved throughout one's life, and not upon what beliefs one accepts or rejects.
(4) Another objection to Hell is that, as the American philosopher Santayana argued, the ideal immortality would be one where, in the afterlife, there were continuing opportunities for moral and emotional growth.
(5) Finally, many philosophers have objected to Hell on the grounds that it involves the idea of retributive punishment, which they hold to be unjustified, on the grounds that punishment is justified only if its function is either reform, or deterrence.
You ask me, in effect, whether I would agree with the last of these objections. The answer is that, contrary to most contemporary philosophers, I am not convinced that a retributive conception of punishment is indefensible. The issue seems to me a difficult one. But my acceptance of the idea of retributive punishment is clearly not a way around what you call an impasse, since Craig embraces an orthodox conception of Hell, which I believe to be morally completely unacceptable in view of objections (1) to (4), set out above.
E3: You say that one of the problems with the claim that people choose hell is that it is eternal; you can't try it for a while and then leave. Now I'm not sure the New Testament says hell is eternal, but if it is, I don't see how its eternality is a problem in the way you say. We often in this life choose for ourselves something that will be permanent. When one commits suicide, for instance, that's a permanent, unalterable decision. Someone might feel very certain that if they take a certain drug just one more time, they will not be able to ever again stop from doing so. I suspect that some psychological addictions are like that: one reaches a point at which there is no more freedom to chose otherwise. Putting aside for the moment the issue of whether hell is unjust punishment or not, if one has a good idea of what one is getting into, what is the problem with making a permanent decision?
T3: First, as regards your remark that you're "not sure that the New Testament says hell is eternal;" Matthew 25.46, with its reference to "everlasting punishment," seems, as St. Augustine pointed out, to be completely unambiguous: "And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life." But other verses, such as Matthew 25.41, are also such as imply, on any natural interpretation, the idea that Hell is eternal: "Then He will also say to those on the left hand, 'Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels.'"
Secondly, you mention the case of suicide as an unalterable decision that people make. But don't you yourself believe that, in general, one should prevent people from committing suicide? There may, of course, be cases where--because, for example, of a very painful terminal illness--suicide is a rational decision, and then one should, I would hold, permit a person to commit suicide. But could a person ever make a rational choice to suffer eternal torment? If not, if such a choice could not be rational, then I would argue that such decisions should not be respected anymore than the decision of a child to run across a highway.
Thirdly, you speak of people having a good idea of what they're getting into. Have you, then, met people who say: "I know that by rejecting Jesus, I'm going to spend eternity in Hell, where I'll suffer torment that never ends?" If so, you've met very different people than I have, for I have never met such a person. The point is that people who act in ways that Christians believe will result in their spending eternity in Hell do not themselves believe that their actions will have any such effect. No one, surely, chooses to spend eternity undergoing torment. So it is simply not the case, as you suggest, that Hell can be justified by appealing to the idea that people who wind up in Hell have decided that that is what they want. People choose to commit suicide; they do not choose to be tormented eternally.
E11: (re T1) You say, "My acceptance of the idea of retributive punishment is clearly not a way around what you call an impasse, since Craig embraces an orthodox conception of [an eternal] Hell, . . ." So you do admit this is a way around the impasse—if this idea of eternal punishment is not a factor and if one receives as one deserves (remember that these are the central stipulations of my question). Your objections 2-4 aren't really relevant to my question given these two stipulations.
Since I take it that you have admitted my point, let's now look at your objections.
To answer objection 1 (in T1), I would claim that the Bible does not definitely teach that the punishment of the lost will be eternal, although this is one of at least three possibilities that scripture does allow for exegetically. These three views were held by early church Fathers until one particular view—the Eternalist view—was forced on the church by Emperor Justinian. The Eternalist view held that the lost would be punished forever. This view tended to be more accepted in the western portion of the church. The Restorationist view held that the lost will be punished for a period of time appropriate to the evil they had done and then be given opportunity to be released. One variation of the Restorationist view was held by Origen and many of his followers. He held that all would eventually freely accept God's offer. The third view, the Annihilationist view, taught that the lost will be punished for a variable period of time, depending on what they deserve, and then be annihilated. (Today those of [essentially] this view call themselves Conditionalists, meaning that we are given immortality only conditionally upon being saved. [They differ from Christian Annihilationists only in what I would consider minor technical points.]) As I said, biblical support can be found for all of these views and no one view is definite. Several leading contemporary Evangelical theologians like John R. W. Stott and Clark Pinnock now hold to or consider possible the Conditionalist view.
Matthew 25.46 [re T3] does not give a clear cut case for Eternalism, as is commonly assumed, because the word translated as 'eternal' or 'everlasting' actually means only 'of the age.' In the Matthew passage, since it's speaking of the future, it means 'of the age to come,' and neither this word nor the passage indicate how long that age will be. If we look at the ancient Greek literature contemporary to the New Testament writings, we will find that these terms, 'aionos,' and its noun form, 'aion,' sometimes would mean eternal or eternity, but only when the context indicated. Often it would mean a human lifetime or an age or dispensation. In none of the relevant biblical passages does the context indicate that it means forever. This also answers your reference to Matthew 25.41.
Perhaps even more importantly, in the Hebrew scripture, the usual Hebrew word used for forever, "olam," very often meant merely a long but limited period of time. That the Septuagent (two or three centuries BCE) translated this term as "aion" shows that aion often meant a limited period of time. [This paragraph added 28 Feb 09.]
Since you refer to Augustine, I should mention that I find it ironic that Augustine more than once admitted that he wasn't good at Greek and then he would proceed to make categorical pronouncements upon the meaning of passages like these.
I've said that the Eternalist position is a legitimate biblical option exegetically. But as we usually understand this view, for moral reasons such as those you present, it is not justifiable. I think it can only be defended if something like the following conditions are met: First the lost are punished for a period of time appropriate to the evil they had committed. Next, the following eternal phase of hell might consist of nothing more than a very neutral or limbo type of existence. Or it might consist of such a state that also includes the knowledge of what has been lost.
It's interesting that more than once Jesus focused on this later aspect of hell without considering any other. He seemed to say that the "weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth" of those cast into "outer darkness" would be caused by their knowledge that they (at least many of those in the audience), the children of Abraham, would be rejected, while Gentiles from the far corners of the earth will sit at table with Abraham. Clearly Jesus was playing on the strong anti-Gentile prejudices of his Jewish audience. But the view considered here also fits the latest and most developed theology we can find in the Hebrew scripture concerning the afterlife, namely Daniel's statement that the wicked will awake from the dust to everlasting disgrace and contempt (12.2). My point is that here both Jesus' and Daniel's words can be taken to speak of the punishment of hell as involving nothing more than shame and disgrace. And this might be the eternal phase of hell.
In your comments in the coming subtopic [T2; re E2] I think you make a significant point in saying that mild punishment suffered for an infinite period of time is still infinite suffering. Nevertheless, if the eternal phase of hell consists of nothing more than this awareness of what has been lost, it is difficult to think of this as "eternal torment." But if it is truly too much, if being aware of one's disgrace and loss for eternity must be considered to be "infinite suffering," then perhaps the eternal phase would consist of merely the limbo type existence mentioned earlier. In that case Jesus' comments about gnashing of teeth, etc. refers only to the first phase of hell.
Of course here the Annihilationist might object that such a state is really no different than not existing at all. Whether in a limbo type existence or even a normal human existence such as we have now (though devoid of pleasure and pain) it cannot be claimed that one is better off existing than not. Nevertheless, even this might be called "eternal punishment" in that it is a form of loss; it's a form of punishment simply because of its contrast to the immense joy that has been lost.
I hope you understand that I am not arguing for the Eternalist position. I'm just saying that it is one of three possible biblical options—and then it is an option only if certain conditions are met.
Concerning your objection 2 (in T1), the fact that the majority of humanity will reject God's offer of a way out of whatever punishment they deserve simply tells us that this is what God has foreseen that people will freely choose. Certainly this is disturbing but it is necessary that this be a true possibility if God will allow us our freedom. Forced love is rape; God is not a divine rapist. I'm sure that what I have just said will infuriate you, but that's because you're assuming we are talking about eternal torment. Please remove that notion from your mind. I'm talking about deserved punishment.
Concerning objection 3, Jesus' statement that those who do not believe will be condemned, Jesus also said that anyone who wills to do the will of the Father will know whether his (Jesus') teachings are true (John 7.17). Thus for anyone who has heard and confronted Jesus' claims, their choice will determine their belief. Romans 1 indicates that the same is true concerning belief in God. Anyone who disbelieves in God does so because of their choice to repress knowledge that God gives them.
This knowledge might consist merely in something like a whisper in one's ear: "What if I'm really here? Would you seek me?" It might contain much more detailed information. How one responds to even the former will determine whether more information will be given. A person is morally accountable for such choices. Thus one's choices may determine not only how one behaves but also what one believes. If the Christian view is correct about our choices determining our knowledge then, to use your words, "how one fares in [an] afterlife" definitely should depend "upon what beliefs one accepts or rejects."
Objection 4 (in T1) is that if there is an afterlife there should be opportunity for moral and emotional growth. Restorationism, one of the three options considered earlier for biblical views of the afterlife, involves choices for "moral growth" of a sort. In that view there will be at least the opportunity to choose the good of accepting God's atonement and eternal life with God.
But then, as the other possible biblical views indicate, the afterlife of the lost might be closed to all potential moral growth and spiritual choice. The scriptures seem to teach that the Spirit of God will not always strive with people to call them to God. Such passages might be speaking not only of this life but of the next as well. There might come a point at which God gives us inalterably what we choose: separation from God. Likewise, with this decision against God, God might remove from us the opportunity for any lesser moral progress. If our minds and wills are set against the highest possible moral goal, if we have chosen to reject the very reason for our existence, to know God, then how can there be any point to such a lesser moral progress, or, for that matter, to any other human endeavor? Also, this loss of the human capacity for moral progress might be at least part of the punishment that we deserve. And finally, if there is opportunity for moral growth there must also be moral choice and the possibility of continued evil. As we continue to sin or cause evil, justice requires continued retribution, continued punishment. We would again be trapped with a hell of potentially eternal torment.
E13 (re T3): You claimed that one of the problems with hell is that it is permanent and I questioned how permanence really makes a difference. To use your example, just as we think it right to stop a child from running into the street, shouldn't someone be stopped from making a morally and rationally unjustified decision of eternal torment? For the moment let's only consider, not eternal torment, but separation from God. We stop the child because they are not yet able to make moral and rational decisions like those involving suicide. Rational people do in some sense have the right to make inalterable decisions like suicide and becoming or remaining separated from God. At the very least, God does not have the right to force someone not to make a permanent decision against God.
I notice that you keep going back to the notion of eternal torment. (You say, "Could a person ever make a rational choice to suffer eternal torment?" [T3]). I had hoped it was clear in the paragraph you refer to that I was not speaking of eternal torment. I'm just talking about the issue of eternality, of permanence. I don't see that that is a problem in itself. In your original objection it sounded as though you were claiming that this is a problem in itself. You said, "For one primary objection to the doctrine of Hell is precisely this: once the door is shut, it's shut for eternity." All I would say here is that if permanence alone is a problem, it is no less a problem for heaven. For once the doors of heaven are shut, they too are shut for eternity.
A person could never make a rational choice for eternal torment, but neither could one make a rational choice against God under any conditions if God is one who deserves our commitment. If hell were a place of eternal bliss, it would still be morally wrong to choose it if it involved rejecting God to do so. Because it would be morally wrong it would also be rationally unjustified. But there is some sense in which one has a right to make that choice. No, not the choice of eternal torment, I'm not talking about that; but then, I don't think God would respect or allow such a decision either.
Concerning my statement about people having a good idea of what they are getting into (reT3): No, I admit that I do not know of anyone who has chosen to be eternally tormented. (I suspect that we might find some masochistic psychological aberrations that have gone that far.) But I never did say that and, as I mentioned earlier, I never intended to say such a thing. So maybe I should rephrase my question, "If hell is not unjust punishment or eternal torment, and if one has a good idea of what one is getting into, why should God not allow one to make such a permanent decision?"
Varying Punishment in Hell?
E2: One aspect of the Christian doctrine of hell that is often overlooked in this kind of discussion is that the punishment of hell is variable: some will be given few stripes, some many, Jesus said. It will be appropriate to the evil one has done. Would this qualification affect your view?
T2: Here I have a question, and a comment? First, can you cite a passage that provides clear and unambiguous support for your claim that some people will be punished more severely in Hell than others? Secondly, even mild punishment, continued forever, adds up to infinite suffering—and this, accordingly to objections (1) and (2) is unlikely to be deserved by anyone, let alone by the majority of the human race. So punishment cannot be eternal and also, as you want to suggest "appropriate to the evil one has done."
E12: For a scriptural passage that unambiguously tells us that the punishment of the lost will vary with the evil one does I would first cite Luke 10.12-14. Jesus is here saying that "it will be more bearable" on the day of judgment for certain notoriously evil cities of antiquity than it will be for those cities Jesus and his disciples had preached to but who had rejected him. Because of the signs and miracles performed in these contemporary cities, Jesus says, because the evidence must be rejected and repressed by such a greater willful evil intent, they will be under greater punishment. To be "more bearable" on the day of judgment can hardly mean that one is condemned and the other is not.
Another very clear passage, Luke 12.42-8, is a parable that indicates the reward that will be given God's faithful servant and roughly three degrees of punishment that will befall evil servants. Because the wicked, and especially the wicked who call themselves God's servants, do not in this life unambiguously suffer fates even analogous to these mentioned, this shows that Jesus is speaking of punishment in the afterlife.
One other passage is Luke 20.45-47. This one clearly implies variable punishment but it is not as explicit as the others. Here Jesus enumerates the evils of certain religious teachers and condemns them by saying they will be "most severely punished." If all the lost will be punished to the same degree, why would Jesus say that this particular group will be "most severely punished"? The sense is that the punishment is much greater in comparison to that of other.
I agree that "mild" eternal punishment is unacceptable. But I made no mention of eternal punishment in the question (E2) you are here answering (T2). From what you have said already I assume that you would agree with me and you would find (or at least might find) no problem with punishment "appropriate to the evil one has done" as long as it is not eternal punishment.
The Burden of Proof.
Finding God Eventually.
E4: Now I'm not sure whether Craig would agree with what I'm about to say, but lets imagine that you and he are talking about the same God, at least a just God, whether or not this God sends anyone to hell. Let's just say that for the time being we won't make a pronouncement as to exactly what justice requires. Having reached this point, it seems that here we would have a clear disagreement between the two of you. You claim that not all who seek God will come to believe Christianity to be true and Craig claims that all who do so will.
One important qualification should be made to Craig's claim. We aren't told in scripture how long it will take for the seeker to find God. It is conceivable that for some it could take an entire lifetime. But that would be the exception. When the scripture says that all who seek will find and that anyone who wills to do God's will shall know that Jesus' teachings are true (John 7.17), the sense seems to be that normally it won't take an extraordinarily long time. At any rate, finding a seeker who doesn't believe in God is not a disproof of Christianity. If you could show that statistically most seekers who have heard of Jesus' claims do not believe in Christianity, then I think that you would have a better case. But I don't think you would be able to do that. You claim that Craig's claim is empirically false and you would probably say that mine is also. But likewise we would say that your claim is empirically false. Since your claim is your basic response to Craig's answer to the hiddenness argument, it appears that the burden of proof would be on you to show empirically that we are wrong.
E5: One other comment. If a person seeks and doesn't find God, even if one seeks all one's life, this shouldn't suggest that that person is lost. I doubt that Craig would agree with me here but I would claim that there might be some lifelong seekers who, though they find God eventually, do not find God in this life. I say this because the passages I had cited do not, strictly speaking, preclude this possibility. Nevertheless, most seekers we encounter tell us that it wasn't extremely long before finding Christianity to be true.
T4 (re E4): Let's consider the implications, first of Craig's claim, and then of your claim. Craig claims that all who seek God will come to believe that Christianity is true. Do you wish to assert that all Buddhists who seek God will come to believe that Christianity is true? That all Hindus who seek God will come to believe that Christianity is true? That all Jews who seek God will come to believe that Christianity is true? That all Muslims who seek God will come to believe that Christianity is true? These claims strike me as utterly fantastic. But unless you are willing to embrace all of these claims, and many others, then you must be agreeing with me on this matter, and rejecting Craig's claim.
How does your claim differ from Craig's? Only, it would seem, in that you want to say that it may take some time before a person who seeks God comes to accept Christianity. But you, like Craig, are committed to the view that, eventually, everyone who seeks God comes to believe that Christianity is true. Like Craig's claim, this one strikes me, as they say Down Under, as coming from Cloud Cuckoo Land. Do you really believe, for example, that every Muslim, every Jew, every Hindu, every Buddhist who has sought God has, eventually, converted to Christianity?
Suppose a Muslim were to make a claim perfectly parallel to the one that you're making--namely, that every person who seeks God comes to believe that Islam is true? I take it that you would not agree with him, and that you would say that his claim was empirically false. Suppose, now, that he replied that "the burden of proof" was on you to show that he was wrong? Would you agree that the burden of proof was on you? If you would, how would you attempt to discharge that burden of proof? Or if, as I suspect, you would not agree that the burden of proof was on you to show that not all people who seek God eventually come to believe that Islam is true, what justification can you have for saying that when you make a precisely parallel claim, the burden of proof is on those who disagree with it?
E14: You ask if I think all Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, etc. who seek God will discover Christianity to be true. I think it should be obvious from my other questions and comments that you have looked at that I think they will, though some may not do so until after death. Though I have to read between the lines, it appears that that is not your question. You're asking about "eventually" coming to believe in Christianity only in this life. Notice also that I said I'm speaking of "those who have heard of Jesus' claims." By this I mean that they have intellectually confronted his claims. Large portions of the world's population of Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, etc. have never heard Jesus' claims. And many more have never really confronted his claims. I can think of an actual Jewish couple whose only knowledge of Christianity came from their familiarity with local Catholic churches with their statues and painting of the "Gentile god." To them this was all gross idolatry. Or think of the Muslims who cannot hear the Christian claims because they cannot get past the thought that Christians believe that God had sexual relations in order to have a son, namely, Jesus, or that Christians believe in three Gods. But even in cases like these we do not know whether God draws the individual to look more closely or to dig deeper to better understand the Christian claims. If one fails to follow such leading, wouldn't this show that the claimed desire to seek God, to obey or will to do God's will, was either originally a sham or is now repudiated? If this is the case wouldn't this deserve God's judgment?
So I really do believe that every Muslim, Jew, Hindu, and Buddhist who seeks God and wills to do God's will and who has heard and understood Jesus' claims, will eventually believe in and trust in Jesus. As I've said, for some this might involve coming to believe after death. But I think that would be the exception. And anyone who seeks God who has not heard of Jesus will also find him; some, I think, even in this life.
If you still think my claim is utterly fantastic then I would hope you would tell me why you think this. Is the thought of God speaking to someone, leading them to a particular belief, incredible to you? God need not speak audibly but, perhaps, intuitively, with a sense of certitude that certain statements are true. Or God might simply expose the person to new evidence or help them to see old evidence in a new way (perhaps without the self-imposed blinders one had before).
Or maybe you've got an image in your mind of some news headline reading: "Muslim World Converts to Christianity Without Missionaries!" Since I've said that most of those who haven't heard of Jesus' claims may very likely not believe in this life, maybe this fantastic imagery can be erased.
Also, we might wonder how many people in the world do seek God. Do you, Michael? If it doesn't really interest you to do so, don't you think it might be conceivable that the majority of humanity feels the same way?
Concerning the issue of the burden of proof let's use your example of my having a debate with a Muslim. Our Muslim friend says that anyone who seeks God will discover Islam is true. As the first affirmative argument he might claim that an empirical study would show this. I would disagree with him, yes, and to answer him I would only need to ask for his evidence or I would examine his evidence. The burden of proof would be on him not me. If he cannot come up with an empirical study supporting his claim then he loses the debate.
Now if I would go further and claim that his claim is empirically false, then to support my claim I would need to come up with some evidence. Otherwise it would just be an empty claim. So, yes, there would be a burden on me once I make that claim and insofar as I wish to make that claim. I could have avoided making that claim and simply waited for him to present some evidence which in turn I could have dealt with. I could have tried to find some fallacy in his reasoning or error in his data. I could have tried to win the debate that way to avoid that onus.
As the first affirmative in your debate with Craig, the burden was on you to show that the hiddenness of God is best explained by his nonexistence. Craig presented a possible state of affairs which, if true, would answer your argument. As the first negative rebuttal, all he needed to do was to show that it was possibly true. He said that God's existence is not obvious because God doesn't want to coerce belief. And he said that the evidence is sufficient or will be made sufficient for anyone who seeks God. Craig didn't need to prove that, he only needed to present this possibility as a feasible explanation as to why God's existence is not obvious to everyone. He did make something of a try-it-and-find-out-for-yourself appeal.
You responded quite emphatically that Craig's claim, that all seekers will find God, is empirically false. Indeed, to answer Craig you would have to show that this possibility is not at all feasible and you took a most obvious way to do it. But surely a burden would be on you to give some kind of evidence for your claim. When you say, "plainly and simply: Craig's claim is empirically false," you should be able to offer some evidence. This should especially be true if you call his claim "incredible." A claim that is so blatantly false as to be "incredible" should be very easy to demonstrate to be false. If you are going to make a statement that strong, you've got to have something to back up what you say.
Second Chance After Death?
What Seekers Find.
T5 (re E5): Two points. First, recall a passage that I mentioned above, namely Mark 16.15-16, where Jesus says: "Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature. He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned." This seems perfectly clear: a person who dies without accepting Christianity will be condemned. So there is no room within Christianity for your optimistic gloss about people finding God after death.
Secondly, you refer to "most seekers we encounter." But you aren't, of course, going to encounter, for example, most people who seek for God and who have been raised within a Muslim culture--people who, when they 'get religion,' will in all probability come to believe that Allah is God.
E15 (re T5): Concerning the Mark 16 passage that says that those who do not believe in Jesus will be condemned: First of all notice that this passage is speaking of those who have heard and understand Jesus' claims. Secondly, let me ask you, does this passage say that those who do not immediately believe will be lost? No? The fact is that the New Testament tells of several people or groups who took some time to come to believe. The Jews who lived in Berea had to take time to search and examine the Hebrew scripture, and especially the prophecies, before believing Jesus to be the promised Messiah. And these people are extolled by Luke for their nobility in doing so. James, Jesus' brother, disbelieved in Jesus until after his death when he encountered him resurrected.
