Summary and audio: William Lane Craig debates Alex Rosenberg: Does God Exist?

Below, please find my summary of the Craig-Rosenberg debate, which occurred on February 1st, 2013 at Purdue University.

Brian Auten has posted the MP3 audio of the debate at Apologetics 315.  J.W. Wartick has a review of the debate here. Tom Gilson has a review of the debate here. Here’s another review of the debate from Carson Witnauer.

The debaters

William Lane Craig:

William Lane Craig is Research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology in La Mirada, California.

Dr. Craig pursued his undergraduate studies at Wheaton College (B.A. 1971) and graduate studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (M.A. 1974; M.A. 1975), the University of Birmingham (England) (Ph.D. 1977), and the University of Munich (Germany) (D.Theol. 1984). From 1980-86 he taught Philosophy of Religion at Trinity… In 1987 they moved to Brussels, Belgium, where Dr. Craig pursued research at the University of Louvain until assuming his position at Talbot in 1994.

He has authored or edited over thirty books, including The Kalam Cosmological Argument; Assessing the New Testament Evidence for the Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus; Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom; Theism, Atheism and Big Bang Cosmology; and God, Time and Eternity, as well as over a hundred articles in professional journals of philosophy and theology, including The Journal of Philosophy, New Testament Studies, Journal for the Study of the New Testament, American Philosophical Quarterly, Philosophical Studies, Philosophy, and British Journal for Philosophy of Science.

Craig’s CV is here.

Craig’s list of publications is here.

Alex Rosenberg:

I joined the Duke faculty in 2000. Previously I was professor of philosophy at Dalhouse University in Canada, Syracuse University, University of California, Riverside and at the University of Georgia, in the US. I have also been a visiting professor and/or fellow of the Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Minnesota, as well as the University of California, Santa Cruz, Oxford University (Balliol College) and the Research School of Social Science of the Australian National University. Here at Duke, I am co-director of the Center for Philosophy of Biology, along with Robert Brandon, Dan McShea and Fred Nijhout.

In addition I am the director of the AB Duke Scholarship Program and its associated summer Duke in Oxford Program at New College. Along with Professor Martha Reeves of the Sociology Department I co-direct Duke’s summer program on Globalization in Geneva. Check the links below for more information on these programs.

My interests focus on problems in metaphysics, mainly surrounding causality, the philosophy of social sciences, especially economics, and most of all, the philosophy of biology, in particular the relationship between molecular, functional and evolutionary biology.

Below is the summary from tonight (February 1st, 2013).

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Summary of the debate

Dr. Craig’s opening speech:

The topic: What are the arguments that make belief in God reasonable or unreasonable?
First speech: arguments for reasonableness of belief in God
Second speech: respond to arguments against reasonableness of belief in God

Eight arguments:

1. Contingency argument: God – a transcendent, personal being – is the explanation of why a contingent universe exists.
2. Cosmological argument: God is the cause of the beginning of the universe, which is attested by physics and cosmology.
3. Applicability of mathematics to nature: God is the best explanation for the applicability of mathematics to nature.
4. Fine-tuning argument: God is the best explanation of the fine-tuning of the universe to permit life.
5. Intentionality of conscious states: God is the best explanation of the intentionality of our mental states.
6. The moral argument: God is the best explanation for the existence of objective moral values and duties.
7. The resurrection of Jesus: God is the best explanation for the core of historical facts accepted by most ancient historians across the ideological spectrum.
8. Religious experience: God is the best explanation of our immediate experience and knowledge of his existence.

