Tag Archive for: William Lane Craig

Human beings are rational animals, according to Aristotle. As animals, human beings are sensible beings who have sensations and movements (in contrast to plants, which are living beings without true sensation and self-initiated movement). But human beings are not just any kind of animal. We have a special quality that separates us from animals, plants and the rest of the material world, which is that we have a rational soul.

Furthermore, leaving Aristotle aside (as we shall see later), this doesn’t mean that human beings are the summit of all that exists. God, who is infinite and intellect in its fullest form can alone claim his proper place at the top of the summit (although, technically speaking, He is the foundation) of all that exists. Still, since human beings are rational animals, but are also finite, it is natural (and by that I literally mean that it is part of human nature), to ask questions.

Why Metaphysics Matters

Now, human beings can and do ask questions about a lot of topics. But there are some questions that matter most not because of their necessarily immediate practical implication, but because of the effect their answers have on the questions that do possess an immediate practical implication. That is, we cannot properly begin to understand secondary matters until we first understand primary matters. And one of the most basic primary questions to answer is “what is (or are) the first principle of reality?”.

Metaphysics deals with these types of primary questions and its importance is by now evident. The results of every other discipline depend on resolving fundamental metaphysical questions. The Christian (let alone the trained Christian philosopher) can’t escape this reality. Simply put, a wrong move in metaphysics will affect doctrines about God, creation, and salvation.

This fact of metaphysics has become evident to me in the modern debate about divine simplicity. Dr. William Lane Craig rejects the Thomistic understanding of the doctrine of divine simplicity and this means his conception of God is different (very different) than that of an existential Thomist, and proper logic mandates that both conceptions of God cannot be correct. Dr. Craig says, “Deny the real distinction between essence and existence, and the nerve of Thomism is cut.[1]”  This claim strikes me as plainly true. I’m not talking about whether we should deny the real distinction between essence and existence (that’s a whole separate matter), but he is correct in that if we do so, the nerve of Thomism is cut, and with it, the Thomistic understanding of God must be denied.

This important matter, the distinction between essence and existence, is the central focus of this blog and my aim is to show how different views of this distinction lead to a different understanding of God, raising the stakes for the Christian (and the Christian philosopher) to ensure that his metaphysics is correct.

In this regard, human beings face a monumental task. Humans, as rational animals, must wrestle with the fact that they can ask questions beyond even their own limitations. For example, as any Christian should affirm, human beings (who only have a human essence) are contingent beings to whom existence owes nothing to make them exist necessarily, want to properly explain existence as a principle and its relationship with essences in general. Despite this limitation, we will see that even in this brief essay there is much that can be said in this regard.

Four Philosophers, Four Visions and Their Implications

Aquinas: Let’s start our brief analysis with none other than Thomas Aquinas. He maintained that there is a real distinction between essence and existence. This means that he believed that essence and existence are real and distinct principles that together constitute the being of a thing. A thing’s essence is what it is, and existence is that it is. Following Dr. Richard Howe’s use of human beings to illustrate this, essence is what makes you human; existence is what makes you a being.[2]

The only exception to this rule is God, in whom essence and existence are identical, and this has several implications. First, he is unique and totally distinct from everything else that exists. He alone is existence; everything else just has existence. Second, as existence itself, God is the only necessary being. Every other being is contingent and depends on God for its existence. Third, God’s omnipotence is evident in His ability to bring things into existence from nothing (creatio ex nihilo). Between existence and non-existence, there’s an infinite metaphysical chasm that only an infinite cause can bridge.

Scotus: Aquinas’ view of God, stemming from his real distinction between essence and existence, can be contrasted with that of John Duns Scotus. Scotus maintained that every essence has some degree of being, according to its (proportional) intrinsic perfection. This implies that the distance between any finite being and nothingness is not infinite. As a result, God’s omnipotence is primarily expressed not in sustaining beings in existence, but in freely determining which essences are actualized in reality. In other words, for Scotus, God’s power, is primarily evident in freely determining what comes to be, rather than in directly causing the act of being itself. It is worth noting that Aquinas integrates both perspectives, affirming divine volition alongside God’s continuous causal role in sustaining creatures in existence.

Plato: On the other hand, Plato did not conceive of existence as an act received from God. Plato believed that the forms—eternal, unchanging, immaterial, and universal realities—are the highest level of reality, while the material world is just an imperfect reflection of them. As such, Plato’s god is really a craftsman-like figure who does not create things (let alone via creation ex nihilo), he merely imposes order on pre-existing chaotic matter in accordance with the forms. He works with what already exists; he does not make things to be or define what they are. There’s no doubt that Plato’s God is a “smaller” God than that of Aquinas.

Spinoza: Benedict Spinoza’s views are also important to mention. He denied the distinction between essence and existence because he maintained that only one substance exists. The implications of this view are profound. If everything that exists is the same substance, that means that everything that exists collapses into a single substance. As a result, God is identical with nature. There is really no distinction between God and everything else, leading directly to pantheism.

It is evident that this view is incompatible with the metaphysical commitments required by Christianity. We need not delve into the implications of this view for divine omnipotence or the necessity of creation. Suffice it to say that since this view denies the distinction between God and His creation, this implies that you, I, and all human beings are part of the same divine nature. This position plainly contradicts Scripture —and, indeed, everyday experience.

Conclusion

There’s much more that could be said about this, and many other important philosophers throughout history could be cited. However, this brief analysis shows that one’s metaphysical conclusions can strongly influence one’s theology. Every Christian should desire to know God and reality as they truly are. To do so properly, one’s metaphysics must be correct. Therefore, we as Christians, must make sure to get our metaphysics right.

References: 

[1] William Lane Craig and Bishop Robert Barron, Bishop Barron & William Lane Craig Symposium, Part 1: Divine Simplicity, Reasonable Faith, accessed February 21, 2025,
https://www.reasonablefaith.org/videos/lectures/bishop-barron-william-lane-craig-symposium-part-1-divine-simplicity

Symposium, Part 1: Divine Simplicity. Reasonable Faith. Accessed February 21, 2025.
https://www.reasonablefaith.org/videos/lectures/bishop-barron-william-lane-craig-symposium-part-1-divine-simplicity

Gilson, Étienne. Being and Some Philosophers. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1952.

———.Craig, William Lane, and Bishop Robert Barron. Bishop Barron & William Lane Craig

[2] Aquinas on Existence and the Essence-Existence Distinction,” Southern Evangelical Seminary, accessed February 21, 2025, https://ses.edu/aquinas-on-existence-and-the-essence-existence-distinction/

———.Aquinas on Existence and the Essence-Existence Distinction.” Southern Evangelical
Seminary. Accessed February 21, 2025
https://www.reasonablefaith.org/videos/lectures/bishop-barron-william-lane-craig-
symposium-part-1-divine-simplicity

Recommended Resources:

How Philosophy Can Help Your Theology by Richard Howe (DVD Set, Mp3, and Mp4)   

What is God Really Like? A View from the Parables by Dr. Frank Turek (DVD, Mp3, and Mp4)

What is God Like? Look to the Heavens by Dr. Frank Turek (DVD and Mp4)

Your Most Important Thinking Skill by Dr. Frank Turek DVD, (mp4) download

 


Diego Fallas earned his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering. During his studies, he became passionate about Christian apologetics. He quickly found himself immersed in the field as he started taking seminary courses in apologetics and became a Reasonable Faith chapter director. Today, he is the Director of Operations for CrossExamined.org, and teaches and speaks in Latin America. Diego is the co-host of the weekly Livestream show Piensalo Bien and is currently completing his M.A. in philosophy from Southern Evangelical Seminary.

Some skepticism is warranted. None of us want to live within a paradigm of naivety. No one wants to blindly accept every foolish notion that comes down the pipeline. A quick glance at social media along with the acknowledgment of the tweaks and twists that artificial intelligence can bring to videos and audio files only intensifies our need for discernment.

Even still, as believers, we must differentiate between discernment and all-out skepticism. Discernment evaluates data to see whether the information is valid and trustworthy. In contrast, skepticism doubts or denies claims that seem to be grandiose or beyond the status quo. Even more to the point, skepticism can deny propositional claims. When left unrestrained, skepticism could lead to doubt, which in turn can lead to the denial of propositions (i.e., truth claims). At worst, unrestrained skepticism can lead to cynicism.

The Infiltration of Skepticism in Conservative Apologetics

I have been troubled by the extreme form of skepticism that has entered the apologetic and theological world, especially within what has been considered conservative evangelical Christianity. When I first entered the apologetic world in 2007 and formally in 2012, apologists and conservative theologians alike were fairly settled on certain issues regarding miracles, biblical fidelity, and creationism. The pillars of the apologetic world, however, seem to be crumbling, instead adopting extreme forms of skepticism that deny veritable biblical truth claims.

At the same time, modern Christianity has adopted a celebrity culture. So, these icons of the time often go unquestioned by their fanbase. We would be well advised, however, to remember that truth is truth and error is error regardless of who speaks it. With that in mind, let us consider three avenues where we should be skeptical of modern skepticism.

Becoming Skeptical of Modern Human Skepticism (Miraculous Skepticism) [i]

David Hume was an English skeptic of the 16th century. Hume maintained that miracles could not be proven as historical events. While a full explanation of his view is beyond the scope of this article, Hume defined a miracle as “a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity, or by the interposition of some invisible agent.”[ii] Part of the problem in Hume’s analysis is that a Deity and/or invisible agent may work through the laws of nature to bring about certain ends. Gary Habermas offers a better definition, claiming that miraculous interventions should be understood as “the manifestation or presence of divine actions that temporarily or momentarily overrule or supersede nature’s normally observed, lawful pattern of events, or that appear to do so.”[iii]

Hume’s Circular Reasoning

A bigger problem with Hume’s assessment is that his argument is largely circular. Hume does not believe miracles can be proven because he does not believe miracles occur. And, like a self-fulfilling prophecy, if you do not believe that miracles occur, then you will deny any claim that purports to be miraculous.

Modern Hume in the Apologetic World?

While nearly all Bible-believing Christians will accept that God does perform miracles, the level of scrutiny that some biblical events have received by Bible-believing scholars is somewhat suspect. With modern scholars, the idea of a talking serpent seems absurd, even though the Bible is riddled with numerous miraculous events. Furthermore, for some, the idea that God could raise numerous saints from the dead around the time of Christ’s crucifixion appears beyond rational belief, all the while the same scholars defend Jesus’s own resurrection and His resurrection of others from the dead. So then, why is it that some stories appear absurd, and others don’t?

At the end of the day, we must ask ourselves whether we actually believe that God can do anything within God’s moral limitations. Sure, even the Bible says that God cannot sin because of His moral holiness, and God cannot do something that goes against God’s character (e.g., Titus 1:2). But do we believe that God can part the Red Sea? Do we really believe that God can raise the dead? If so, why do we place limitations on what God can do?

Becoming Skeptical of Modern Bultmannian Skepticism (Biblical Skepticism) [iv]

Rudolf Bultmann was a German theologian of the 19th century who was highly skeptical of the biblical texts. Bultmann promoted the demythologization of the Bible. That is, Bultmann believed that the Bible must be stripped of all its mythological elements to make it more palatable for modern scientific minds. As such, Bultmann held an informal uncontrolled mindset when it came to the oral traditions undergirding the life of Jesus. The informal uncontrolled model means that, according to Bultmann, no one was concerned about preserving accurate information about Jesus, and no one was selected to authenticate the material. Thus, the Gospels tell us next to nothing about the historical Jesus and more about the church’s belief about Jesus. Therefore, no one can know anything about the life of Jesus.

Oral Traditions

In my dissertation work, not only did I discover that Bultmann’s theory on oral traditions was wrong, but the Gospels texts also indicate that something more controlled was at hand when it came to the preservation of Jesus traditions.[v] As such, the data suggests that the Gospels are based on eyewitness testimony. We have good reasons to believe that Jesus rose from the dead, as well as other events in Scripture.[vi] If the data suggests that we have reasons for believing in the fidelity of Scripture and the stories it contains, then why do we find it necessary to cast doubt on the authenticity of the traditions of Jesus?

Is Harmonization a Sin?

Why is it such a sin to harmonize the Gospels as Michael Licona suggests if the Gospels indeed contain eyewitness testimonies? It seems to me that attempts to diffuse the mystical and miraculous elements of Scripture are falling back into the unjustified skepticism of Bultmann and his desire to demythologize the pages of the Bible. But the greater question is, what are we left with if we remove the divine power of God from the testimonies of Scripture? We’ll discuss that in the conclusion.

Becoming Skeptical of Modern Darwinian Skepticism (Creationary Skepticism)

Lastly, it seems as if theistic evolution has become the fad of the day. Since William Lane Craig published his book In Quest of the Historical Adam, I have observed many young apologists and would-be scholars falling in line with endorsing theistic evolution, even though evolutionary theory still suffers from the same methodological flaws that it ever has.

What happened to the apologists’s endorsement of the work of Stephen Meyer and the Discovery Institute? Through the years, Meyer has given ample reason to question Darwinianism. His book Darwin’s Doubt is one such example. Do we now cast aside Darwin’s Doubt just because it is popular to now follow the idea that much of Genesis 1–11 is mythological? Do we now openly reject classic creationist concepts by scientists like Hugh Ross, the staff at Reasons to Believe, and Answers in Genesis just because a well-known philosopher says to do otherwise?

Conclusion

Most assuredly, I am not trying to lambast Craig, Licona, or any of their followers. I have been blessed by many of their works in time’s past and have many friends who follow along with the concepts presented by the two men. And it should be noted that many other scholars could be included in the three aforementioned categories. But I am troubled by the following question: At what point should we become skeptical of our own skepticism?

As I had the pleasure of editing the book Why Creationism Still Matters with my good friends and colleagues Dr. T. J. Gentry and Dr. Michelle Johnson, it struck me how strong the case can be made for creationism. And it further troubled me why others feel the need to reject such a defense when in fact numerous scientists are questioning evolutionary theory as well.[vii]

Additionally, consider that we have spent thousands of years trying to understand what it only took seconds for God to create. God spoke, and the universe came into existence with all its laws, physics, and numerical values. Thus, if God is God, and the Bible is God’s Word, wouldn’t it behoove us to believe what God said?

