William Lane Craig debates Victor Stenger: Does God Exist?

Here are the details of the debate that I got from Cloud of Witnesses:

The OSU [Oregon State University] Socratic Club will sponsor a public dialogue entitled, “Two Philosophers Debate the Existence of God,” on Monday, March 1, at 7 p.m. in the LaSells Stewart Center on the OSU campus.  William Lane Craig will argue for the Christian view that a personal God exists and Victor J. Stenger the atheist position that there is no God.

In this debate, Victor Stenger does affirm his belief that the universe could be eternal in his second rebuttal (1:02:30), thus denying the standard Big Bang cosmology. He also denies the law of conservation of energy and asserts that something can come from nothing in his concluding speech (1:33:50). He also caused the audience to start laughing when he said that Jesus was not moral and supported slavery. There is almost no snark in this summary. Instead, I quoted Dr. Stenger verbatim in many places. I still think that it is very entertaining even without the snarky paraphrasing.

The debate includes 30 minutes of Q&A with the students.

Here is the MP3 file for the audio.

Here’s the video of the debate:

Dr. Craig’s opening speech:

• The ontological argument
• The contingency argument
• The cosmological argument
• The moral argument
• The resurrection of Jesus (3-fact version)
• Religious experience

Dr. Stenger’s opening speech:

• There is no scientific evidence for God’s existence in the textbooks
• There is no scientific evidence for God acting in the universe
• God doesn’t talk to people and tell them things they couldn’t possibly know
• The Bible says that the Earth is flat, etc.
• There is no scientific evidence that God answers prayers
• God doesn’t exist because people who believe in him are ignorant
• Human life is not optimally designed and appears to be the result of a blind, ad hoc evolutionary process
• The beginning of the universe is not ordered (low entropy) but random and chaotic
• It’s theoretically possible that quantum tunneling explains the origin of the universe
• The laws of physics are not objectively real, they are “our inventions”
• Regarding the beginning of the universe, the explanation is that something came from nothing*
• Nothing* isn’t really nothing, it is “the total chaos that we project existed just before the big bang”
• If something has no structure, then “it is as much nothing as nothing can be”
• Consciousness is explainable solely on the basis of material processes
• There are well-informed, rational non-believers in the world and God would not allow that

Dr. Craig’s first rebuttal:

Stenger’s argument that there is no objective evidence for God’s existence:

• First, it is not required that God rely only on objective evidence in order to draw people to himself (Alvin Plantinga)
• Second, God is not required to provide evidence to everyone, only to the people who he knows would respond to him
• Third, Craig gave lots of objective evidence, from science, history and philosophy
• Stenger asks for certain evidence (answered prayers, prophecy, etc.), but Craig presented the evidence we have

Stenger’s argument that the balance of energy is zero so “nothing” exists:

• if you have the same amount of assets and liabilities, it doesn’t mean that nothing exists – your assets and liabilities exist
• Christopher Isham says that there needs to be a cause to create the positive and negative energy even if they balance
• the quantum gravity model contradicts observations
• the vacuum is not the same as nothing, it contains energy and matter
• the BVG theorem proves that any universe that is expanding must have a beginning

Stenger’s argument that mental operations can be reduced to physical operations:

• mental properties are not reducible to physical properties
• epiphenomenalism: is incompatible with self-identity over time
• epiphenomenalism: is incompatible with thoughts about other things
• epiphenomenalism: is incompatible with free will
• substance dualism (mind/body dualism) is a better explanation for our mental experience
• God is a soul without a body

Dr. Stenger’s first rebuttal:

Craig’s cosmological argument:

• Craig’s premise is “everything has a cause”, but quantum mechanics has causeless events
• There are speculative theories about how something could have come into being uncaused out of nothing
• “I don’t know of a single working cosmologist today who believes there was a singularity prior to the Big Bang”
• “If there wasn’t a singularity then there’s no basis for arguing that time began at that point”
• “There’s no reason from cosmology that we know of that the universe can’t be eternal”
• “When I talk about an eternal universe, I mean a universe that has no beginning or end”
• The Hartle-Hawking model doesn’t have a beginning
• “There was no violation of energy conservation by having a universe coming from nothing”
• “The universe could have come from a previous universe for example or even just from a region of chaos”
• The paper by Vilenkin is counteracted by other papers (he doesn’t specify which ones)