Does the Mark 16 passage give some indication of how soon it must be before one must believe without being condemned? No? Then the passage does leave open the possibility that some might take an entire lifetime and even that some might not believe until after death. What you say is "clear" in Mark 16 is simply not there.
Now it is only those who seek God, those who will to do God's will, who should feel confident that eventually they will discover that it is true. Again let me say that the tone of the Mark 16 and John 7 passages do indicate that normally this will occur in this life. But literally, they do not exclude the possibility of such an after life discovery and commitments to Jesus.
A passage in Hebrews (9.27) says, "It is appointed unto man once to die and after that to face judgment." These several passages indicate that those who disbelieve and do not seek God should certainly have no hope of coming to faith and salvation after death. The failure to obey God's initial leading to seek him is deserving of God's judgment. Also, the fuller context of Mark 16 indicates that Jesus is saying that the proclamation of this gospel will be accompanied by sufficient evidence to believe. One cannot be considered innocent who rejects such evidence. Someone who confronts sufficient evidence to believe God has acted such that Christianity is true and who rejects that belief should face God's judgment
E17 (re T5): Concerning my claim that "most seekers we encounter" will discover Christianity to be true, you object that I haven't encountered most seekers who grew up in a Muslim culture and that they will probably come to believe in Allah. I would think that it is hard to say how many seekers from such differing religions and cultures will discover Christianity to be true. If most of these people have never confronted the claims of Christianity--and following the example you gave of a Muslim culture, this is a very real possibility--it could be that few or none of them will discover this before death.
Some theologians claim that anyone who seeks will also gain a knowledge of the Christian claims before death. And there are many anecdotal accounts that will support this claim. The person who calls upon God for truth who lives in a country that has repressed religious inquiry and literature: he happens to stumble upon a Bible though all Bibles are outlawed. The Ethiopian tribesman who calls upon God and is given a vision of missionaries who would come years later. The man who is known to the rest of his tribe for his close walk with God and the knowledge God has given him: when Muslim missionaries come to his village he hears them and tells the people that this religion is false; when Christian missionaries later come, he tells his people that this is the truth.
Stories like this can be multiplied. But there are other stories of those who have called upon God who have not discovered anything about Christianity. So my own feeling is that there are many seekers who have not heard of Jesus and will not hear anything of him in this life.
Will our hypothetical Muslim seekers gain a greater dedication to Allah or to Islam? This certainly might happen either through or even without God's direct activity in their lives. And as I've said, depending on their knowledge of Christianity, they might never in this life leave their Muslim beliefs. Of these seekers I think God will lead many of them to gain a greater dedication to the core theistic concepts. Perhaps they will be drawn by God to have a greater love for God and an awareness of their own sin and failing and their need of repentance. Maybe some will become aware of God's love for them. Some might even be drawn to see through some of the false extraneous beliefs of Islam. As one says to God, "However I can be accepted by you and be made right with you, if there is any such way, I would do it," so God would accept them. Like the righteous Hebrews before Jesus' time, they were accepted by God through Jesus' atonement even though they didn't yet know of it.
Christianity, the Immoral Religion?
Will the Seeker Find?
E6: It doesn't involve any inhumanity to say that those who disbelieve who knowingly reject God and God's offer of reconciliation are lost. That is what Craig is claiming. He's not saying that the seeker who doesn't find will be lost but rather that the seeker will find. There is nothing reprehensible in that claim. And seeking is not just an indifferent examination of the evidence, it's asking of God and seeking God.
T6: What is your view of the Muslim who never hears the Christian message? Or of the Muslim who hears the Christian message and rejects it as preposterous--perhaps on the grounds that the idea of a trinity involves a rejection of pure monotheism? Where will those Muslims spend eternity? If you and Craig accept the New Testament, then given that such Muslims do not believe in Jesus as Lord and Savior, you must hold that they are condemned to eternal torment. And you say that this doesn't involve any "inhumanity"? Do you really believe that there is nothing immoral, not only in punishing people for not accepting certain beliefs, but in punishing them eternally?
E16: I've presented a Christian view of those who seek God who haven't heard of Jesus' claims. (It was in a response you may not have had when you asked this last question so I will repeat the essence of that response here.) By making this profession to seek God and to will to do God's will, many of these will hear of Jesus and his claims in this life but some will not. If someone "wills to do God's will" and if they discover that Christianity is true--whether in this life or the next--then it follows that they will accept it and commit themselves to Jesus. Now for one who does earnestly seek God and who has confronted the Christian message, it might take a considerable amount of time to overcome the prejudices and misunderstandings ground into one's mind by one's culture and/or religion, but for most of these people I think such issues will be overcome in their lifetime.
Every person, no matter what they know or believe, is drawn by God to seek God, Craig points out. If one does seek God and acts upon whatever knowledge is given, that person won't be lost. I think I've adequately shown that this is a biblical view. I've also shown that it is not true that the New Testament must be seen to teach eternal torment for the lost. I've also shown that one would be deserving of judgment who knowingly accepts false beliefs. God does not punish people for not accepting certain beliefs, rather God punishes for rejecting beliefs that they know to be true or which they refuse to even consider. One who seeks God must accept whatever truth God would give them. So now then, where is the "inhumanity" you think is so glaring? How is the Christian belief in any way "immoral"?
Using Hell to Coerce Belief (1).
Is it Immoral Not to Believe?
E7: One question from the audience (Q9) proposes that the threat of hell for not believing seems to be coercive. Of course it's not coercive for anyone who doesn't believe in hell, as Craig points out, but is it for the person who does and who believes that belief in Jesus will remedy the problem? I met a lady--I believe she had cancer--who told her physician that she would undergo any surgery necessary to delay her death, because, she said, she knew where she was going. I've never seen such a deadly serious and deadly frightened person in my life. So is the threat of hell coercive to a person like this?
Suppose someone contemplates a crime but believes he will inevitably be caught and punished if he does so. Is he coerced not to commit the crime because of his belief? If this is coercion, there is nothing objectionable about it. Likewise if hell is merely receiving the punishment we deserve, then there is nothing wrong with believing that that is what we will get if we don't take the way out that God offers.
T7: The threat of punishment may certainly coerce people into not committing crimes, and you are right that there is nothing wrong about such coercion. What you then want to go on to say is that if the threat of Hell coerces some people into accepting Christian beliefs, there is nothing wrong with that. But what your analogy shows is that coercion is acceptable when it is used to discourage immoral actions, and so what you're assuming here is that someone who rejects Christian beliefs--who holds, for example, that God is not a trinity, and thus that Jesus, in particular, was not God--is acting immorally in rejecting those Christian beliefs. By contrast, I take it that you do not hold that you are acting immorally in rejecting Buddhist beliefs, or Muslim beliefs, or Hindu beliefs, or the Roman Catholic dogma of transubstantiation, etc. What would a Buddhist, or a Muslim, or a Hindu, or a Roman Catholic think of your claim here? Would they not find it arrogant, immoral, and utterly preposterous?
E18: I'm disappointed that I have been so unclear that you have so completely misunderstood what I have said in this section. Let me try to show that I have not said the "arrogant, immoral, and utterly preposterous" things you think I have said.
Notice that I have stated that we are talking about people who actually believe Christianity to be true. I have not said that one should believe something because of the threat of punishment for not believing. And in my statements you have evaluated I have taken pains to repudiate such an approach.
So when I said that there is nothing wrong with believing that we will get the punishment we deserve if we do not take the way out that God offers, for clarification I should have added "if we happen to believe that God in fact did offer a way out and that such a hell will otherwise be our lot." But notice that whether or not we have reason to believe in God and an afterlife in which justice is carried out, there is still nothing wrong with believing that we will get the justice we deserve, at least in a weaker sense of 'believe.' What I mean by that is that we might still consider such an afterlife a possibility and thus consider it prudent to live accordingly.
Although there is nothing wrong with living as though we will receive justice after death, there definitely is something wrong with having an unquestionable belief in God's existence such that at no point in our lives would we feel free to repress such knowledge and choose against God. Many people might feel so compelled, at least initially; I know I did as a child growing up in a Fundamentalist church. But like myself, I think everyone comes to a point at which they are able to question such beliefs and reject them if they want to. It is because the evidence is not irresistible, it is because we can mentally repress evidence that should be sufficient to persuade any normal, rational person, that one is not coerced to believe. Only thus can God know what our free choice will be. Now it might be the case that after choosing to do God's will, to follow God and accept the evidence God gives, that one will come to feel that belief in God is irresistible. But that wouldn't really make a difference once the initial choice has been made.
It is interesting that in the first centuries of the church there were at least several leaders who felt compelled to believe that hell is not eternal and they taught this privately. Yet they publicly taught that hell is eternal. They didn't think they could otherwise sufficiently motivate the people to live morally. In relation to the question at hand, perhaps they hoped to use the threat of hell to coerce people into belief. I'm told that Roman thought often followed such utilitarian ethics, condoning admitted lies so long as the people would be motivated to do good. It is sad that the Christian teachers I had mentioned should still be bound by their culture's values. Such a utilitarian ethic definitely does not come from the scripture.
[Dr. Tooley had mentioned Calvin's part in having his opponent, Servitus, executed. His full statement will be given later in T10.] I'll say more about your example of Calvin murdering Servitus later (E27) (for isn't that exactly what he did?), but I might comment here that Calvin, like the early church leaders just mentioned, shows a similar inability to be free of his cultural values. Calvin shows us that the problem is not to be found in the scripture, but in our temptation to ignore its clear teaching and to rationalize our unfaithfulness to scripture.
Back to your comments about coercion to belief, I'm not saying that to reject Christian beliefs is under all circumstances morally wrong, and I don't think that is what Jesus said. There are many people who seek after God and who do reject those beliefs because psychological, social, and cultural factors. Some reject him because of lack of evidence at a given time. But my point is that they will sooner or later discover that they are wrong to reject Christianity and this will occur before it is too late to find God's acceptance and salvation.
Someone who confronts sufficient evidence to believe God has acted such that Christianity is true and who rejects that belief will face God's judgment--unless they repent of doing so before it is too late. As I mentioned earlier, other statements in the Gospels make it clear that these are the people Jesus is speaking of in Mark 16 who will be condemned who do not believe. Even if they merely confronted enough evidence to see that it could be true, they would have an obligation to seek further.
If I were to become aware of the evidence for Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, or even Transubstantiation, and if I ignored or failed to honestly confront that evidence, then I would be acting immorally. If I were to honestly confront that evidence and reject those beliefs, then I would not be acting immorally; and I think these religious followers would admit as much if they believed that I had tried my best to be honest in my evaluation. And the same thing is true of non-Christians as they evaluate the basic Christian claims: they would be acting morally or immorally depending on how honestly they confront the evidence for Christianity.
Using Hell to Coerce Belief (2).
The Obligation to Seek God.
E8: Now there may be more to this individual's question (Q9) than appears on the surface. It sounds as though she resents the use of the threat of hell to make people believe. Now that is understandable. I know of Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and Christians as well as various other religions and cults who, rather than try to persuade by honest evidence, have used the threat of hell to make converts or warn backsliders.
We should certainly do what is right because it is right. We should seek God because God (by definition) deserves to be searched after. If we do not know that God exists, we should admit to ourselves at least that we would seek such a God if this God does exist and we should actually seek God on just this possibility. But we should also be aware that if we do not seek God and if some day we will stand before God, we will deserve God's judgment. We will deserve judgment for any other failure to do what is right as well. So it seems to me that if someone comes along who claims that God has provided a means by which we can be free of the sin and resulting judgment we deserve, we have an obligation to seriously consider their evidence for that claim and to seek the truth from God concerning that claim (on nothing more than the possibility that God does exist). There is no religion that should use the threat of hell as a club to win converts, but the possibility that we will face the justice we deserve should be used as a threat to cause us to fulfill our more primary prereligious obligations.
T8: First, you do not know of any Jews who have "used the threat of hell to make converts," since Jews do not believe in Hell. Nor do you know of any Buddhists who have "used the threat of Hell to make converts," since Buddhists do not believe in Hell.
Secondly, you claim that it follows from the definition of God that one should search for God. This may, of course, be part of your definition of God. I cannot see, however, how it follows from the idea of God as an omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect being that one should seek after God. Why shouldn't God be satisfied if people simply strive to live moral lives--as Kant, for example, maintained?
Thirdly, even if there were an obligation to seek God, it would not take much investigation to dismiss many religions: the presence of immoral beliefs in many religions would be all the grounds that one would need for concluding that God had not revealed himself in that religion. And one of the first religions one could set aside would be Christianity, with its belief that anyone who rejects Christianity will be condemned to eternal torment.
E20: Michael, I didn't lie to you about knowing of Jews and Buddhists who believe in hell. If a Jew or a Buddhist has told you that they do not, they either do not know what they are talking about or they do not believe in it in their particular branch of Judaism or Buddhism and they would like to give the impression that all Jews or Buddhists believe the same. Obviously, the latter is lying and, sadly, sometimes people do resort to lies to try to make their position look better.
Concerning Judaism, let me just give one example of many. Rabbi Tovia Singer said in a public debate that any Jew who believes Jesus is God goes to the eternal fires of hell.2 And this is hardly an isolated example in the history of Judaism.
Now some Buddhists might say that they do not believe in hell because they define hell as being eternal and the place of punishment in the afterlife as described in Buddhist scripture is not eternal. That might be so, and if it is true I have defined hell too broadly. Nevertheless, I do question this claim because of some of the descriptions found in Buddhist texts.3 But even if all of the Buddhist hells are not eternal, that might not make a lot of difference. One of the Buddhist hells lasts about 200 trillion years and in all of them the torture sounds like something out of Dante's Inferno.4
In Tibetan Buddhism there are special hells for various sins, such as those who revile the Buddha, apostates who reject the truth of Buddhism, and Buddhist heretics. These respectively involve being kept in flames that are never consumed, being rolled in red-hot iron plates, and being cooked in molten iron. Other Buddhist hells are similar.5 I mention these particular sins to show you that there are Buddhists who have used the threat of hell to warn followers not to backslide or reject Buddhism.
(I cannot resist mentioning that there is even a hell for those who grumble about the weather. Waddell quips that this is surely the hell made most specifically for the British.)
I'm not sure that omnipotence and omniscience are necessary for God "to be an appropriate object of religious attitudes" as you say. I do think being morally perfect and being deserving to be searched after are. (However, I do think God is omnipotent and omniscient.) God must be one who deserves our highest commitment. If God's nature accords with your definition, then it might be that God would be satisfied just with our striving to live moral lives in relation to each other. But if God deserves our love, commitment, and search, then I think it follows that God should not be satisfied with anything less from us, nor should we of ourselves. On just the possibility that there is such a being, we have an obligation to seek such a God.
Yes, immoral beliefs within a religion "would be grounds . . . for concluding the God had not revealed himself in that religion." But then, I have shown that Christianity does not teach any such beliefs, at least none that you have thus far put forward. It does not teach eternal torment for those who reject it. It does teach just punishment for those who know it to be true and reject it or those who reject it out of hand or those who fail to seriously evaluate it and ask for the truth from God. So Christianity cannot be dismissed on the grounds you give. One does have an obligation to seek God and to consider the evidence for Christianity.
Would Too Strong of Evidence Be Coercive to Belief?
E9: Craig dwells on the point that too strong of evidence would be coercive. That seems to me to be a very persuasive point. God desires for us to seek God without feeling compelled by the evidence. How can God know what our desire and free choice is otherwise?
T9: Earlier you argued that coercion in the form of Hell would be fine. Now you are saying that coercion in the sense of knowledge of the existence of God would be bad!
Leaving aside the inconsistency, the basic point is simply this. To believe in God is one thing, to act morally, and in accordance with God's will, is quite another. Thus, to make the point within the Christian framework itself: Satan knew that God existed--and so he was 'coerced' by his experiences of God into believing that God existed--but this left him perfectly free not to act in accordance with God's will. Similarly, a human who knew that God existed would still be free to choose whether he was going to live as God willed or not.
E18: I have never said coercion to belief is fine and I have strongly repudiated such a view. Thus there is no inconsistency in saying that we should seek God without feeling compelled to believe in and obey God. Without excessively compelling evidence one has a greater freedom to mentally repress evidence which should otherwise be persuasive. One thus has a greater freedom to refuse to act according to that evidence. Disbelief can thus be an immoral act.
You claim that in Christian theology Satan knew God existed and yet was "perfectly free not to act in accordance with God's will." However, Satan didn't know his rebellion would fail. If Satan had known that, do you really think he would have rebelled? If we had overwhelming evidence of an omnipotent and just God (something Satan was not fully aware of), then we would know that our disobedience would inevitably bring a painful justice. Do you really think we would disobey or reject God? You said earlier that you had never met a person who has said, "I know that by rejecting Jesus I'm going to spend eternity in Hell where I'll suffer torment that never ends," and I agreed that neither I nor anyone else will ever meet such a person who is in their right mind [T3]. By the same token, I think we will not meet many who will feel free to act against God's will if they know the inevitable outcome of their act. Some might, but of course I would claim that their end will not be "eternal torment in hell." My point is that for most of us, our acceptance of God's will in this case would be too coerced. If we are given too irresistible of evidence for God and the judgment we will face, we won't be as free to reject him as we need to be.
Satan might have thought that God could be defeated or at least dissuaded from carrying out his justice. We, on the other hand, if we knew only that a God existed who is just and much more powerful than ourselves, we would be most foolish if we thought we could stop him from carrying out his justice.
Choice Better Than Knowledge.
Calvin's Sin.
E10: Suppose we concede, for the sake of the argument, your claim that many or most spiritual seekers will never come to believe in God. Might someone claim that the more important issue isn't whether we come to know God exists but rather whether or not we seek God? Isn't that what would be more important for God to know? So if God cannot be found in this life, ultimately, what would that matter? If we must wait to find God in the next life, then the good that you acknowledge would be accomplished from discovering that God exists will still be achieved.
T10: My view is that "Morality Rules!"--in the sense that what is important is the attempt that one makes to lead a moral life. But I also think that a part of what is involved in that is an obligation to attempt to find out the truth in important matters that bear upon human life. So I would agree with Lessing, who said: "Not the truth in whose possession any man is, or thinks he is, but the honest effort he has made to find out the truth is what constitutes the worth of man."
You are saying something rather similar when you suggest that what may be important is the effort a person has made to find God. But this view is, of course, a view that is not compatible with the teachings of Jesus, as is clear from the passage that I quoted earlier, and from many other passages in the New Testament, which affirm the importance both of certain beliefs, and of certain rites--such as baptism. So your view is heretical, and had you lived, for example, in Calvin's day, then you would probably have suffered the same fate as the founder of Unitarianism--Servetus--whom Calvin burned at the stake for denying that Jesus was the eternal son of God.
E23: We are obligated to attempt to find spiritual truth, but that obligation involves seeking God and seeking the truth from God. A person is not lost or saved by what they know but by what they choose, and specifically, by whether they choose to will and do God's will. Yes, it is the choice, the attempt, that is the important thing. But, as you know, I also claim that all who seek will find, at least eventually. [They will know that it is true and be obligated to act and believe accordingly.] So it does follow that many will be responsible for failing to accept certain beliefs and obey certain commands [in this life]. [And] I've shown that my claims are or follow from Jesus' teachings and the other New Testament teachings we have considered.
Certainly I might have been persecuted had I been caught in Calvin's Geneva as Servitus was. But just my Arminian views would likely have been enough to do that for me. Now Calvin did disagree with the verdict that Servitus be burned at the stake. If it is any consolation, he thought he should just be beheaded.
But of course this isn't really any consolation. I find it amazing that someone who had so immersed himself in the study of the Bible should form an ethic so opposed to it's teaching. This shows the extent to which people will avoid and distort what they do not want to see.
Any political power structure will attract evil people; but it will also corrupt good people, because power does corrupt. It shouldn't be thought strange to find evil people in every conceivable political system, even religious ones that purportedly hold to high moral standards. But at the very least, leaders in such systems have to contradict the teachings of their system. To rationalize such contradictions can never be easy. When one can do evil and not contradict the teachings of one's system, it is much easier for evil people and policies to be found in that system. Thus under Hitler's neopaganism it was not difficult for him to justify his attempted genocide to his followers. (It was difficult to justify it to the portion of the culture that was dominated by the traditional Christian ethic. It took a lot of equivocation, intimidation, cover up, and outright lies and it still was not entirely successful.) Under Lenin and Stalin's atheistic system virtually any ethically reprehensible policies was allowed so long as the desired ends could be achieved.
I find it difficult to imagine justifying any ethical system--anything that assumes the value and rights of persons--when persons turn out to be such transitory or temporary entities. If soon we will not exist then ultimately we do not exist. Ultimately we are nothing. How can we ascribe value to nothing? Atheistic systems can quite arbitrarily pronounce high ethical standards but they just as easily might not. They have no foundation for doing so. A system that assumes and has good justification for the value of persons cannot as easily justify unethical behavior. So I find it easy to understand how the major Communist and Marxist regimes have slaughtered so many millions of people. What "Christian" Inquisitions or Crusades could ever match the numbers amassed by Lenin, Stalin, Mao or Pol Pot?
So, yes, I probably would have been persecuted in Calvin's culture. But such an ethic would have been far more difficult to justify in the light of Jesus' clear teachings. Yet I would have been much more likely persecuted under an atheistic culture and political system because it would have been much less likely to value human rights like the freedom to investigate and seek the truth for oneself.
(For another discussion concerning the the problem of the Christian belief in an eternal hell, see the Flew debate. Also, see our discussion with Paul Doland on the problem of hell following his critique of Lee Strobel's The Case for Faith.)
References
Continuing the debate between Dr. Michael Tooley and Dr. William Lane Craig (see the speakers' credentials in the first portion of the debate), we will here present and discuss Dr. Craig's argument for Theism from religious experience. This part presents and follows Dr. Craig's sixth argument for the existence of God.
Craig:p4 God can be immediately known and experienced. This 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 immediately experiencing Him. This was the way that people in the Bible knew God, as Professor John Hick explains: "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 the 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 the experiential reality which gave significance to their lives."1
Now if this is the case, then there's a real danger that arguments for the existence of God could actually distract one's attention from God Himself. If you're sincerely seeking God, then God will make his existence evident to you. The New Testament promises, "Draw near to God and He will draw near to you," (James 4.8). We mustn't so concentrate on the arguments that we fail to hear the inner voice of God to our own hearts. For those who listen, God becomes an immediate reality in their lives.
p10I can just say that in my own life God has certainly been an immediate reality, and in the absence of any defeaters for that claim I don't see any reason that I should deny the reality of His existence.