Final Analysis

As an apologist, I most assuredly believe that the resurrection and events of the Bible stand on their own merit. Thus, I am not a fideist. Have we, however, encountered God and known the power He holds? If so, at what point should we begin asking if our latent skepticism reflects our own doubt more than it does the evidence within the text?

So, to summarize, why should we become skeptical of our skepticism? When our skepticism begins to offer more reasons not to believe in God’s power and His revelation, that’s when our skepticism exposes latent doubt more than our faith. We must then ask ourselves if we really believe in what we are leading others to believe. If we don’t, then why encourage others to believe at all? But if we do believe, then what good is it when we continuously downgrade what God has given us in His Word? And if we do believe, then at some point, we must become skeptical of why we are so skeptical.

Furthermore, we must also question if our skepticism has caused an even greater naivety, wherein we blindly follow whatever our favored philosophers or scholars say without considering the validity of their claims. In a sense, our unrestrained skepticism could lead to greater gullibility. Just some things to consider from a fellow disciple as we journey this life together.

References: 

[i] Humean refers to the teachings of David Hume.

[ii] David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, in the Essential Works of David Hume, Ralph Cohen, ed (New York: Bantham, 1965), 1:129n3.

[iii] Gary Habermas, On the Resurrection: Evidences, vol. 1 (Brentwood, TN: B&H Academic, 2024), 242.

[iv] Bultmannian refers to the teachings of Rudolph Bultmann.

[v] Brian G. Chilton, “Semitic Residue: Semitic Traits that Indicate Early Source Material Behind the Gospel of Matthew” (2022), Doctoral Dissertations and Projects, 3874, https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/doctoral/3874.

[vi] See my contribution for an extensive defense of the resurrection in the upcoming book Thomas J. Gentry, ed., Strong Faith (West Frankfort, IL: IHP Practica, 2024).

[vii] For example, read “Scientists Dissent from Darwinian Theory,” Discovery.org (Feb. 12, 2019), https://www.discovery.org/v/darwin-dissenters-speak/. Also consider the mathematical problems related to Darwinianism, David Berlinski, Stephen C. Meyer, David H. Gelernter, “Mathematical Challenges to Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, With David Berlinksi, Stephen C. Meyer, and David Gelernter,” Interview, Hoover Institution, Hoover.org (July 22, 2019), https://www.hoover.org/research/mathematical-challenges-darwins-theory-evolution-david-berlinski-stephen-meyer-and-david.

Recommended Resources:

Debate: What Best Explains Reality: Atheism or Theism? by Frank Turek DVD, Mp4, and Mp3 

Oh, Why Didn’t I Say That? Does Science Disprove God? by Dr. Frank Turek (DVD and Mp4)

Stealing From God by Dr. Frank Turek (Book, 10-Part DVD Set, STUDENT Study Guide, TEACHER Study Guide)

I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist (Paperback), and (Sermon) by Norman Geisler and Frank Turek 

 


Brian G. Chilton earned his Ph.D. in the Theology and Apologetics at Liberty University (with high distinction). He is the host of The Bellator Christi Podcast and the founder of Bellator Christi. Brian received his Master of Divinity in Theology from Liberty University (with high distinction); his Bachelor of Science in Religious Studies and Philosophy from Gardner-Webb University (with honors); earned a Certificate in Christian Apologetics from Biola University, and plans to purse philosophical studies in the near future. He is also enrolled in Clinical Pastoral Education to better learn how to empower those around him. Brian is a member of the Evangelical Theological Society and the Evangelical Philosophical Society. Brian has served in ministry for over 20 years and currently serves as a clinical hospice chaplain as well as a pastor.

Originally posted at: https://bit.ly/4e4KBrE

 

Many have attempted to discredit the Kalam Cosmological Argument for God. Have they succeeded? Join Frank for this special midweek podcast episode as he hosts not one, but TWO of the most accomplished Christian philosophers, Dr. William Lane Craig and Dr. Stephen C. Meyer. Both guests present their own approaches to the argument and answer the main objections to it. And during the second half of the show, they tackle a long list of thought-provoking (and sometimes mind-boggling) listener questions!

Including:

  • If God created the universe, who created God?

  • How is math the product of a mind?

  • What does “began to exist” mean in the Kalam cosmological argument?

  • How do we know the creator is the Christian God?

  • What is the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin (BGV) theorem?

  • Is it possible to reconcile young + old earth creation views?

  • If God is timeless, how did He create time?

To view the entire VIDEO PODCAST, be sure to join our CrossExamined private community. It’s the perfect place to jump into some great discussions with like-minded Christians while simultaneously providing financial support for our ministry.

Connect with the guests:

Dr. William Lane Craig: https://www.reasonablefaith.org/

Dr. Stephen C. Meyer’s website: https://stephencmeyer.org/

Dr. Stephen C. Meyer’s online course: https://bit.ly/3GL1qKB

If you would like to submit a question to be answered on the show, please email your question to Hello@Crossexamined.org.

Subscribe on Apple Podcast: http://bit.ly/CrossExamined_Podcast Rate and review! Thanks!!!
Subscribe on Google Play: https://cutt.ly/0E2eua9
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In this mid-week bonus episode of the, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist podcast, Frank sits down with legendary philosopher, Dr. William Lane Craig, for a fascinating discussion on the beginning of the universe. Dr. Craig is perhaps best known for his work on the Kalam Cosmological Argument which offers an excellent philosophical foundation (supported by physics) for a theistic creator. What type of theistic creator might that be? Only one meets the criteria! Listen to this great conversation between Frank and one of his greatest influences, recorded at the Evangelical Theological Society Meeting in Denver, CO. Then go subscribe to the Reasonable Faith podcast to hear more from the brilliant mind of Dr. William Lane Craig.

If you would like to submit a question to be answered on the show, please email your question to Hello@Crossexamined.org.

Subscribe on Apple Podcast: http://bit.ly/CrossExamined_Podcast Rate and review! Thanks!!!
Subscribe on Google Play: https://cutt.ly/0E2eua9
Subscribe on Spotify: http://bit.ly/CrossExaminedOfficial_Podcast
Subscribe on Stitcher: http://bit.ly/CE_Podcast_Stitcher

 

By Wintery Knight 

I was very excited to see a recent debate by Christian philosopher William Lane Craig against atheist astronomer Jeff Hester. When I summarize a debate, I do a fair, objective summary if the atheist is intelligent and informed, as with Peter Millican, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, or Austin Dacey. But the following summary is rated VS for Very Snarky, and you’ll soon see why.

The debate itself starts at 29 minutes:

The audio is very poor.

Dr. Craig’s opening speech

Dr. Craig went first, and he presented four arguments, as well as the ontological argument, which I won’t summarize or discuss. He later added another argument for theism from the existence of the universe that does not require an origin of the universe.

A1. Counter-examples

Theists who are elite scientists cannot be “irrational,” for example Allan Sandage, Gustav Tammann, George Ellis, Don Page, Christopher Isham

A2. Kalam cosmological argument

  1. Whatever begins to exist requires a cause.
  2. The universe began to exist.
  3. Therefore, the universe requires a cause.

A3. Fine-tuning of the universe to permit complex, intelligent life

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

A4. Moral argument

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

Dr. Hester’s opening speech

Dr. Hester went second and presented two arguments, which both committed the genetic fallacy, a logical fallacy that makes the arguments have no force.

Hester starts his opening speech by asserting that Albert Einstein was irrational because he denied quantum mechanics.

Hester explains that he became an atheist at 15. This would have been before the evidence for the origin of the universe became widespread before we had very many examples of fine-tuning before the discovery that the origin of life problem is a problem of the origin of complex, specified information, etc. What kind of reasons can a 15-year-old child have for becoming an atheist? It’s hard to say, but I would suspect that they were psychological. Children often desire autonomy from moral authorities. They want to be free to pursue pleasure. They don’t want to be thought of as superstitious and morally straight by their non-religious peers.

Later on in the debate, Hester volunteers that he hated his father because his father professed to be a Christian, but he was focused on his career and making money. In the absence of any arguments for atheism, it’s reasonable to speculate that Hester became an atheist for psychological reasons. And as we’ll see, just like the typical 15-year-old child, he has no rational basis for atheism. What’s astonishing is how he continues to hold to the atheism of his teens when it has been falsified over and over by scientific discoveries in the years since.

Dr. Craig’s deductive arguments do have premises that reach a conclusion through the laws of logic. On the contrary, he just asserts that God exists as his conclusion, and then says that this assertion is the best explanation of a gap in our scientific knowledge. Some of the gaps in our scientific knowledge he uses in his arguments are: 1) he doesn’t understand why the Sun moves through the sky, so God exists, 2) he doesn’t understand why the wind blows, so God exists.

What counts as “rational” are things that have not been disproved. The progress of science has shown that the universe did not need a cause in order to begin to exist, and also there is no cosmic fine-tuning.

A1. The success of evolution in the software industry proves that there is no God.

All hardware and software are developed using genetic algorithms that exactly match Darwinian processes. All the major computer companies like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, etc. are just generating products using mutation and selection to evolve products over long periods of time. If you look over a typical software engineering degree, it’s all about Darwinian evolution, and nothing about design patterns, object-oriented design, etc.

This widespread use of evolution in the software industry undermines all of the arguments for God’s existence. Evolution caused the origin of the universe. Evolution explains why the universe is fine-tuned for life. Evolution, which requires replication already be in place in order to work, explains the origin of the first self-replicating organism.

A2. Theist’s view of the world is just a result of peer pressure from their tribes.

All of Dr. Craig’s logical arguments supported by scientific evidence don’t matter, because he got them from a primitive tribe of Christians that existed 2000 years ago. Everyone gets their view of origins, morality, meaning in life, death, etc. from their tribes. Except for me, I’m getting my beliefs from reason and evidence because I’m a smart atheist. I don’t have an atheist tribe in the university that would sanction me if I disagreed with nonsense like homosexuality is 100% genetic, transgenderism, man-made catastrophic global warming, fully naturalistic evolution, aliens seeded the Earth with life, infanticide is moral, socialism works, overpopulation will cause mass starvation, nuclear winter, etc. Also, my argument isn’t the genetic fallacy at all, because smart atheists don’t commit elementary logical fallacies that even a first-year philosophy student would know.

A3. Our brains evolved, so our rational faculties are unreliable, so God does not exist.

The logical reasoning that Dr. Craig uses to argue for theism are all nonsense, because human minds just have an illusion of consciousness, an illusion of rationality, and an illusion of free will. Everything Dr. Craig says is just deluded nonsense caused by chemicals in his brain. He has cognitive biases the undermine all his logical arguments and scientific evidence. He just invented an imaginary friend with superpowers. Except me, I’m a smart atheist, so I actually have real consciousness, real reasoning powers, and no cognitive biases. Also, my argument isn’t the genetic fallacy at all, because my arguments would not get an F in a first-year philosophy course.

Discussion

I’m not going to summarize everything in the discussion, or the question and answer time. I’m just going to list out some of the more interesting points.

Dr. Craig asks him how it is that he has managed to escape these biases from tribalism, projection, etc. He talks about how brave and noble atheist rebels are. The moderator asks him the same question. He repeats how brave and noble atheist rebels are.

Dr. Hester is asked whether he affirms a causeless beginning of the universe or an eternal universe. He replies he states that the universe came into being without a cause because causality doesn’t apply to the beginning of the universe. He also asserts with the explanation that Borde, Guth, and Vilenkin have undermined the kalam cosmological argument, mentioning a web site.

Dr. Craig replied to this phantom argument after the debate on Facebook:

Speaking of which, although I haven’t had time to consult the website mentioned by Dr. Hester concerning Guth and Vilenkin on the kalam cosmological argument, I know the work of these two gentlemen well enough to predict what one will find there. Since neither one is yet a theist (so much, by the way, for the dreaded confirmation bias!), they have to reject at least one of the premises of the kalam cosmological argument.

Guth wants to deny premiss (2) The universe began to exist–for which Vilenkin has rebuked him. Guth would avoid the implications of their theorem by holding our hope for the Carroll-Chen model, which denies the single condition of the BGV theorem. This gambit is, however, unsuccessful, since the Carroll-Chen model does so only by positing a reversal of the arrow of time at some point in the finite past. This is not only highly non-physical but fails to avert the universe’s beginning since that time-reversed, mirror universe is no sense in our past. The model really postulates two different universes with a common beginning.

So Vilenkin is forced to deny premiss (1) Whatever begins to exists has a cause. He says that if the positive energy associated with matter exactly counterbalances the negative energy associated with gravity, then the net sum of the energy is zero, and so the conservation of energy is not violated if the universe pops into being from nothing! But this is like saying that if your assets exactly balance your debts, then your net worth is zero, and so there does not need to be a cause of your financial situation! As Christopher Isham points out, there still needs to be “ontic seeding” in order to create positive and negative energy in the first place, even if on balance, their sum is zero.

Dr. Hester is asked how he explains the evidence for fine-tuning. He literally says that “Life is fine-tuned for the Universe,” i.e., that evolution will create living beings regardless of the laws of physics, constants, etc. For example, he thinks that in a universe with a weaker strong force, which would have only hydrogen atoms, evolution would still evolve life. And in a universe that recollapses in a hot fireball, and never forms stars or planets, evolution would produce life. Physicist Luke Barnes, who was commenting on the YouTube chat for the video, said this:

“Life is fine-tuned for the Universe” – complete ignorance of the field. Read a book.

Hester tries to cite Jeremy England to try to argue for life appearing regardless of what the laws of physics are. Barnes comments:

Jeremy England’s work supports no such claim.

Hester appealed to the multiverse, which faces numerous theoretical and observational difficulties. For example, the multiverse models have to have some mechanism to spawn different universes, but these mechanisms themselves require fine-tuning, as Robin Collins argues. And the multiverse is falsified observationally by the Boltzmann brain problem. It was so ironic that Hester claimed to be so committed to testing theories. The multiverse theory cannot be tested experimentally and must be accepted on faith.