Craig’s moral argument:

• Dr. Craig is arguing from ignorance
• But morality can be decided by humanity just like governments pass laws, and that’s objective
• Dr. Craig has too little respect for the human intellect
• I don’t need to tell me that slavery is wrong
• The Bible supports slavery
• Atheists can behave as good as theists
• Morality just evolved naturally as an aid to survival

Craig’s resurrection argument:

• No Roman historians wrote about the execution of Jesus but none of them did
• The empty tomb is doubtful because it is only mentioned in the gospels, not by Paul
• John Dominic Crossan says there was no empty tomb
• Christianity only survived because the Roman empire thought that they were useful

Dr. Craig’s second rebuttal:

Craig’s cosmological argument:

• There is no reason to prefer an indeterministic interpretation of quantum mechanics
• Dr. Stenger himself wrote that deterministic interpretations of quantum mechanics are possible
• The vacuum in quantum mechanics is not nothing
• The quantum vacuum he proposes cannot be eternal
• The cosmological argument does not require a singularity
• The Hartle-Hawking model is from 1983
• Hawking says that there is a beginning of space and time after that model
• The Hartle-Hawking model does still have a beginning of time – the model is not eternal
• The BVG theorem that requires a beginning for expanding universes is widely accepted among cosmologists

Craig’s moral argument:

• Stenger redefined objective to mean that most people agree with it – but that’s not what objective means
• Objective means right and wrong whether anyone accepts it or not
• Richard Dawkins himself says that on atheism there is “no evil and no good” – why is he wrong?
• Even Dr. Stenger says that morality is the same as passing laws – it’s arbitrary and varies by time and place
• But on his view, right and wrong are the same as deciding which side of the road to drive on
• But somethings really are right and some things are really wrong

Craig’s resurrection argument:

• Josephus is a Roman historian and he wrote about Jesus, for example
• There were four biographies of Jesus are the best sources for his life
• The scholars that Stenger mentioned are on the radical fringe

Dr. Stenger’s second rebuttal:

Knowledge and the burden of proof:

• Dr. Craig has to bear the burden of proof, not me – because his claim is more “extravagant”
• “I don’t have to prove that a God was not necessary to create the universe”
• “I don’t have to prove that a God did not design the universe and life”
• “I don’t have to prove that the universe did not have a beginning”
• “I don’t have to prove that God did not provide us with our moral sense”
• There are a lot of books written about how morality evolved naturally
• “I don’t have to prove that the events surrounding the supposed resurrection of Jesus did not take place”
• Bart Ehrman says that the gospels are generally unreliable (Note: Ehrman accepts all 3 of Craig’s minimal facts)
• Just because people are willing to die for a cause, does not make their leader God, e.g. – the Emperor of Japan

Aesthetic concerns about the universe:

• I don’t like dark matter and I wouldn’t have made the universe with dark matter
• I don’t like the doctrine of penal substitution
• I don’t like the doctrine of original sin
• I don’t like the heat death of the universe

Dr. Craig’s conclusion:

The case for atheism:

• Dr. Stenger had two arguments and he has to support his premises
• Dr. Craig addressed his two arguments and each premise and Dr. Stenger never came back on it

The contingency argument:

• Dr. Stenger has dropped the refutation of this argument

The cosmological argument:

• The theoretical vacuum he proposes cannot be eternal

The moral argument:

• He asserts that things are wrong, but there is no grounding for that to be objective on atheism

The resurrection of Jesus:

• There are surveys of scholars on the empty tomb and 75% of them agree with it
• Bart Ehrman agrees with all 3 of the minimal facts that Dr. Craig presented
• Ehrman’s objection to the resurrection is not historical: he’s an atheist – he thinks miracles are impossible

Religious experience:

• No response from Dr. Stenger

Dr. Stenger’s conclusion

The cosmological argument:

• “I argued that we have very good physical reasons to understand how something can come from nothing”
• “There is a natural tendency in the universe… to go from.. simpler thing to the more complicated thing”
• The transition from a vapor to a liquid to ice shows how something could come from nothing
• “It cannot be proven that the universe had a beginning”

The moral argument:

• Objective morality, which is independent of what people think, could be developed based on what people think
• “Jesus himself was not a tremendously moral person… he had no particular regard for the poor… he certainly supported slavery… he was for the subjugation of women” (audience laughter)

The resurrection argument:

• Bart Ehrman says that the majority of the gospels are unreliable

Religious experience:

• I don’t see any evidence that there is anything more to religious experience than just stuff in their heads

God’s purpose of the world should be to make people feel happy:

• God could have made people feel happier
• God could have made people not die
• God could could have made the universe smaller: it’s too big
• God could have made it possible for humans to live anywhere “even in space”

Filed under: Videos, Appearances, Atheism, Bible, Christian Theism, Cosmology, Debate, Empty Tomp, Evidence, Freethought, God and the Folly of Faith, God: The Failed Hypothesis, Jesus, Moral Values, Morality, New Atheism, New Atheists, Objective Morality, Philosophy, Physics, Quantum Mechanics, Rationality, Reason, Religion, Resurrection, Science, Stephen Hawking, The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning, The New Atheism, Theism, Truth, Unbelief, Vic Stenger, Victor J. Stenger, Victor Stenger, William Lane Craig

N.T. Wright lectures on the resurrection of Jesus: did Jesus rise from the dead?

Here’s a lecture from N.T. Wright, whose multi-volume case for the historicity of the bodily resurrection of Jesus seems to be getting a lot of respect from the other side, (although I strongly disagree with his economic and political views, which are naive at best). Wright has taught at Cambridge University, Oxford University, Duke University, McGill University, and lectured on dozens of prestigious campuses around the world. He’s published 40 books.

Here’s the video:

For those who cannot see the video, here is a written version of the lecture that Wright gave on the resurrection. And please note that I do not endorse anything that N.T. Wright says on any topic outside of history. History is his field of expertise, and I think he has no authority outside of the field of history.

N.T. Wright’s historical case for the bodily resurrection of Jesus

Wright basically argues that the resurrection cannot have been a myth invented by the early Christian community, because the idea of the Messiah dying and being bodily resurrected to eternal life was completely unexpected in Jewish theology, and therefore would not have been fabricated.

In Judaism, when people die, they stay dead. At the most, they might re-appear as apparitions, or be resuscitated to life for a while, but then die again later. There was no concept of the bodily resurrection to eternal life of a single person, especially of the Messiah, prior to the general resurrection of all the righteous dead on judgment day.

Wright’s case for the resurrection has 3 parts:

• The Jewish theological beliefs of the early Christian community underwent 7 mutations that are inexplicableapart from the bodily resurrection of Jesus
• The empty tomb
• The post-mortem appearances of Jesus to individuals and groups, friends and foes

Here’s the outline of Wright’s case:

…the foundation of my argument for what happened at Easter is the reflection that this Jewish hope has undergone remarkable modifications or mutations within early Christianity, which can be plotted consistently right across the first two centuries. And these mutations are so striking, in an area of human experience where societies tend to be very conservative, that they force the historian… to ask, Why did they occur?

The mutations occur within a strictly Jewish context. The early Christians held firmly, like most of their Jewish contemporaries, to a two-step belief about the future: first, death and whatever lies immediately beyond; second, a new bodily existence in a newly remade world. ‘Resurrection’ is not a fancy word for ‘life after death’; it denotes life after ‘life after death’.

And here are the 7 mutations:

1. Christian theology of the afterlife mutates from multiples views (Judaism) to a single view: resurrection (Christianity). When you die, your soul goes off to wait in Sheol. On judgment day, the righteous dead get new resurrection bodies, identical to Jesus’ resurrection body.
2. The relative importance of the doctrine of resurrection changes from being peripheral (Judaism) to central (Christianity).
3. The idea of what the resurrection would be like goes from multiple views (Judaism) to a single view: an incorruptible, spiritually-oriented body composed of the material of the previous corruptible body (Christianity).
4. The timing of the resurrection changes from judgment day (Judaism) to a split between the resurrection of the Messiah right now and the resurrection of the rest of the righteous on judgment day (Christianity).
5. There is a new view of eschatology as collaboration with God to transform the world.
6. There is a new metaphorical concept of resurrection, referred to as being “born-again”.
7. There is a new association of the concept of resurrection to the Messiah. (The Messiah was not even supposed to die, and he certainly wasn’t supposed to rise again from the dead in a resurrected body!)