Tooley: The problem with the appeal to religious experience is that there are different religions, and believers in these very different religions all have experiences of the deities of their own religions. The question, then, is whether or not one can set out any justification for saying, yes, the experiences of Dr. Craig are veridical, but the conflicting experiences of someone in another religion are not veridical. It seems to me the latter claim simply represents a biased point of view, and that there's no justification for it. Moreover, I believe that the diversity of religious experience provides a reason for concluding that any argument from religious experience to the existence of a certain sort of deity, if it appeals to an experience that can be different from one religion to another, must be an unsound argument.
Discussion with Dr. Tooley
E1: To say that because religious experiences give conflicting evidence for different deities or religions that none of them can be veridical appears to be little different than saying that all sense experience must be non-veridical simply because we can point to hallucinations, optical illusions, and vivid dreams that conflict with normal sense experience. The proper conclusion is not that all sense experience is non-veridical but that at least one type is and that the conflicting type(s) might be veridical. Just as we might determine certain sense experiences to be veridical, so we might find certain religious experiences.
We have two possible means of determining which (if any) of at least two conflicting experiences is veridical. First, an individual might seek an adjudicating experience for oneself.
If there is a being who deserves to be searched after and deserves our commitment and has greater power than any other spiritual being (if there is any), then it is possible that we could receive an adjudicating experience from this being. If there is such a being it is possible that any religious experience might be non-veridical if it has not been sought from this being. If we do not seek the truth from this being as we should, why should we be allowed to have the truth? Thus we need to seek spiritual truth from this being on just the possibility that this being does exist. If we fail to seek in this way, we can never be sure that our experience is veridical. So whatever other method we use to seek an adjudicating experience, this one must be included as well. On the possibility that there is no such being (or that this being doesn't care to communicate with the spiritual seeker), then other methods of seeking the religious experience might also be possible.
An adjudicating experience would be the stronger, clearer, or more intense of two or more conflicting experiences. Or a simpler or otherwise better explanation might be found if one experience is hypothesized to be veridical rather than the other. There might be greater certitude in one than another. Or there might be a sense of certitude in one that the other is non-veridical.
A second approach one might take to judge between conflicting experiences would be to look at the experience claims of others who have sought an adjudicating experience. Here again [as in a previous discussion] I would claim that an honest empirical study would indicate that probably most people who follow the above procedure have discovered biblical Christianity to be true. I would claim that most people will definitely discover this eventually before death and very possibly all will.
Four factors need to be taken into account that might be overlooked in such an investigation. The first applies more to the second approach mentioned above than to the first. We need to take into account human honesty. When someone claims to have had a religious experience or an adjudicating experience [an experience that would expose one experience to be veridical but another nonveridical] we have to trust their truthfulness. We might never be sure in any particular case whether someone is being honest in expressing their findings. Human desire for one conclusion over another might influence one's final conclusion in such an investigation. We must be very watchful of this, both in ourselves and in the claims of others, in any such spiritual inquiry.
The second factor is that one cannot, like John Lennon or Ingmar Bergman, begin such a search and then end it when nothing immediately happens. There is no time limit for this kind of investigation. Though I think this would be the exception, one should be prepared even to live one's entire life in an honest continuously searching agnosticism. One might even feel, as you do, that the evidence against belief is so strong they must profess to be an atheist. Now I suspect that to be an atheist one must have repressed some good evidence that God had once given this person at one time or another in one's life. But even so, as long as the atheist is honestly seeking a God who deserves one's search and commitment, is seeking the truth from this God, and wills to do this God's will, on the sheer possibility that there is such a being, this individual has fulfilled his or her spiritual responsibility until they are made aware of any other. The Christian believes (or should believe) that this individual is not under God's judgment unless they reject or repress what God tries to show them.
The third factor that needs to be remembered in such an investigation is that one might discover a particular religious belief to be true not through what we usually think of as a religious experience but through other means such as exposure to new evidence, new insight concerning a logical argument, and so on.
The last point that needs to be emphasized has only been touched on earlier. It is most important that one seek the truth from one who deserves to be searched after. In Mormonism, for example, it is common to appeal to religious experience to verify that belief. An individual might speak of receiving a "burning in my bosom" as proof of the belief. One minor problem with this claim is that it is at least troubling to trust in such a non-noetic experience, an experience that is very different from normal sensory or other knowledge bestowing experience. But the more important problem is that one has to ask if this individual has followed the proper criterion in seeking this experience. If a person should seek the truth from the god of Mormonism, it would be very questionable whether he or she has indeed sought it from one who deserves to be searched after. This is a created being, a god who was originally a man; this is the kind of god we are supposed to be able to become. Even if someone were to merely "seek the truth from God," I have to wonder whether this might not lead to the Mormon experience (if that belief is being considered) or to any other of a number of possible seemingly belief verifying experiences. The "God" one seeks the truth from might mean a number of different things to different people and there might be a number of spiritual beings willing to provide a deceptive experience. That is why it is important to qualify this title "God" as being deserving of our search, commitment, and obedience.
One final comment. For the person who has had a religious experience and has come to a particular belief because of it, if this person is not yet aware of any conflicting experiences, he or she should be aware that their own religious experience should be considered veridical until then. We accept the veridicity of a sense experience until we have reason to question it. So it must be with religious experience.
T1: First, you attribute to me the view that "because religious experiences give conflicting evidence for different deities or religions none of them can be true," [E1, ¶1]. This is a misattribution, since the two claims that I advance are simply these. First, that the diversity of religious experience means that if one is going to claim that the religious experiences of Dr. Craig are veridical, one needs to justify that claim in a way that provides a reason for thinking that while his experiences are veridical, those of, say, a Muslim, or a Hindu, or a Buddhist, etc., are not. Craig provided no such justification. Indeed, he did not even acknowledge the need for such a justification in the argument that he offered.
My second point was essentially just a corollary--namely, that given the diversity of religious experience, any argument for the existence of, say, the Christian God that appeals to Christian religious experiences cannot, unless supplemented by other sorts of considerations, possibly be sound, since if it were a parallel argument, appealing to Muslim religious experiences in support of the existence of Allah, would be equally sound. But the total evidence concerning religious experiences--both Christian and Muslim--cannot provide sound grounds for concluding both that the Christian God exists, and that Allah exists, since the existence of Allah is logically incompatible with the existence of the Christian God.
Secondly, you introduce a comparison between religious experience and ordinary sense experience, noting that the fact that there are non-veridical sense experiences doesn't entail that there aren't veridical sense experiences. This comparison, however, rather than providing support for Craig's argument from religious experiences, undermines it further. The reason is that our grounds for holding sense experiences provide us with knowledge of an external, objective reality include the following two facts: (1) Sense experience is characterized by intersubjectivity; (2) Sense experience is not characterized by cultural dependence. Thus, as regards the first point, two individuals, situated in the same situation, will have sense experiences that map into one another, so that the beliefs that it will be natural for one to form about the part of the world in which they are will be very closely related to the beliefs that it will be natural for the other to form. So, for example, if you and I are in the vicinity of one another, and my sensory experience gives rise in me to the belief that there is a table between us that contains two apples, four books, and a vase of flowers, your sensory experiences will also give rise to the belief in you that here is a table between us that contains two apples, four books, and a vase of flowers.
As regards the second point, take two people from cultures as different as you like, and, if they speak different languages, have them learn each other's language, so that they can communicate. What one will then find is that, when they are in the same situation, they will assent to the same perceptual claims about their immediate environment. So perceptual beliefs do not depend, in any interesting way, upon the culture in which a person is raised.
Religious experiences differ very markedly from sensory experience in both respects. Thus, religious experiences are not characterized by intersubjectivity: not only do people not, in general, have the same religious experiences in a given situation, but two people may well be such that neither person has religious experiences of a sort that the other person has. Such variation, moreover, is not a random matter. On the contrary, there are overwhelming correlations between the sort of religious experiences that one has, and the culture in which one has been raised.
In short, two factors that play a crucial role in justifying the claim that sensory experiences provide one with information about an objective, external reality--namely, intersubjectivity and the absence of cultural dependence--are absent in the case of religious experiences, and this means that the type of case for veridicality that can be developed in the case of sense experience cannot be advanced in the case of religious experience. But, in addition, the absence of intersubjectivity in the case of religious experience, coupled with the dependence of the nature of one's religious experiences upon the culture in which one was raised, strongly suggests that the content of an individual's religious experiences is produced by the religious beliefs that the individual in question accepts. There is, accordingly, strong reason for concluding that religious experiences are probably non-veridical.
You go on to suggest "two possible means of determining which (if any) of two conflicting experiences is veridical." The first point that I want to make here is that I cannot see that what you suggest here is at all helpful. For keep in mind the problem here: A Christian has an experience of what he or she takes to be a triune creator; a Muslim has an experience of what he or she takes to be Allah; a Jew has an experience of what he or she takes to be the non-triune deity, Yahweh. At most one of these three deities can exist, and so at most one of the experiences in question can be veridical. So the question is, What reason is there for thinking--as Craig does--that the Christian religious experience is veridical, whereas the Muslim and the Jewish religious experiences are both non-veridical? You have not, it seems to me, really addressed this question, let alone provided any satisfactory answer.
Second, your second suggested approach involves looking at "the experience claims of others who have sought an adjudicating experience" and here you go on to say: "I would claim that an honest empirical study would indicate that probably most people who follow the above procedure have discovered biblical Christianity to be true," I don't want to be overly harsh here, but I think that I must say quite frankly that this claim is both an extraordinarily arrogant one--for which you offer no evidence at all--and one that is contrary to the evidence provided by studies in comparative religion, and by careful investigations of religious experience by famous researchers, such as William James in his classic book, The Varieties of Religious Experience2, and James Bissett Pratt, in The Religious Consciousness: A Psychological Study3. All such studies appear to indicate that there is no general type of religious experience that is present in one religion that is not also present in many other religions.
In your final comment, you suggest that if a person who has had a particular religious experience, and come to a particular belief because of it, is not aware of any conflicting religious experiences, then that person is justified in treating the experience as veridical. If one is considering a person who is in a society where he or she does not even know of the existence of other religions, that may be so. But virtually no one in contemporary society is in such a situation. Almost everyone is aware of the fact that there are other people with different religious beliefs, and given such knowledge, it seems clear that, in a matter as important as that of religious belief, that knowledge puts one under an obligation to determine whether people in those religions do not in fact have comparable religious experiences, but whose content supports belief, for example, in a different deity. So your remark, even if it would be true of people in certain situations of a sort that may have been not uncommon in past times and places, has no real relevance to the situation in which contemporary believers find themselves.
E2: First let me deal with a minor issue lest the reader be confused. I did not say of you that "because religious experiences give conflicting evidence for different deities or religions none of them can be true," [T1 ¶1; citing E1 ¶1]. I used the word 'veridical,' not 'true.' Thus I was not speaking of a religion being false but of the experience being nonveridical. No, you did not say that none of these conflicting experiences can be veridical; I did mistake your view here, but you did say that we do not know (and presumably cannot know) which ones are. Thus you are saying that such religious experience arguments are unsound.
I do agree that an argument from religious experience is unsound if we can point to other religious experiences that arrive at conflicting conclusions (if we cannot show the other experiences to be nonveridical).
No, Craig did not deal with this issue of conflicting experiences. But he did not have a chance to respond to your statements; he merely stated that the prima facie case goes to religious experience "in the absence of any defeaters." At that point in the debate you had not yet presented any defeaters or opposing evidence like conflicting experience. So contrary to your claim, there was no need for Craig to justify his claim at that point in the argument. Because we can claim to have knowledge through our experience, so we should through our religious experience. That I take to be the gist of Craig's argument.
You claim that intersubjectivity and cultural independence are among the crucial features that show sense experience to be veridical and that their absence in religious experience shows that it is not (T1 ¶3-6). To consider this objection we need to imagine the kind of world--or world view--envisioned when one makes a claim based on religious experience.
One might think that by following the proper techniques, one might perceive spiritual realities that would otherwise be hidden to us. In sense experience one must always follow the proper criteria. If I am going to confirm that I also see the books, apples, and flowers on the table, I cannot simply sit across from you with my eyes closed and say I don't see anything. Likewise, to have the proffered religious experience one has to follow the criteria or use the technique followed by someone who has claimed to have had that experience already.
Thus one might open the Huxlean "doors of perception" by following the proper technique. These techniques might include praying, fasting, chanting, meditating, taking drugs, or some other type of sensory or physical deprivation or overload.
In contrast to a very mechanistic world view one might think the religious experience should be given by one who reveals to us what we cannot see. The Flatlander cannot see into the third dimension but the reality of that dimension might be revealed to him or her by a three dimensional being. Here too one must follow the proper criteria to have this experience but that is not to say that the revealer cannot so act when one has not followed the criteria. In the revelatory world view one should not expect the experiences to show intersubjectivity, although that might be present. (Examples of intersubjective religious experiences might include mass visions, mass auditions--more than one person hearing a voice, such as a voice from heaven--ecstatic experiences, etc.) It all depends on the choice of the revealer. So if intersubjectivity is absent from the religious experience, this in no way gives us reason to disbelieve in its veridicity.
This is substantiated further by the fact that we very often lack intersubjectivity in unquestioned sense experience. Before a certain time in our recent history, no one had ever seen the far side of the moon. Suppose the first astronaut to do so was unable to photograph it or otherwise send back images to the earth. Suppose further that the surface was demolished by an enormous rain of meteorites shortly after he observed the moon. Would we have reason to doubt the astronaut's description of what he saw, at least as to the major features? Certainly not.
Some would say that at least the astronaut's experience was in principle intersubjective whereas the religious experience--the common ones we are usually concerned with--are not. But the distinction between the in principle and in practice does not really make any difference to the argument. If the astronaut's experience was not in practice intersubjective, how is it really any different than an experience which is in principle lacking intersubjectivity? In either case we still do not have intersubjectivity.
If the reader might think this example is unusual or forced, it would not be difficult to think of other common sense experiences which lack intersubjectivity: the candle that briefly burst into a green flame (did a small amount of magnesium somehow get mixed in the wax?), the unusual insect you saw that was shortly eaten by a passing bird, the religious man who muttered some profanity when he thought no one was around, the death bed confession. No one else was there to observe the event and it cannot be repeated. Are these nonveridical because they lack intersubjectivity? Certainly not.
Sense and religious experience are sufficiently analogous for us to accept the veridicity of both and on the same grounds.
The appeal to intersubjectivity is often part of a fuller argument appealing to a claimed need for checking procedures. I know there is a pencil in my hand because I can check the tactile experience by other senses: by vision, or even by sound if I tap it on the desk. But I can further check it by asking another person what they see or feel or hear. Most, or at least many, religious experiences only involve one sense. Some involve no normal sense experience at all but only an inner intuition or awareness.
If an unchecked or uncheckable experience must be rejected as being nonveridical, then why should the checked experience be accepted? If an unchecked experience (touching the pencil alone) has zero veridicity, then so does any other experience I'm checking it with (seeing or hearing the pencil). Likewise asking another person what they see or hear or feel is checking by reference to another unchecked experience. I don't know that the person is even there except by seeing, hearing, or touching them. Zero plus zero plus zero, etc. will always equal zero. If a single experience has a finite amount of veridicity value, then, yes, further checking procedures (with similar veridicity for each additional checking experience) can give it greater veridicity. But you have to begin with a certain value for the single experience. And it is totally arbitrary to claim that the value of the single unchecked experience is not quite enough but the checked experience is just enough to establish veridicity.
So the appeal to intersubjectivity or checking simply does not work to exclude an unchecked religious experience. If you experience something to be true you should accept it to be true just as you would accept any sense experience to give you the truth even if no one else is present to confirm it.
One final point concerning intersubjectivity. One very common feature of religious experience is that one person may have an experience showing that x is true and another person might have a very different experience also showing that x is true. This is not sufficiently different than a normal intersubjective sense experience; we have the same claim confirmed by two experiences. In normal intersubjective sense experience both parties rarely (if ever) have the same experience. If I sit across from you at the table and confirm the presence of apples, flowers, etc., I still haven't had the same experience you've had. You've seen the objects from your side of the table, I from mine. If such sense experiences can be considered to be intersubjectively checked, why shouldn't the above religious experience?
Concerning your claim that "there are overwhelming correlations between the sort of religious experiences that one has, and the culture in which one has been raised," you haven't given me any examples to consider and I'm not entirely sure what you are referring to. For example, you might be referring to the kind of problem Antony Flew discussed when he said that the character of religious experience
seems to depend on the interests, background, and expectations of those who have them rather than upon anything separate and autonomous. . . . The expert natural historian of religious experience would be altogether astonished to hear of the vision of Bernadette Soubirous occurring not to a Roman Catholic at Lourdes but to an Hindu in Benares, or of Apollo manifest not in classical Delphi but in Kyoto under the Shoguns.4
If you are referring to something else please let me know. For now I will simply answer Flew's argument and hope that I will have thereby answered your criticism as well. Please let me know if there is more to your claim that I have not answered.
First of all, if one has a religious experience, the revealing being might consider it necessary or at least important that it be given some nonessential coloring in order that it be received and understood. For example, a vision of Mary to a medieval monk might appear quite different from Miriam, the mother of Jesus, as she looked in her earthly life. Or would the Buddha be recognizable to a Chinese follower if he appeared in a vision as he actually looked in his lifetime? Thus the fact that there could be the kind of cultural correspondences Flew talks about does not necessarily count as evidence against the experiences.
The main problem with Flew's claim is simply that it is an excessive overgeneralization. Many religious experiences do correspond to the "interests, backgrounds, and expectations" of the experients (those who have the experience), but there are many individuals who have reached experiences which are clearly at variance with their pasts or their expectations. The apostle Paul is a classic example. There is little historical doubt that because of his religious experience Paul did undergo a complete conversion from a very anti-Christian form of Judaism to become a dedicated follower of Jesus. William James records the vision experience of one M. Ratisbonne, "a free thinking French Jew" which caused him to convert to Catholicism.5 Throughout the history of this paper, Encounter (and before that Point/Counterpoint), we have provided accounts of individuals who have had religious experiences which were at odds with their predispositions, expectations and backgrounds. Some have had experiences that have brought them to believe things they definitely did not want to believe. It is these "case studies," if you will, that provide some of the strongest evidence for the beliefs these individuals have come to hold.
But we should also notice that just because one has an experience that conflicts with one's desires, that does not mean that experience must be veridical. There might be psychological or spiritual explanations for such phenomena as we suggested in factor four above [E1 ¶9]. Yet we should accept any such experience as prima facie veridical until we have reason to doubt it. The important thing would be to test such experiences by following the proper criteria mentioned in factor four and in the suggested means of attaining an adjudicating experience or determination of the truth [E1 ¶3, 5 ].
On the other hand if A experiences x to be true, that experience should not be discounted simply because A happened to have a desire for x to be true. Should a scientific experiment be discounted if it demonstrates something the scientist hoped to be true?
What of the problem of widespread correspondence of religious experiences to beliefs (e.g.., medieval Catholic monks never experiencing visions of the Buddha and medieval Buddhist monks never experiencing visions of Jesus)? Why would each group have such uniform kinds of experiences supporting virtually only their own beliefs? If naturalism is true, it is likely because the experiences are self-created and nonveridical. If certain forms of theism were true, it is because, to a very large degree, God only shows himself or his truth to those who seek God and there may be relatively few who do so. As under naturalism, people might have experiences that are the creation of their own psyche. Or deceiving spirits (if there be such) might give experiences fitting what the people want to believe. Those who seek the truth from God might be given experiences which conflict with their accepted beliefs. Those old beliefs would likely then be rejected. (Accounts of individuals who come to reject old beliefs because of their experiences would provide evidence of this last possibility.) Or the old accepted beliefs might be close enough to the truth that the seeker will be given little or even no differing information. If it is true that all God requires is that we one confess to will to do the will of the one who deserves our commitment and obedience, in some cases God might not give any new information until after death (see the previous debate and discussion concerning Dr. Tooley's argument from the hiddenness of God and hell). So in summary, the social correspondence of religious experience to belief is what we would expect under either world view and it does not give sufficient reason to believe the experiences to be nonveridical.
Real problems arise only when we have true conflicting religious experience claims, of person A experiencing x and B experiencing not x. And that problem we have already discussed and will further discuss shortly.
You claim that I have not given any grounds for judging between conflicting experiences [T1 ¶7; re E1 ¶3-4]. My statement was that to attain an adjudicating experience, an experience which will show us which of two or more conflicting experiences are veridical, one should seek the truth from one who deserves our highest commitment. I mentioned possible characteristics of such an experience [E1 ¶4] that should give us reason to believe that ones previous experience or a reported experience by another person is not veridical and that another such experience is. If by following the given criteria one does not attain an adjudicating experience or otherwise determine one belief to be true and the other or others to be false, one should remain agnostic about the claims made. One should certainly follow other means of determining which religious or nonreligious views are true (evaluate historical, philosophical, and scientific arguments and evidence, etc.), but I would maintain that in any case this criterion should be followed. To use your example of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, I have not shown that one belief is true and the others are false. I have rather offered a means by which one can do so: by seeking the truth from One who deserves our commitment.
So if my point was not clear, I hope it is now or will be with the following example. Perhaps we need to see what a very definite adjudicating experience would look like; although the following is not the only form one might take.
While in Yogic trance, Rabindrath Maharaj experienced that "I was Lord of the universe, with no problems, no unrest, no uncertainty." In contrast, he relates a later experience at a time he, then a highly esteemed local Yogi, was receiving worship from a poor neighbor:
Reaching out to touch her forehead in bestowal of my blessing, I was startled by a voice of unmistakable omnipotent authority: "You are not God, Rabi!" My arm froze in midair. "You . . . are . . . not . . . God!" The words smote me like the slash of a cutlass felling the tall green cane.
Instinctively I knew that the true God, the Creator of all, had spoken these words, and I began to tremble.6
Obviously this individual was able to judge between the two conflicting experiences by their character or nature.
Consider the outcomes that we should expect to occur when one seeks an adjudicating experience by following this criterion of seeking the truth from a revealing being:
(1) If the belief given by ones initial religious experience is true and if there is one who deserves our commitment who has the power and will to give this truth, and if one becomes aware of well supported conflicting experiences claimed by other individuals, then a second religious or other experience will be given or will occur to confirm the first experience.
(2) If the belief given by ones initial religious experience is not true and if a conflicting religious belief is true and if there is one who deserves our commitment who has the power and will to give this truth, then the seeker will be given a new adjudicating experience, an experience which will show them that the new belief is true. Again, this might not be a strictly religious experience; it could be a new insight or evaluation of, say, an old argument. Possibly it could involve becoming aware of the testimony of another person's claimed adjudicating experience.