Dr. Hester is asked how he grounds morality on atheism. He says there are no objective moral values and duties. He instead lists off a bunch of Christian beliefs which he thinks are objectively wrong. Even his statements about these moral issues are misinformed. For example, he asserts that homosexuality is causally determined by biology, but this is contradicted by identical twin studies that have a rate of 20-40% where both twins are gay.

Dr. Hester is asked about free will, which is required in order to make moral choices. He denies the existence of a free will, which undermines his earlier statements about morality. Morality is only possible if humans can make free choices to act in accordance with a moral standard. So, he claims that Christians are immoral, then he claims that they have no freedom to act other than they do.

Dr. Hester also volunteered that his father believed in the prosperity gospel, and tithed in order to be rewarded with money by God. Dr. Craig immediately says, “no wonder you’re in rebellion against Christianity.” Indeed.

Dr. Hester is asked about his view that human beings are unable to unable to perceive the world objectively. How is he able to perceive the world objectively, when all of the rest of us are unable to? His response is that he is just smarter than everyone else because his ideas have never been falsified by testing.

Scoring the debate

Dr. Craig’s five arguments went unrefuted. Hester’s argument about genetic algorithms was ludicrous to anyone who understands software engineering. His arguments about tribalism and unreliable mental faculties were self-refuting and committed the genetic fallacy. At several points, Hester denied mainstream science in favor of untested and untestable speculations. It was the worst defeat of atheism I have ever witnessed. He was uninformed and arrogant. He didn’t know what he was talking about, and he tried to resort to speculative, mystical bullshit to cover up his failure to meet Dr. Craig’s challenge.

Recommended resources related to the topic:

I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist (Paperback), and (Sermon) by Norman Geisler  and Frank Turek

Why Science Needs God by Dr. Frank Turek (DVD and Mp4)

Science Doesn’t Say Anything, Scientists Do by Dr. Frank Turek (DVD, Mp3, and Mp4)

Oh, Why Didn’t I Say That? Does Science Disprove God? by Dr. Frank Turek (DVD and Mp4)

Stealing From God by Dr. Frank Turek (Book)

God’s Crime Scene: Cold-Case…Evidence for a Divinely Created Universe (Paperback), (Mp4 Download), and (DVD Set) by J. Warner Wallace

God’s Crime Scene: The Case for God’s Existence from the Appearance of Design (mp4 Download Set) by J. Warner Wallace 

God’s Crime Scene: The Case for God’s Existence from the Appearance of Design in Biology DVD Set by J. Warner Wallace 

 


Original Blog Source: https://bit.ly/2ySL4PM

By J. Brian Huffling

In November of 2018, I was on a panel with Richard Howe, Stephen Davis, and William Lane Craig at an Evangelical Philosophical Society session hosted by the American Academy of Religion. The topic was “Divine Simplicity.” It can be viewed here. Howe argued for why it is true, Davis argued why it is not necessary, Craig leveled various critiques of it, and I defended it.

(You can read this article for a discussion of what divine simplicity is.) Craig brought up the same basic objections in our panel as he did with Bishop Barron in January of 2018 on another panel on the same topic. I have addressed several of those objections in a previous post but would like to elaborate further on some of those objections, as well as address some of his points that came out in our exchange but not in the previous one.

This was my first interaction with Davis and Craig, and they were a delight to work with. (Howe and I are colleagues at Southern Evangelical Seminary.) While Howe and I disagree with Davis and Craig on this immensely important topic, I consider them excellent scholars and gentlemen. I am more familiar with Craig and have found him to be a very sincere man of God. Due to his influence on evangelical thinking, my responses will focus on his objections.

Craig’s Objections and My Responses (Our Opening Statements)

Craig’s first few objections were made in the 2018 panel to which I responded in my article, but I will quickly respond to some of those while spending more time on others. First, Craig stated that divine simplicity is unbiblical in that the Bible never teaches the doctrine and actually teaches things about God that could not be the case of divine simplicity were true. Examples would be various descriptions of God having multiple properties, such as God being powerful, wise, etc. Such would be distinct properties, but divine simplicity states there are no distinctions in God, so the latter must be false, says Craig.

In my opening, I agreed with Craig that the Bible does not explicitly teach divine simplicity; however, I also maintained that the Bible does not teach anything that is contradictory to it. For example, we use various ways of describing God, such as the words ‘powerful,’ ‘wise,’ etc. We really mean different things with these words. But we know God (and everything) through complex ways and complex things. (Here ‘complex’ means that a thing is made up of various parts, immaterial or material. So, it means the opposite of simple.) But just because we necessarily know God through complex means, i.e., through nature and the Bible, that doesn’t mean that God exists in the way that we know him. There is a distinction between our epistemology of God and the ontology of God. When we use various words to describe God, our limited descriptions don’t limit God. If we are going to describe God’s attributes (or properties), there is no other way to describe him than by saying he has qualities x, y, and z. So the way we know him is through his effects—the world (and Scripture)— which are complex. But it doesn’t follow that just because our descriptions of him are complex that he is actually complex. If the arguments for divine simplicity are sound, then God is simple, and the way we describe him is just the limitations of human language since we know the material world directly via experience but God indirectly via the world.

Craig further states that the “terrible consequence of Thomism is that the biblical attributes are annihilated” since God can’t be positively described if simplicity is true. Thomists would deny this and say that the biblical and theological descriptions of God are true pictures of God, but true analogously.

Craig worries that divine simplicity “makes God unintelligible.” Craig says it makes no sense to maintain, as the Thomist does, that God is Pure Act and that his essence just is existence. Further, if God is identical to all he “has,” as simplicity says, and if God has properties, then he just is a property. (This last point is made by Alvin Plantinga in his Does God Have A Nature.) It is true, as Howe pointed out, that since we don’t know God directly, then we don’t know what he is in himself. This is further true since God is an infinite being, and we are finite. It is also true that Thomists hold to a qualified agnosticism about God’s nature (not his existence). However, I think it is the case, again, as Howe points out that everyone is agnostic about God’s nature to some degree since most, if not all, Christians would admit that they don’t know everything about God. I would also point out that saying God is beyond our comprehension is not a weakness of God but rather shows how great he is. If we could understand God, then he wouldn’t be much of a God.

However, Craig is not just saying that because divine simplicity leads to agnosticism that it must be false. He’s saying that there are logical problems with it, such as God just being a property. This is where Craig and Thomists would disagree over terms. Properties in the historical sense are ways that real metaphysical things (on the Platonic model) exist in relation to another thing, or (in the Aristotelian model) the way in which a thing can be modified. The latter can also be called an accident. However, accidents are explicitly denied of God according to divine simplicity since they would modify God’s existence and thus introduce potency, parts, and complexity. Rather than use the word ‘property’ Thomists would rather use the word ‘attribute’ since the latter is not a thing to be possessed the way that properties often are described. (This is actually a curious case with Craig since he rejects a Platonic notion of properties.) Attributes are just ways we can describe God. Many times, properties are said to be “had” or “possessed” by God. Thomists simply deny this about God, and so this particular objection doesn’t exactly apply since Thomists don’t, at least generally, mean the same thing by ‘properties’ as Craig does.

Craig’s other objections along this vein are more puzzling. Given simplicity, he says that God is not personal, doesn’t love, and is not active in the world. In his Time and Eternity, he states that divine simplicity leads to the conclusion that God “does not literally love, know, or cause His creatures” (30). Thomists simply would reject this as a mischaracterization and misrepresentation of divine simplicity. God is certainly personal, but he is not a person in the way that humans are. However, it seems that Craig wants to maintain a univocal view of personhood as it relates to humans and God. (Much of the debate we had centered around the issue of whether our language applies to God univocally or analogically.) However, Howe and I maintain that we can make true statements about God without our language being univocal. Thus, to say God is personal reflects truth about God, but it does not say that he relates to his creation in the same way (i.e., univocally) as we do. This should not be surprising since finite, material, and changing beings are qualitatively different than an infinite, immaterial, unchanging being (although in some ways Craig says that God is simply quantitatively different from us, such as our level of knowledge).

It is not clear to me why God could not love given simplicity. However, at least one traditional view of love is the willing of another’s good. God certainly wills the good of his creation. Thus, he loves. To say God is not active is hard to understand since the Thomist says that God is pure act. God is not just active in the world; he is actively upholding the world’s very existence. Without such sustaining activity, the world would not exist since it doesn’t just need a reason for its beginning to exist, but also for its continued existence.

To say that simplicity leads to the conclusion that God doesn’t love, know, or cause his creation is difficult to understand. However, it seems that Craig holds this position based on his understanding of the Thomistic notion of God not being really related to the world. On the surface of this notion of God not being really related to the world, it looks like God has nothing to do with the world. However, such would simply be false. What Thomas means, a la Aristotle is just that God is not dependent on the world. God is not changed in any way with the existence of the universe—a claim that Craig denies since, in his view, if God created the world, then he must be related to it. Of course, Aquinas is not denying that God is related to the world as such. He is just not related to the world in certain ways, especially any dependent way. The world is really related to God in that it depends on God for its very existence, but the converse is false: God does not rely on the world for anything. It is difficult to see how Craig would maintain that on Thomism God does not know or cause his creation, although he would probably say that while Thomists hold those views, they must do so in violation of simplicity.

The next major objection that Craig leveled at divine simplicity is the modal collapse objection. This states that according to divine simplicity, God’s will is identical with his nature. Since his nature is necessary, his will must be necessary too. Thus, God can only will one scenario, state of affairs, possible world to be actual, whatever you want to say. Since God necessarily wills a given world to exist, there is no other world that could possibly exist. Since God, says Craig, is the same in all possible worlds, the existence of creatures can’t be found in God since God being the same doesn’t create in one world and not in another. Also, creatures can’t explain their existence since they would need a cause, but God couldn’t be their cause, Craig says.

I offered various responses in my original critique of Craig’s position but in my panel discussion, I relied on the distinction that Aquinas makes between absolute and suppositional necessity (cf. Summa Theologiae 1. 19. 3). Aquinas argues that a thing can be necessary absolutely or by supposition. The former is the case when a statement is true by definition, such as “A bachelor is an unmarried man.” Another example of absolute necessity is how God wills his own goodness. This kind of necessity is of something that just has to be the case. Thus, God wills his own goodness of absolute necessity (as Aquinas says that we will our happiness in such an absolute way). Further, Aquinas notes that there are some relations such as how the sensible faculties relate to their objects in an absolutely necessary way, like sight to color. Things are not willed in this absolutely necessary sense unless such things are necessarily required for the end, such as food for survival, as Aquinas notes. But God does not lose anything by not willing creation. He does not need it for his own end. Thus, his willing creation is not absolutely necessary. But supposing he does will it, it is willed by necessity of a certain sense: suppositional necessity. To borrow another example from Thomas, it is not the case that Socrates must sit. However, if he does sit, he necessarily sits as long as he sits. Such necessity is not an absolute necessity since he does not have to sit. But supposing he sits, he sits. Hence, a suppositional necessity. Since God doesn’t need the world, it is not willed of absolute necessity. But it is willed in a necessary sense like that of Socrates sitting. If God wills it, he wills it. He can’t un-will it. Thus, supposing he does will it, it is willed of suppositional necessity.

I think Aquinas’ distinction here answers the modal collapse because the collapse says that God wills of absolute necessity, or as Craig says, a logical necessity. If Aquinas is right, then such is simply not the case.

The Back and Forth

Bill said I was “too cavalier” in my paper regarding the difficulties of the Trinity and simplicity. In my paper, I asserted that Aquinas et al. did not see a problem with divine simplicity and the Trinity, to which Bill averred, “they most certainly did.” As I said in my follow up, what I meant was that they did not see the two doctrines as mutually exclusive or contradictory. One reason that Bill sees such a contradiction with divine simplicity with the Trinity is because he sees the persons of the Trinity as parts, which simplicity by definition denies (see his Time and EternityPhilosophical Foundations, and my article in response to his position). As Richard stated, the doctrine of divine simplicity was actually used throughout history to defend the Trinity. James Dolezal notes, “As for the Trinity, the [doctrine of divine simplicity] was used to prove the indivisible singularity of the divine essence and thus refute the accusations of tri-theism (God Without Parts, 4. See also Jordan P. Barrett, Divine Simplicity: A Biblical and Trinitarian Account).

Around this point, Steve said he could not understand why complexity in God necessitates composition. In other words, he argues that God can have parts, while those parts just are necessarily his essence and would not need a composer. That metaphysical parts of a being are in a dependent relation of potency is a position that is taken as a metaphysical truism in Aristotelian/Thomistic thinking. Steven’s position was basically, “I don’t understand why God can’t be complex without being composed.” The basic answer as I responded to him while also noting that it wouldn’t satisfy him (and it didn’t) was that if there are distinct parts of a being, even God, then those parts must have a certain relation of potency to each other. Such a potential relation must be realized/made to be that way by something other than itself. Otherwise, it is basically the problem of saying that something caused itself to exist, which is a contradiction since it would have had to exist prior to causing itself to exist. However, the doctrine of simplicity denies such parts, to begin with.

When asked by an audience member how we are different from God, Steve said that God being simple is one way. He said that God is simple in some way but not in the Thomistic sense. Bill shares this view and wants to redefine simplicity to say that nothing has metaphysical constituent parts. Thus, all things are simple, even God, but not in an interesting way since everything else is too. However, he is quick to point out that this is not the Thomistic understanding. It is not at all clear to me what he means by denying metaphysical constituent parts to things.

Bill makes the further assertion in response to this question that we only differ quantitatively from God in some ways. For example, humans have knowledge and power in a finite way, whereas God has them infinitely. This stems from his univocal view of how language applies to God. I would deny that our differences with God are merely quantitative in this way. There is a much more profound difference in unlimited being and limited being besides just amount. What ‘power’ means in reference to God and man is not the same. Such is the case for knowledge and wisdom. God does not know in the same way as we do. We use senses, but God, as an immaterial being, has no senses. We know passively; however, God as Pure Act knows actively as the cause of all finite being (in other words, God doesn’t learn).