Dr. Rosenberg’s opening speech

First argument: The fallacy of ad hominem

• I don’t know whether to laugh or to cry
• Dr. Craig has said all of that before in other debates
• You didn’t need to come out on this cold night
• Craig’s arguments have all been refuted
• Dr. Craig just doesn’t listen
• Dr. Craig is not interested in getting at the truth
• Dr. Craig is just interested in scoring debate points
• The adversarial system is the wrong approach to decide truth
• Dr. Craig is very confident about his take of physics

Second argument: The fallacy of arguing from authority

• 95% of members of the NAS are atheists
• Therefore Dr. Craig cannot use science

Third argument: Effects don’t require causes

• I am going to pretend that Craig said that “every effect requires a cause”
• Quantum mechanics shows that some effects occur without causes
• A particle of uranium (which is not nothing, it is something) decays without a cause
• This uncaused effect is the same as the universe coming into being out of nothing uncaused
• Therefore the principle of sufficient reason is false

Fourth argument: Silicon-based life and the multiverse

• If these constants had been different, maybe we would have other kinds of intelligent life, like silicon-based life
• Carbon-based life is not the only kind of life, maybe you can have other kinds of life, none of which have been observed
• There could be different kinds of life in other areas of the universe that we can’t see
• There are things we can’t see that disprove the current physics that we can see
• Quantum foam is evidence that a multiverse exists
• The multiverse would solve the problem of fine-tuning

Fifth argument: The Euthyphro dilemma

• The moral argument is refuted by Euthyphro dilemma
• Dr. Craig is such a moron that he has never heard of the Euthyphro dilemma ever before
• This is found in the first and simplest of Plato’s dialogs
• Why is Dr. Craig so stupid that he has not read this simple dialog ever before?
• Evolution explains why humans evolve arbitrary customs and conventions that vary by time and place
• Alternative moral theories: utilitarianism, social contract, etc. that don’t require God

Sixth argument: Mormonism undermines Dr. Craig’s three minimal facts about Jesus

• Why is Dr. Craig so stupid and ignorant to persist in pushing such an ignorant, stupid argument?
• Mormonism is a silly religion that is not historically well founded
• Therefore, Jesus was not buried
• Islam is a silly religion that is not historically grounded
• Therefore, the tomb was not found empty
• Scientology is a silly religion that is not historically grounded
• Therefore, the eyewitnesses didn’t have post-mortem appearances
• Eyewitness testimony is unreliable in some cases
• Therefore, eyewitness testimony was unreliable in this case
• Apparitions of Mary are bizarre
• Therefore, the majority of historians are wrong to think that the disciples saw post-mortem appearances

Seventh argument: Deductive problem of evil

• Evil and suffering are logically incompatible with an all good, all powerful God

Eight argument: God is not just to allow evil and suffering

• God cannot make the evils of this life right in the afterlife

Dr. Craig’s first rebuttal

Dr. Rosenberg sketched the deductive argument from evil.

Dr. Rosenberg presupposes naturalism. Naturalism is a false theory of knowledge:

1. It’s too restrictive: There are truths that cannot be proved by natural science.
2. It’s self-refuting: no scientific proof for naturalism exists.

That’s why epistemological naturalism is considered false by most philosophers of science.

But more importantly than that: Epistemological naturalism does not imply metaphysical naturalism. (E.g. – W. Quine)

Dr. Rosenberg has to present arguments in favor of (metaphysical) naturalism, not just assume that (metaphysical) naturalism is true.

Dr. Craig presented eight arguments against metaphysical naturalism taken from Rosenberg’s own book:

1. The argument from the intentionality (aboutness) of mental states implies non-physical minds (dualism), which is incompatible with naturalism
2. The existence of meaning in language is incompatible with naturalism, Rosenberg even says that all the sentences in his own book are meaningless
3. The existence of truth is incompatible with naturalism
4. The argument from moral praise and blame is incompatible with naturalism
5. Libertarian freedom (free will) is incompatible with naturalism
6. Purpose is incompatible with naturalism
7. The enduring concept of self is incompatible with naturalism
8. The experience of first-person subjectivity (“I”) is incompatible with naturalism

Metaphysical naturalism is false: it is irrational and it contradicts our experience of ourselves.

And epistemological naturalism is compatible with theism.

Rebutting Dr. Rosenberg’s responses:

1. Contingency: no response

2. Cosmological: he mis-states the first premise to say every effect… when it is whatever begins to exist…, the origin of the universe was not from a vacuum, virtual particles come from a vacuum not nothing, there are interpretations of QM that are compatible with determinism. Rosenberg has to believe that the entire universe popped into being from non-being.