(3) If the belief given by ones initial religious experience is not true and if a conflicting religious belief is true but there is no revealer, then the seeker will not likely attain a new adjudicating experience. If the seeker becomes aware of a well supported conflicting experience claim, that person should not assume that their initial experience is veridical. One should give precedence to the one's own experience but, in light of the claimed conflicting experience, hold it in question. Following a different criterion to seek the religious experience might give an adjudicating experience, for example, one that does not necessarily presuppose the existence of a revealer. If the seeker does attain an experience by which it appears that the initial belief or a conflicting belief is true, then they should assume that they have been given the truth. In fact, the seeker will not have the truth if the initial experience is confirmed but they will have the best they can have, a justified belief. Just as a sense experience might give a false belief, still one might be justified in believing it.
(4) If no religious belief is true and there is no revealer, then again, the seeker will not likely attain an adjudicating experience. If one does then the evidenced belief should be considered to be a justified belief though in fact it would be a false belief.
I have claimed "that an honest empirical study would indicate that probably most people who follow the above procedure have discovered biblical Christianity to be true," (E1 ¶5) and you called this an arrogant claim ( T1 ¶8). But you haven't told me why this claim is arrogant. I've merely given you my own experience of what I have usually found to be the case. If to claim that the religious seeker will discover that Christianity is true is arrogant, is your claim that they will not any less arrogant? If you think your claim is less arrogant, why?
Next you say that my claim is contrary to the evidence of comparative religion and the investigations of researchers like James and Pratt who show that "there is no general type of religious experience that is present in one religion that is not also present in many other religions." But I'm not claiming that the general type of experience is different; I'm not contradicting James or Pratt. On the other hand one may obviously have different experiences which differ in certitude or similar characteristics. And these characteristics might cause one to value or trust one experience over the other if the experiences conflict. If you can give evidence from James or Pratt or anyone else that this is not the case, I would love to hear it.
Lastly you suggest that almost everyone, who fulfills ones obligations to investigate, should be aware that those of different religions likely have experiences that justify those conflicting beliefs and thus conflict with one's own experiences (T1 ¶9, re E1 ¶11). Thus you argue that one cannot claim, as I have, that one's experience is veridical if one is unaware of conflicting religious experiences.
Many people who have a religious background assume that most religious people--including people of all religions--are like themselves. They believe what they believe because that is what they have always been taught. And I think most or at least many nonreligious people think the same way. They think that people of varying religions believe, not because of any good reason or because of any noetic (information imparting) experience, but because of their upbringing and tradition. They think that new religions either flourish or flounder primarily because the hearers either liked or disliked what they heard or because of other purely psychological and social reasons.
Now imagine that such a person has a religious experience such that she comes to believe a particular religion to be true. Until she becomes aware of others who have experiences that confirm their own particular beliefs, she will assume what she had believed all along, namely, that nobody else has such experiences. She has just discovered that her religion (or another religion depending on just what she has experienced) is different and that there is someone (a God, spirit, Ascended Master, Bodhisattva etc.) who has shown her that it is true.
If you have "discovered" something to be true, wouldn't you expect that there is no way an alternate belief can be similarly evidenced to be true? Would you really feel obligated to take the time to investigate whether some other religion or religions have similar experiential phenomena? If our experient thinks that God or some similar revealing being has shown her this, wouldn't she think that there are no other similar experiences that verify other religions? At least wouldn't she think that if there might be such, they certainly would not be veridical? After all, God had the option of showing her the truth of any one of a number of possible religions and this is the one God showed her, or so she would think.
[ Another factor we often overlook it that most people in the world do not even have access to the educational institutions and information systems we have in the West. Many would not be able to research such issues if they wanted to.]
I will grant you that if this person does think through her views very well she should question her experience. Most religions, certainly most of the western theistic religions, will warn their followers and inquirers that deceiving forces or spirits (Satan, demons, etc.) will give deceiving experiences. Might it be, she might ask herself, that her's is a deceiving experience? So as you suggest, but for largely other reasons, if she does much thinking about it at all, she should at least eventually consider the possibility that her experience might be nonveridical.
So I would maintain that there are many people who, if they have a religious experience, will never consider the possibility of conflicting experiences and they should consider their experience as prima facie veridical. Others who do come to question their religious experience will need to find a means of testing it.
As I have pointed out, one who follows the criterion I've suggested--that of seeking the truth from one who deserves our commitment--should feel assured that they have or will discover the truth or will arrive at the most justified conclusion if certain world views are true. And simply honestly investigating the evidence will bring us to the most justified conclusion if other possible world views are true. So both procedures should be followed.
(For further discussion concerning the evidential value of religious experience, see our discussion with Paul Doland regarding his critique of Lee Strobel's The Case for Faith.)
References
The Default Argument for Atheism
Part 5, Tooley/Craig Debate
Continuing our debate between Dr. Michael Tooley and Dr. William Lane Craig (see the speakers' credentials in the first portion of the debate),, we will here present and discuss Dr. Tooley's argument against Theism in his claim that atheism is the default position. This is part five of the debate and Dr. Tooley's first argument against the existence of God.
Tooley: p4The central claim in the first argument is that atheism is the default position; and what that means is that, if there is no evidence in support of the existence of God, then it is reasonable to believe that God does not exist. The essential line of thought which I would hope to develop later on is that if you consider other things like fairies, leprechauns, golden teacups orbiting around Venus, and so on, I would suggest that we have no evidence against the existence of those sorts of things, but if I asked you whether you were agnostic I think the answer would be "no." You would believe there are no fairies, no leprechauns, no golden teacups orbiting around Venus. That illustrates the general principle in regard to God's existence that the burden of proof must fall upon the person who is arguing in support of God's existence. If there's no positive support for it, then the other side wins by default. . . .
Craig: p6What about atheism as a default position? Frankly, I'm very surprised to hear this argument coming from [Dr. Tooley] because I think it's clear that the failure of arguments for God's existence in no way proves that God therefore does not exist. Kai Nielsen, who is an atheist philosopher, makes this point as follows. He says,
To show that an argument is invalid or unsound is not to show that the conclusion of the argument is false. All the proofs of God's existence may fail, but it still may be the case that God exists. In short, to show that the proofs do not work is not enough by itself. It may still be the case that God exists.1
Atheism does not simply win by default.
Let me give you an analogy. In current cosmology many scientists believe that there was an era of inflationary expansion in the early history of the universe. We have at this point no positive evidence, however, of such an era. Does that therefore mean that no such era ever existed? Of course not. The absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence. Atheism doesn't simply win by default. . . .
Tooley: p10In the case of the first argument, I didn't sketch it fully because of time limitations. Let me sketch it very briefly now. The thrust of the argument, in effect, is that if you consider something like the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect being, there are other types of omnipotent, omniscient beings. There could be an omniscient, omnipotent being who is, for example, morally evil and supremely so. There could also be omnipotent, omniscient beings who have intermediate moral characteristics. You therefore get a range of omnipotent and omniscient beings with as great a variety of possible moral attributes as you care to imagine, and there's no reason, a priori, why the existence of one of these should be more probable than the other. But now the crucial point is that at most one omnipotent and omniscient being can exist at any given time. For then, in view of the fact that any number of different types of omnipotent and omniscient beings are logically possible, the probability that any particular one of them would exist--such as an omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect one--must surely be (much) less than one half. But if the probability of a proposition is less than one half, the probability of its being false is greater than one half. And so one would have a reason not to accept that proposition. Therefore, atheism is the default position for that reason.
Q1:Q&A [To Dr. Craig.] How do you deal with the statement that even God cannot create a boulder so heavy that he cannot lift it?
Craig: Generally speaking, theists have held that God's omnipotence does not mean that He can do things that are logically impossible. And the idea of a boulder too heavy for God to lift is simply a self-contradictory description. It's not a logical possibility, and therefore most philosophers would say that this is not something that should fall within the pale of God's omnipotence. He cannot do logical impossibilities, and therefore this is no infringement of His omnipotence.
Now of course, if you do think He can do logical impossibilities, then He can create a stone heavier than he can lift and then lift it! So, either way, if He cannot do logical impossibilities it's no infringement, and if He can then it's no problem.
Tooley: Well, it's possible for an omnipotent being to create a boulder too heavy for him to lift, but only at the cost of the sacrifice of his own omnipotence. He ceases to be omnipotent if he creates such a state of affairs. But if you wave that sort of move I would say that it is possible, as Dr. Craig has suggested, to give a satisfactory account of omnipotence to handle that sort of a case. Giving a satisfactory account of omnipotence is a somewhat subtle matter, but I think a satisfactory account can be given.
Comments for Dr. Tooley
Encounter: You say that a crucial point is "that at most one omnipotent and omniscient being can exist at any given time." However crucial it might be, it is simply not true. Since omnipotence cannot do the logically impossible, two omnipotent beings would have the power to do anything not opposed by the other or otherwise disqualified by the definition. Thus they could coexist.
Indeed, before going any further let me give some definitions. "Infinite power" would be the power to do anything not logically impossible. "Infinite knowledge" would be knowledge of all that can be possibly known. (Notice how different this is from the modern notion of a mathematical infinity.)
So if you think it is really crucial that two such beings cannot coexist, then I think your argument fails. But I don't think it is crucial. It seems to me that your argument still has some force without this assumption.
The more highly specified a claim is, the less likely it is if no evidence is present. A golden tea cup orbiting Venus is a highly specified state of affairs. It is more specified than the claim that somewhere a golden tea cup exists; which is more specified than the claim that somewhere a tea cup exists; which is more specified than the claim that somewhere a solid object the size of a tea cup exists.
But notice that any state of affairs is more highly specified to the degree we have greater knowledge of it. Once I know what a rock is made of I can say more about it and it is thus more specified. If I know its shape and size, again it is more specified than if I don't. The more specified the claim, the more evidence I need to support each claim.
So I do admit that as a statement becomes more specified without evidence, so it becomes less likely. But this isn't really a formula that should be plugged into an evaluation of the evidence for God's existence. It doesn't somehow count against God's existence once we start to weigh the evidence.
Let me give an example. When scientists first began talking about quarks they couldn't say an awfully lot about them. As new evidence came in, their descriptions became more specified. The fact that we could once make only very general claims about quarks does not in any way diminish the greater evidence that supports the more detailed claims we can now make about them. It does not diminish our right to make those claims. Likewise detailed claims about God would be unwarranted if we had no evidence for those claims. But that does not lessen the power of the evidence for those detailed claims once the evidence becomes available.
First of all, is it more likely that something should exist or that nothing should exist? We are speaking of existence in the most unspecified terms possible. We know nothing about it other than it is just "something." This is or is at least part of surely the most basic and yet ultimate question of all of philosophy: Why is there something rather than nothing? My intuition is that there should more likely be nothing. But obviously, there is something so my intuition is incorrect. Nevertheless, shouldn't we assume that something does not exist if we have no reason to think that it does? It is at least a very close call to speak of the unlikelihood of something as unspecified as simply "something." But once this "something" becomes even the least bit more specified, shouldn't we assume that its existence less probable? Perhaps. However, the creator described earlier is such a simple being it is hard to imagine any physical object being simpler. Nevertheless, a creator would be less intrinsically probable than something less specified, assuming we have (or are considering) absolutely no evidence for or against its existence.
So I think that the existence of a creator (not yet specified as good or evil) is less likely than a creator's nonexistence, given no evidence for or against such a being. A good creator (let me call this benevolent theism) is still more specified than one that could be either good or bad or both. A good creator is thus less likely intrinsically than not. But this 'not' is not atheism. It includes some views that atheism would be reluctant to claim. Atheism, by most definitions, would not admit the existence of any creator, be it good or bad. So it is not atheism that is the default position but all positions not covered by benevolent theism. And this "everything else" is only the default position between itself and benevolent theism. The truly default position is agnosticism. To the degree we lack evidence for anything, so we do not have reason to claim to know it and so we should admit agnosticism. Having said this, we have talked earlier about reasons for considering theism more basically likely than atheism. Theism is a simpler explanation for a complex universe than the universe existing on it's own. But here we are considering evidence of a sort and we have gone beyond a true consideration of intrinsic probability, probability considered with no evidence whatsoever.
Also, benevolent theism might be thought to be more likely than a malevolent or a mixed theism (God being both good and evil, as we find in humans ). A God who created everything must have had a very great intelligence and power, certainly far greater than that of any human. One who so intimately understands all of creation, one from whom all value in created beings is derived, would certainly value all that this being has created. This being would thus have the power and the will to do only good or at least that which would eventually result in the greatest good. So it seems that given the above considerations and if we admit any kind of theism it would be more likely that theism would be benevolent theism.
If, given no evidence for or against benevolent theism, it is less likely that there is a good creator than not, this doesn't really mean much. As with any other existential claim, the theist doesn't expect one to believe something until there is evidence. And as more is claimed, more evidence must be added.
Let me offer just a couple of final minor observations. It is not so unlikely that a creator would have infinite knowledge and power as would some other being (a being less specified than "creator"). We should expect that a creator would more likely have infinite knowledge/power than just any other being since the creator must have at least very great knowledge/power. It might be that that creator's very great power/knowledge happens to be infinite knowledge/power. Any other being would have too many other possible degrees of power/knowledge open to it and thus it is less likely they would have infinite power/knowledge. So it is more probable that a creator would have infinite power than just anybody else.
My last comment: When you talk about leprechauns and fairies I sense that your objection involves some unstated and unanalyzed assumptions that might be worth talking about. If you ask someone if they believe in leprechauns and fairies, they will likely tell you no, but they will do so because of factors in their background and upbringing more than for any rationally justifiable reason. We are brought up with stories about creatures like leprechauns and fairies. When as children we asked our parents or teachers if they really exist they would laugh and say of course not. So we are conditioned to think that anyone who would consider the possibility of the existence of such creatures should be laughed at. Now under more exacting analysis we might determine that there is good reason for positively disbelieving in their existence; or, perhaps, we might determine that agnosticism is the more rational position. But short of this kind of honest investigation, the main reason most people disbelieve in such creatures is because of a kind of social conditioning. The fact that many or even most people positively disbelieve in something is not in itself adequate reason to disbelieve it. Remember Plato's harsh words for that very same kind of assumption used in arguments for God's existence? If everyone in the world believed there was a God, that would not be adequate reason to believe it. We need good, strong arguments; we need evidence, not popular opinion. All I'm saying here is that leprechauns and fairies are not good examples because the reasons many people disbelieve in them are not good reasons. And thus to use the fact that most people disbelieve in such creatures as one of the grounds for your claim that the burden of proof is on the believer is not sound.
References
1. Kai Nielsen, Reason and Practice (NY: Harper & Row, 1971) 143-4.
The Argument from Objective Moral Values
Part 6, Tooley/Craig Debate
Continuing the debate between Dr. Michael Tooley and Dr. William Lane Craig (see the speakers' credentials in the first portion of the debate), we will here present and discuss Dr. Craig's argument for Theism from objective moral values. This is the sixth part of the debate. This part presents and follows Dr. Craig's fourth argument for God's existence.
Craig:p3 God provides the best explanation for objective moral values in the world. If God does not exist, then objective moral values do not exist. Many theists and atheists alike concur on this point. For example, the late J. L. Mackie of Oxford University, one of the most influential atheists of our time, admitted,
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.1
But in order to avoid God's existence, Mackie therefore denied that objective moral values exist. He wrote, "It is easy to explain this moral sense as a natural product of biological and social evolution."2
Professor Michael Ruse, a philosopher of science at the University of Guelph, agrees. He explains,
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 reference is truly without foundation. Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction, and any deeper meaning is illusory.3
Friederich Nietzsche, the great atheist of the last century who proclaimed the death of God, understood that the death of God meant the destruction of all meaning and value in life.4
I think that Friederich 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 a moral life? I'm not claiming that we must. Nor is the question, Can we recognize objective moral values without believing in God? I think we can. Rather, the question is, If God does not exist, do objective moral values exist?
Like Mackie and Ruse, I just don't see any reason to think that in the absence of God the morality evolved by homo sapiens is objective. After all, if there is no God, then what's so special about human beings? They're just accidental by-products 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, and which are doomed to perish individually and collectively in a relatively short time. On the atheistic view, some action, say, rape, may not be socially advantageous and so in the course of human development has become taboo. But that does absolutely nothing to prove that rape is really morally wrong. On the atheistic view, if you can escape the social consequences, there's nothing really wrong with your raping someone. And thus without God there is no absolute right and wrong which imposes itself on our conscience.
But the fact is that objective values do exist, and we all know it. There is no more reason to deny the objective reality of moral values than the objective reality of physical objects. Actions like rape, torture, child abuse--aren't just socially unacceptable behavior. They're moral abominations. Even Ruse himself admits, "The man who says it is morally acceptable to rape little children is just as mistaken as the man who says 2+2=5."5 Some things are really wrong.
Similarly, love, equality, self-sacrifice are really good. But if objective values cannot exist without God and objective values do exist, then it follows logically and inescapably that God exists. . . .
[In responding to the problem of evil, Craig presented the following argument:]
p7. . . I think that there is actually an argument for God from evil. It would go like this:
(i) If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist. If there is no God, moral values are either sociobiological by-products or just expressions of personal preference.
(ii) Evil exists. That's the premise of the atheist. There is real evil in the world.
(iii) Therefore, objective values do exist. Some things are really wrong.
(iv) Therefore, God exists. Thus the presence of evil in the world actually demonstrates God's existence because in the absence of God, there wouldn't be any distinction objectively between good and evil, between right and wrong. So although evil in one sense calls into question God's existence, in a much deeper sense, I think, it actually requires God's existence. . . .
Tooley:p8 Dr. Craig's fourth argument was the argument from objective values. Craig's setting out of this argumentation was interesting, for there was no real argument offered. It was simply claimed that, if there are objective values, there must be a God. No God, no objective values.
That contention goes against certain quite famous philosophical arguments, one going back to Plato's Euthyphro. The argument involves asking whether the gods love the things that are holy because they are holy or whether things are holy because they were loved by the gods.
There is a theory which has the consequence that there cannot be objective moral laws unless God exists--that's the so-called 'divine command theory of morality.' What it says is that an action is wrong because and only because God forbids it. And an action is obligatory because and only because God demands it. If that theory were right, then there would be an argument in support of the claim that Dr. Craig has advanced. But that theory is quite a hopeless theory because of it's implications. One of its implications, for example, is that, if God had commanded mankind to torture one another as much as possible, then it would follow that that action was obligatory. Perhaps Dr. Craig would be happy with that consequence. But many people, including many religious thinkers, are very unhappy with that consequence, and so have rejected the divine command theory of morality.
The divine command theory of morality represents one way in which one might think that the existence of God was presupposed by the existence of objective moral values. Unfortunately, Dr. Craig has not offered any explanation of the connection that he believes to exist between the two, so I can't really offer an argument against his own view concerning the connection. Perhaps he'll say something about this later on.
p9The other point that needs to be made, however, is that there are a number of ethical theories--such as that of the famous British philosopher, G. E. Moore, in which moral values are identified with non-natural properties--which provide one with perfectly objective values even in a world without God. Consequently, the existence of God is just completely irrelevant for the existence of objective moral values. . . .
Craig: What about God's being the best explanation of objective moral values? I certainly did give an argument for this. I said that in the absence of God there is no reason to think that human beings are special. There's no reason to think they have these non-natural properties that Dr. Tooley seems to posit. It's much more plausible on the atheistic view that man is just an animal, just a primate, and moral values don't exist.
He attacks the divine command theory of ethics; but notice that a defensible view of the divine command theory is available so long as you say that God's commands are not arbitrary, but are rooted in His own moral nature. P10So His commands flow necessarily out of His own nature, and thus you don't get into the dilemma Dr. Tooley referred to. . . .
Q7: Q&A[To Dr. Craig.] Dr. Tooley has stated that G. E. Moore and other Platonists can give a perfectly plausible account of objective values. You deny this. Could you expand on this?
Craig: On the atheistic view, I just don't see why we should think that the ethics that have been developed by homo sapiens is objective, why there are these supposed non-natural properties that make man morally valuable or intrinsically of moral significance. It seems to me that given the atheistic view it's much more plausible that what we call morality is what we observe in animals. It is genetically induced or sociologically induced behavior patterns, such as the altruism that you see in a troupe of baboons or something of that sort. I don't see any grounds for believing that human beings would have those sorts of properties. Any evidence that we do have for objective values would suggest to me that therefore God exists. I don't have any intuition that such properties would exist in the absence of God as the source or yardstick of moral values.
Tooley: Two comments. First, it seems to me that Dr. Craig has not offered any argument at all against G. E. Moore's view. Moore says that there are these non-natural properties, and that we're intuitively aware of them. Craig says, "Well, moral beliefs just arise through evolutionary restraints." Moore says, "No, I believe that it's wrong to torture sentient life, and so on. There isn't any reason to believe that this belief just arose through evolution." Dr. Craig is here running an argument he wouldn't accept for a moment in any other context. We see agreement in different societies on many fundamental values, and it may very well be that the best explanation of that agreement is that there are non-natural properties that people are directly aware of.
The second point is that William Craig has no viable alternative. He keeps claiming that somehow the existence of God helps provide us with objective values. Suppose there is an omnipotent and omniscient being who is a cosmic Hitler, and who wants people to torture one another. That's his nature. Moreover he issues commands, not arbitrarily, but according to his nature. So what he commands is that people should go and torture one another. According to Dr. Craig's theory, it's now morally right for people to torture one another. That's just not a satisfactory outcome. Any theory that has that consequence is not an acceptable theory. So again, there is no defensible version of the divine command theory--contrary to what Dr. Craig has said.
Comments for Dr. Tooley
Encounter: You present G. E. Moore's view that objective moral values are or are derived from non-natural properties and then you object that Craig never responds to this possibility. But Moore, so far as you have presented his view, never says how we get non-natural properties, which is Craig's question. Just to affirm that there are non-natural properties is merely to affirm Craig's second premise, that there are objective moral values. Why should Craig try to answer a view that just affirms his point?
So how do we get objective moral values or non-natural properties? You admit that we cannot get them through the usual evolutionary scenarios. Somehow we just have them, you seem to say, but you don't show how it is even imaginable, on a naturalistic view, that there could be such a thing.
Craig points out that if there is a God, then objective moral value could be derived from God's nature. Because God has infinite worth or value we might possess worth by virtue of being God's creation. Somehow God could give us this non-natural property such that good and evil, right and wrong, have meaning in relation to the treatment of persons.