My main objection about Bill’s position, in the panel discussion and in his writings, is that the objections he raises to the Thomistic notion of divine simplicity were raised and answered by Aquinas himself in the 13th century. However, Bill does not deal with the responses to the objections that he raises, which were anticipated hundreds of years ago. (One exception is his response to the idea that all of God’s properties/attributes collapse into one if simplicity is true. In his Philosphical Foundations, he says Venus being the morning and evening star serves as a counterexample since these are really distinct properties in reality and not just in our minds. I would point out, though, that these properties about Venus are extrinsic to Venus and are based on our relation to it.) Bill did make the comment at the end of the panel that what is inadequate from Thomists is to cite Aquinas and think that is the end of it. However, if one is going to object to a doctrine as it was formulated by Aquinas and Aquinas already raised the very objections that he makes, then it seems necessary to explain why the responses to those objections by Aquinas fail. To move the conversation forward, it would be helpful for the objector of Thomistic divine simplicity to explain why Thomas’ responses to those objections fail.

Bill’s response to suppositional necessity was that while it is true that “If God wills x, then x happens necessarily,” the problem for Thomism is that the antecedent is necessary since God’s will and essence are identical and the latter is necessary. In other words, God must will x. However, Aquinas rejects that position because God could have willed not to create anything or to create differently than he did. The necessity can’t be in the effects, says Aquinas since they aren’t necessary. Since God could have willed other than he did and since creation is an activity of God’s will and intellect, this demonstrates that there is no absolute necessity in God willing anything or willing differently than he did. (I argue in more detail on this point in my previous article on this topic.)

All in all, the panel was a great experience for me, and I appreciate the time and efforts that Richard, Steve, and Bill put into it.

Recommended resources related to the topic:

What is God Really Like? A View from the Parables by Dr. Frank Turek (DVD, Mp3, and Mp4)

What is God Like? Look to the Heavens by Dr. Frank Turek (DVD and Mp4

How Philosophy Can Help Your Theology by Richard Howe (DVD Set, Mp3, and Mp4)   

 


J. Brian Huffling, PH.D. have a BA in History from Lee University, an MA in (3 majors) Apologetics, Philosophy, and Biblical Studies from Southern Evangelical Seminary (SES), and a Ph.D. in Philosophy of Religion from SES. He is the Director of the Ph.D. Program and Associate Professor of Philosophy and Theology at SES. He also teaches courses for Apologia Online Academy. He has previously taught at The Art Institute of Charlotte. He has served in the Marines, Navy, and is currently a reserve chaplain in the Air Force at Maxwell Air Force Base. His hobbies include golf, backyard astronomy, martial arts, and guitar.

Original Blog Source: https://bit.ly/2Kr1h0L

By William Lane Craig

SUMMARY

Whether God is timeless or temporal depends on whether an A-Theory or a B-Theory of time is correct, where the former presents temporal facts and the latter only timeless facts. Given the superiority of the A-Theory, it follows that God is temporal. But since the Special Theory of Relativity relativizes simultaneity to reference frames, the question arises of what “now” is God’s “now.” To answer that question, we must distinguish between time and our measurements of time. Relativity concerns only measured time and therefore does not affect God’s actual time. How does God’s time relate to measured time? Contra Alan Padgett, God’s time must coincide with a measured time, most plausibly the cosmic time of the General Theory of Relativity.

Introduction

While some of the traditional attributes of God, such as omnipotence or omniscience (particularly divine foreknowledge) have been exhaustively—and one is tempted to say almost exhaustively—analyzed and defended in recent philosophical literature, other divine attributes such as the eternity of God have received scant and generally superficial analysis. [1] Current discussions of the eternity of God have for the most part been conducted in almost complete ignorance of the philosophy of space and time and without any deep knowledge of the theory of relativity and its analysis of time [2] —a notable deficiency, when one thinks about it, for how can one hope to formulate an adequate doctrine of the eternity of God and its relation to time without taking into account what modern philosophy and science have to say about time?

Now Alan Padgett, a PhD candidate under Richard Swinburne, has attempted to remedy that lack by presenting, in full conversation with philosophical and scientific discussions of time, a view of divine eternity that he characterizes as “relative timelessness.” [3] As someone who has recently been working in this very area, I wish to endorse the direction in which Padgett is moving and offer some refinements to this view.

The Eternal Eternity of God: Theory A vs. Theory B of Time

Padgett rejects the classical Plotinian-Augustinian analysis of divine eternity in terms of timeless existence, a view he calls “absolute timelessness.” He regards the classical analysis as inadequate because God, in order to sustain created things, which are always changing in their ontological state, must change in his activity and therefore cannot be timeless.

What Padgett’s article does not make clear, however, is that this line of argument only carries through if one has previously committed oneself to an A-theory of time. [4] According to the A-theorist, temporal becoming is a real, objective feature of the universe; transience is essential to the nature of time, a truth expressed metaphorically by saying that time “flows.” The temporal properties of events cannot be adequately analyzed in terms of prior , simultaneous , and posterior alone, but must include references to the past , present , and future , which are not merely deictic expressions but are irreducibly temporal. The present represents the edge of becoming, and future events merely do not exist yet , but do not exist at all . By contrast, according to the B-theorist, temporal becoming is mind-dependent and purely subjective. Time does not flow, nor do things come into being, except in the sense that at one moment we are aware of them after not having been at an earlier moment. Simultaneous things with different moments on the timeline are equally existent and interrelated to each other by the prior, simultaneous and subsequent relationships to which past, present and future can be reduced. Anything that, from our perspective, existed, exists or will exist in the universe, simply exists (without temporality).

By contrast, on the A-theory of time, the concept of a timeless God who is actually related to the world seems incoherent. Since future states of the universe do not actually exist, God cannot be causing them (even timelessly) to exist; otherwise, they would in fact exist at their respective times. The same holds for past states of the universe. Thus, Aquinas’s argument that God causes timeless things to happen at their respective times only succeeds in showing that things caused by time need not exist eternally, and in fact betrays a B-theoretic view. [5] Even if God immutably wills from eternity that a temporal event exist, there must be attached to that will an exercise of divine causality at the time of the thing’s creation for it to actually happen at that time rather than existing timelessly at that time. The only way to avoid this conclusion would be to deny with Aquinas that God is really related to the world, a totally implausible system of motion that depends on an elaborate Aristotelian metaphysics. [6]

It can be plausibly argued, I think, that the A-theory of time is philosophically and theologically superior to the B-theory. Philosophically, one should agree with D. H. Mellor that “time is such a striking aspect of reality that only the most compelling argument justifies denying it: namely, that the dynamical view of time is contradictory and therefore cannot be true” [7] and then proceed to show that in fact all such attempts to provoke a contradiction, such as McTaggart’s, fail, [8] leaving us secure in our naturally intuitive understanding of the A-theory. No B-theorist, on the other hand, has successfully answered, in my view, the charge that his theory is incoherent because mental dependence on physical becoming requires real becoming in the subjective contents of consciousness. [9] In favor of theory A, one could argue that it offers the most adequate analysis of personal identity [10] and that the temporality of our language and experience is inescapable. [11]

Theologically, there seems to be one decisive reason for Christian theists to reject the B-theory, namely, that it cannot give an adequate analysis of the biblical doctrine of creatio ex nihilo . In the B-theory, creatio ex nihilo is reduced to the ontological dependence of creation on God and the space-time continuum with an edge or boundary. But creation as a whole is co-eternal with God in the sense that it exists as timelessly as He does. There is no state of affairs in the present world that consists in God existing alone without creation. But such an analysis is a wholly inadequate understanding of the biblical doctrine that the created order came into existence and was created by God. Although Aquinas (unlike Bonaventure) thought that one could not philosophically prove this aspect of the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo , he was firmly committed to it on the basis of revelation, a fact that contemporary theologians, who sometimes appeal to Aquinas to justify their undue reliance on temporal creativity ex nihilo , tend to forget. [12]

Padgett’s argument against divine timelessness, then, is valid only if the case for an A-theory is successful. What the reader of Padgett’s paper will not realize is that Padgett himself is fully aware of this point and argues for the superiority of the A-theory in his unpublished thesis. On this point, therefore, we are in fundamental agreement.

God’s time and ours

If the A-theory of time is correct, then, and God is in time, the question naturally arises in the context of the theory of relativity: “Whose time is God in?” According to that theory, events that are present to an observer in one inertial frame may be future to an observer in another inertial frame. Certain events will even occur in reverse temporal order relative to some frames compared to others. An observer at rest relative to an observer making a high-speed round trip will experience moments of time or “nows” for which there literally are no correlated simultaneous moments in the traveler’s experience. According to Einstein, neither of these perspectives is privileged, and therefore there is no absolute “now” in the universe. Absolute simultaneity has been banished from the universe in favor of simultaneity relative to a frame of reference. For example, no event occurs “now” in an absolute sense on the planet Neptune or even on the other side of the earth. For observers in relatively mobile reference frames, at this same space-time point they will draw different planes of simultaneity in space-time and thus measure different events, say, on Neptune, as occurring in their respective “nows.” But what is God’s “now”?

Ontological time and measured time

It is to the credit of Padgett’s work that he has cut this Gordian knot by distinguishing between “time” and “measured time.” [13] Time itself, according to Padgett, has to do with God’s eternal duration; measured time is clock time, time according to some metric. Padgett argues that while God is in time, he is not in any measured time, and therefore his “now” is not to be identified with any of the relative “nows” of measured time.

This distinction between ontological time and measured (or empirical) time seems to me to be an extremely important insight, which is a healthy counterweight to the universally repeated and extravagant claims that TRE has forced us to abandon: the classical views of time and space. [14] This erroneous inference rests precisely on the failure to draw the kind of distinction that Padgett has emphasized. That failure can be laid at Einstein’s door. It seems astonishing to me that anyone reading Einstein’s 1905 paper could think that Einstein proved that there is no absolute simultaneity, and that therefore time is relative to reference frames. [15] For the whole theory depends on the acceptance of Einstein’s arbitrary (and, indeed, highly counterintuitive) definition of simultaneity, [16] together with a philosophical positivism of Machian provenance [17] according to which a notion like absolute simultaneity is meaningless if it is empirically undetectable. Since the ether frame of 19th century physics could not be detected empirically, Einstein dismissed it as meaningless, along with his absolute simultaneity, which referred to events occurring simultaneously in the ether frame. By redefining simultaneity in terms of the light signal timing method, Einstein was able to give empirical meaning to the notion of simultaneity, but the simultaneity that emerges from the theory is relative due to the invariant speed of light. Since light signals are measured as having the speed c regardless of the motion of the sender or receiver of the signals, two relatively moving observers will measure the same event occurring at different times, which goes against the traditional notion of simultaneity. [18]

Anyone who is not a positivist, and therefore rejects Einstein’s definitions, would regard these relatively soulful observers as deluded because of the nature of their measurements, which cannot detect real time. [19] In a real sense, he would not regard Einstein’s theory as a theory about time and space at all, but, as Frank put it, as “a system of hypotheses about the behavior of light rays, rigid bodies, and mechanisms, from which new results about this behavior can be derived.” [20] Trapped in our locally moving frames, we may be forced to measure time by devices that are inadequate to detect real time, but that by no means implies that there is no such time. The fact that uniformly moving clocks run slowly says more about our clocks than about the nature of time. Thus, Einstein’s theory can be regarded as pragmatically useful and scientifically fruitful without having to regard absolute simultaneity and absolute time as abolished.

One might think that Einstein’s positivism was simply a historically accidental feature of the theory, but it is not part of the philosophical foundations of that theory. Such an attitude, however, would be mistaken. As J.S. Bell points out, it is primarily this philosophical positivism that serves to distinguish the Einsteinian interpretation of lavTRE from the Lorentzian interpretation, which differentiates between ontological time and measured time:

The difference in philosophy is this. Since it is experimentally impossible to tell which of two systems of uniform motion is really at rest, Einstein declares that the notions of “really at rest” and “really in motion” are meaningless. For him, only the relative motion of two or more objects in uniform motion is real. Lorentz, on the other hand, preferred to see that there does indeed exist a real state of rest, defined by the “ether,” even though the laws of physics conspire to prevent us from identifying it experimentally. The facts of physics do not force us to accept one philosophy rather than the other. [21]

Since the Lorentzian interpretation of the TER is empirically equivalent to Einstein’s interpretation, the only way the latter can rule out the former is by a positivist critique of notions of absolute simultaneity, and so on. According to Lawrence Sklar,

“Certainly the original arguments for the relativist view are riddled with verificationist presuppositions about meaning, etc. And despite Einstein’s later denial of the verificationist view, no one to my knowledge has provided an adequate account of the foundations of relativity that is not verificationist in essence.” [22] “I see no way to reject the old compensatory ether theories […] without invoking a verificationist criticism of one sort or another.” [23]

Now this constitutes a truly serious drawback of Einstein’s interpretation. As Healey observes, although positivists tried to restrict the content of scientific theories in order to ensure that they were meaningful, “more recently positivism has come under such sustained attack that opposition has become almost orthodoxy in the philosophy of science.” [24] Philosophers of religion need not be reminded of the untenability of positivism in view of their radical critique of religious language, which would regard Padgett’s distinction between God’s time and our time as cognitively meaningless.

Since God is in time, therefore, it is evident that His is not the time that is determined by Einstein’s operational definitions; subject to dilation, the relativity of simultaneity, and the reversal of events. Rather, God’s time is true A-series time, determined by the succession of events in divine consciousness and activity and characterized by the absolute “now” of the present and the edge of becoming. His is, to borrow D.H. Mellor’s phrase, “Real Temporality.”