3. Mathematics: no response

4. Fine-tuning: the multiverse is refuted by empirical observations of the universe. Without fine-tuning, it’s not that we still have silicon to make life out of. It’s that we lose basic minimal things like chemical diversity, matter, stars, planets, etc. No life of any kind, not just no carbon-based life.

5. Intentionality: no response.

6. Moral argument: the answer to the dilemma is that you split the dilemma: God is the standard of good, and the commands flow from his unchanging moral nature. The commands are not arbitrary, and the standard is not external to God. Dr. Rosenberg is a nihilist and he cannot ground good and evil on his nihilistic view.

7. Resurrection: The Gospels are early eyewitness testimony. Mormonism and Islam have nothing to do with the minimal set of historical facts about Jesus agreed to by the majority of ancient historians across the ideological spectrum, general statements against eyewitnesses do not refute the specific eyewitness testimony in this case.

8. Religious experience: No response.

Dr. Rosenberg’s first rebuttal

I wrote a book and you should buy it, because it got me invited to this debate. Let me repeat the title a few times for you. Please buy it.

Dr. Craig is right, there are multiple interpretations of QM, not just the one I presented, including deterministic ones.

All the disturbing implications of naturalism that Dr. Craig stated follow from metaphysical naturalism, and metaphysical naturalism is true. (Note: he equates science with metaphysical naturalism)

Science proves that metaphysical naturalism is true, but I won’t say what specific scientific tests prove my philosophical assumption of metaphysical naturalism.

I’ll pretend that the Big Bang (science) doesn’t disprove naturalism, like Dr. Craig said. Again. (covers ears) La la la, there is no Big Bang.

We didn’t come here to debate epistemological naturalism and metaphysical naturalism.

Let me explain the problem of intentionality since I’m so smart and no one knows what it means.

There are many answers to this problem of intentionality.

My answer is that most scientists are naturalists, therefore naturalism is true, regardless of the argument from intentionality of mental states.

That’s how I would respond to one of the eight problems with naturalism that Dr. Craig raised. I won’t answer the other seven problems.

It is an argument from ignorance to argue that the applicability of mathematics to the universe requires a designer, because there are non-Euclidean geometries. Craig’s argument, which he gets from people like respected physicists like Eugene Wigner, is bizarre. It is bizarre, therefore I refute Eugene Wigner and all the other scholars who make that argument. It is bizarre! Bizarre!

Deductive problem of evil: there is no response to this argument, certainly not Alvin Plantinga’s free will defense. The deductive argument from evil has not been entirely abandoned at all! It’s not like arch-atheist J.L. Mackie himself admits that the deductive problem of evil doesn’t lead to a logical inconsistency between evil and God.

Dr. Craig has to tell me why God allows evil or God doesn’t exist.

It is offensive that Dr. Craig cannot tell me why God allows every evil and suffering that occurs.

He literally said this: “I will become a Christian if Dr. Craig can tell me why God allowed EVERY EVIL THAT OCCURRED IN THE LAST 3.5 BILLION YEARS”

Dr. Craig’s second rebuttal

We are not in a position to know why God allows specific instances of evil and suffering.

God cannot force people to freely do anything – freedom is not compatible with determinism. Freedom is a good, but freedom opens up the possibility of moral evil. You cannot have the good of free will without allowing people to choose to do morally evil things.

God can permit evil and suffering in order to bring more people into a relationship with him.

The atheist has to show that God could allow less evil and achieve more knowledge of God in order to say there is too much evil.

The purpose of life is not happiness, but knowledge of God.

Dr. Craig quotes agnostic Paul Draper (Purdue) and Peter Van Inwagen (Notre Dame) to state that the deductive problem of evil is dead because of free will and morally sufficient reasons for permitting evil.

1. Contingency: no response.

2. Cosmological: QM does not apply, because the universe came from nothing, not a vacuum, and QM only works in a vacuum.

3. Mathematics: He mentions alternatives like non-Euclidean geometry, but we have to explain the structure of THIS universe.