Now much of what I have just said is an elaboration or explication of Craig's statement, but it seems to me that this does answer your second objection. Your objection was that Craig offers no alternative to the naturalistic view when he suggests that objective values flow from God's nature. You say that maybe there is a cosmic Hitler and that evil flows from this god's being. Well, that wouldn't account for objective moral values; there you would certainly be correct. But that being would also not be God, by your definition as well as by Craig's definition. So whether there is such a being is totally irrelevant to the claims of the moral argument. The question is, What if there is a being whose very nature provides us with objective moral value, one whose nature possesses objective value or worth? Then our belief that we do posses objective moral value would be justified if we are created with the worth that comes from this God.
On the other hand, how can Moore's or any other naturalistic view provide justification for the belief that there are objective moral values or non-natural properties? You haven't answered this question in the debate. As Doestoyeski said, "If there is no God, then all things are lawful." What right do you have to say that anything is right or wrong?
You might try to claim that non-natural properties are just there just like the theist says that God is just there. There is no cause or reason for God's existence. If you do so then you are making a religious claim and the kind of religious claim that cannot be accounted for by any normal naturalistic scenario of the origin and evolution of life. Certainly theism can adopt this naturalistic scenario and say that this is simply how God chose to create life. But my point is that if we adapt that naturalistic scenario and try to make it work (seem plausible) without God, then there isn't really any place for non-natural properties. What is it about mere changing arrangements of matter (which constitute the purported origin and evolution of life) that can allow the entrance of non-natural properties?
Also you face the problem that it is difficult to say why these non-natural properties should just happen to resided in persons. Why not in the clock in my living room or the table in your dining room? What makes persons so special?
Now the theist will bring up other arguments for God's existence and say that Moore's claim cannot provide similar arguments, but if we are to consider Craig's argument from objective moral values as an independent argument then we need to see how it fares without those supporting arguments. So if the existence of God is a good explanation for objective moral values, then the existence of non-natural properties is an equally good explanation of objective moral values, you might say. Well, until the problems of the previous two paragraphs are answered, it cannot be an equally good explanation.
References
1 J. L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982) 115-6.
2 Miracle of Theism, 117-8.
3 Michael Ruse, "Evolutionary Theory and Christian Ethics," in The Darwinian Paradigm (London: Routledge, 1989) 262-9.
4 Friederich Nietzsche, "The Gay Science," in The Portable Nietzsche, trans. and ed. W. Kaufmann (NY: Viking, 1954) 95.
5 Michael Ruse, Darwinism Defended (London: Addison-Wesley, 1982) 275.
The Argument from Minds
Part 7, Tooley/Craig Debate
Continuing the debate between Dr. Michael Tooley and Dr. William Lane Craig (see the speakers' credentials in the first portion of the debate), we will here present and discuss Dr. Tooley's argument against Theism in his argument from the existence of minds. This is part seven of the debate and Dr. Tooley's second argument against theism.
Tooley: p4Let us now move on to my second argument. It involves an extrapolation from the nature of the minds that we know, and it turns upon the following thesis:
All minds that it is generally agreed that we are definitely acquainted with--namely the minds of humans and other animals--are either purely physical in nature or else are causally dependent on something physical in nature.
Now, one reason that we have for accepting this claim consists of facts that point toward at least a very intimate relationship between mental states and brain states. Among the facts that are relevant here are the following:
First, when an individual's brain is put into a certain physical state by direct stimulation, this causes the individual to have a corresponding experience, or, more generally, to be in some corresponding mental state.
Secondly, certain types of damage to the brain make it impossible for one to enjoy any mental states at all--either temporarily or permanently, depending on the nature of the damage.
Thirdly, damage to the brain destroys various mental capacities, and which capacity is affected depends upon the particular region of the brain where it was damaged.
Fourthly, the mental capacities possessed by animals of other species become increasingly complex and impressive as the brain becomes more complex.
Fifthly, in the case of individuals belonging to a single species, the development of mental capacities is correlated with the development of neuronal circuitry in the relevant regions of the brain.
So in short, there is a good deal of evidence which indicates that there is a very close relationship between mental states and mental capacities and the development of the states of the brain.
Many contemporary philosophers and psychologists believe that the proper conclusion is that the mind is in fact purely physical: it is identical with the brain. Other philosophers and psychologists hold that this conclusion is too strong, and that the mind, rather than being identical with the brain, is instead causally dependent upon it. For the purpose of our discussion tonight though, for the present argument, it doesn't matter which of these views is the right one since, regardless of whether the mind is actually identical with the brain or merely causally dependent upon it, we can draw the following conclusion: To wit, none of the minds with which we are definitely acquainted can exist independently of physical arrangements of matter. All the minds that we are definitely acquainted with have a material basis.
If this conclusion is correct, it would seem that we are justified in making a standard inductive extrapolation upon it and concluding that probably there is no mind that exists independently of some associated physical arrangement of matter that it is either identical with or at least causally dependent upon.
Now if one used the term 'God' to mean a being that is immaterial or spiritual then it would follow immediately that it is unlikely that such a God exists. I didn't incorporate that requirement into the definition of God I gave at the beginning but I think there is good reason for drawing the same conclusion nonetheless. The reason is that I think one can argue that, given what we know about the universe, it would be impossible for there to be a being that was omnipotent and omniscient and that was physical in nature. p5So it seems to me that, even if one does not hold that God is by definition immaterial, what we are presently justified in believing about the nature of minds with which we are acquainted makes it reasonable to believe that it is unlikely that God exists. . . .
Craig: p6What about the nature of minds? The evidence shows, Dr. Tooley says, that minds are dependent upon physical states, and therefore he draws the conclusion that there can be no mind that exists independently of matter. Well, I guess I'm just not impressed by the argument because it seems to me that's a whopping big inference to make. Let me just respond with a couple of points.
First of all, all that the evidence shows is that being embodied is a common property of minds, but that doesn't show that it's an essential property of minds. To draw the conclusion that there can be no unembodied mind you'd have to show that this is an essential property. I don't see how he can do that.
Secondly, he neglected to mention there's a good number of people who defend dualism-interactionism today--people like Nobel Prize winning scientist Sir John Eccels, the great neurologist, or his collaborator Karl Popper, one of the greatest philosophers of science. They wrote a book called The Self and Its Brain1 and defended dualism-interactionism, according to which the self and the brain work together in tandem.
Thirdly, how about our experience of human freedom? Surely this counts as some sort of evidence for a mind or soul that exists independently (or can exist independently) of the brain. If the mind is simply the brain or is totally causally dependent upon the brain, then everything you think or choose or do is determined by the stimuli that you receive. But surely our experience of human freedom suggests that we are not just deterministic machines, that minds are not simply reducible to the brain or causally dependent upon it. So I think he's just making a very, very large inference here from data that doesn't support it. . . .
Tooley: p10As regards the argument that appeals to a fact about all the minds that we are acquainted with, here, as in a number of places, Dr. Craig distorted my argument. I did not claim, as he said, that there could not be a non-embodied mind, for I believe that non-embodied minds are possible. My argument did not, as he suggested, involve the assumption that dualism is false. For I myself am an interactionist dualist, and I was certainly not making assumptions that are contrary to ones I myself believe!
My argument here was a probabilistic argument. The claim was that all the minds we are acquainted with have a certain property--namely, that they are all at least dependent upon physical entities--brains. But if this is so, then it's reasonable to project that property onto any other minds that may happen to exist. And if you do project that property, you arrive at a certain conclusion--not that the existence of God is impossible, but, rather, that the existence of God is unlikely. Dr. Craig just did not address that argument at all.
Comments for Dr. Tooley
Encounter: You point out that "none of the minds with which we are definitely acquainted can exist independently of matter." From this you conclude that "there is no mind that exists independently of some associated physical arrangement of matter. . . ." This is a "standard inductive extrapolation," you say. This excludes a God who has no physical body as well as one who does. No finite amount of matter could contain the memory storage capacity and computer or neural machinery to allow for infinite intelligence.
Of course omniscience might not be an actual infinity of knowledge (Craig would surely balk at such an idea since he thinks actual infinities are impossible). It might be that all that is logically possible to know is finite. Thus, if it is necessary that every mind has a body (a brain-type structure), then it might be that God's is large enough to accommodate such knowledge. The apostle Paul talks about 'spiritual bodies' (1 Corinthians 15) to give us some idea of what our future post-resurrection bodies will be like. Possibly God possesses such a body. At least Paul does not make it clear that this is not the case. And that a spiritual body might be material in some way or at least analogous to what we think of as material cannot be precluded either.
And we might not be able to locate such a "material" God because we may not be able to look in the right "direction." Suppose, for example, that this God exists in a dimension imperceptible to us. A book placed over a sheet of paper on your desk is in contact with every portion of the two dimensional surface of that paper. Thinking of the old Flatland scenario, suppose God is a four dimensional material being who is in contact with every portion of our three dimensional spatial universe. As the Flatlander would be unable to even conceive where to look to see the book because he or she is confined to two dimensions, so we would never know how to look in the direction needed to see God.
If the idea of dimensions beyond our three (four including time) bothers you, let me offer another possibility. (Incidentally, it is not questioned by most physicists that there are at least about ten dimensions.) Scientists have of recent years spent a lot of time talking about the nature of something called "exotic matter." The evidence is now pretty conclusive that there really is such a thing but scientists are still trying to figure out more precisely what it is like. At one time, I don't know if this is still a viable option, but at one time some have speculated that exotic matter is such that it can exist in the same space occupied by ordinary matter and the two can in no way affect each other except gravitationally. Thus as we sit together talking we might at the same time be sitting in the middle of somebody elses dining room table as they have their dinner. Perhaps then, by the same or similar physical principles, "spiritual matter" or a spiritual world might be everywhere present but imperceptible to us.
My point is that this idea has been bandied about by serious contemporary scientists and that something like this idea, as well as the multidimensional idea, can account for omnipotence and omniscience without much difficulty. Being at all points in contact with our material universe, God can know and affect any portion of this universe he has contact with. If intelligence requires matter (neurocircuitry or computer circuitry, memory storage, etc.) and if we cannot limit the amount of matter there is in the spiritual universe, then where is the problem? Also, memory storage and similar neural machinery might be eliminated by God's being in contact with all portions of the universe at all times. All points in the past might continue in existence in some way or they might continue in at least some type of image that might be accessible to God though not to us. Instead of God having to remember them, God would have direct contact with them or their images.
As we pointed out before, omniscience might be limited to all that can be known. But likewise omnipotence might be limited to the power to do anything logically possible that involves only all that actually has existed, does exist and will exist. Craig would argue that it cannot involve an actual infinity of power and we should at least concur that this might be the case.
So I think the first horn of your dilemma is avoided. If you have shown that God needs (or probably needs) a material or quasi-material body, then so be it.
Like most Christian theists I do admit that I feel uncomfortable sitting this close to a physical theism. So I'd like to show that the other horn of your dilemma also fails. Here I would have to argue that it cannot be shown to be probable that every mind must have a material body. Thus it would not be improbable that God could be a pure mind without a body. As our minds affect events in our physical bodies (say, my ability to lift my hand), so God might bring about effects in our physical universe.
In chapter 10 of his Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Hume undertook his famous critique of miracles. A specific illustration concerning miracles (it's had more than one variation) had gained popularity during the proceeding era of the deist controversy and Hume could hardly avoid commenting on it. European exploration had reached the warmer regions of India and a story was told of an Indian prince who had never experienced solid or frozen water. Though the Europeans described to him the nature of ice and snow, the prince refused to believe such things could be. Hume concurred that this conclusion was the most rational course the prince could take considering his lack of experience of the world.
Many people see this illustration as fatal to Hume's particular argument against miracles, a deadly virus he had allowed to slip in by way of a small paragraph and footnote. No matter how little one's experience might be, it is surely irrational to say that there cannot be such a thing as, in this case, solid water. Since the prince did not know how very cold water behaved, he should not have been so presumptuous as to make a such a pronouncement upon what might or might not happen in such a state. Nor did he have the right to even make a probability claim. His position should have been that of a kind of honest agnosticism pending further appropriate experience.
The same should be one's attitude toward miracles. (Hume's argument, based as it is on "uniform [human] experience," is particularly vulnerable to this argument.) No matter how much we might think we know about our laws of nature or the makeup of all that there is, there might be much larger portions of reality totally imperceptible to us. We might in fact be as much scientifically in the dark concerning what we do not know as was the Indian prince. I think that is why Craig said that you have to show not just that it is a common characteristic but that it has to be an essential characteristic of minds that they must be related to bodies. [This does not mean that there is no place for inductive reasoning. But induction only applies to a world in which we can assume that what applies to part of that world applies to the rest of it. An entirely other world might be so different that extrapolation by induction just does not apply.]
One might have overwhelming empirical evidence (given our limited experience) of minds only connected with bodies just as some have had uniform experience only of liquid and gaseous water. The reasonable course would be not to claim probability but to remain agnostic concerning disembodied minds until the proper experience or evidence is given. In fact, unembodied minds should be in principle imperceptible to us except through inference and then only if such a mind wishes to disclose itself.
Now if you find this argument unconvincing then consider the following: Empirical evidence applies to our universe with it's uniform laws. But if we consider the possibility that there could be another universe or other universes quite different than the one we now experience, then it is also possible that the probability conclusions we reach concerning this universe do not apply to that one. And if, so far as we know, it is only possible that there is such a universe, then it would be as inappropriate to claim probability as it was for the Indian prince. In other words, probability cannot apply. So I think your argument against bodiless minds (minds not being dependent upon bodies) does fail.
References
1 John Eccles and Karl Popper, The Self and Its Brain (NY: Springer, 1977).
The Fine-Tuning Argument
Part 8, Tooley/Craig Debate
Continuing the debate between Dr. Michael Tooley and Dr. William Lane Craig (see the speakers' credentials in the first portion of the debate), we will here present and discuss Dr. Craig's argument for Theism following the finely tuned nature of the universe. This, the eighth part of the debate, presents and follows Dr. Craig's third argument for God's existence.
Craig: p2God provides the best explanation for the complex order in the universe. During the last thirty years, scientists have discovered that the existence of intelligent life depends upon a complex and delicate balance of initial conditions that are simply given in the Big Bang itself. We now know that life-prohibiting universes are vastly more probable than life-permitting universes like ours.
How much more probable? Before I share with you an estimation, let me just give you some numbers to give you a feel for the odds. p3The number of seconds in the history of the universe is about 1018, ten followed by eighteen zeros. The number of subatomic particles in the entire universe is said to be about1080.
Now with those numbers in mind consider the following: Donald Page, one of America's eminent cosmologists, has calculated the odds of our universe existing as one chance out of ten to the power of ten to the one hundred and twenty-forth power (1010124)--a number which is so inconceivable that to call it astronomical would be a wild understatement.1 Robert Jastrow, the head of NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies, has called this the most powerful evidence for the existence of God ever to come out of science.2
Once again the view that the Christian theist has always held, that there is an intelligent designer of the universe, seems to be much more plausible than the atheistic interpretation. . . .
Tooley: p8Let us turn now to Dr. Craig's third argument--sometimes called the "fine tuning argument." This involves certain calculations of the probability of their being a universe that supports life. The first point to be made with regard to this is that these calculations are simply unsound. For the calculations to be sound, you would have to look at all logically possible laws and boundary conditions. But the calculations Craig has in mind aren't made that way. What they have done is to look only at laws rather like ours, and to consider the extent to which the constants can be changed. But that means that the argument is unsound.
The second important point is that there is an alternative explanation, for an explanation of the many worlds sort is possible. Other people have tried, unlike Craig, to offer arguments against this. Swinburne, for example, attempts to offer an argument. He tries to maintain that the many worlds account is not as simple as the theistic account. But Swinburne has overlooked a certain type of move that can be made at this point--namely, that it's not that one has to postulate a number of independent universes in the many universes account, since one can explain all of them in terms of single law. So in fact the many worlds account, as properly formulated, can be an extremely simple account and, arguably, is simpler than the theistic alternative. (This is what I call the 'superlaw' hypothesis--a hypothesis that underpins and explains the many worlds hypothesis.). . .
Craig: p9What about God's being the best explanation of the complex order in the universe? He says the calculations are unsound. I don't think that's true. I've read widely in the literature on the Anthropic Principle and every account says that the delicate balance of initial conditions in the universe is wildly improbable. I don't know of anybody who says that these conditions are probable.
He says you can explain them by a Many Worlds Interpretation. Again, notice that he's appealing to metaphysical entities which are no more scientific and no less metaphysical than theism. I don't see any reason to prefer these interpretations. Moreover, I think they are less simple because you're going to have to have an infinite number of these many worlds, and they're going to have to be random in the distribution of physical laws in order to be able to explain this universe. And that's certainly less simple than the hypothesis of theism, which has as well independent reasons for adopting it. . . .
Encounter: It is not entirely clear what Dr. Tooley means when he says that we have to look at all logically possible laws and boundary conditions. It seems very obvious to me that we do not need this. I think that Dr. Tooley would have the burden of showing why we would need this. It is not difficult to see that of all of the possible configurations of the values of the laws and constants, that within very narrow constraints, we happen to have the one configuration that allows for life. And outside of these precise parameters we cannot imagine different laws or variations of the present laws and constants that will allow for life. We cannot imagine this even if such life forms are very different, even fundamentally different, from what we are presently aware of in our universe. And we also know that no matter how far these values go beyond these narrow parameters, we still will not have life. It is not as though if we really go far enough that things might change and maybe another kind of life might be possible.
Even if somehow, though quite contrary to current scientific thought, we were to find that the universe just had to be the way it is now with all its precisely finely tuned characteristics, the power of this argument for theism would be just as strong. These constants just had to be what they are now and yet they just happened to be such that life would be possible? They happen to be exactly what is needed for life? No rational person can honestly think that this would solve the problem for naturalism.
As for the multiple universe explanation, this does very clearly apply to Craig's fine tuning argument. But by appealing to multiple universes, doesn't it almost appear as though atheism has to resort to very desperate measures to keep from being completely defeated? Before Pasture it was thought that the substance of life was a fairly simple thing. As soon as we get a little better instruments--they thought--we'll understand it. Once its extreme complexity began to be understood, it could no longer be said that life occurred easily and readily. But at least, they thought, given enough time, it would surely form eventually on earth. Then when that was found to be unfeasible some said that even if it is unlikely to originate on earth, maybe it could form somewhere is space. Richard Dawkins, for example, said that since there are so many planets like earth, the chances are that life would originate on at least one of them at one time or another. Though it is unlikely that life can originate on a planet that can only support life once its there, its not unlikely that it can originate on one of a very large number of such planets. (And when it occurs, if it evolves into intelligent life, then its inhabitants will mistakenly wonder how their planet should happen to be the one in all the universe that should have intelligent life.)
But now we know that it is very unlikely that there is any planet in the universe like earth that can support (at least) intelligent life.3 And there is good evidence that it is very unlikely that there would be even one that can support any kind of life. It's also very unlikely that the earth itself would have formed the way it did such that it can support intelligent life.4 The only way out of this problem is to claim that maybe there are so many whole universes out there that enough of them will have by chance the right conditions, the right kind and size of planet the right distance from the right kind of star with the right kind of orbit in the right kind of galaxy in the right portion of that galaxy for the right amount of time, etc. Of these many universes in which life would not be impossible, the chances are that at least some will originate and sustain life and then from at least one of these universes intelligent life will evolve on at least one of its planets.
But now look at how far we have come. We've come so far from believing life to be a simple chemical substance that could easily form just about anywhere. Have the atheist's claims come to die the death of a thousand qualifications?
Now the fine tuning argument would push the problem to a whole new level. It would point out that even if life could easily originate and evolve on this planet and even a vast number of other planets in our universe, that doesn't tell us why our universe should just happen to have the laws that allow for life in the first place. Change any of the constants of nature ever so slightly, the speed of light, the mass of the universe, the strength of the four forces, etc., and no life will be possible on even the most perfect planet otherwise imaginable.5 Many of these constants we can imagine could be very different. Only by conjecturing many universes, each of which having by chance different values for their constants, can we arrive at the possibility that at least one of them has the right constants. Again, the day is long past when atheists could think that life could have occurred naturally and easily on just about any kind of universe.
When considering Richard Swinburne's claim that theism offers at least a simpler explanation than multiple universes Tooley said, ". . . it's not that one has to postulate a number of independent universes in the many universes account, since one can explain all of them in terms of single law. So in fact the many worlds account, as properly formulated, can be an extremely simple account and, arguably, is simpler than the theistic alternative."
To discuss this let me call all material entities, that is, everything there is with the exception of a possible spiritual universe or universes, the "Universe," with a capital "U." A universe that is just one of many universes, a domain or a pocket universe distinct from other universes in having differing laws or values for the strengths of common laws, I will usually call a "universe" with a small "u."
Now of course to talk about this overriding simple law that can cause there to be multiple universes is extremely speculative. We don't currently have this single law; we're just talking about how maybe there might be such a law. Somehow this superlaw will cause the universe to separate into multiple universes at a particular time or at various times in it's history. Or perhaps it will cause universes to come into being separately and not from a single source. In the latter case they cannot truly come into being out of nothing but, perhaps, from something like an energy field. So even here they come into being from a single kind of substance or source, though not a source as localized and identifiable as the big bang.
The first problem we should note for Dr. Tooley is that he is presenting here an explanation that lacks explanatory detail. We have presented a similar explanation in our earlier discussion we called the simplicity debate. Dr. Tooley objected that we could not detail how God could be extremely simple and choose plurality (including plurality of knowledge of the soon to be created Universe) and the existence of the Universe to come into being. Thus, he said, we were not really giving an explanation. We responded that explanations are a matter of degree and it is legitimate to call this an explanation. The point to be understood now is that if Tooley's objection to the simplicity argument were sound then it should apply equally to his claim that there can be some unknown superlaw that will cause multiple universes to be born. The superlaw view should be rejected because it lacks enough detail to be called an explanation. On the other hand, if he is wrong and explanations need not be so detailed or highly specified, then at least the simplicity argument for God shows that theism is more reasonable than atheism. Also, other objections against the superlaw argument may be forthcoming .
Indeed, there are more problems with the superlaw view. Laws are descriptions of how things behave. They can't make things come into being out of nothing. So if we have a superlaw that can explain how multiple universes came into being, it would have to work with some kind of material. The Universe would have to get to a particular state. Why should we think the Universe should just happen to reach the appropriate state that would allow this superlaw to be active? (Notice that we cannot talk about the Universe being in that state originally because on any plausible naturalistic view there cannot be any "original" state; there was always a different state before that state.)