There are also other historical puzzles that are solved by postulating a bodily resurrection of Jesus.

1. Jewish people thought that the Messiah was not supposed to die. Although there were lots of (warrior) Messiahs running around at the time, whenever they got killed, their followers would abandon them. Why didn’t Jesus’ followers abandon him when he died?
2. If the early Christian church wanted to communicate that Jesus was special, despite his shameful death on the cross, they would have made up a story using the existing Jewish concept of exaltation. Applying the concept of bodily resurrection to a dead Messiah would be a radical departure from Jewish theology, when an invented exaltation was already available to do the job.
3. The early church became extremely reckless about sickness and death, taking care of people with communicable diseases and testifying about their faith in the face of torture and execution. Why did they scorn sickness and death?
4. The gospels, especially Mark, do not contain any embellishments and “theology historicized”. If they were made-up, there would have been events that had some connection to theological concepts. But the narratives are instead bare-bones: “Guy dies public death. People encounter same guy alive later.” Plain vanilla narrative.
5. The story of the women who were the first witnesses to the empty tomb cannot have been invented, because the testimony of women was inadmissible under almost all circumstances at that time. If the story were invented, they would have invented male discoverers of the tomb. Female discovers would have hampered conversion efforts.
6. There are almost no legendary embellishments in the gospels, while there are plenty in the later gnostic forgeries. No crowds of singing angels, no talking crosses, and no booming voices from the clouds.
7. There is no mention of the future hope of the general resurrection, which I guess they thought was imminent anyway.

To conclude, Wright makes the argument that the best explanation of all of these changes in theology and practice is that God raised Jesus (bodily) from the dead. There is simply no way that this community would have made up the single resurrection of the Messiah – who wasn’t even supposed to die – and then put themselves on the line for that belief.

And remember, the belief in a resurrected Jesus was something that the earliest witnesses could really assess, because they were the ones who saw him killed and then walking around again after his death. They were able to confirm or deny their belief in the resurrection of Jesus based on their own personal experiences with the object of those beliefs.

Filed under: Videos, Afterlife, Apologetics, Appearances, Body, Empty Tomb, Eschatology, Historical Jesus, Historical Method, Judgment Day, Legend, Life After Death, Messiah, Minimal Facts, Mutations, Myth, N. T. Wright, Resurrection, Theology

William Lane Craig on historical reliability of the gospels

From Reasonable Faith, a challenge from a non-Christian who watched the Craig-Ehrman debate. (PDF of the transcript here at Apologetics 315)

Here are his questions:

1) What outside sources (outside of the canon) are there that support Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection in bodily form, and ascension into heaven?

2) The message of Jesus was spread by word of mouth until the gospels were written. How do we know legend wasn’t developed? Such as Jesus being buried by Joseph of Arimathea.

3) What about other pagan miracle workers such as Honi the Circle-Drawer, Hanina be Dosa, and Apollonius of Tyana (p 27). Doesn’t the fact that these pagan people doing miracles similar to Jesus discredit Jesus as a miracle worker?

4) What about the seeming contradictions in the different gospel accounts? Please give me a different answer then “These are only secondary details and does not lie at the heart of the matter.” If we go to a University that declares the Bible is inerrant, then shouldn’t we be able to explain these?

I quote from Mr. Ehrman in his debate vs Craig on p. 11:

“What day did Jesus die on and what time of day? Did he die on the day before the Passover meal was eaten, as John explicitly says, or did he die after it was eaten, as Mark explicitly says? Did he die at noon, as in John, or at 9 a.m., as in Mark? Did Jesus carry his cross the entire way himself or did Simon of Cyrene carry his cross? It depends which Gospel you read. Did both robbers mock Jesus on the cross or did only one of them mock him and the other come to his defense? It depends which Gospel you read. Did the curtain in the temple rip in half before Jesus died or after he died? It depends which Gospel you read. Or take the accounts of the resurrection. Who went to the tomb on the third day? Was it Mary alone or was it Mary with other women? If it was Mary with other women, how many other women were there, which ones were they, and what were their names? Was the stone rolled away before they got there or not? What did they see in the tomb? Did they see a man, did they see two men, or did they see an angel? It depends which account you read. What were they told to tell the disciples? Were the disciples supposed to stay in Jerusalem and see Jesus there or were they to go to Galilee and see Jesus there? Did the women tell anyone or not? It depends which Gospel you read. Did the disciples never leave Jerusalem or did they immediately leave Jerusalem and go to Galilee? All of these depend on which account you read.”