4. Fine-tuning: ???

5. Intentional states: intentional mental states proves that minds exist, which fits with theism better than it fits with atheism.

6. Moral argument: You need God to ground morality, and Dr. Rosenberg believes in morality. He needs God to ground objective moral values and duties.

7. Historical argument: He has to respond to the minimal facts supported by the consensus of ancient historians across the ideological spectrum.

8. The problems of naturalism: He says that you can’t have science without naturalism, but you can have science with EPISTEMOLOGICAL NATURALISM, and theists accept science and methodological naturalism. We don’t accept METAPHYSCIAL NATURALISM because of the eight problems Craig presented, like intentionality, first-person, persistence of self, etc. You can believe in both science and theism, by embracing epistemological naturalism, while rejecting methaphysical naturalism.

Dr. Rosenberg’s second rebuttal

Dr. Craig hasn’t answered many of my points, I won’t say which ones though.

Debates don’t work as a way of deciding what’s true, so we should overturn the entire criminal justice system.

The principle of sufficient reason is false because it is disconfirmed by quantum mechanics. And quantum mechanics (vacuum and virtual particles that exist for a short time) is similar to the origin of the universe (nothing and entire universe and 14 billion years).

We know that alpha particles come into being without cause all the time from a quantum vacuum for a tiny sub-second duration before going out of existence, so we can say that the entire physical universe came into being for 14 billion years from absolute nothing which is not a quantum vacuum.

Peter Van Inwagen is the best metaphysician working today, and he says that my deductive argument from evil is not decisive, it’s not a successful argument. (Why is he undermining his own problem of evil argument????!)

Dr. Craig invoked Plantinga’s free will defense to the deductive POE. Freedom allows us to do evil. God could have given us free will without evil and suffering. I won’t show how, but I’ll just assert it, because debates are such a bad forum for supplying evidence for my speculative assertions.

If you answer the question 3 + 5 as being 8, then you don’t have free will – you are biologically determined if you answer 8, because everyone answers 8, and that means everyone is biologically determined with no free will.

Why can’t God give us free will and then prevent us from making a free choice?

No scholars date the gospels earlier than 60-70 AD, especially not atheists like James Crossley who dates Mark to 40 AD. Therefore Jesus’ burial isn’t historical, like the majority of scholars across the broad spectrum of scholarship agree it is.

The original New Testament documents were written in Aramaic.

All New Testament scholars are orthodox Christians, like atheist Robert Funk for example.

Dr. Craig’s concluding speech

In order to sustain the deductive argument from evil, Dr. Rosenberg must show that God could create a world of free creatures with less evil.

Principle of Sufficient Reason: not using the general principle of sufficient reason, but a more modest version of this states that contingent things should have an explanation for their existence. And we know that the universe is a contingent.

The New Testament was not written in Aramaic, they were written in Greek. Dr. Rosenberg is wrong there too.

(Dr. Craig spends the rest of his concluding speech giving his testimony and urging people to investigate the New testament).

Dr. Rosenberg’s concluding speech

Some long-dead French guy named Laplace said that he has no need of that (God) hypothesis. He did not know about any of Dr. Craig’s arguments made in this debate tonight when he said that, though.

There is no need to explain how the universe began or how the universe is finely-tuned if you just assume metaphysical naturalism on faith.

The Easter Bunny, therefore atheism.

Most scientists are atheists, therefore atheism.

You can do a lot of science without God, just don’t look at the origin of the universe, the fine-tuning of the universe, or the other parts of science that Craig mentioned, as well as the origin of life, the Cambrian explosion, the habitability argument, and so on.

You can be a Christian, but good Christians should not use arguments and evidence.

Good Christians should be irrational and ignorant. Bad Christians look for arguments and evidence from science and history.

Good Christians should embrace the absurd. Bad Christians want to search for truth and use logic and evidence.