For example, if multiple universes could only form if the Universe shortly after the big bang reached a certain temperature, then what is to say that the universe would ever reach that temperature or reach it for long enough or possess enough material once it was reached?
Someone might say that the universe must reach such a state eventually since it has infinite time to do so and all things must be in eternal change. Given enough time, all potentialities will be realized, won't they? We have earlier talked about the problems involved in the idea of a Universe with an infinite changing past when discussing the cosmological argument. But lets now ignore those problems and assume at least for the sake of argument that this eternal and changing Universe is a possibility.
There are some states through which the Universe might pass from which it will never be able to recover. Should the Universe have begun to expand too slowly after the big bang, it would have recollapsed into black holes or singularity. Or consider the state of our Universe now: it is believed that it will expand on and on forever. Someday even the most elementary particles of each atomic nuclei will be flying away from each other at fantastic speeds and will be separated from each other by near infinite distances. Unless there are other domains or pocket universes that act very differently from our observable pocket universe (if it be such), our Universe will never reform from this endless expansion such that a superlaw could ever be active.
In fact, if we have the Universe changing throughout an infinite past, then all possible states must have been realized in the past. That means that these dead ends must have been reached at some time in the past and our present universe (in its present form) could not now exist. The only way out of this problem is to claim that the dead ends I have suggested are not really dead ends. Perhaps, the infinitely expanding Universe will, by some now unknown law, someday recollapse or will generate new universes from each widely diffuse particle, etc. Or the recollapsed Universe will somehow be able to generate a new big bang, even though our current understanding denies this possibility.
One most important problem with the superlaw view is that any way we might imagine a multiverse to form involves complex laws and structures. Under Linde's multiverse cosmogony, for example, we would need an inflation field that reaches a specific state; we need general relativity to produce budding or bubble universes; we need laws that will convert the inflation field energy to the mass and energy we have in our Universe; we need a law or laws that will vary the constants of physics for each universe created; and we need at least several other background laws to produce multiverses.6 And of course we have no reason to think that even all of this would actually create anything new, much less a multiverse.
Because the simpler explanation is the more likely, the complexity of any imaginable multiverse view or any multiverse generation mechanism would make it less likely than a theistic explanation.
There is one even greater problem with the superlaw suggestion. We need some kind of starting material for a multiverse to grow out of. Perhaps it's what theorists call an inflation field or energy field. Now there are no pure energy fields. Energy and matter are interchangeable but energy is a meaningless concept unless there is some kind of matter with which the energy relates. Photons travel at the speed of light. Their energy moves them but the energy cannot exist unless something is there to be moved.
If our starting material is an inflation field or energy field, it has a given size and complexity. And the greater the size of the field, the greater its complexity. Even if we could imagine a simple superlaw that causes this starting material to change and to divide into multiple universes, we have to begin with a complex starting material. If (per impossible) this field could be infinite in size then it would be infinite in complexity. And the more universes we need to create from this starting substance in order to account for the fine tuning, the more complex the starting material must be because the greater its size must be. Only a starting material made of some pure, simple, changeless, undifferentiated substance would be of the same complexity at different volumes. A sea of particles in motion would not.
So as the starting material for a multiverse becomes increasingly complex to account for the fine tuning (that accounts for any possible chemical life), so the theistic explanation becomes increasingly more likely than a multiverse view. Likewise as the theoretical laws that might allow for the formation of a multiverse never appear to be simple or singular, so it seems unlikely that we will ever come up with a superlaw that will be simple.
References
1 Page's estimation is to be found in L. Stafford Betty and Bruce Cordell, "God and Modern Science: New Life for the Teleological Argument," International Philosophical Quarterly 27 (1987): 416. In fact, as Page explained to me in personal conversation, Betty and Cordell get the number too low, misinterpreting 1010124 to mean (1010)124, when in fact Page calculated 10(10124), an incomprehensibly huge number.
2 Robert Jastrow, "The Astronomer and God," in The Intellectuals Speak Out About God, ed. Roy Abraham Varghese (Chicago: Regenery Gateway, 1984) 22.
3 Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee, Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe (New York: Copernicus, 2000).
4. Hugh Ross, The Creator and the Cosmos (Colorado Springs, Co, 2001), ch. 16.
5. Ross, Creator, ch. 14.
6. See Lee Strobel's discussion with Robin Collins in The Case for a Creator (Grand Rapids, Mi; Zondervan, 2004) 138-144, for an interesting exploration of this argument.
(For further discussion concerning the fine tuning and multiverse arguments see our response to Doland's critique of Lee Strobel's The Case for Christ on these points.)
The Argument from Evil
Part 9, Tooley/Craig Debate
Continuing the debate between Dr. Michael Tooley and Dr. William Lane Craig (see the speakers' credentials in the first portion of the debate), we will here present and discuss Dr. Tooley's argument against Theism via the problem of evil. This is part nine of the debate and Dr. Tooley's fourth argument against theism.
Tooley: p5My fourth argument is the argument from evil. This is also my final argument, . . .
Argument number four--sometimes also referred to as the argument from suffering--is the argument that most philosophers think constitutes the most powerful objection against belief in the existence of God. It's also, I think, the argument that is most easily appreciated even by people who are not trained in philosophy or religious studies.
The argument focuses upon the fact that the world appears to contain states of affairs that are bad or undesirable, and it asks, in effect, how the existence of such states of affairs are to be squared with the existence of God.
The argument has a number of different forms. In one well known variation, it is advanced as an argument in support of the following claim: It is logically impossible for it to be the case both that there is evil and that God exists. That argument goes as follows: If God exists, he will want to eliminate evil since he is by definition morally perfect. Being omniscient, he will know about any evil that happens to exist, and being omnipotent, he will have the power to eliminate any evil. So if God exists, he will be willing and able to eliminate any evil that there is. Therefore, if God exists, there will not be any evil. But the world does contain evil. Therefore God does not exist.
Now that's a rather striking and initially it might seem like an impressive argument. But there are serious objections to it. So it's important to be clear that I'm not advancing any sort of claim that there's a contradiction between the existence of God and the existence of evil. What I am defending is the following more modest claim: There are some evils that actually exist in the world that make it very unreasonable to believe that God exists; not impossible, but very unreasonable.
When the argument from evil is understood in this way, it can be put roughly as follows:
First of all, isn't it true that there are a number of changes that can be made in our world or that could have been made in the past, that it is very reasonable to believe would probably have made the world a better place? Think about that question. Isn't it reasonable to believe, for example, that the world would be improved if a cure for cancer were discovered? Or a cure for mental illness? Or isn't it reasonable to believe that the world would have been a better place if a polio vaccine were discovered earlier than it was--say in the year 1900--so that all of the people paralyzed between 1900 and the time of the Salk vaccine wouldn't have been paralyzed? And isn't it reasonable to believe that the world would have been a better place if, say, Hitler had died of a stroke, before he had a chance to pursue some of his more ambitious undertakings?
Now note that I'm not claiming that these things couldn't possibly have made the world a better place. Perhaps if Hitler had died before having had the opportunity of implementing his 'final solution' to the 'Jewish problem' there might have been someone out of the several million people who would thereby have been spared who would have turned out to be a mad genius who would have constructed a doomsday machine and would have destroyed all of life on earth. That might have been the case. Similarly it might be the case that if a cure for cancer were discovered today the results would be that the world would be destroyed in two years by someone who would have died had the cure not been discovered. But these possibilities do nothing to undermine the claim that it's reasonable to believe that the changes in question are ones that would make the world a better place. If you discovered a cure for cancer you would surely not conclude that you should keep it secret on the grounds that it was possible that the cure might save the life of someone who would later go on to destroy the world.
p6Secondly, notice that it does not matter whether the changes in question are ones that are brought about by human action. Suppose that the ocean just happened to wash some shells up onto the shore in a pattern of some English sentences describing a cure for cancer. If those sentences turned out to be true and cancer was thereby eliminated from the world--by a fantastic accident rather than by human endeavor--it still would be very reasonable to believe that this would make the world a better place.
Suppose we have a person--let's call him John--who knows a cure for cancer, who is able to communicate it to mankind, but who refuses to do so. Given that it is reasonable to believe that knowledge of a cure for cancer would make the world a better place, what conclusions could we draw about our friend John? The answer would seem to be that either John has an unreasonable belief to the effect that making a cure for cancer known to mankind would not make the world a better place, or John's moral character is defective--not only does it fall short of moral perfection but John is far less good than the average person.
Similarly, suppose that some person, Mary, knew of Hitler's plans to kill several million people, and could have killed him, but refrained from doing so. Given that it is reasonable to hold that the death of Hitler would have made the world a better place, what conclusion could you draw regarding Mary? The answer, surely, is that either Mary had an unreasonable belief to the effect that the world would be a better place if Hitler were allowed to go ahead with his idea of killing several million people, or else Mary's moral character was grossly defective.
Suppose finally, that there is a single person who could have done these things and more: a person who knows of a cure for cancer who could communicate it to us; a person who could have killed Hitler or otherwise diverted him from his wicked ways; a person who could have told us how to eliminate polio; a person who could have stopped Stalin from having millions of people murdered; a person who could have eliminated mental illness; and so on through countless changes that, it is very reasonable to believe would make, or have made, the world a better place. What conclusion could you draw concerning such an individual? The answer, surely, is that either that individual would have to have a large number of unreasonable beliefs--to the effect that the world would not be improved by the elimination of cancer or mental illness, that it would not be improved by the elimination of polio in 1900, that it would not be improved by stopping Stalin and Hitler before they had succeeded in killing millions--or else, that individual is not only far less good than the average person, but profoundly evil. And either way, such an individual could not be God, since he would have to be less than perfect either in regard to knowledge or in regard to moral character.
The argument can now be stated very briefly. If there were an omniscient, omnipotent being, it would certainly be capable of making the changes in question. As we have just seen, however, if it is reasonable to believe the changes in question would make the world a better place, then it is reasonable to believe that an individual who could make those changes but who does not, could not be God. It therefore follows that if it is reasonable to believe those changes would make the world a better place, then it is reasonable to believe that any omniscient and omnipotent being who happens to exist cannot possibly be God. This means in turn that if it's reasonable to believe those changes would make the world a better place then it is reasonable to believe that God does not exist. But there are surely reasons to believe that eliminating cancer would make the world a better place, and similarly, that stopping Hitler would have made the world a better place. Therefore it's reasonable to believe that God does not exist. Thank you. . . .
Craig:p7 What about the argument from evil? Dr. Tooley argues that it's very unreasonable to believe that God exists. This is his most important argument, and I want to make several points by way of response.
(1) I want to suggest that there is no way for us to know that God doesn't have morally sufficient reasons for permitting the evils that occur. In his article on this subject, Dr. Tooley admits that the whole argument for evil stands or falls upon the claim that there are in the world evils which are such that God would have no morally sufficient reason for permitting them.1 And I would suggest that you just can't know that.
There are two reasons that you cannot prove that God lacks morally sufficient reasons for permitting evil:
(i) In order to know that it is actually true that God lacks such reasons, Dr. Tooley would have to prove it to be necessarily true. You see, otherwise there are possible worlds which are exactly like this one, with exactly the same evils occurring in them, and yet in those worlds God justly permits such evils. So how do you know the actual world isn't one of those possible worlds? The only way you can know that is by proving that necessarily God can't have morally sufficient reasons for these evils.
But Dr. Tooley admits in his article that he cannot prove that this is necessarily true. He admits, for example, that it's possible that God prevents animals from feeling pain even though they exhibit pain behavior or that evils could be justified through life after death.2 So as long as these are possible, he cannot demonstrate that it is necessarily true that God lacks morally sufficient reasons for permitting evil. And if he can't prove that it's necessarily true, I don't think he can prove that it's actually true.
(ii) I want to argue that we're just not in a good position to assess the probability of whether God lacks morally sufficient reasons for permitting the evils that occur. Take an analogy from chaos theory. In chaos theory, scientists tell us that even the flutter of a butterfly's wings could produce forces that would set in motion causes that would produce a hurricane over the Atlantic Ocean. And yet looking at that butterfly palpitating on a branch, it is impossible in principle to predict such an outcome. Similarly, an evil in the world, say, a child's dying of cancer or a brutal murder of a man, could set a ripple effect in history going, such that God's morally sufficient reason for permitting it might not emerge until centuries later or maybe in another country. We're just not in a position to be able to make these kinds of probability judgments.
William Alston, a philosopher at the University of Syracuse, summarizes the point. He says, "The judgments required by the [probabilistic] argument from evil are of a very special and enormously ambitious type and our cognitive capacities are not equal to this. . . . We are simply not in a position to justifiably assert that God would have no sufficient reason for permitting evil."3 So I don't think that you can show that that central premise of his argument stands.
(2) Christian doctrines increase the probability of the coexistence of God and the evils in the world. Let me just mention a couple of these.
(i) On the Christian view, the purpose of life is not happiness as such in this life. Rather it is the knowledge of God--which will ultimately produce true and everlasting happiness. What that means is that many evils occur in this life which might be utterly pointless with respect to producing human happiness. But they might not be pointless with respect to producing the knowledge of God. Dr. Tooley assumes, when he talks about changes that would make this world a better place, that the purpose of life is basically to be happy in this life. And I certainly admit that you could make changes that might appear to make this life a better place, make it happier. But that's not God's purpose. So if you understand that the purpose of life is not happiness as such, I think that you can see that the existence of evil doesn't necessarily cast any improbability upon God's existence.
(ii) It's also the Christian view that God's purpose spills over into eternal life. In the afterlife God will bestow a glory and happiness upon us that is incomparable to what we've suffered here on earth. And the longer we spend in eternity with him, the more the sufferings in this life shrink by comparison to an infinitesimal instant.
Dr. Tooley admits in his article that it is possible that immortality could justify such evils. But, he says, it's "very unlikely" that there is life after death.4 Well, I have two comments. First, I'd like him to prove that it's unlikely that there is life after death. Second, I suggest that the resurrection of Jesus gives us grounds for hoping in life after death, and I've attempted to justify that historically. So given these Christian doctrines, I think you can see that the existence of God and evil is not so improbable after all.
(3) The arguments for God's existence outbalance the argument from evil. Dr. Tooley admits in his article that if one had a proof for God, then one would have a defense which would be compatible with one's not being able to say for any of the problematic evils what morally sufficient reason there is for allowing its existence.5 In other words, even if you couldn't explain why God permitted such evils, if you have a proof for God, that would solve the problem. You wouldn't need to be able to explain what His morally sufficient reason was. And in the first speech I attempted to give just such an argument for an omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect being. And I think that these arguments simply outbalance any argument that there might be from evil in the world.
(4) Finally, I think that there is actually an argument for God from evil. It would go like this:
(i) If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist. If there is no God, moral values are either sociobiological by-products or just expressions of personal preference.
(ii) Evil exists. That's the premise of the atheist. There is real evil in the world.
(iii) Therefore, objective values do exist. Some things are really wrong.
(iv) Therefore, God exists. Thus the presence of evil in the world actually demonstrates God's existence because in the absence of God, there wouldn't be any distinction objectively between good and evil, between right and wrong. So although evil in one sense calls into question God's existence, in a much deeper sense, I think, it actually requires God's existence.
So in the light of these four responses, I think that the argument from evil, as difficult and emotionally pressing as it might be, in the end doesn't constitute a good argument against the existence of God. . . .
Tooley:p10. . . There were a number of distortions in Craig's discussion of my final argument--the argument from evil. Here, too, it would take some time to go through all of them. The basic point, however, is that, as I emphasized earlier, I was not making any sort of necessity claim. I was claiming that there was a sound probabilistic argument. And that probabilistic argument rested upon claims about the reasonableness of believing that the world could be improved in certain sorts of ways. I claimed, for example, that the world would be improved by the elimination of cancer, or by the elimination of mental illness; that the world would be a better place if Hitler had been killed before he got the holocaust going, and so on.
Dr. Craig did not address any of those specific claims. He needs to come out and say right off, then, if he thinks the world would not be a better place by the elimination of cancer. What he did, instead, was to accuse me of some sort of utilitarian approach. But I'm not a utilitarian. My approach to ethics is deontological. It's a rights-based approach, rather than utilitarian one. So Dr. Craig's response was a distortion of my view.
The point here--concerning the irrelevance of utilitarianism--can be put this way. Suppose you think there are things other than happiness that matter--as I do. Do you then conclude that the world would not be a better place by the elimination of cancer? That seems to me to be an extraordinary claim. But it seems to be the claim that Dr. Craig is putting forward.
Dr. Craig also referred to my article on the problem of evil6, and ascribed to me the view that, if one had a proof of the existence of God, then one would have no problem with the argument from evil. Again, this is a distortion. In that article, I considered different sorts of arguments that one might put forward for the existence of God, and the point I made is that there are a very limited number of arguments which would, even if they were sound, provide one with a reason for thinking that there was a morally perfect deity. One argument that would do so is the ontological argument. If the ontological argument were sound, then it would follow that there is an omniscient, omnipotent, morally perfect being. Moreover, since that would be a necessary truth, one would have a conclusive answer to the argument from evil.
But I would claim to be able to offer a decisive refutation of the ontological argument, for I believe that, by paralleling precisely the reasoning that is involved in the ontological argument, you can derive a contradiction. (This is something which I've shown in one of my published articles.) . . .
Q3: Q&A[To Dr. Craig.] You seem to try to find hidden problems. Have you found any problems in your own view of theism.
Craig: Yes, of course, and I do find the problem of evil to be a very significant problem. And I think Dr. Tooley lays out very persuasively in his article--although in the end I think a defense can be made against it--I think all of us can see intuitively the force of this argument. I'm not very persuaded by arguments against the coherence of the concept of God--many of these have been offered--or the other arguments he gave about the hiddenness of God. So I guess the problem of evil would be the one. . .
Q3 cont.: But what about your theories? Have you thought about the question of the problems in your theories of Christianity?
Craig: Well, yes, like the problem of evil. I think we've all thought about that, wondering how a good God could exist given the suffering in the world. I think that would be the one that would give me the most pause. . . . But at the end of the day I'm persuaded that in fact these objections are not sufficient to overthrow the rationality of Christian belief. But those would be two areas where I would ask myself these difficult questions. [etc.] . . .
Q6: [To Dr. Tooley.] For theists the existence of supernatural phenomena is enough to prove God's existence. It seems to me that atheism is an excessively skeptical viewpoint. What would God have to do to prove his existence beyond a shadow of a doubt to an atheist?
Tooley: It's easy to describe something very spectacular and in my presentation I mentioned the possibility that we could hear voices from the sky in every language over every country. . . .
Now there is still the problem of evil. But even here it might be possible to imagine some sort of dialogue that was at least helpful. You might say, "This world doesn't look like such a great place--with cancer in it, for example. If I had a cure for cancer, I'd try to get cancer out of the world. If you're omniscient, you must know the cure for cancer. Why don't you get cancer out of the world?" If the voice responded with some sort of plausible story, then perhaps it might be reasonable to believe that the being in question was not only omniscient and omnipotent but also morally perfect. In any case, at the very least there could be evidence that would make the existence of God much more evident than it presently is.
Comments for Dr. Tooley
Encounter: Some of the following comments are just restatements of Dr. Craig's views; some are my own.
Let me allude to some comments I had made concerning your argument that minds need bodies. As with that argument, I think we should be able to see that evil can provide no probability against the existence of a good God. As the Indian prince refused to believe in the existence of solid water (ice) because his uniform experience excluded it, so the probabilistic argument from evil assumes that our experience in this world should apply to something we have not yet experienced, and, indeed, an entirely different category of being. We are talking about one whose knowledge might be compared to our own as a human's knowledge compares to that of, say, a shell fish. Inductive extrapolations only apply to the same category of beings or worlds.
Craig claimed that your probability argument from evil cannot apply to God when he said that we are just not in any position to know the probability that God has morally sufficient reason for allowing evil. Now in the question and answer session you point out that we can imagine God telling us a reason or reasons evil is allowed and, if they seem plausible, we would have good reason to reject the argument from evil. You seem to be claiming that we need God to give that explanation for us to be justified in believing it. Let me give another illustration to show that we don't need that kind of verification and we shouldn't expect it.
I know of someone whose young son had an ailment that needed surgery. The child had to be fully awake for this procedure and it was very painful. Without this procedure the child would endure much greater suffering. The parents had to literally hold the child down. The boy looked at his father and you could tell what he was thinking. "You of all people say that you love me and yet you allow that man to hurt me like this. You can't love me." We, like the child, would say that God (like the child's father) cannot (or probably does not) have good reason for allowing this. But the child is wrong and we are wrong when we see such suffering as evidence against God. We're just not is the position to know that the one allowing this pain does not have adequate reason for doing so. It's possible that we are like the child in that we wouldn't be capable of comprehending the reason if it were given. Or perhaps, withholding the reason might be part of the pain we have to endure. Whatever the reason, we have no good reason to believe we must be given that reason in order to believe a good God exists.
How do these considerations apply to your challenge to Craig? You asked Craig if he thinks the world would be a better place with the elimination of cancer or any of the other evils you had enumerated. You assume Craig must be claiming that it would not be a better place if those evils were removed and you say that you find this to be an extraordinary claim.
The child undergoing this surgery would likewise believe his father could make the world a better place if he would stop the surgeon. There would be a short term reduction of suffering but in the long term the suffering or evil would be greater. Yet the child might never even be aware of the true situation. Likewise we might never, in this life at least, be aware of why so much greater evil would occur if some suffering is not allowed. Craig's claim is hardly extraordinary. If God is omniscient, it is not at all probable that God has no good reason(s) for allowing evil. The reason might be beyond our comprehension, it might be something we could understand but would never be able to think of on our own, or it might be withheld from us for now as part of that necessary suffering.
Having said all this let me give a more specific theodicy. Please remember that the following might be wrong. Whether it is or not does not affect the previous argument which, I think, is sufficient to refute your argument from evil. My failure to know why God allows evil may say something about my own psychological state but it does not affect our reason for believing that the argument from evil fails.
I've already claimed that some degree of suffering is necessary in order that the greater good will occur. To understand exactly why I think this is so one would need to look at the first chapters in the book of Job. God needs to know how we will respond to God in the face of suffering. Will we give our commitment to the God who deserves our commitment or will we allow the emotional force that pain provides to draw us to reject God?