Now check this out – Dr. Craig quoting Ehrman to respond to a challenge raised by Ehrman:

4. What about the seeming contradictions in the different gospel accounts?

Here’s your straight answer, Grant: they don’t matter. I could accept that all of these apparent discrepancies are irresolvable, and it wouldn’t affect my historical argument one wit. Don’t believe me? Then let’s let Bart Ehrman speak for himself. Does he think that the seeming contradictions he lists undermine the historical credibility of the facts upon which my argument is based? No! He says,

The resurrection of Jesus lies at the heart of Christian faith. Unfortunately, it also is a tradition about Jesus that historians have difficulty dealing with. As I said, there are a couple of things that we can say for certain about Jesus after his death. We can say with relative certainty, for example, that he was buried. . . .

Some scholars have argued that it’s more plausible that in fact Jesus was placed in a common burial plot, which sometimes happened, or was, as many other crucified people, simply left to be eaten by scavenging animals (which also happened commonly for crucified persons in the Roman Empire). But the accounts are fairly unanimous in saying (the earliest accounts we have are unanimous in saying) that Jesus was in fact buried by this fellow, Joseph of Arimathea, and so it’s relatively reliable that that’s what happened.

We also have solid traditions to indicate that women found this tomb empty three days later. This is attested in all of our gospel sources, early and late, and so it appears to be a historical datum. As so I think we can say that after Jesus’ death, with some (probably with some) certainty, that he was buried, possibly by this fellow, Joseph of Arimathea, and that three days later he appeared not to have been in his tomb (“From Jesus to Constantine: A History of Early Christianity,” Lecture 4: “Oral and Written Traditions about Jesus” [The Teaching Company, 2003]).

The same goes double—well, many times more than double—for Jesus’ crucifixion. This event is widely recognized as the most solidly established fact about the historical Jesus, denied only by kooks and Muslim true believers. Yet Ehrman’s first five discrepancies are all connected, not with the burial and empty tomb narratives, but with the crucifixion accounts! So are you going to deny that Jesus of Nazareth was crucified under Roman authority at the time of the Jewish Passover feast in AD 30 because of these differences in the narratives? If so, Grant, then you will have not only intellectually marginalized yourself but also shown that you are not a sincere seeker after truth.

Do you see now, Grant, why I refused to be drawn into a dispute about how many angels there were at the tomb? Insofar as the historicity of the empty tomb is concerned, it just doesn’t matter.

This article also contains a bit of broad, educational material on how to do history:

In addition to these general considerations, scholars have enunciated certain “criteria of authenticity” to help detect historically reliable information about Jesus even in a document which may not be generally reliable. What the criteria really amount to are statements about the effect of certain types of evidence upon the probability of various sayings or events narrated in the sources. For some saying or event S, evidence of a certain type E, and our background information B, the criteria would state that, all things being equal, Pr (S|E&B) > Pr (S|B). In other words, all else being equal, the probability of some event or saying is greater given, for example, its early, independent attestation than it would have been without it.

What are some of the factors that might serve the role of E in increasing the probability of some saying or event S? The following are some of the most important:

1. Historical congruence: S fits in with known historical facts concerning the context in which S is said to have occurred.
2. Independent, early attestation: S appears in multiple sources which are near to the time at which S is alleged to have occurred and which depend neither upon each other nor upon a common source.
3. Embarrassment: S is awkward or counter-productive for the persons who serve as the source of information for S.
4. Dissimilarity: S is unlike antecedent Jewish thought-forms and/or unlike subsequent Christian thought-forms.
5. Semitisms: traces in the narrative of Aramaic or Hebraic linguistic forms.
6. Coherence: S is consistent with already established facts about Jesus.