Filed under: Videos, Alex Rosenberg, Apologetics, Argument, Atheism, Atheist, Big Bang Theory, Christian, Christianity, Contingency, Cosmology, Debate, Dualism, Evidence, Fine Tuning, God, Holocaust, Intentionality, Logic, Mind-Body Dualism, Moral Argument, Morality, Non Belief, Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion, Physics, Problem of Evil, Resurrection, Science, Theism, Universe, William Lane Craig

The kalam cosmological argument defended in a peer-reviewed science journal

Here’s the peer-reviewed article. It appears in a scientific journal focused on astrophysics.

Here’s the abstract:

Both cosmology and philosophy trace their roots to the wonder felt by the ancient Greeks as they contemplated the universe. The ultimate question remains why the universe exists rather than nothing. This question led Leibniz to postulate the existence of a metaphysically necessary being, which he identified as God. Leibniz’s critics, however, disputed this identification, claiming that the space-time universe itself may be the metaphysically necessary being. The discovery during this century that the universe began to exist, however, calls into question the universe’s status as metaphysically necessary, since any necessary being must be eternal in its existence. Although various cosmogonic models claiming to avert the beginning of the universe predicted by the standard model have been and continue to be offered, no model involving an eternal universe has proved as plausible as the standard model. Unless we are to assert that the universe simply sprang into being uncaused out of nothing, we are thus led to Leibniz’s conclusion. Several objections to inferring a supernatural cause of the origin of the universe are considered and found to be unsound.

The whole article is posted online here.

Here’s an excerpt in which Craig explains the Big Bang cosmology:

The monumental significance of the Friedman-Lemaitre model lay in its historization of the universe. As one commentator has remarked, up to this time the idea of the expansion of the universe “was absolutely beyond comprehension. Throughout all of human history the universe was regarded as fixed and immutable and the idea that it might actually be changing was inconceivable.”{8} But if the Friedman-Lemaitre model were correct, the universe could no longer be adequately treated as a static entity existing, in effect, timelessly. Rather the universe has a history, and time will not be matter of indifference for our investigation of the cosmos. In 1929 Edwin Hubble’s measurements of the red-shift in the optical spectra of light from distant galaxies,{9} which was taken to indicate a universal recessional motion of the light sources in the line of sight, provided a dramatic verification of the Friedman-Lemaitre model. Incredibly, what Hubble had discovered was the isotropic expansion of the universe predicted by Friedman and Lemaitre. It marked a veritable turning point in the history of science. “Of all the great predictions that science has ever made over the centuries,” exclaims John Wheeler, “was there ever one greater than this, to predict, and predict correctly, and predict against all expectation a phenomenon so fantastic as the expansion of the universe?”{10}

As a GTR-based theory, the Friedman-Lemaitre model does not describe the expansion of the material content of the universe into a pre-existing, empty, Newtonian space, but rather the expansion of space itself. This has the astonishing implication that as one reverses the expansion and extrapolates back in time, space-time curvature becomes progressively greater until one finally arrives at a singular state at which space-time curvature becomes infinite. This state therefore constitutes an edge or boundary to space-time itself. P. C. W. Davies comments,

An initial cosmological singularity . . . forms a past temporal extremity to the universe. We cannot continue physical reasoning, or even the concept of spacetime, through such an extremity. . . . On this view the big bang represents the creation event; the creation not only of all the matter and energy in the universe, but also of spacetime itself.{11}

The popular expression “Big Bang,” originally a derisive term coined by Fred Hoyle to characterize the beginning of the universe predicted by the Friedman-Lemaitre model, is thus potentially misleading, since the expansion cannot be visualized from the outside (there being no “outside,” just as there is no “before” with respect to the Big Bang).{12}

The standard Big Bang model thus describes a universe which is not eternal in the past, but which came into being a finite time ago. Moreover,–and this deserves underscoring–the origin it posits is an absolute origin ex nihilo. For not only all matter and energy, but space and time themselves come into being at the initial cosmological singularity. As Barrow and Tipler emphasize, “At this singularity, space and time came into existence; literally nothing existed before the singularity, so, if the Universe originated at such a singularity, we would truly have a creation ex nihilo.“{13}

[...]On such a model the universe originates ex nihilo in the sense that at the initial singularity it is true that There is no earlier space-time point or it is false that Something existed prior to the singularity.