Here I should also mention that there is another necessary part to this and the following theodicy. Not only must God have good reason for allowing the evil that occurs (the reason cited in the above paragraph), but there must also be compensation, or redemption if you will, for any undeserved pain. One reason Jesus endured the suffering of the cross was because of the glory that awaited him, the writer of Hebrews tell us. Certainly the primary reason was his love for us, we are told. Only by this death could we be reconciled to God. But the factor of reward or compensation is also very important. And it isn't just an added factor, it is necessary. Any undeserved suffering must be compensated. Otherwise God would not be just. And if God is not just, God is not good.
Even though some suffering is necessary, the amount of evil need not be what many times occurs. It could be at least diminished and God's purposes, at least the one mentioned above, would still be fulfilled. God leaves it in our hands to stop evil by either trying to eliminate it before or after it begins or by aiding those suffering to ease their pain. So we have here a second reason evil is allowed. God needs to know how we will respond to others who are suffering. God needs to know if we will seek to have God's heart and compassion, if we will seek to become like God. And God wants us to become like God. These are things God can foreknow, but God cannot foreknow them unless they occur.
So to your question, Would the world be a better place if cancer, genocide, etc. were eliminated? I would answer yes and no. Yes, the elimination of some evils would result in a better world in some ways but, no, it would also result in a worse world in much greater ways. It would be better to be without pain but (relatively) much worse to be without the testing of our choice in the face of that pain. On the other hand, the elimination of some evils would make the world better almost without qualification. The latter, however, God has reason to leave in our hands. God will not remove those evils without our intervention. Thus I say "almost without qualification." Allowing us the power to remove such evils is a much greater good than God's removing those evils without the possibility of our intervention. And again, because God must be just, God compensates for any undeserved suffering once the purpose of the suffering is fulfilled.
References
1. Michael Tooley, "The Argument from Evil," in Philosophical
Perspectives 5: Philosophy of Religion, ed. James E. Tomberlin (Atascadero, Ca.: Ridgeview Publishing, 1991) 108.
2. "Evil," 105-6, 126-7.
3. William Alston, "The Inductive Argument from Evil and the Human
Cognitive Condition," in Philosophical Perspectives 5:
Philosophy of Religion, (1991) 65, 61.
4. Tooley, "Evil," 126-7.
5. Tooley, "Evil," 129.
6. Tooley, "Evil."
(Another look at the problem of evil.)
(Debate with Paul Doland concerning the problem of evil.)
(Could God have allowed the holocaust?)
The Argument for Jesus' Resurrection
Part 10, Tooley/Craig Debate
Continuing the debate between Dr. Michael Tooley and Dr. William Lane Craig (see the speakers' credentials in the first portion of the debate), we will here present and discuss Dr. Craig's argument for Theism following the evidence for the resurrection. This is part ten of the debate and Dr. Craig's fifth argument for theism.
Craig: p3God provides the best explanation for the historical facts concerning the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
The historical person, Jesus of Nazareth, was a remarkable individual. New Testament critics have reached something of a consensus that the historical Jesus came on the scene with an unprecedented sense of divine authority, the authority to stand and speak in God's place. 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 miracle-working and exorcisms.
But the supreme confirmation of his claim was his 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.
It seems to me that there are three main historical facts that support the resurrection of Jesus: his empty tomb, Jesus' appearances alive after his death, and the very origin of the Christian faith. Let's look very briefly at each one of these.
First, the evidence indicates that Jesus' tomb was found empty on Sunday morning by a group of his women followers. According to Jacob Kremer, an Austrian scholar who has specialized in the study of the resurrection, "By far, most [scholars] hold firmly to the reliability of the biblical statements about the empty tomb."1 And he lists twenty-eight prominent scholars in support. I can think of at least sixteen more that he neglected to mention.
According to New Testament critic D. H. Van Daalen, "It is extremely difficult to object to the empty tomb on historical grounds; those who deny it do so on the basis of theological or philosophical assumptions."2
But assumptions may simply have to be changed in light of the facts.
Secondly, the evidence indicates that on separate occasions different individuals and groups saw appearances of Jesus alive after his death. According to the late Norman Perrin of the University of Chicago, "The more we investigate the traditions with regard to the appearances, the firmer the rock begins to appear upon which they are based."3 These appearances were physical and bodily and were witnessed not only by believers, but also by unbelievers, skeptics, and even enemies.
And thirdly, the very origin of the Christian faith implies the reality of the resurrection. We all know that Christianity sprang into being in the middle of the first century. Well, where did it come from? Why did it arise?
Well, all scholars agree that it came into being because the disciples believed that God had raised Jesus from the dead. And they proclaimed this message everywhere they went. But where in the world did they come up with that outlandish belief?
If you deny that Jesus really did rise from the dead, then you've got to explain the origin of the disciples' belief in terms of either the Christian influences or Jewish influences. Now obviously it couldn't have come from Christian influences for the simple reason that there wasn't any Christianity yet. But neither can it be explained by Jewish influences. For the Jewish concept of resurrection was radically different than Jesus' resurrection. As the renowned New Testament scholar Joachim Jeremias puts it, "Nowhere does one find in the literature [of ancient Judaism] anything comparable to the p4resurrection of Jesus."4 Apart from the resurrection of Jesus, therefore, there simply are no antecedent, historical factors that would explain the origin of the disciples' belief.
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 three facts. Therefore it seems to me we are amply justified in believing that Jesus rose from the dead and was who he claimed to be. But that entails that God exists.
Tooley: p9Turning now to Dr. Craig's fifth argument, let me comment briefly on the resurrection of Jesus. Again, there were a number of points which were quickly thrown out, and which it is very difficult to come to terms with in such limited time. If one had a couple of hours to discuss the various considerations, one could do something rather useful. Nevertheless, let me say a few things very quickly.
The basic point I want to make in the time remaining is that there have been many studies of how, given a situation in which nothing exciting happens, where nothing really has taken place, fabulous stories gradually develop which are elaborated over time with the introduction of more detail, and with descriptions of events that are ever more miraculous.
One of the more scholarly accounts is that of A. D. White's classic book, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology within Christendom,5 in a chapter entitled "The Growth of Healing Legends" where he's discussing the miracles attributed to St. Francis Xavier. What White shows is that, if you look at the writings of St. Francis Xavier and his contemporaries, there are no references to miraculous events. But when you look at Xavier's early biographers, you start seeing some minor miraculous events coming in. You look further along, at the accounts offered by later biographers, and eventually you have accounts of St. Francis Xavier raising people from the dead, with complete details of the names, the towns and so on where these events supposedly took place.
There have been similar investigations of miraculous claims in the present day--such as Louis Rose's book on faith healing.6 All of these investigations have had the same result--namely, the evidence for miracles has turned out never to be satisfactory. Thank you.
Craig: p10As for God's being the best explanation of the resurrection of Jesus, the evidence that I gave already takes into account the hypothesis of legendary development. And as I say, the majority of the critics today hold that you cannot explain away the empty tomb as a late legend akin to St. Francis' miracles. Nor can you explain away the appearances on that basis. So he's got to deal with the evidence for the empty tomb, for the appearances, and for the origin of the Christian faith.
The gospels were written down within the lifetime of the eyewitnesses in the same geographical locale where these stories occurred. There's no comparable place in history for this kind of rapid legendary development.
Q2: Q&A[To Dr. Tooley]: You said that there were no people present or no documentation of miracles in our present day. Now there is a teacher in India named Sai Baba who has displayed before millions of people what appear to be miracles. He has also shown this to many scientists around the world. My question is, If this is true, if he does exhibit a control over matter, for instance creating things out of thin air, then does this affect your argument in any way?
Tooley: Well, if he had that ability, it might or might not be miraculous, since it could be that he merely has some paranormal abilities that aren't yet fully understood. However, I personally would be extremely skeptical of the claim that he has any such abilities, because if you look at claims that are made in the area of the paranormal, many scientists have thought that claims that have been advanced in areas of the paranormal like telepathy, clairvoyance, psychokinesis, and so on, were plausible, but when such claims have been subjected to more careful controls, and more thorough investigation, it always turns out that they don't stand up. One of the important conclusions concerning investigations of paranormal phenomenon, moreover, is that scientists can easily be tricked. For this reason, it is very important that magicians be involved in such investigations.
For example, there's a well-known case involving a famous physicist of very high standing named John Taylor in England. Taylor was on a show with Uri Geller, where Uri Geller did his usual collection of tricks like bending spoons, starting stopped watches, and so on. (Uri Geller is, incidentally, a former Israeli stage magician.) Taylor was very struck by Geller's performance, and wanted to investigate such phenomena himself, and to work out a theory of what was going on in these sorts of cases. So he did experiments with British school children and published a book called Superminds, in which you'll find pictures of British school children holding up pictures of mangled cutlery. And Taylor tried to work on a theory of how children were able to bend things psychokinetically.
Other investigators were somewhat more skeptical than Taylor was, so they decided to run the experiments themselves. They were particularly interested in what Taylor had called the 'shyness effect.' Taylor noted that, as long as you watched the children closely, their psychic powers seemed to be inhibited. But if you relaxed your attention, and looked out the window, etc., then the children were really able to perform. The investigators, however, in rerunning the experiments, changed one thing: they videotaped the procedures. They found, indeed, that there was a shyness effect operating; but what was happening when you looked away was that little Mary was taking her foot and using it to bend the fork.
The conclusion, accordingly, is that even very great scientists--such as Taylor--can be taken in, and they have in fact been taken in frequently by fraud in the area of the paranormal.
Craig: I would simply second that, except to say also that I'd be really suspicious about anybody who would claim to do miracles under the conditions of scientific tests. For I can't imagine that God would allow Himself to be trapped in that kind of conjuring performance. The notion of miracles in the New Testament is not that these are natural powers that a person exercises as a display to others. Rather the miracles done by Jesus were demonstrations of the inbreaking of the Kingdom of God and were not conjurer's tricks where God would allow Himself to be put on display. I think that the miracles had a religious significance that transcends that. . . .
. . . [As for one of the problems in Christianity I've found to be most significant,] I've obviously asked myself, Could this story in the New Testament about Jesus be mere legend and not be historically credible? But at the end of the day I'm persuaded that in fact these objections are not sufficient to overthrow the rationality of Christian belief.
Comments for Dr. Tooley
Encounter: No credible biblical scholars question that the New Testament book of 1 Corinthians was written about 25 years after the death of Jesus and some of the evidence suggests that it could be closer to 20 years. In the first part of chapter 15 of this book the apostle Paul repeats a very early creedal statement indicating certain named individuals and a larger number of unnamed individuals--some 500 it says--who saw Jesus alive after his death. Paul said that most of these people are still alive, as would be expected if this were written twenty-some years after Jesus' death.
From what we know of the historical context, primarily from the text of First and Second Corinthians, Paul wanted to be sure his authority was firmly established. If he were found to be lying, all that he had worked for would be lost. Yet he says that these witnesses had seen Jesus alive and he doesn't give the slightest hint of apprehension about the possibility that his readers might question the witnesses for themselves. He almost seems to encourage them to do so. Indeed, at least one of the named witnesses, Peter, might have already visited the Christians at Corinth. This is very strong evidence that these 500 did actually believe they saw Jesus alive after his public execution.
If this cannot stand as adequate testimonial evidence, then it is difficult to imagine that any court would ever have the right to accept testimonial evidence. Obviously a resurrection is not the same as a normal daily event. If a witness tells a court, "I saw Dr. Tooley teaching a class this morning," this statement should be far more readily accepted and should require far weaker testimonial support than the statement, "I saw Ted Bundy alive today," some years after his verified execution. But if we have good enough testimonial evidence, this should still be sufficient to persuade any rational person that such an event has occurred. The best explanation would be that there very likely exists someone with very great power or knowledge (or both) who has brought him back to life. This would be even more likely if we had some evidence that this resurrection was predicted and if the person in question was earlier claimed to be a healer or miracle worker or something similar.
If you place so much weight on your argument from the development of miracle-fables, how would your respond to the arguments from prophecy? One is included later in this book looking at Daniel's prophecy of the seventy weeks as found in Daniel 9. It purports to predict the time of the coming of Messiah as being precisely the time of Jesus. If you dismiss prophetic evidence as (routinely) predictions made after the events and claimed to have been written earlier, then prophecies like Daniel 9 would be immune. The latest anyone will date Daniel is the second century BCE.
The question from the audience offers an interesting twist to the issue at hand. You claim that it is extremely unlikely that Sai Baba actually carried out the feats the questioner claimed. Yet you suggest that if they did actually occur, we still do not necessarily have good reason to believe them to be miraculous.
After recently looking at an account given by a person who had left his association with Sai Baba, I'm inclined to believe that the claimed miracles did occur. Yet because of the moral character this account gives of this particular teacher, we might find this to be evidence not of a good God or superhuman being but of an evil supernatural being or beings. Tal Brooke, in his book Lord of the Air7, tells of his journey from an intimate follower of this guru to a disillusioned apostate. Only intimate followers like Brooke could have experienced the evils purported. But similarly, Brooke's depth of dedication to this person and his world view could only have been broken by the type of evils he claims to have encountered.
The idea of a superintelligent or superpowerful being who is evil, of one who performs "lying signs and wonders," is not incompatible with the beliefs of Christian theism. Indeed, Brooke points out that Jesus predicted the appearance of false prophets who would be known to be such because of the evil they would do.
But the more relevant evidence to this entire debate is that which points to a superintelligent, superpowerful being who is not demonstrably evil. So we must return to the resurrection evidence or similar evidences if we are to use miracles to argue for a good God--unless, of course, you can show moral flaws in Jesus as you have claimed elsewhere in the debate.
References
1. Jacob Kremer, Die Osterevangelien--Geschichten um Geschichte (Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1977) 49-50. Kremer uses the word "exegeten," which I render as "scholars," since the literal "exegetes" would have been unfamiliar to students in the audience.
2. D. H. Van Daalen, The Real Resurrection (London: Collins, 1972) 41.
3. Norman Perrin, The Resurrection According to Matthew, Mark, and Luke (Philadelphia: Fortres, 1974) 80.
4. Joachim Jeremias, "Die älteste Schicht der Osterüberlieferung," in Resurrexit, ed. Edouard Dhanis (Rome: Editrice Libreria Vaticana, 1974) 194.
5. A. D. White, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology within Christendom (NY: D. Appleton & Co., 1896).
6. Louis Rose, Faith Healing, ed. Bryan Morgan (Harmondsworth, Eng.: Penguin Books, 1971).
7. Tal Brooke, Lord of the Air (Herts, Great Britain: Lion Publishing Co., 1977); OOP but copies may be available from SCP, B. 4308, Berkeley, Ca. 94704. A shorter account is available from SCP in their SCP Newsletter (Summer 1985) 11:2, 16-20.
The Case Against Christianity
Part 11, Tooley/Craig Debate
Continuing the debate between Dr. Michael Tooley and Dr. William Lane Craig (see the speakers' credentials in the first portion of the debate), we will here present and discuss Dr. Tooley's argument against Christianity. This is part eleven of the debate. This argument was not presented by either debater in the main portion of the debate itself; rather, it follows from some statements in the question and answer period (we will begin with these statements). To flesh out some of Dr. Tooley's claims we will here present some additional claims he has made in other writings.
Tooley: . . . I don't think that arguments based upon claims that the concept of God is incoherent are impressive at all. As regards Christianity, however, what I would say is that I think that the case against Christianity is actually in a different league from the case against theism. I think there are much more powerful objections against Christianity, and so I think that, if one is a Christian, one should be thinking not merely about the existence of God, but about the objections against Christianity. The one that I mentioned in passing is the doctrine of hell. And if you read the Bible it does say that the majority of the people in the world are going to wind up in hell--which is a place of eternal torment. A lot of people are deeply troubled by that, and you will find philosophical theists, such as the late A. C. Ewing, who hold there is good reason to believe in God, but also that there are very good reasons for not being a Christian.
I think one should look at the question of hell. I also think one should look carefully at the character of Jesus, and that one should look, for example, at Jesus' belief in his Second Coming. Thus, there are passages that indicate that Jesus believed that the Second Coming was going to take place in the lifetime of some of those standing in front of him. (This erroneous belief of Jesus concerning the Second Coming is a theme that was developed by Albert Schweitzer.) In short, I think that there are a number of powerful objections to Christianity, and I think Christians should think more about those objections than about the question of theism versus atheism.
Q4: [To Dr. Tooley.] You said that God is hiding. How do you explain the Bible which is claimed to be his word and in which he reveals himself? As a trustworthy document, how would you deal with that?
Tooley: I think it is a very important question, the status of the Bible. I don't know exactly what your view of it is. If you take the view that it is the real word of God, then you ought to think that it's relatively free of error. Now one of the exercises I have students do in some of my classes is actually to read parts of the Bible very carefully. I have them read parts of Genesis, for example, and instruct them to try to find beliefs that are so implausible that even most contemporary Christians and Jews would find them implausible. And they come up with things like people living for nine hundred and twenty three years. They come up with verses about there being divine beings who look down on earth, find tempting women there, and decide to have children with them, and we are told that thus arose the great men of old and so on. You find stories like that of Noah's ark, in which Noah and his family round up at least two of each species and put them on the ark along with sufficient food for a very lengthy journey, and so on.
The students also come up with contradictions. There are contradictions between the creation stories in Genesis one and Genesis two, for example, with regard to the order of creation. In chapter two, Adam is created first, whereas in chapter one Adam and Eve are created together. Or, again, in chapter two Adam is created and God notices that Adam is lonely, so he decides to create a helpmate for Adam. He creates some cows and sheep, and so on, and brings them to Adam, but Adam rejects all of them. Finally he gets the bright idea of taking a rib from Adam and creating Eve. So the order of creation is different, both with regard to when Eve was created, and with regard to when animals were created.
In the case of the story of Noah, you actually find contradictions with regard to the number of animals that are supposed to go into the ark. In some cases it's two of each kind, while in some cases it's seven pair of certain types of animals. In short, if you look at the Bible carefully, you find that there are contradictions in it, and you also find beliefs that are very implausible.
Or, again, if you look at the morality of the Bible, you find serious problems again. For example, things like slavery were accepted. There were rules, for example, that if a master had a slave and he had given the slave a wife, and she had had some children, after a certain period of time the slave had the option of going free but his wife and children had to remain the property of the master.
There are also passages that say that certain people should be stoned to death. People should be stoned to death for adultery, homosexuality, having sex with animals and so on. If you read the Old Testament carefully, you'll find that there are moral beliefs that I'm sure you yourself will not accept..
Craig: I think that there are good grounds for the belief that God has disclosed Himself in the history of Israel as well as supremely in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Whether or not one then adopts a doctrine of biblical inerrancy, I think, is perhaps an in-house question among Christians—to what degree the Bible has to be free from error in order for it to be regarded as God's revelation to mankind. I think there are good grounds in regard to the miracles and resurrection of Jesus for thinking of Jesus as being the self-disclosure of God.
As for contradictions in the Bible, you can pick up biblical commentaries that resolve most of these. Most of these are imagined, I think. For example, the order in the creation story. All it says in Genesis 1 is that "male and female he created them." God made man and woman in His own image. It doesn't say anything about a different order of creation. It just spells this out in more detail in the second chapter. With regard to Noah's ark, for example, I know that there are different interpretations among biblical scholars as to whether this was just a local flood or a universal flood. As for the people living a long time: some have speculated this refers to the time of the clan, how long that clan survived, not necessarily the individual person. So I think that in all of these cases there's matter for debate and interpretation; but there are good historical grounds for believing that God has revealed Himself in Christ and in the narrative of the New Testament.
Encounter: In light of the importance you place on this argument, Dr. Tooley, it seems appropriate to spend some extra time considering your claims. You say that the case against Christianity is in a different league from the case against God, the arguments being so much stronger in the former. You say that the God of Christianity is a morally deficient God as depicted in the Hebrew scripture as well as the New Testament. Contradictions and inconsistencies in the Bible as well as Jesus' purported moral shortcomings and failed prophecies disprove Christianity.
My impression is that though you believe there is good reason to disbelieve in a generic, all powerful, all knowing, and all good God, you think that there is much more reason to disbelieve in the Christian God who, you say, sends most of the human population to eternal torment in hell, who slaughters and enjoins his people to slaughter and displace whole populations (including innocent children), who unjustly orders death for any who fail to obey his arbitrary commands, and who advocates slavery and oppression of women. This is your picture of the Christian God. I think your arguments fail for various reasons. Some lack sufficient moral analysis, some fail to look closely enough at scripture, and some look closely at scripture but without adequate research tools (e.g., knowledge of ancient language or literary methods).
My own belief is that the unique evidence for Christianity provides additional evidence for God and the general evidence for God supports the case for Christianity. But it is the final case for Christianity that is most important. So it is very important that your arguments be fully considered.
Hell. The Christian doctrine of an eternal hell seems to be your biggest complaint. In another context I recall you saying that, with this doctrine, Christianity is simply too horrible to be true. As you depict the Christian view of hell, I would agree with you. Of course I do not think that is how the New Testament depicts this doctrine and thus it fails as an argument against Christianity. I would claim that the notion of God's justice is substantiated by a proper understanding of this doctrine. We have spent an entire segment of this debate on this issue alone (part 3), so we cannot rehearse the details of that discussion here. At this point we can only present summary statements.
Unbiased investigation. You mention that in some of your classes you have your students read the Bible for themselves and you instruct them to find portions that they might think to be implausible or contradictory. Craig responded that any good commentary will answer most of the apparent difficulties. Now if that is true, or even if it isn't, wouldn't your procedure be something akin to looking at some current scientific theory and critiquing it without knowing any science?
For example, suppose you told your students that some scientists believe that the earth revolves around the sun. If your students don't know of any of the studies that went into making or confirming the Copernican model of the solar system and if you do not provide such information, and if no authority figure had earlier taught them that the earth revolves around the sun, shouldn't they also think this belief implausible?
Two creation accounts. By the same token, one can see two creation accounts in the first two chapters of Genesis only if one doesn't know ancient Near Eastern literature and archeology. If Genesis 2 is an independent creation account, then why is there no other ancient Near Eastern creation account that lacks any mention of the creation of the seas, moon, sun, and stars? If we understand that it was a normal literary technique to make a summary account and then to give a detailed account of certain features of the first account, then this belief in two independent creation accounts becomes as absurd as the belief that the sun circles the earth.