Notice that these criteria do not presuppose the general reliability of the Gospels. Rather they focus on a particular saying or event and give evidence for thinking that specific element of Jesus’ life to be historical, regardless of the general reliability of the document in which the particular saying or event is reported. These same criteria are thus applicable to reports of Jesus found in the apocryphal Gospels, or rabbinical writings, or even the Qur’an. Of course, if the Gospels can be shown to be generally reliable documents, so much the better! But the criteria do not depend on any such presupposition. They serve to help spot historical kernels even in the midst of historical chaff. Thus we need not concern ourselves with defending the Gospels’ general reliability or every claim attributed to Jesus in the Gospels (much less their inerrancy!).

Click here for the rest. It is very important that Christians be able to use the Bible as a historical source with non-Christian challengers who do not accept the Bible as inerrant, nor even as generally reliable. The best way to learn is by seeing how Christian scholars make the case in debates and discussions.

Filed under: Commentary, Appearances, Bart Ehrman, Bible, Burial, Contradictions, Death, Debate, Errancy, Gospels, History, Inerrancy, Jesus, Legend, Miracle, New Testament, Reliability, Resurrection, Transcript, Variants, Video, William Lane Craig

William Lane Craig debates John Shelby Spong on the resurrection of Jesus

William Lane Craig is the greatest Christian debater in the history of the church, and Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong is a very liberal non-Christian.

Part 1 of 2: (61 minutes)

Part 2 of 2: (42 minutes)

The moderator is none other than the famous journalist David Aikman! The opening speeches are only 15 minutes, and the rebuttals are 10 minutes. This debate is accessible because Craig’s opponent is not really attacking him on a scholarly basis, but more as the pretty typical liberal atheist that you meet at work.

Craig spends all of his opening speech explaining historical methods, sources, dating and how he infers the resurrection as the best explanation of the minimal facts. The resurrection of Jesus is quite awesome to debate when people are given time to explain the historical methods and how the scholars use these methods to evaluate which facts are likely to be historical and which are not.

Filed under: Videos, Appearances, Bible, Bishop, Bodily Resurrection, Christian, Christianity, Debate, Easter, Empty Tomb, Episcopal, Good Friday, Jesus, John, John Shelby Spong, Luke, Mark, Matthew, Minimal Facts, Resurrection, Theology, Tomb, True, Truth, William Lane Craig

CBO: Obamacare will push 7 million Americans out of job based health insurance

The Washington Times reports.

Excerpt:

President Obama’s health care law will push 7 million people out of their job-based insurance coverage — nearly twice the previous estimate, according to the latest estimates from the Congressional Budget Office released Tuesday.

CBO said that this year’s tax cuts have changed the incentives for businesses and made it less attractive to pay for insurance, meaning fewer will decide to do so. Instead, they’ll choose to pay a penalty to the government, totaling $13 billion in higher fees over the next decade.

But the non-partisan agency also expects fewer people to have to pay individual penalties to the IRS than it earlier projects, because of a better method for calculating incomes that found more people will be exempt.

Overall, the new health provisions are expected to cost the government $1.165 trillion over the next decade — the same as last year’s projection.

With other spending cuts and tax increases called for in the health law, though, CBO still says Mr. Obama’s signature achievement will reduce budget deficits in the short term.

During the health care debate Mr. Obama had said individuals would be able to keep their plans.

Obama said one thing, and something else happened. So why did an obvious liar win re-election in 2012?

The purpose of Democrat policies is not to make our lives better. The purpose of their policies is to make them feel good about themselves. Their good intentions matter more than actual results. But it’s not enough to say that everyone will have great health care. Politicians have to put in place policies that will solve the real problem and make things better. Nothing that Obama did solves the problem. In fact, what he did made the problem worse. That’s what happens when you appoint an imbecile to a difficult task. You get failure.

Filed under: Videos, Appearances, Atheism, Barack Obama, Bible, Bullying, Christian Theism, Communism, Cosmology, Debate, Empty Tomp, Evidence, Freethought, God and the Folly of Faith, God: The Failed Hypothesis, Health Care Plan, Health Insurance, Health-care, Jesus, Lies, Lying, Marxism, Moral Values, Morality, Nationalized Health Care, New Atheism, New Atheists, Obama, Objective Morality, Philosophy, Physics, Quantum Mechanics, Rationality, Reason, Religion, Resurrection, Science, Socialism, Socialized Medicine, Stalin, Stephen Hawking, The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning, The New Atheism, Theism, Truth, Unbelief, Vic Stenger, Victor J. Stenger, Victor Stenger, William Lane Craig