Now such a conclusion is profoundly disturbing for anyone who ponders it. For the question cannot be suppressed: Why does the universe exist rather than nothing? In light of the universe’s origin ex nihilo, one can no longer dismiss this question with a shrug and a slogan, “The universe is just there and that’s all.” For the universe is not “just there;” rather it came into being. The beginning of the universe discloses that the universe is not, as Hume thought, a necessarily existing being but is contingent in its existence. Philosophers analyzing the concept of necessary existence agree that the essential properties of any necessarily existing entity include its being eternal, uncaused, incorruptible, and indestructible{14}–for otherwise it would be capable of non-existence, which is self-contradictory. Thus, if the universe began to exist, its lacks at least one of the essential properties of necessary existence-eternality. Therefore, the reason for its existence cannot be immanent, but must in some mysterious way be ultra-mundane, or transcendent. Otherwise, one must say that the universe simply sprang into being uncaused out of absolutely nothing, which seems absurd. Sir Arthur Eddington, contemplating the beginning of the universe, opined that the expansion of the universe was so preposterous and incredible that “I feel almost an indignation that anyone should believe in it–except myself.”{15} He finally felt forced to conclude, “The beginning seems to present insuperable difficulties unless we agree to look on it as frankly supernatural.”{16}

I find that most scientists do not reflect philosophically upon the metaphysical implications of their theories. But, in the words of one astrophysical team, “The problem of the origin [of the universe] involves a certain metaphysical aspect which may be either appealing or revolting.”{17}

Every theist should able to understand and defend this argument. It is a scientific refutation of materialism, and it is supported by six lines of scientific evidence – all of which emerged as science has progressed.

Scientific evidence:

1. Einstein’s theory of general relativity (GTR)
2. the red-shifting of light from distant galaxies
3. the cosmic background radiation (which also disproves the oscillating model of the universe)
4. the second law of thermodynamics applied to star formation theory
5. hydrogen-helium abundance predictions
6. radioactive element abundance predictions

Those are the scientific discoveries that have led us to the beginning of the universe, which support’s Dr. Craig’s argument.

Several naturalistic/materialistic cosmologies are refuted in Craig’s peer-reviewed paper, including the steady-state model, oscillating model, the vacuum fluctuation model, the chaotic inflationary model, and the quantum gravity model. These naturalistic (no God) alternatives all have theoretical or observational difficulties. Atheism is at odds with modern cosmology – and the progress of science itself.

This is the kind of evidence I expect all my readers to be using when discussing whether God exists. Scientific evidence. When talking to non-Christians, it’s best to avoid quoting the Bible, talking about theology, or sharing our personal feelings and experiences. That can come much later when the person is open to it. We first need to show that we understand science, because science is a reliable and respected way of getting knowledge about the universe. Science (experimental, testable, repeatable science) should set limits on what anyone can believe – including non-Christians, who might otherwise not be inclined to listen to Bible verses and theology.

You should definitely print this article out and read it, then send it to your atheistic friends. I have tried this out on atheists, and the response I get is that scientific discoveries will soon emerge that falsifies all of these six scientific discoveries. That sounds more like faith than science to me. Let’s make the decisions based on what science is telling us today. Let’s not speculate against the science, let’s go with the flow of the recent discoveries.

Filed under: Polemics, Apologetics, Atheism, Big Bang, Chaotic Inflationary, Conservation of Matter, Cosmic Microwave Background Radiiation, Cosmological Argument, Cosmology, Debate, Debates, Einstein, Elemental Abundance Predictions, GTR, Kalam, Kalam Argument, Kalam Cosmological Argument, KCA, Oscillating, Progress of Science, Quantum Gravity, Second Law of Thermodynamics, Steady State, Vacuum Fluctuation, William Lane Craig

J. Warner Wallace: making sense out of the creation from nothing

An article from “Cold Case Christianity” author J. Warner Wallace.