So I think it’s rather unfortunate that Padgett chose to call his view “relative timelessness,” because it is precisely the opposite. It is God who exists in true ontological time, while finite observers, restricted to our locally moving reference frames dependent on the light signal timing of clocks, have to make do with our manufactured measured time. Contrary to Padgett, ordinary use of time concepts cannot justify calling God relatively timeless, since our intuitive view of time is an A-theoretic view, and this is precisely the time in which God lives. Thus, the view Padgett presents is better labeled “Real Temporality.”

God’s time and cosmic time

But how does God’s time relate to our own? Padgett answers that while we are in God’s time, God is not in any measured time. But this answer seems to me to be factually false. From the perspective of God in the real time of the A-series, there is an absolute present in which he is now aware of what is happening in the universe, and he is now causally causing the events in the universe. But if, as we saw in our critique of divine timelessness, God’s causally sustaining the universe in being is simultaneous with the events being sustained, then there must be an absolute cosmic “now” that describes the state of the universe as it is present to God. Future events for this moment do not exist at all, since God has not yet caused them. But is there a frame of reference in the universe that produces a measured time that can be naturally associated with the succession of such moments? Yes, there is. It is not, in fact, the inertial frame of any spatially local observer, but the reference frame of the cosmic expansion of space itself. The relativity of simultaneity depends on the assumption that there is no preferred reference frame; but if there is a preferred frame, as the Lorentzian interpretation would have it, then the relations of simultaneity in it would be absolute, and relativity would apply to all other frames. But the frame associated with cosmic expansion seems naturally suited to such a privileged position. Michael Shallis explains:

However, it is also possible to take a single clock as a standard, to define a universal time coordinate and to relativize everything to it […] Of course, the choice of a coordinate time is to some extent arbitrary; in principle, one could take any clock as a standard. But in a cosmological context, it is natural to take as a standard a clock whose motion is typical or representative of the motion of matter in general, one that simply “advances,” so to speak, with the general expansion of the universe. [25]

We must not forget that Einstein proposed his Special Theory long before cosmic expansion was discovered, so that in the absence of the characterless and dying ether, there seemed to be no empirical basis for positing any universal frame beyond the multitude of locally moving frames. But with the discovery that the universe is expanding, it became possible to imagine a universal frame of reference by imagining observers associated with fundamental particles (i.e., galaxies or galaxy clusters) having mutual recessional velocities. In fact, the “gas” constituted by these fundamental particles is at rest relative to the expansion of cosmic space and is therefore an ether. As early as 1920, Eddington acknowledged that the General Theory of Relativity postulated a kind of cosmic time, but he objected that such cosmic time was unknowable and therefore irrelevant to observers in moving local frames. [26] Within a few years, however, the expansion of the universe predicted by Einstein’s field equations (minus the cosmological constant) had been confirmed by observational astronomy, thus providing a sort of cosmic clock that the abandonment of the aether theory seemed to have served no practical purpose. Of course, it might still be objected that this universal time is unknowable and therefore irrelevant. But not only does this objection seem to be infected with a defunct verificationist attitude, it does not even seem to be true. Recent observations have revealed an apparent anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background radiation that is due to the motion of the earth relative to the cosmic reference frame, resulting in what has been characterized as a “new aether wind” of about 360 kilometers per second. [27] Comments by P.C. W. Davies,

At any given location in the universe, there is only one reference frame in which the universe is expanding isotropically. This privileged reference frame defines a privileged time scale (the time indicated by a clock at rest in that frame). Two separate locations have their privileged reference frames in mutual motion, due to the expansion of the universe. However, the time measured by the entire collection of imaginary standard clocks is obviously correlated such that the global condition (e.g., the average separation of two galaxies) of the universe appears the same at times equal to those recorded by each privileged clock (assuming they are all correctly synchronized). Fortunately, the Earth moves very slowly relative to the local privileged frame in our vicinity of the universe, so Earth time is a fairly accurate measure of cosmic time. [28]

Not only, then, is there cosmic time, but we even have a pretty good idea of ​​what time it is.

Given the existence of this cosmic time, I believe that the moments of God’s actual time, the A-series—while perhaps not identical to the moments of measured cosmic time—do coincide. God’s ontological time clearly exceeds the cosmic time by which the former could have preceded the latter (imagine God leading creation by counting “1, 2, 3, … fiat lux !”), but once cosmic time comes into existence, its moments would coincide with the moments of actual time. How could they fail to do so? If the duration of the universe is measured in cosmic time at 15 billion years from the singularity, isn’t the duration of God’s creative activity in actual time the same duration? In God’s “now” the universe has (present time) certain specific and unique properties, for example, a certain radius, a certain density, a certain background temperature, etc., but in the cosmic “now” it has all the identical properties, and so it is with each successive “now.” Is it not obvious that these “nows” coincide and designate the same present?

Perhaps we can state this consideration more formally by the following principle:

P : For any recurrent, constantly changing universe U and time intervals x , y large enough to allow change, if the physical description of U at x is the same as the physical description of U at y , then x and y coincide.

Since in real time there is a temporal interval or duration during which a certain physical description of the universe is true, and since in cosmic time there is a similar interval, it follows from P that those intervals of real and cosmic time coincide. Note that the argument makes no reference to any particular metrication of time and therefore does not depend on it. It seems to me, then, that real time and cosmic time should naturally be regarded as coinciding since the beginning of cosmic time.

Padgett’s objections to this understanding of the relationship of God’s time to measured time appear to be rather weak. He first objects that God is not subject to the laws of nature, as anything in measured time must be. He argues that since God acts freely rather than uniformly and has the power to alter the laws of nature, he cannot be in measured time. But why could not God’s time contain its own intrinsic metric, as Newton believed, that physical clocks provide a more or less “sensible” measure? [29] In this case, an ideal physical clock would measure God’s time. Furthermore, the premise that anything in measured time must be subject to the laws of nature is a non sequitur. It is the measuring instrument , i.e. the clock , that must be subject to the laws of nature, not the object of measurement, which could be a totally random process. To say that 15 billion years ago God created the universe is not to say that God is subject to the laws of planetary motion, but simply to apply to God’s time a conventional metric that marks a duration equal to the duration of the earth’s orbit around the sun. That is to say that the duration during which God thought or did something is equal to, say, the duration it would take the earth to complete a certain number of orbits. Even on a purely mundane level, global proper time near the singularity is not a direct count of simple, real phenomena, since the earth will not have actually completed, say, 1010 orbits in the last 1010 years and even a cesium atomic clock would not have ticked at very early intervals. Rather, global proper time is an elaborate mathematical extrapolation of physical phenomena. [30] Similarly, any arbitrarily chosen metric can be applied to the duration of God or the universe.

Padgett anticipates such an objection, supposing that the universe might be thought of as acting as a kind of clock to measure the length of God’s time. But let’s be quite clear about this, for the universe does not merely act as a clock for God. The universe is a clock; it is God’s clock. For example, some conventional unit of God’s time might be the time it takes for the radius of the universe to increase by a certain factor. Padgett retorts that it does not follow that because two events e1 and e2 are one hour apart in one frame of reference, they are one hour apart in God’s time. He appeals to time dilation between relatively moving frames to show that the duration between two identical events can be measured diversely. But the analogy fails here, for we are not comparing two relatively moving frames using light signals to synchronize their respective clocks. Since God is actually related to the universe and not moving relative to it, there is no basis for any relativity of simultaneity between His present and the cosmic present. God is a disembodied Mind that uses a physical clock.

Padgett objects that cosmic time is contingent and applies only to our universe. We cannot, therefore, suppose that it applies to anything beyond it. But we have no reason, biblical or philosophical, to think that there are other universes. Parsimony justifies the assumption that ours is the only universe. In that case, it only follows that actual time and cosmic time contingently coincide ; there are possible worlds in which they do not. [31] But why is that an objection? Since God’s decision to create was free, cosmic time is essentially contingent; indeed, I should say that even actual time is contingent. [32] But since cosmic time exists, there is no objection to holding that God’s time contingently coincides with it for the duration of the cosmos.

Padgett’s second objection to this view is that measured time is relative to a particular frame of reference, which need not apply to God. He argues that because God transcends space, his life need not occur in our four-dimensional space-time continuum. Therefore, his life is not limited to the temporal dimension of our space-time.

This objection raises some interesting questions about divine omnipresence, [33] which we can give up. One might also question whether the objection has sufficient insight into the difference between parameter time and coordinate time. [34] In Newtonian mechanics, time functions as a parameter, which is entirely independent of space. However, in the theory of relativity, time functions not only as a parameter, but also as a coordinate that is joined with spatial coordinates. However, that theory is susceptible to reformulation entirely in terms of parameter time. One might therefore argue that God is in measured time, but that means therefore parameter time, not coordinate time, so that God’s independence from space is preserved. However, the essential point to be made is that God’s time can be measured by coordinate time without His being also measured by spatial coordinates, because on the understanding I have proposed, moments of ontological time can be thought of as coinciding with moments of measured time without being identical to them. Thus, even if it is true that a being whose duration is measured exclusively by coordinate time must also have spatial coordinates, it does not follow that a being whose duration in ontological time coincides with its duration in measured time must also be in space. Again, the fact that this coincidence is contingent constitutes no objection, but it is in fact implied by traditional theism.

It seems to me, therefore, that Padgett’s view needs to be refined with respect to the relationship between ontological time and measured time, and hence between God’s time and our own. Real time is the time of the A-series in which God thinks and acts and in which things come into being; the moments of this time coincide from the beginning of the universe with the moments of cosmic time determined by ideal stationary clocks with respect to the expansion of space itself.

Conclusion

I believe, therefore, that Padgett has gone a long way toward formulating a philosophically sound and scientifically informed doctrine of divine eternity that is also faithful to biblical revelation. The philosophical and theological grounds for preferring an A-theory of time also provide justification for rejecting the Plotine-Augustinian doctrine of divine timelessness because that theory seems incompatible with the real relationship of a timeless God to the world. God thinks and acts in real time—that is, the A-series of temporal moments, in which becoming, absolute simultaneity, and absolute “now” exist—and his relationship to time must be characterized as “true temporality.” In contrast, by conventionally defining simultaneity in terms of the light-signal method of clock synchronization and by adopting arbitrary metrics to quantify time, men have developed a measured time, which is extremely malleable to relatively moving timekeepers. Since God is not in any inertial frame, his time, ontological time, is not subject to these effects. However, in our universe, due to its isotropic expansion from an initial singularity, there is cosmic time that records successive moments in the history of the universe. Although ontological time may precede (or succeed) measured cosmic time—whether ontological time has a beginning is an issue we have not sought to judge in this article—nevertheless, the moments of ontological time and cosmic time will coincide for the duration of cosmic time, since they refer to the identical succession of states in the universe. To object that this makes God subject to the laws of nature is a non sequitur , since it is our clocks that must be subject. To object that this view traps God in spacetime is equally mistaken, since ontological time only contingently coincides with cosmic time, so that God in ontological time can exist at a time that coincides with a measured moment of time without having to possess coordinate space as well. One of the interesting implications of this understanding is that a Lorentzian rather than an Einsteinian interpretation of the special theory of relativity is correct: there is a preferred reference frame in which light propagates with speed c , and relativistic effects are due to local motion relative to this frame. With these refinements, Padgett’s view of divine eternity appears to be coherent and plausible.

Grades

[1] Note that the literature on divine eternity is so sparse that it did not even merit a mention in Philosophy of Religion: an Annotated Bibliography of Twentieth Century Writings in English (New York: Garland Publishing, 1978).

[2] See, for example. Nelson Pike,  God and Timelessness  (New York: Schocken Books, 1970); Stephen T. Davis,  Logic and the Nature of God  (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1983); Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann, “Eternity,”  Journal of Philosophy  78 (1981):429-58.

[3] Alan Padgett, “God and Time: Toward a New Doctrine of Divine Timeless Eternity,”  Religious Studies  25 (1989): 209-15); see further idem , “Divine Eternity and the Nature of Time” (Ph.D. thesis, Oxford University, 1988) [now published as  God, Eternity, and the Nature of Time  (New York: St. Martin’s, 1992)].

[4] The distinction between the A and B series of temporal events was originally made by J. M. E. McTaggart,  The Nature of Existence , 2 vols., ed. C. D. Broad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1927; rep. ed.: 1968), Book V, chs. 33; for discussion, see C. D. Broad,  Examination of McTaggart’s Philosophy , 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1938; rep. ed.: New York: Octagon Books, 1976), 2:265–344. See also Richard Gale, “Introduction” to Section II: “The Static versus the Dynamic Temporal,” in  The Philosophy of Time , ed. R. Gale (London: Macmillan, 1968), pp. 65–85.

[5] On the connection between classical conceptions of divine eternity and a B theory of time, see Wm. L. Craig,  The Problem of Divine Foreknowledge and Future Contingents from Aristotle to Suarez , Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History 7 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1988), pp. 116–21; idem, “St. Anselm on Divine Foreknowledge and Future Contingency,”  Laval théologique et philosophique  42 (1986):93–104. See also Delmas Lewis, “Eternity, Time and Tenselessness,”  Faith and Philosophy  5 (1988):72–86.

[6] For a brief critique, see Wm. L. Craig, “God, Time, and Eternity,”  Religious Studies 14 (1979):497-503.

[7] D.H. Mellor,  Real Time  (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 5.

[8] See refutation in Paul Horwich,  Asymmetries in Time  (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1987), pp. 26–27. Horwich’s own rejection of A-theory is based on the mistaken view that an A-theory entails the denial of semantic bivalence for contingent future propositions.

[9] Such an objection needs to be formulated more carefully, but is detailed in Milic Capek,  The Philosophical Impact of Contemporary Physics  (Princeton: D. Van Nostrand, 1961), p. 165; idem, “Introduction,” in  The Concepts of Space and Time , ed. M. Capek, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 22 (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1976), p. XLVII; Frederick Ferré, “Grünbaum on Temporal Becoming: A Critique,”  International Philosophical Quarterly  12 (1972):432-33; James A. McGilvray, “A Defense of Physical Becoming,”  Erkenntnis  14 (1979):275-99.

[10] See Ronald C. Hoy, “Becoming and Persons,”  Philosophical Studies  34 (1978):269-80.