Kenneth Kitchen notes that several ancient Egyptian inscriptions have used this same type of structure: the Karnak Poetical Stela of Thutmose III, the Gebel Barkal Stele, and certain royal inscriptions. He then notes that
What is absurd when applied to monumental Near Eastern texts that had no prehistory of hands and redactors should not be imposed on Genesis 1 and 2, as is done by uncritical perpetuation of a nineteenth-century systematization of speculation by eighteenth-century dilettantes lacking, as they did, all knowledge of the forms and usages of Ancient Oriental literature.1
A teacher would never ask his or her students to believe that it is reasonable to believe that the sun revolves around the earth and offer no context of available scientific information relevant to the issue. Likewise to read an ancient text with the purpose of looking for errors without knowing the customs and literary methods of the time is merely to encourage old errors that should have been removed long ago. Ignorance is not being dispelled when it easily could be.
Sons of God. Another example you raise is the story of angels (the "sons of God") mating with humans and producing offspring. Here again, a better knowledge of context, in this case a better knowledge of word usage found in this text, would solve this problem. The words for "sons of God" refer to righteous people as well as to angels in Hebrew scripture. There is nothing in this story that should cause us to believe that angels, whether fallen or not, must have mated with humans. The righteous sons (descendents) of Seth simply took wives from the unrighteous descendents of Cain. It appears that this led to such increased wickedness that God determined to exterminate the entire population except for Noah and his family.
Slavery. Let me next address the issue you raise about slavery in the Bible. (Tooley's original statement.) Hebrew slaves in Israel were essentially indentured servants. They were freed and given food and provisions after six years of labor (Deut 15:13-14). This was a means for the impoverished to get back on their feet as it were.
You are right that if a master gave a female slave to a male slave to marry, the female and her resulting children could not be freed when the male's six years were up (Ex 21:1-4). But for this and your following complaint you gave only half the story. The wife, like other female slaves, would be freed eventually. The wife and children had to wait until their six years were up or until the husband could buy their freedom. A woman who was taken as a slave could not be freed if she was taken to be the master's wife or his son's wife. But then, she was given nearly the full rights of a free wife anyway (Ex 21:7-11).
There are other problems with slavery in the Bible that I don't remember you raising that would take too long to fully address here. But I think that there are good answers to such problems; problems like the foreign slaves in Israel who were slaves until death or the problem of slavery not being explicitly condemned in the New Testament.
There is one comment I should make that would hint at the kind of answer or at least the most significant part of the kind of answer I would give to this and similar problems with the claimed ethical deficiencies in the Hebrew scripture. I would note that there might have been several laws that God allowed because of the hardness of the people's hearts. Jesus noted that the laws allowing divorce were such (Matthew 19:3-9). Some laws regarding slavery, especially foreign slaves, treatment of women, etc. might have also been allowed by God because of the hardness of the people's hearts. Far greater social good would have occurred had those laws been different.
I do think it is very unlikely that slavery would be illegal in most of the world as it is now if it were not for Christianity. Jesus' statements that one is to love one's neighbor (that is, all other people) as oneself and that one should do to others as one would want done to oneself are simply incompatible with slavery. How can a slave owner do to his slave as he would have done to himself unless he frees his slave? Thus people like Wilberforce fought slavery their entire lives because they understood the full implications of their Master's teachings. Only in those portions of the ancient world (such as in the Roman empire) where people often sold themselves into slavery for reasons of social, political, and/or economic advancement might slave owners do unto their slaves as they would have done unto themselves and yet refrain from freeing the slave.2
(For more discussion concerning slavery in the Bible see our response to this issue specifically as presented by Paul Doland in his critique of Lee Strobel's The Case for Faith.)
Death for disobeying arbitrary commands. You complain that in the Torah God commanded the death penalty for adultery, homosexuality, witchcraft, bestiality, etc. Another example is working on the Sabbath. There is a story in the Torah of a man who was executed simply because he gathered wood on the Sabbath. You also mention Jesus' statement that one who curses one's parents deserves death. Evidently Jesus agreed with these "unjust" laws.
Clearly, there are offenses which in themselves do not deserve death. But if any of the above were such, still, they did deserve death. Why? Because God had directly commanded these things not be done and to disobey God deserves death. If God were to give a completely arbitrary command, to disobey it would deserve death.
How is it that God deserves to be obeyed? This would have to be one of the characteristics for a starting definitions for God. Indeed, so great would be the offense of disobedience that it should deserve death. Even traditional concepts like omniscience and omnipotence would have to take second place to attributes like this and to God as creator. If God is our creator, this would make it much more intuitive (though perhaps not necessary) that God deserves our obedience. An interesting conclusion of this particular characteristic is that since this God has given us life, so God has the right to take it from us, whether we have done anything that we might think should deserve death or not.
Similar characteristics would be intrinsic absolute worth and goodness. With this God would deserve our highest and greatest adoration or love. An absolutely good God deserves to be obeyed since God's choices would only be good or would produce the greatest possible good eventually. And we are always obligated to do only the good. God's absolute goodness is a necessary condition for being deserving of obedience. It would be a sufficient condition if we also added omniscience, or at least sufficient knowledge that God's commands would always result in the greatest good.
Only an evil that God does not have the right to command or commit would one be obligated to disobey. And such an act God could not commit or order someone to commit since God is intrinsically and absolutely good. Now what is evil for us to do is not always evil for God. Taking a human life, for instance, is God's right but not ours. To put someone into eternal torment who does not deserve it, for example, (an unredeemable evil) would be evil for God if God could do it.
So God would deserve to be obeyed for arbitrary commands as well as normal moral obligations (which, of course, should be carried out whether they are commanded or not). But it also follows that God deserves to be obeyed for actions which would be evil for us to carry out on our own but not for God to carry out or command.
The above is more of an exploration of some of the characteristics and the implications of those characteristics of God that would or might make God deserving of our obedience. The bottom line, however, is that we must be considering a God who does deserve our obedience. That is our starting point for this particular discussion. It must be one of the necessary conditions for at least Christian theism.
So if homosexuality, bestiality, and adultery were forbidden simply by arbitrary command, the commands should still be obeyed because God commanded them. Nevertheless, it is not clear that they were arbitrary laws. Some had symbolic meaning and humanitarian purposes. Some benefited the larger social welfare. Some of these sins were forbidden because they did harm to oneself or others. Very possibly, none actually deserved death had God not forbidden them.
The next point would be that though we may be obligated to obey such a God, we need to have sufficient evidence to believe that such a God exists and is giving us such a command. Abraham's attempted sacrifice of his son would have been a great evil had he done this on his own. It was not evil for him to do if God had commanded him to do it and if Abraham could not doubt that such a God had commanded this of him. One would not need such absolute certainty of less consequential arbitrary commands. One would only need evidence sufficient to believe God had spoken to be obligated to obey laws against homosexual behavior or adultery. One would, of course, need stronger evidence to be obligated to execute such an offender.
But if you say God told you to kill someone, you should question whether you have sufficient reason to believe it was God who commanded this. Merely hearing a voice in your head, as happened to Son of Sam and similar psychotic murderers, isn't good enough.
The man who gathered wood on the Sabbath was without excuse. Assuming the account as given in the Torah, he had seen the miracles that verified God's existence and according to his particular thought mode, the thought mode of the time, could not doubt that this God had spoken forbidding this action.
Not everyone in Israel's history had this kind of evidence however. Imagine yourself as a homosexual living at a later time in Israel's history when no such signs and wonders were common. You know that if you give in to your desires and seek a homosexual partner, you might be caught and executed. The first thing to notice in this situation is that you could still seek to determine whether this command was truly from a God who deserves your obedience. If you ask this God and God gives you no answer or if you have an experience that isn't really enough to justify belief, you would be within your rights to go on thinking that this command is not from God. If God would give an experience that you should judge to be veridical or if God provides some other kind or evidence, like the miraculous signs of Elijah or Elisha's time, you might feel justified in believing that God had indeed given this command. As was mentioned earlier, you would now be obligated to obey this law.
The second thing to notice in this situation is that whether you conclude that this law is or is not from God, you still wouldn't have to stay in this country. There were many surrounding nations which seemed to have very little trouble accepting homosexuality or most of the other biblical sins you had mentioned. (Can we imagine Alexander making a law against homosexual behavior?)
To summarize, simply because the Bible gives commands that are punishable by death and that do not in themselves deserve death does not mean that they do not deserve death. Disobedience to a command from a God who deserves our obedience deserves death.
Number of animals in the ark. One problem Craig did not answer is in my thinking likely the easiest to answer. Perhaps that is the reason he didn't try to answer it. Are there contradictory accounts in the Bible as to the number of animals allowed in the ark? God told Noah to take two of every creature into the ark (Genesis 6:19). Then he said to take seven pairs of every clean animal and bird (7:2-3). The latter was just an added stipulation so that there would be enough animals for sacrifice and food (8:20).
Just because historiographers today would leave out the summary statement (6:19) and record only the more detailed statement (7:2-3) because it records everything stated in the summary statement, does not mean that ancient historiographers would do the same. As with the supposed two creation accounts, so here we see an ancient pattern of a summary statement followed by a more detailed statement.
Jesus' failed moral character. You made a very general accusation about Jesus' moral failings. In order to find a specific accusation I had to look outside of this debate. (You did state that Jesus was guilty of agreeing with the Hebrew scripture in claiming that one deserved death who would curse one's parents. This criticism was dealt with above.) In one of your criticisms of Christianity you claim that Jesus' moral character is defective because he condemned those who rejected him or his teachings. He said that it will be better on the day of judgment for the infamously wicked cities of Old Testament times whom God had destroyed than it will be for those cities that reject Jesus. But the full context of the passages you had cited (Matt 11:20-24) makes it clear that he said this, not because he simply wanted to condemn anyone who rejected him, but because they rejected him in the face of overwhelming evidence. Jesus said that if the signs that were done in your cities had been done in Tyre and Sidon and Sodom, those cities would have repented in sackcloth and ashes. Jesus is emphasizing that the present cities deserve greater condemnation because they hardened their hearts and closed their minds to evidence that should persuade anyone.
Jesus' false prophecies: (1) The towns of Israel. You claim that Jesus made predictions that did not come true. You said that he claimed he would return to earth during the lifetime of some of his hearers. This 'Second Coming' is his return to earth from the sky after his death. Schweitzer notwithstanding, there is simply no good reason to believe he said this. Elsewhere you cite Matthew 10:23, "Before you will have gone through all the towns of Israel, the Son of man will have come." The most obvious and literal meaning is that his disciples won't finish this particular missionary work in Israel that they were being sent on before Jesus meets them on the way.
Of course Jesus could have meant something else by "before the Son of Man comes." In Matt 24:30 Jesus did talk about his returning to earth in the clouds. If that is what he meant in this passage then he could have been saying that this 'second coming' would occur before his message is taken to all of Israel. Even today there are Jewish people who have never heard the claims and evidence that Jesus is the promised Messiah. Recently a Jewish population was located in a city in China, the people having lived there for centuries without having heard of Jesus.
Another possible interpretation of this passage is that Jesus was talking about his coming in judgment to Israel. Though his Jewish followers reached very great numbers in the first century--indeed, some estimate that there could have been a million at one time--they were increasingly persecuted by the official Judaism of the time. Yet before Jesus' message was taken to every town in Israel, judgment came to the nation. Jerusalem was destroyed in AD 70 and except for a last attempt at rebellion, the nation essentially was no more. Jesus came in judgment because official Judaism had rejected the evidence of his messiahship. This happened while some of his original listeners would still have been alive.
Jesus' false prophecies: (2) Coming in his kingdom. You refer to Matthew 16:27-28 in one of your writings. Here Jesus said, "For the Son of man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay every man for what he has done. (28) Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom," (RSV). If these two verses are speaking of the same event, the same coming, then Jesus' prophecy did prove false. But these are not the same events. Most likely, Jesus' "coming in his kingdom" is the event called the Transfiguration which is recorded in the chapter immediately following these statements. In Jesus' teachings the Kingdom of God appears very often to be tied with or even identical to the spiritual life followers of Jesus have in him. In the Transfiguration, Jesus is seen on a mountain talking with Moses and Elijah, he has an appearance that is so bright that he seems to be emitting light, and a voice comes out of a bright cloud saying that Jesus is his son in whom he delights and that they must listen to him. If this event ushered in Jesus' spiritual kingdom, this might very well be the event Jesus was speaking of in v. 28, his coming in his kingdom. Jesus' coming in judgment spoken of in v. 27 is most likely a very different event. Other meanings have been suggested as well for the "Son of man coming in his kingdom." Whatever the two events might have been, we just have no reason to believe they were the same.
Jesus' false prophecies: (3) This generation will not pass away. In Matthew 24 Jesus gives a general list of events that he claimed would occur before his return to earth, when "all the tribes of the earth will. . . see the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven. . ." (v. 30). Then in v. 34 he says that "this generation will not pass away till all these things take place." Verse 33 indicates that "all these things" are all of the signs that precede Jesus' return. But once they all occur, he says that his coming is near and right at the gate. Now if any normal meaning of "near" or "right at the gate" cannot be as long as two thousand years, wouldn't this mean that since Jesus has still not returned that his prophecy has proved false? Jesus even gave an illustration of how when a fig tree puts forth its leaves you know that summer is near (v. 32). What else can "near" mean but "near" as we normally understand the term?
The term for "generation" that Jesus likely used in Aramaic could mean either generation or race. Those who translated the word into Greek used a word that sometimes meant race but more commonly meant generation. Indeed, this is the word the translators used when Jesus very clearly meant "generation." Perhaps the translators' own hope that he meant generation rather than race affected their selection of this word. Had all or nearly all the signs transpired, might they not hope that Jesus' coming would be as near as summer once the leaves first appear?
At any rate, whether in Aramaic or Greek, it is very possible that Jesus meant to say that the Jewish race as an identifiable entity will not pass away until he returns.3 This was a very real fear not only after Jerusalem was destroyed but even before Jesus' own time. John 11:48 hints at this. The Jewish people had long faced the temptation to deny their Jewish identity and to assimilate into the cultures of their conquerors and neighbors. Some rejected their Judaism so thoroughly that they even sought to have their circumcision surgically reversed. Yet we know of no other nation that has been destroyed with its people dispersed among the nations that has survived assimilation and maintained its distinct ethnic identity for two thousand years. Had Hitler succeeded in wiping out the Jewish people before Jesus had returned, then the prophecy would have proven false.
Illness by demons. Another purportedly mistaken belief you mention is Jesus' belief that many illnesses like epilepsy and madness are caused by demon possession. It does appear that he thought that at least some instances of such maladies were caused by demon possession but there is no reason to think that he thought that all were. He also appeared to believe that sometimes these might be caused by mere demonic influence. I think Jesus is right: there are some diseases and behavior patterns that are caused by demonic activity. If you think this is not so then I would need to hear your argument. So far you haven't been able to show that Jesus was mistaken in any of his beliefs.
No divorce for abuse. What about Jesus' purported belief that one has no right to divorce even in cases of "persistent and extreme physical abuse." Well, life threatening physical abuse was a crime in Jesus' day, so the first thing we should be aware of is that a separation would be forced upon the couple if it would not occur otherwise. If the state would not step in, the victim should seek a separation even if the abuse is not extreme or life threatening. Simply separating without the intention or right to remarry was not forbidden by Jesus. Thus the guilty party is given an opportunity and a motivation to change this behavior. But the victim has no right to divorce this partner unless the partner is involved in sexual sin (adultery, homosexuality, etc.). Jesus assumed, like everyone else, that in a marrital setting one's safety should never be threatened.
The principle here is to establish the ties of marriage to such a point that when a couple should marry they would feel assured that the marriage is secure. You can enter a marriage assured that if you should become physically handicapped, say, your partner will not leave you but will always be there with you to support you. If you become emotionally or mentally ill, your partner will always be there to help you unless your safety is threatened, and even then your partner will return if or when the safety problem is removed. If you become physically ill, the partner will not leave you. If you lose your 'feeling' of love for your partner, you will not leave them but you will stay and seek to renew those feelings as they follow from your commitment to your partner.
The fear so common today that my marriage partner might fall 'out of love' with me and leave me is not a fear for Christian marriage partners who seriously desire to and are committed to follow and obey their Lord. The deep emotional pain and insecurities that result from divorce and fear of divorce are greatly removed. People who grow up in divorced families often feel very insecure about the possibility of ever having a permanent relationship with someone of the opposite sex. Indeed, almost anyone who is not bound by Jesus' ethic and who is aware of how easily marriages can currently be dissolved at the whim of one of the partners, will feel insecure in their relationships.
Suppose a husband might feel very lucky to have a wife who is very much in love with him. She has expressed the feeling that she cannot believe she will ever fall 'out of love' with him. However secure he might feel in this relationship, should he really believe that her feelings will continue in this way? Too many people in this very situation have found that time does change such feelings. A marriage based on feelings rather than commitment is much more likely to fail.
The deep emotional pain and scars that result from infidelity and broken marriages are epidemic in our society. Some have claimed that if the same amount of physical illness (e.g., heart disease), and the same amount of emotional and mental distress and disease that results from such marital losses were caused by, say, smoking, the social outcry against smoking would be enormously greater than it is now. I know of one man who has stated that the emotional pain was so great for him that it would have been far less had the separation between his parents been caused by death rather than divorce. (Here, of course, he means non-suicidal death.) Death, at least, is not a matter of one's choice. The far greater good occurs when marriage is maintained as a matter of commitment.
Jesus considered emotional and physical abuse as much a sin as any other evil he condemned. Nevertheless, we have seen that he was right in denying that one has the right to divorce on the grounds of such abuse, one only has the right to separate. (We have also seen that sometimes one has an obligation to separate.)
Dr. Tooley, you have claimed that the case against Christianity is much greater than the case against theism. As we have seen, just like your arguments against theism, I don't think your arguments against Christianity can be shown to have any force at all.
References
1. K. A. Kitchen, Ancient Orient and the Old Testament, (InterVarsity Press, 1966) 117; cited in Gleason Archer, Encyclopedia of Biblical Difficulties (Zondervan, 1982) 69.
2. S. S. Bartchy, "Slavery," in The New International Standard
Bible Encyclopedia, gen. ed., G. W. Bromiley, revised ed., (Eerdmans, 1979) vol 4, 543-6.
3. Archer, Difficulties, 338-9.
Not Looking for God
A New Age Journey
From the age of fifteen to twenty four I became very involved in Eastern mysticism. During this era in my life I considered Jesus to be one of many avatars similar to Buddha and Krishna. I also considered Christianity as a primitive path of enlightenment for less advanced souls. Around the age of twenty two I had an experience that deeply challenged my suppositions. I was in my house in the living room when a vibrational sound entered the room. I instinctively knew that whatever this energy was, it was evil, and was attempting to enter my body.
When I looked over and saw my roommate's dog hiding under the kitchen table, I knew that this energy/vibrational sound was not my imagination. Up to this point in my life I was the kind of person who could hang out in any big city USA at 2 a.m., without fear. At the moment of this encounter, however, I had never been so scared or felt so lacking in control in all my life, especially when I began to hear audible voices, mainly of a sinister sounding laughter.
I felt that if this force possessed me, that I would go out and kill somebody or be killed. I don't know if that was really the case but that was my impression at the time. My response was to lay hold of the power of good which could overcome this evil, so I pulled out my copy of the Bhagavad Gita and began to read. However, it seemed that with every word I read, the evil energy grew stronger.
In a state of extreme urgency, I began to chant the name Krishna, but there was no relief. I felt I was going to lose the battle. I switched to naming Buddha, still no result, and the force was growing. At this time, I was looking for anything that would work, so I said the name Jesus, invoking him as one of many of the ascended souls.
The moment I said his name, one single time, the hideous energy vanished without a trace of its presence left. I quickly reasoned the whole experience with the name of Jesus as a mere coincidence. It could have been the name of Mohammed, Buddha, Krishna, or Babaji that caused the departure of the evil presence. However, something else inside of me told me otherwise, but I did not want to deal with the implications.
From this point on a cloud hung over my head. I could sense this presence lurking nearby, especially anytime I entered an altered state of consciousness via meditation/yoga/hallucinogenics. In the meantime I was being challenged by Christian acquaintances to check out the claims of Christ and the Bible. I prided myself on being open minded, so I obliged them even though it was about the last thing I wanted to do. Over the next three years a deep internal conviction was growing within me that much of my life-style was wrong, and that the God of the Bible was real.
In my response to the challenge by Christians to have an open mind toward Christianity I was reading any books they gave me. A book called Evidence That Demands A Verdict by Josh McDowell made a good case for the credibility of the Bible as history. I read many conversion stories by many individuals. From Chuck Colson (exhatchet man for Nixon) to Nicky Cruz (N.Y. gang leader), to a nineteenth century lawyer, to an East Indian mystic claiming a life-changing encounter with Jesus. Could they all be lying, I asked myself? Or is there some psychological phenomenon that explains it. This was all happening to me, a person who found Christianity deeply undesirable.
I did not want a faith that restrained my sexual liberty, recreational drug use, or claimed to be the only way. I did not want to face the disapproval and ridicule of my friends whom I had known since childhood. All these factors were causing me to experience an internal world war. A battle I could not talk to anyone about. I did not want to confide with Christians lest they be encouraged that I might become one of them, nor could I confide with my friends lest they get suspicious that I was considering defecting to the Christian camp.
My response to all this turmoil was to relocate from Northern California to Montana. I saw it as a chance to get away from the war I was experiencing. I would start a new life, get away from all forms of spirituality and get back down to earth. This plan succeeded for a while. I remember reflecting on how good I felt to be in Montana, with a whole bunch of new friends, working on various creative projects.
Then one day I was at a social gathering in Missoula, Montana. . . . I was with a house full of people enjoying the music . . . when I suddenly heard a voice, not audible, but somehow my whole being could hear the words: "Danny, why do you keep running from me? You know that I am Jesus, the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and yet you keep running away from me?"
I placed my hands over my ears and mumbled, "I don't want to hear that voice. No!" I got up and walked out the door to the closest liquor store to buy a case of beer. I came back to the house and proceeded to drink one beer after another, attempting to drown that voice out. To make a long story shorter, I became a Christian within the next sixty days, not without biting, kicking, and scratching each step of the way. The war being fought within me escalated to the point that I felt I was losing my mind. When I finally decided to become a Christian, I felt 10,000 pounds of weight leave me. That was twenty years ago.
Today I am more convinced than ever of the faith I hold. I have never ceased reexamining my faith. . . .
Danny Aguirre's testimony abridged and reprinted by permission of S.C.P., Box 4308, Berkeley, Ca 94704; email: scp@dnai.com. From the SCP Newsletter 22:3, 1998, 3,
- Editorial and Material Contributors:
- Danny Aguire, William Lane Craig, Dennis Jensen, Richard Swinburne, Michael Tooley,
- Some of the specific writers in this issue wish to remain anonymous.