Excerpt:

Even as an atheist, I understood the challenge offered by the “Standard Cosmological Model” (theBig Bang Theory) when examined from my naturalistic worldview. This model infers a “cosmological singularity” in which all space, time and matter came into existence at a point in the distant past. In others words, “everything” came from “nothing”. I knew this presented a problem for me as a naturalist; if the universe had a beginning, the “principle of causality” inclined me to believe there must have been a cause. But, what could cause something as vast as the universe? Could it have caused itself to come into existence, or must the first cause of all space, time and matter be non-spatial, atemporal and immaterial? How could “everything” come from “nothing”?

One way to navigate this dilemma is simply to redefine the terms we are using. What do we mean when we say “everything” or “nothing”? At first these two terms might seem rather self-explanatory, but it’s important for us to take the time to define the words. By “everything” we mean all space, time and matter. That’s right, space is “something”; empty space is part of “everything” not part of “nothing”. For some of us, that’s an interesting concept that might be hard to grasp, but it’s an important distinction that must be understood. When we say “nothing”, we mean the complete absence of everything; the thorough non-existence of anything at all (including all space time and matter). These two terms, when defined in this way, are consistent with the principles of the Standard Cosmological Model, but demonstrate the dilemma. If everything came from nothing, what caused this to occur? What is the non-spatial, atemporal, immaterial, uncaused, first cause of the universe? A cause of this sort sounds a lot like a supernatural Being, and that’s why I think many naturalists have begun to redefine the terms.

I was just being asked about this by a friend of mine who I sent two copies of Wallace’s book to. (One for non-Christian him, and one for his non-Christian girlfriend, too). He wanted to know what was outside the expansion of space and whether the space would expand forever and what was the space expanding into and would we ever be able to see what was outside of our space. Well, these are all good questions and that’s why Christians need to get used to the standard cosmology. There is nothing at all about that hurts us, but it’s just awful for atheists who think that the universe exists without a cause.

You can click on the link to the article for a  hilarious illustration of how atheists redefine nothing!

Filed under: News, Atheism, Big Bang, Cosmology, Existence, God, Materialism, Matter, Naturalism, Nothing, Physics, Science, Space, Theism, Time

William Lane Craig lectures on naturalistic alternatives to the Big Bang

Here’s the lecture, which was given in 2004 at the University of Colorado, Boulder. A very liberal university!

This lecture is suitable for intermediate and advanced Christian apologists.

The description of the video states:

This is quite simply one of the best lectures William Lane Craig (a philosopher of science) has given. Craig explores the origins of the universe. He argues for a beginning of the universe, while refuting scientific models like the Steady State Theory, the Oscillating Theory, Quantum Vacuum Fluctuation Model, Chaotic Inflationary Theory, Quantum Gravity Theory, String Theory, M-Theory and Cyclic Ekpyrotic Theory.

And here is the description of the lecture from Reasonable Faith:

A Templeton Foundation lecture at the University of Colorado, Boulder, laying out the case from contemporary cosmology for the beginning of the universe and its theological implications. Includes a lengthy Q & A period which features previous critics and debate opponents of Dr. Craig who were in attendance, including Michael Tooley, Victor Stenger, and Arnold Guminski.

Craig has previously debated Stenger and Tooley previously. And they both asked him questions in the Q&A time of this lecture. Imagine – having laid out your entire case to two people who have debated you before and who know your arguments well. What did they ask Craig, and how did he respond?

This lecture is based on a research paper published in an astrophysics journal, and was delivered to an audience of students and faculty, including atheist physicist Victor Stenger and prominent atheist philosopher Michael Tooley, at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

The whole research paper that the lecture is based on is posted online.

Filed under: Videos, Agnosticism, Apologetics, Arnold Guminski, Atheism, Atheist, Big Bang, Big Bang Theory, Christian Apologetics, Cosmological Argument, Cosmology, Creation, Ex Nihilo, Kalam, Kalam Cosmological Argument, Lecture, Logic, Michael Tooley, Origin of the universe, Out of Nothing, Philosophy, Progress of Science, Reason, Science, Templeton Foundation, The Big Bang Theory, Theism, Victor Stenger, William Lane Craig

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”

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