[11] See Quentin Smith, “Problems with the New Tenseless Theory of Time,”  Philosophical Studies  52 (1987):371-92 and the literature cited therein.

[12] See, for example, John Polkinghorne, “Cosmology and Creation,” paper presented at the conference “The Origin of the Universe,” Colorado State University, Ft. Collins, Colorado, September 22-25, 1988. The proceedings will probably be published by SUNY Press.

[13] This much-misunderstood distinction was carefully worked out by Newton himself in the Scholium  to the Definitions at the beginning of his  Principia  (Isaac Newton,  Sir Isaac Newton’s ‘Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy’ and his ‘System of the World’,  trans. Andrew Motte, rev. with appendix by Florian Cajori, 2 vols. [Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1966], pp. 6–12). Cf. M. F. Cleugh,  Time and its Importance in Modern Thought  (London: Methuen, 1937), pp. 29–67; Philipp Frank,  Philosophy of Science  (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1957), pp. 140–43; Herbert Dingle, “Time in Philosophy and Physics,”  Philosophy  54 (1979):99–104.

[14] Typical are Hawking’s recent statements: “…the theory of relativity puts an end to the idea of ​​absolute time […] The theory of relativity forces us to fundamentally change our ideas of space and time.” (Stephen Hawking,  A Brief History of Time  [New York: Bantam Books, 1988], pp. 21, 23).

[15] A. Einstein, “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies,” in  The Principle of Relativity , trans. W. Perrett and GB Jeffery with notes by A. Sommerfield (New York: Dover Publications, 1952), pp. 37-65.

[16] Two spatially separated events are simultaneous if they both occur at the same clock hours as recorded by two synchronized clocks A and B situated respectively at the locations of the events, where A and B are stationary relative to each other and B reads the same as A at the temporal midpoint of the time required for A to send a light signal to B and receive it back. The assumption is that A and B are not moving with reference to the ether-frame, so the travel time of the signal is no longer (or shorter) on the return leg of its journey. Now, clearly, unless one is an operationalist, this is not what is meant by simultaneity, and unless one is a positivist, the underlying assumption of the definition is entirely gratuitous.

[17] The influence of Mach’s positivism on Einstein and his Special Theory of Relativity is widely acknowledged by historians of science, but surprisingly rarely discussed by philosophers exploring the philosophical foundations of that theory. For discussion, see G. Holton, “Mach, Einstein, and the Search for Reality,” in Ernst Mach: Physicist and Philosopher , Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 6 (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1970), pp. 167-77; P. Frank, “Einstein, Mach, and Logical Positivism,” in Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist, ed. P. A. Schilpp, Library of Living Philosophers 7 (LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court, 1949), pp. 271-86; H. Reichenbach, “The Philosophical Significance of the Theory of Relativity”, in Albert Einstein , pp. 289-311.

[18] For alternative operational definitions of “simultaneity” and “synchronization” that preserve absolute simultaneity, see T. Sjödin, “On the One-Way Velocity of Light and its Possible Measurability”, paper presented at the conference Physical Interpretations of Relativity Theory , British Society for the Philosophy of Science, Imperial College, London, September 16–19, 1988.

[19] This is, in fact, the modern Lorentzian interpretation of SRT, which holds that velocity affects our measuring devices, so that moving rods and clocks contract slowly. Such an interpretation does not commit us to a substantive ether, but merely to an ether- frame , i.e. a privileged frame of reference. The fact that the Lorentzian interprets longitudinal contraction and time dilation as not merely apparent but real cannot be cited as a disadvantage of the theory, since the Einsteinian must also postulate real contraction and dilation (see Peter Kroes’ paper “The Physical Status of Time Dilation within the Special Theory of Relativity,” at the conference mentioned in note 18; see also Dennis Dieks, “The `Reality’ of the Lorentz Contraction,” Zeitschrift fur allgemeine Wissenschafts-theorie 15/2). The difference between the two on this point is that the Lorentzian offers some explanation for these effects, while the Einsteinian does not. The decision between a Lorentzian and an Einsteinian interpretation of SRT will probably depend on whether God’s time can plausibly be interpreted to coincide with some coordinate time, which would therefore be the privileged time of the aether frame.

[20] Frank,  Philosophy of Science , p. 140.

[21]  J. S. Bell, “How to Teach Special Relativity,” in  Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics , ed. JS Bell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 77.

[22] Lawrence Sklar, “Time, reality and relativity,” in  Reduction, Time and Reality , ed. R. Healey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 141.

[23] Ibid., p. 132

[24] R. Healey, “Introduction,” in  Reduction, Time and Reality , p. vii.

[25] Muchael Shallis, “Time and Cosmology,” in  The Nature of Time , ed. Raymond Flood and Michael Lockwood (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), pp. 68-69.

[26] Arthur Eddington,  Space, Time and Gravitation , Cambridge Science Classics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 168:

In the first place, absolute space and time are restored for cosmic-scale phenomena […] The world taken as a whole has a direction in which it does not curve; that direction gives a kind of absolute time distinct from space. Relativity is reduced to local phenomena; and although this is sufficient for the theory so far described, we are inclined to look at the limitation reluctantly. But we have already insisted that the theory of relativity is not concerned with denying the possibility of absolute time, but with denying that it is concerned with any experimental knowledge that has been found; and we need not be disturbed if the conception of absolute time appears in a new form in a theory of cosmic-scale phenomena, of which no experimental knowledge is yet available.

[27] GF Smoot, MV Gorenstein, and RA Muller, “Detection of Anisotropy in the Cosmic Blackbody Radiation,”  Physical Review Letters  39 (1977): 899.

[28] PCW Davies, “Space-Time Singularities in Cosmology and Black Hole Evaporations,” in  The Study of Time III , ed. JT Fraser, N. Lawrence, and D. Park (Berlin: Springer Verlag, 1978), p. 76. I have corrected spelling errors in the quote.

[29] See Charles W. Misner, Kip S. Thorne, John A. Wheeler, Gravitation (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1973), pp. 813-14. The authors’ attempt to criticize proper global time as inadequately physical fails to appreciate the counterfactual nature of the application of the metric; elapsed time is measured as if an atomic clock were present and running.

[30]  For a helpful discussion see Peter Kroes,  Time: Its Structure and Its Role in Physical Theories , Synthese Library 179 (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1985), p. 49.

[31] By postulating a cosmic rotation of matter, Gödel was able to work out model universes satisfying Einstein’s field equations in which there is no cosmic time (Kurt Gödel, “A Remark about the Relationship between Relativity Theory and Idealistic Philosophy”, in Albert Einstein , pp. 557–62). In such worlds, Padgett’s view would be correct. But in fact, there is cosmic time, and it naturally appears to coincide with real time.

[32] See my “God, Time and Eternity,” pp. 497-503, where I argue that God existing without creation is timeless and that He enters time at its beginning with His creation of the universe. Since creation is a freely willed act of God, the existence of actual time is therefore contingent.

[33] See, for example, Eddington’s observation:

Just as each limited observer has his own particular separation of space and time, so a being coextensive with the world might well have a special separation of space and time natural to him. It is the moment of this being which is here dignified by the title of “absolute.” (Eddington, Space, Time and Gravitation , p. 168)

[34] See Kroes,  Time , pp. 60-96.

 


William Lane Craig is an American Baptist Christian analytic philosopher and theologian. Craig’s philosophical work focuses on the philosophy of religion, metaphysics, and philosophy of time. His theological interests lie in historical Jesus studies and philosophical theology.

Original Blog: http://bit.ly/3aWccf2 

Translated by Jairo Izquierdo

By Wintery Knight

Here is Dr. William Lane Craig giving a long-form argument for the historical event of the resurrection of Jesus and taking questions from the audience.

The speaker’s introduction goes for 6 minutes, then Dr. Craig speaks for 35 minutes, then it’s a period of questions and answers with the audience. The total length is 93 minutes, so quite a long period of Q&A. The questions in the Q&A period are quite good.

Introduction:

  • Many people who are willing to accept God’s existence are not willing to accept the God of Christianity
  • Christians need to be ready to show that Jesus rose from the dead as a historical event
  • Private faith is fine for individuals, but when dealing with the public, you have to have evidence
  • When making the case, you cannot assume that your audience accepts the Bible as inerrant
  • You must use the New Testament like any other ancient historical document
  • Most historians, Christian and not, accept the minimal basic facts supporting the resurrection of Jesus

Fact #1: the burial of Jesus following his crucifixion

  • Fact #1 is supported by the early creed found in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor 15)
  • Fact #1 is supported by the early Passion narrative which was a source for Mark’s gospel
  • Fact #1 passes the criterion of enemy attestation since it praises one of the Sanhedrin
  • Fact #1 is not opposed by any competing burial narratives

Fact #2: on the Sunday following his crucifixion, Jesus’ tomb was found empty by some women

  • Fact #2 is supported by the early Passion narrative which was a source for Mark’s gospel
  • Fact #2 is implied by the early creed found in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor 15)
  • Fact #2 is simple and lacks legendary embellishment, which argues for an early dating
  • Fact #2 passes the criterion of embarrassment because it has female, not male, witnesses
  • Fact #2 passes the criterion of enemy attestation since it is reported by the Jewish leaders

Fact #3: Jesus appeared to various people in various circumstances after his death

  • Fact #3 is supported by the early creed found in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor 15)
  • Fact #3 is supported by multiple, independent reports of the events from all four gospels
  • Fact #3 explains other historical facts, like the conversion of Jesus’ skeptical brother James

Fact #4: the earliest Christians proclaimed their belief in the resurrection of Jesus

  • Fact #4 explains why the earliest Christians continued to identify Jesus as the Messiah
  • Fact #4 explains why the earliest Christians were suddenly so unconcerned about being killed

Dr. Craig then asks which hypothesis explains all four of these facts. He surveys a number of naturalistic hypotheses, such as the hallucination theory or various conspiracy theories. All of these theories deny one or more of the minimal facts that have been established and accepted by the broad spectrum of historians. In order to reject the resurrection hypothesis, a skeptic would have to deny one of the four facts or propose an explanation that explains those facts better than the resurrection hypothesis.

I listened to the Q&A period while doing housekeeping, and I heard lots of good questions. Dr. Craig gives very long answers to the questions. One person asked why we should trust the claim that the Jewish leaders really did say that the disciples stole the body. Another one asked why we should take the resurrection as proof that Jesus was divine. Another asks about the earthquake in Matthew and whether it is intended to be historical or apocalyptic imagery. Dr. Craig is also asked about the Jewish scholar Geza Vermes, and how many of the minimal facts he accepts. Another questioner asked about the ascension.

If you are looking for a good book to read on this topic, the best introductory book on the resurrection is “The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus,” and the best comprehensive book is “The Resurrection of Jesus.”

Recommended resources related to the topic:

Early Evidence for the Resurrection by Dr. Gary Habermas (DVD), (Mp3) and (Mp4)

Cold Case Resurrection Set by J. Warner Wallace (books)

Did Jesus Rise from the Dead? By Dr. Gary Habermas (book)

Jesus, You and the Essentials of Christianity – Episode 14 Video DOWNLOAD by Frank Turek (DVD)

 


Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/36kqnqz

Por William Lane Craig

RESUMEN

Wes Morriston argumenta que, si incluso consideramos que una serie interminable de eventos es meramente potencial, en lugar de actualmente infinita, aún no se ha establecido una distinción entre una serie de eventos sin comienzo y una serie interminable, que es relevante para los argumentos en contra de la posibilidad metafísica de un número infinito actual de cosas: si una serie sin comienzo es imposible, también lo es una serie sin fin. El éxito del argumento de Morriston, sin embargo, depende de rechazar la caracterización de una serie interminable de eventos como un infinito potencial. Resulta que, según su propio análisis, es de vital importancia si la serie de eventos es potencial a diferencia de actualmente infinita. Si es razonable mantener que una serie infinita de eventos es potencialmente infinita, mientras que una serie sin comienzo es actualmente infinita, entonces se ha establecido una distinción relevante para cualquier persona que piense que un infinito actual no puede existir.

I

Según Wes Morriston, el corazón de su paper[i] se refiere a dos afirmaciones:

(i.) que una serie interminable de eventos es meramente un potencial infinito.

y

(ii.) que esto establece una distinción relevante entre el pasado sin comienzo (que supuestamente es imposible) y un futuro sin fin (que es claramente posible).

Nos dice que “argumentaré que no se ha establecido una distinción relevante”. La declaración de Morriston hace evidente que su crítica se dirigirá a la segunda afirmación expuesta arriba. Para tener éxito, tal crítica debe otorgar (i), al menos por el bien del argumento. Morriston debe mostrar que incluso si una serie interminable de eventos es meramente potencial, en lugar de actualmente infinita, entonces no se ha establecido una distinción relevante entre las dos series.

Una lectura cuidadosa del artículo de Morriston revela, sin embargo, que fracasa en su objetivo, a mitad de su trabajo, comenzando en la sección titulada “¿Un infinito meramente potencial?”, Morriston pasa a atacar (i) en lugar de concederlo. El éxito de su argumento viene a depender de rechazar la caracterización de (i) como una serie infinita de eventos siendo un infinito potencial. Resulta que, según su propio análisis, es de vital importancia si la serie de eventos es potencial a diferencia de actualmente infinita. Si es razonable mantener que una serie infinita de eventos es potencialmente infinita, mientras que una serie sin comienzo es en actualmente infinita, entonces se ha establecido una distinción relevante para cualquier persona que piense que un infinito actual no puede existir.

El ataque de Morriston a la infinitud potencial de una serie interminable de eventos es, por lo tanto, de un interés mucho más amplio que las preocupaciones de la teología natural, ya que virtualmente todos los filósofos que defienden una teoría del tiempo dinámica o A, sostienen que la serie de sucesivamente ordenada e isócrona de eventos posteriores a algún evento denominado es potencialmente infinita.

II

El argumento de Morriston, antes del cambio crucial mencionado anteriormente, es fatalmente ambiguo.[ii] Hay dos formas en que una serie temporal de eventos isócronos que tiene un comienzo puede ser interminable: (i) podría ser actualmente infinita, es decir, compuesta de un número infinito actual de eventos; (ii) podría ser potencialmente infinita, es decir, compuesto por un finito, pero siempre creciente número de eventos con el infinito como límite. La segunda respuesta implica una teoría A del tiempo según la cual el devenir temporal es una característica objetiva de la realidad, mientras que la primera respuesta está asociada, naturalmente, con una teoría B según la cual todos los eventos en el tiempo están a la par de los factores ontológicos.

Entonces, con respecto a la ilustración de Morriston de dos ángeles que comienzan a alabar a Dios para siempre, un teórico A coincidirá de todo corazón con su afirmación: “Si preguntas: ‘¿Cuántas alabanzas se expresarán?’, la única respuesta sensata es infinitamente muchas”—es decir, muchas, pero potencialmente infinitas. Si esta respuesta es permitida por el teórico A, entonces los argumentos supuestamente paralelos de Morriston colapsan. Dios podría haber dejado espacio para un número infinito de alabanzas potencialmente infinitas por parte de un tercer ángel, en cuyo caso se “agregarán” infinitamente muchas alabanzas, y las alabanzas de los tres ángeles se dirán en la misma cantidad de tiempo potencialmente infinita. No hay absurdo allí, ya que el número de alabanzas dichas por los ángeles siempre será finito, aunque aumente hacia el infinito como límite. O, de nuevo, si Dios determinó que los ángeles se detuvieran después de la cuarta alabanza o si un ángel fuese silenciado, se podrían evitar muchas alabanzas infinitas potencialmente, pero en un caso solo expresarán cuatro alabanzas mientras que en la otra se dirán infinitas potencialmente. De nuevo, no hay absurdo, ya que el infinito es simplemente potencial. No se puede decir nada paralelo de una serie de eventos sin principio, ya que, dada la asimetría de lo temporal, el pasado no puede ser potencialmente infinito, porque entonces tendría que ser finito, pero creciendo en una dirección hacia atrás.

Si se permite tal respuesta, el teórico A—como debe ser si Morriston tiene éxito en demostrar que interpretar una serie interminable de eventos como potencialmente infinitos no es relevante para el argumento—está claro que los casos de Morriston no están completamente paralelos a una serie de eventos sin principio. A medida que se aclara aún más en los argumentos del kalam para la finitud del pasado basada en la imposibilidad de formar un infinito actual mediante una adición sucesiva,[iii] la asimetría del tiempo marca una enorme diferencia metafísica entre el pasado y el futuro en una teoría A del tiempo. Quizás la oración más reveladora en el artículo de Morriston sea su desconcertada pregunta: “¿Qué diferencia podría hacer un simple cambio de tiempo?”

III

Al darse cuenta de que el teórico A insistirá en que una serie interminable de eventos es propiamente un potencial en lugar de un infinito actual, Morriston, en la segunda parte de su artículo, recurre, en contra de su propósito declarado, a desafiar la afirmación de que una serie interminable de eventos es simplemente potencialmente infinita. Él pregunta: “¿Está claro que la serie interminable de alabanzas futuras previstas es un potencial, en lugar de un infinito actual?” “Dada la realidad del devenir temporal, ¿deberíamos decir que la serie interminable de eventos que he previsto es un infinito meramente potencial?”

Para justificar una respuesta negativa a esas preguntas, Morriston malinterpreta el punto de vista del teórico A de una manera perversa pero interesante. Cuando el Teórico A expresa la afirmación (i) arriba antes mencionada, la serie interminable de eventos de la que está hablando es la serie actual de eventos que han ocurrido. Pero como Morriston deja en claro, está hablando de una serie que, en la teoría A, no existe en ningún sentido, es decir, la serie de eventos que aún no han sucedido. Así que Morriston dice:

Como lo he previsto, la serie de alabanzas futuras no está “creciendo” en absoluto. A medida que cada alabanza se hace presente, se elimina de la “colección” de aquellas que aún están por venir. La colección de alabanzas futuras es, por así decirlo, miembros perdidos.

Esto golpeará a un teórico A como una extraña ontología, al menos a la que el teórico A no está comprometido de ninguna manera. No existe una serie como la que Morriston imagina, como tampoco existe una serie de eventos que se previnieron, que aumenta constantemente a medida que pasa el tiempo. Morriston no ha demostrado que la afirmación (i) sea falsa con respecto a la serie que el teórico A tiene en mente, porque el referente de la frase “una serie interminable de eventos” y “un futuro sin fin” en las afirmaciones (i) y (ii) es una serie diferente de la serie que Morriston está considerando.

Morriston niega que esté hablando de ontología. Él dice que podría reformular su afirmación de que la colección de verdades temporales futuras sobre las alabanzas de los ángeles está perdiendo miembros. Pero luego está hablando de ontología, ya que tal reformulación parece presuponer que las verdades son objetos abstractos, lo que no ha sido justificado. Morriston necesita encontrar algo que sea parte de la realidad que sea actualmente infinita en cantidad para hacer una analogía con una serie sin comienzo de eventos pasados. Morriston luego vuelve a su sugerencia de que, en lugar de eventos futuros, que en una teoría A del tiempo no son parte de la realidad, consideramos verdades temporales en el futuro o hechos temporales correspondientes. Pero este movimiento hace dos suposiciones injustificadas: primero, el platonismo con respecto a las proposiciones y, segundo, la infinitud actual de proposiciones o hechos. Si aceptamos estas suposiciones, no hay necesidad de apelar a verdades temporales en el futuro para designar una infinitud actual de proposiciones, ya que para cada proposición p existe la proposición adicional de que Tp, o que es verdad que p. El finitista, por lo tanto, negará el platonismo con respecto a las proposiciones, considerándolas como ficciones útiles, o negará que haya un número infinito de proposiciones, ya que, dado que el conocimiento de Dios no es proposicional, las proposiciones son el subproducto de la intelección humana y, por lo tanto, potencialmente infinitas en número, ya que llegamos a expresar de manera proposicional lo que Dios sabe de una manera no proposicional.

Morriston reitera su intuición de que el número de alabanzas angelicales que se dirán en una serie interminable es actualmente infinito. Pero las únicas alabanzas que son actuales son las que se dicen, y siempre serán finitas en número. No se dirá un número actualmente infinito de alabanzas. Considere los ejemplos más familiares del potencial infinito en la división espacial y la suma. Hay una enorme diferencia entre tomar una línea espacial como una composición de puntos densamente ordenada y tomarla como no compuesta de puntos, sino potencial e infinitamente divisible. En la segunda postura, se puede continuar dividiendo una línea sin fin, pero no se puede hacer un número actualmente infinito de divisiones. Estas son posturas completamente distintas de la naturaleza del espacio, y una no puede colapsarse en la otra. O, de nuevo, si el universo es finito (debido a que el espacio tiene una curvatura positiva) pero se expande sin cesar, el volumen del universo es potencialmente infinito, pero no se volverá actualmente infinito. Hay un mundo de diferencia entre los modelos del universo en los que el espacio es actualmente infinito en extensión y los modelos en los que el espacio se expande constantemente pero siempre es finito.

Del mismo modo, en las ilustraciones de Morriston, lo que es real o actual siempre es finito. Entonces, en respuesta a la pregunta de Morriston, “¿Cuántas alabanzas se dirán?”, Debemos responder, “Potencialmente infinitas,” y distinguir esto de la pregunta, “¿Cuál es el número de alabanzas en la serie de alabanzas futuras?”, la respuesta a la cual es “Ninguno”.

Morriston insiste en que, en una teoría A del tiempo, los eventos pasados ​​tampoco existen, por lo que la no existencia de eventos futuros no hace ninguna diferencia real. Pero a pesar de confesar un poco de perplejidad sobre el concepto del potencial infinito como límite,[iv] Morriston parece preparado para admitir que la serie de eventos que han sucedido es solo potencialmente infinita en la dirección después que (later than). Además, está claro que nada paralelo puede decirse con sinceridad sobre la serie de eventos que han sucedido en la dirección antes que (earlier than). El número de eventos que ocurrieron antes que cualquier evento dado, por lo tanto, solo puede ser finito o actualmente infinito. En una teoría A del tiempo, la serie temporal de eventos comprende todo lo que ha sucedido y nada más. Note bien el uso del tiempo pretérito perfecto en esta caracterización. El tiempo verbal pretérito perfecto de “ha sucedido” cubre cada vez hasta el presente y, por lo tanto, incluye cada evento pasado y presente. Todo lo que ha sucedido se ha actualizado. Como lo expresaron los medievales, estos eventos han salido de sus causas y, por lo tanto, ya no tienen potencial. El mundo actual incluye tanto lo que existe como lo que existió. Pero los eventos que aún no han tenido lugar, siendo pura potencialidad, no son, en una visión dinámica del tiempo, parte del mundo actual.[v]

La distinción ontológica entre el pasado y el presente, por un lado, y el futuro, por el otro, es especialmente evidente en los puntos de vista “bloque creciente” del tiempo, como el enunciado por el medio (middle) C. D. Broad y defendido por el colega de Morriston, Michael Tooley. Un defensor del argumento kalam que acepta la visión de bloque creciente no tiene dificultad en diferenciar la actualidad del pasado de la potencialidad del futuro. Mi afirmación es que la existencia sin tiempo del bloque pasado de eventos no es una condición necesaria de la actualidad del pasado. Incluso si los eventos pasados no existen, siguen siendo parte del mundo real de una manera que los eventos futuros no lo son, ya que el mundo real comprende todo lo que ha sucedido.

IV

En conclusión, parece claro que Morriston no ha tenido éxito en el propósito central de su artículo, a saber, mostrar que incluso si una serie interminable de eventos es solo potencialmente infinita, ese hecho no establece una distinción relevante entre el pasado sin principio y un futuro sin fin. En cambio, se vio obligado a pasar a argumentar que una serie interminable de eventos no puede considerarse potencialmente infinita. Pero su argumento malinterpretó seriamente la Teoría A del tiempo, sustituyendo una serie imaginaria de eventos por la serie de eventos en curso que realmente han sucedido.

Notas:

[i] Wes Morriston, “Beginningless Past, Endless Future, and the Actual Infinite,” Faith and Philosophy.

[ii] Aunque no estoy completamente contento con la reconstrucción de Morriston de mi argumento a favor del finitismo, lo dejé pasar. En lugar de hablar de mundos alternativos posibles, debería hablar en términos de condicionales contrafácticos. Si todos los demás huéspedes en el Hotel Hilbert se fueran, ¿cuántos quedarían? El experimento mental no depende de la verdad del antecedente. Creo que hay contrafácticos no trivialmente verdaderos con antecedentes imposibles, por ejemplo, “Si Dios no existiera, el universo no existiría”.

[iii] La diferencia entre la potencialidad del futuro y la actualidad del pasado emerge con especial claridad en los argumentos del Kalam para el comienzo del universo, basados ​​en la imposibilidad de formar un infinito actual mediante sumas sucesivas. Por ejemplo, al-Ghazali nos invita a suponer que Júpiter y Saturno orbitan alrededor del Sol de tal manera que por cada órbita que Saturno completa, Júpiter completa dos. Cuanto más orbitan, más se queda atrás Saturno. Si continúan orbitando para siempre, se acercarán a un límite en el que Saturno está infinitamente lejos de Júpiter. Por supuesto, nunca llegarán a este límite. Pero ahora cambie la historia: suponga que Júpiter y Saturno han estado orbitando el Sol desde la eternidad pasada. ¿Cuál habrá completado la mayor cantidad de órbitas? La respuesta es que el número de sus órbitas es exactamente el mismo, es decir, ¡infinito! Eso puede parecer absurdo, pero parece ser el resultado inevitable de la actualidad del pasado en oposición a la potencialidad del futuro.

[iv] Los límites juegan un papel esencial en el proceso matemático de diferenciación, uno de los pilares del cálculo. El límite de una determinada función f (x) es el valor de esa función cuando x se acerca a un número dado. Esto está escrito:

lim f (x) = L

x a

que se lee, “A medida que x se acerca a a, el límite de f (x) es L.” A veces uno está interesado en encontrar el límite de una función a medida que el valor de a aumenta indefinidamente, en cuyo caso se sustituye a por el signo del potencial infinito “∞”:

lim f (x) = L

x

En tales casos, se dice que estamos determinando el límite “al” infinito. A veces, el valor de una función aumenta indefinidamente a medida que las entradas se acercan a un cierto número, en cuyo caso el límite de la función es infinito:

lim f (x) = ∞

x a

En ninguno de los casos el infinito es un número, como lo es ℵ0. En las ilustraciones de Morriston, tanto el valor de a como el límite de la función f (x) son ∞. Entonces, por ejemplo, si por cada alabanza pronunciada por un ángel hay dos pronunciadas por el otro,

lim f (x) = 2x = ∞

x → ∞

A medida que x se aproxima al infinito, también lo hace la salida de la función 2x. Significativamente, el valor de la función f (a) no tiene relación alguna con el valor o incluso con la existencia de un límite a medida que x se acerca a a, es decir, “a” a. Por lo tanto, en la ilustración de Morriston no estamos hablando del valor f (∞). El infinito es simplemente acercado, no alcanzado. Entonces, si comparamos el número de alabanzas ofrecidas por los ángeles, encontramos que cada vez más divergen:

lim g (x) = 2xx = ∞

x

Pero ahora contrasta el caso de dos ángeles que alaban a Dios en una proporción de 2: 1 desde la eternidad pasada. En este caso, como en el caso de Saturno y Júpiter en la ilustración de al-Ghazali mencionada en la nota 3, se ha alcanzado el infinito; se ha pronunciado un número actualmente infinito de alabanzas. En este caso, de hecho, nos preocupa el valor f (a), y solo puede ser 2⋅ℵ0 = ℵ0.

[v] La lección de la paradoja de McTaggart es que, si nos tomamos el tiempo en serio, no puede haber una descripción máxima de la realidad como se imagina en la semántica de los mundos posibles, que proporcionan descripciones puramente atemporales de cómo podría ser el mundo. Para un intento de introducir el tiempo en la semántica de mundos posibles, ver William Lane Craig, The Tensed Theory of Time: A Critical Examination, Synthese Library 293 (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000), pp. 208-10.

 


William Lane Craig es un filósofo​ analítico y teólogo​ cristiano bautista estadounidense. El trabajo filosófico de Craig se enfoca en la filosofía de la religión, la metafísica y la filosofía del tiempo. Su interés teológico se encuentra en los estudios del Jesús histórico y en la teología filosófica.

Blog Original: http://bit.ly/2Tbzwid

Traducido por Jairo Izquierdo

By Wintery Knight

Here is the video of the debate:

TOPIC: DOES GOD EXIST?

MY NOTES ON THE DEBATE: (WC = William Lane Craig, CH = Christopher Hitchens)

WC opening speech:

Introduction:

WC makes two contentions:

– there are no good arguments for atheism

– there are good arguments for theism

These topics are IRRELEVANT tonight:

– the social impact of Christianity

– the morality of Old Testament passages

– biblical inerrancy

– the debate is whether God (a creator and designer of the universe) exists

  1. cosmological argument

– an actually infinite number of past events is impossible

– number of past events must be finite

– therefore the universe has a beginning

– the beginning of the universe is confirmed by science – the universe began to exist from nothing

– space, time, matter, energy began at the big bang

– the creation of the universe requires a cause

– the cause is uncaused, timeless, spaceless, powerful

– the cause must be beyond space and time because it created space and time

– the cause is not physical because it created all matter and energy

– but there are only two kinds of non-physical cause: abstract objects or minds

– abstract objects don’t cause effects

– therefore must be mind

  1. teleological argument

– fine-tuned constants and ratios

– constants not determined by laws of nature

– also, there are arbitrary quantities

– constants and quantities are in a narrow range of life-permitting values

– an example: if the weak force were different by 1 in 10 to the 100, then no life

– there are 3 explanations: physical law or chance or design

– not due to law: because constants and quantities are independent of the laws

– not due to chance: the odds are too high for chance

– therefore, due to design

– the atheist response is the world ensemble (multiverse)

– but world ensemble has unobservable universes, no evidence that they exist

– and world ensemble contradicts scientific observations we have today

  1. moral argument

– objective moral values are values that exist regardless of what human’s think

– objective values are not personal preferences

– objective values are not evolved standards that cultures have depending on time and place

– objective moral values and duties exist

– objective moral values and duties require a moral lawgiver

  1. argument from resurrection miracle

– resurrection implies miracle

– miracle implies God

– 3 minimal facts pass the historical tests (early attestation, eyewitness testimony, multiple attestation, etc.)

– minimal fact 1: empty tomb

– minimal fact 2: appearances

– minimal fact 3: early belief in the resurrection

– Jewish theology prohibits a dying Messiah – Messiah is not supposed to die

– Jewish theology has a general resurrection of everybody, there is not supposed to be a resurrection of one person

– Jewish theology certainly does not predict a single resurrection of the Messiah after he dies

– therefore, the belief in the resurrection is unlikely to have been invented

– disciples were willing to die for that belief in the resurrection

– naturalistic explanations don’t work for the 3 minimal facts

  1. properly basic belief in God

– religious experience is properly basic

– it’s just like the belief in the external world, grounded in experience

– in the absence of defeaters, those experiences are valid

Conclusion: What CH must do:

– destroy all 5 of WC’s arguments

– erect his own case in its place

CH opening speech:

  1. evolution disproves biological design argument

– evolution disproves Paley’s argument for a watchmaker

  1. God wouldn’t have done it that way

– God wouldn’t have waited that long before the incarnation

– mass extinction and death before Jesus

– God wouldn’t have allowed humans to have almost gone extinct a while back in Africa

– why insist that this wasteful and incompetent history of life is for us, that’s a bad design

– the universe is so vast, why would God need so much space, that’s a bad design

– there is too much destruction in the universe, like exploding stars – that’s a bad design
– the heat death of the universe is a bad design

– too many of the other planets don’t support life, that’s a bad design

– the sun is going to become a red giant and incinerate us, that’s a bad design

  1. Hitchens’ burden of proof

– there is no good reason that supports the existence of God

– all arguments for God can be explained without God

– atheists can’t prove there is no God

– but they can prove there is no good argument for God

  1. Craig’s scientific arguments don’t go far enough, they only prove deism, not theism

– the scientific arguments don’t prove prayer works

– the scientific arguments don’t prove specific moral teachings of Christianity

  1. if the laws of physics are so great then miracles shouldn’t be allowed

– good laws and miracles seem to be in contradiction

  1. extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence

– none of Craig’s evidence was extraordinary

  1. science can change, so Craig can’t use the progress of science

– it’s too early for Craig to use the big bang and fine-tuning

– the big bang and fine-tuning evidences are too new

– they could be overturned by the progress of science

  1. Craig wrote in his book that the internal conviction of God’s existence should trump contradicting evidence

– but then he isn’t forming his view based on evidence

– he refuses to let evidence disprove his view

– but then how can atheists be to blame if they don’t believe

– so evidence is not really relevant to accepting theism

  1. the progress of science has disproved religion

– Christianity taught that earth was center of the universe

– but then cosmology disproved that

Response to the big bang and fine-tuning arguments:

– was there pre-existing material?

– who designed the designer?

WC first rebuttal:

Reiterates his 2 basic contentions

CH agrees that there is no good argument for atheism

– then all you’ve got is agnosticism

– because CH did not claim to know there is no God

– and he gave no arguments that there is no God

CH’s evolution argument

– irrelevant to Christianity

– Genesis 1 allows for evolution to have occurred

– Christianity is not committed to young earth creationism

– the origin of biological diversity is not central to Christianity

– St. Augustine in 300 AD said days can be long, special potencies unfold over time

– also, there are scientific reasons to doubt evolution

– cites barrow and Tipler, and they say:

– each of 10 steps in evolution is very improbable

– chances are so low; it would be a miracle if evolution occurred

CH’s argument that God is wasteful

– efficiency is only important to people with limited time or limited resources

– therefore God doesn’t need to be efficient

CH’s argument that God waits too long to send Jesus

– population was not that high before Jesus

– Jesus appears just before the exponential explosion of population

– conditions were stable – roman empire, peace, literacy, law, etc.

CH’s argument that Craig’s scientific arguments only prove deism, not theism

– deism a type of theism, so those scientific arguments work

– all that deism denies is a miraculous intervention

CH’s argument that Craig has a burden of proof

– theism doesn’t need to be proven with certainty

– must only prove a best explanation of the evidence

CH’s citation of Craig’s book saying that evidence should not overrule experience

– there is a difference between knowing and showing Christianity is true

– knowing is by religious experience which is a properly basic belief

– showing is done through evidence, and there the evidence does matter

CH’s rebuttal to the big bang

– there was no pre-existent material

– space and time and matter came into being at the big bang

– the cause must be non-physical and eternal

– cause of the universe outside of time means = cause of the universe did not begin to exist

– this is the state of science today

CH’s rebuttal to the fine-tuning

– CH says scientists are uncertain about the fine-tuning

– Craig cites Martin Rees, an atheist, astronomer royal, to substantiate the fine-tuning
– the fine-tuning is necessary for  minimal requirements for life of any kind

– the progress of science is not going to dethrone the fine-tuning

CH’s argument about heat death of the universe

– duration of design is irrelevant to whether something was designed

– cars are designed, yet they break down

– design need not be optimal to be designed

– CH is saying why create if we all eventually go extinct

– but life doesn’t end in the grave on Christianity

CH’s rebuttal to the moral argument

– CH says no objective moral values

– but CH uses them to argue against God and Christians

– but CH has no foundation for a standard that applies to God and Christians

CH’s rebuttal to the resurrection argument

– empty tomb and appearances are virtually certain

– these are minimal facts, well evidenced using standard historical criteria

– best explanation of these minimal facts is the resurrection

CH’s rebuttal to a religious experience

– prop basic belief is rational in the absence of defeaters

– so long as Craig has no psychological deficiency, experience is admissible

CH first rebuttal:

it’s not agnosticism

– if there are no good arguments for theism

– then there is no reason for belief in God

– that is atheism

– everything can be explained without God

God wouldn’t have done it that way

– homo sapiens is 100K years old

– for 98K years, they had no communication from God

– lots of people died in childbirth

– disease and volcanos are a mystery to them

– life expectancy is very low

– they die terrible deaths

– their teeth are badly designed

– their genitalia are badly designed

– why solve the problem of sin by allowing a man to be tortured to death

– that’s a stupid, cruel, bumbling plan

lots of people haven’t even heard of Jesus

– many of them die without knowing about him

– they cannot be held responsible if they do not know about Jesus

the early success of Christianity doesn’t prove Christianity is true

– because then it applies to Mormonism and Islam, they’re growing fast

objective morality

– belief in a supreme dictator doesn’t improve moral behavior

– I can do moral actions that you can do

– I can repeat moral positions that you can say

religious people are immoral

– genital mutilation

– suicide bombing

moral behavior doesn’t need God

– we need to act moral for social cohesion

– it evolved for our survival

– that’s why people act morally

– it’s degrading to humans, and servile, to require God for morality

free will

– I believe in free will

– I don’t know why, because I can’t ground free will on atheism

– a bossy God seems to reduce free will because then we are accountable to God

WC cross-examination of CH:

WC why call yourself an atheist when you have no reasons?

CH because absence of belief is atheism

WC but agnosticism, atheism, verificationism all don’t hold that belief, which one are you?

CH I think God does not exist

WC ok give me an argument for the claim you just made to know God does not exist

CH I have no argument, but I don’t believe in God because it depresses me to think he might be real

WC would you agree that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence?

CH no I don’t agree

WC moral argument: it’s not epistemology it’s the ontology – have you got a foundation for moral values and duties?

CH I do not, it’s just evolution, an evolved standard based on social cohesion

CH cross-examination of WC:

CH you said that the historical reports of Jesus doing exorcisms are generally accepted – do you believe in devils?

WC I commit to nothing, what I am saying their historical consensus on the reports that Jesus did exorcisms

CH what about the devils going into the pigs, do you believe that?

WC yes I do, but the main point I’m making is that the historical reports show that Jesus acted with divine authority

CH do you believe in the virgin birth?

WC yes, but that’s not historically provable using the minimal facts methods, and I did not use the virgin birth in my arguments tonight, because it doesn’t pass the historical tests to be a minimal fact

CH do you believe that all the graves opened and dead people all came out?

WC not sure if the author intended that part as apocalyptic imagery or as literal, I have no opinion on it, have not studied it

CH do exorcisms prove son of God?

WC no, I am only saying that the historical reports show that Jesus exercised authority and put himself in the place of God

CH are any religions false? name one that’s false

WC Islam

CH so some religions are wicked right?

WC yes

CH if a baby were born in Saudi Arabia would it be better if it were an atheist or a Muslim?

WC I have no opinion on that

CH are any Christian denominations wrong?

WC Calvinism is wrong about some things, but they are still Christians, I could be wrong about some things, I do the best I can, studying theology, so I’m not wrong

WC second rebuttal

Response to CH arguments:

no reasons for atheism

– no reasons to believe that God does not exist

– CH withholds belief in God

why wait so long before contacting humans with Jesus

– population matters, not time – Jesus waited until there was about to be a population explosion

– there is a natural revelation (Romans 1) for those who lived before Christ

what about those who never heard

– (Acts 17:22-31) God chooses the time and place of each person who is born to optimize their opportunity to know him based on how they will respond to evidence (this is called middle knowledge)

– those who haven’t heard will be judged based on general revelation

WC re-assess the state of his five arguments:

cosmological argument

– heat death of the universe won’t happen on Christianity

moral argument

– if no objective moral standard, can’t judge other cultures as wrong

– no transcendent objective standard to be able to judge slavery as wrong

name an action argument

– e.g. – tithing

– the greatest command – love the Lord your God your God with everything you’ve got

– atheists can’t do that, and that is the biggest commandment to follow

moral obligations

– there are no objective moral obligations for anyone on atheism

– on atheism, you feel obligated because of genetics and social pressure

– on atheism, we’re animals, and animals don’t have moral obligations

resurrection
– the belief in the resurrection of 1 man, the Messiah is totally unexpected on Judaism

– they would not have made this up, it was unexpected

religious experience

– experience is valid in the absence of defeaters

CH second rebuttal:

faith and reason

– Tertullian says faith is better when it’s against reason

it’s easy to start a rumor with faith-based people

– Mother Teresa: to be canonized she needs to have done a miracle

– so there was a faked miracle report

– but everybody believes the fake miracle report!

– this proves that religious rumors are easy to start

– the resurrection could have started as a similar rumor by people wanting to believe it

name an action

– tithing is a religious action, I don’t have to do that

moral argument

– I can be as moral as you can without God

– I can say that other cultures are wrong, there I just said it

– without God, people would still be good, so God isn’t needed

religious people did bad things in history

– this church did a bad thing here

– that church did a bad thing there

– therefore God doesn’t exist

religion is the outcome of man’s struggle with a natural phenomenon

– that is why there are so many religions

WC concluding speech

no arguments for atheism presented

What CH has said during the debate:

– God bad, Mother Teresa bad, religion bad

atheism is a worldview

– it claims to know the truth

– therefore it is exclusive of other views

what does theism explain

– theism explains a broad range of experiences

– origin of the universe, CH has dropped the point

– fine-tuning, CH has dropped the point

– moral, CH says that humans are no different from animals – but an evolved standard is illusory, there are no actual moral values and standards, it’s just a genetic predisposition to act in a certain way – that’s not prescriptive morality

– resurrection, CH has dropped the point

– experience, Craig tells his testimony and urges the audience to give it a shot

CH concluding speech

HITCHENS YIELDS HIS ENTIRE CONCLUDING SPEECH!

A question & answer Period followed the end of the formal debate

Further study

Check out my analysis of the 11 arguments Hitchens made in his opening speech in his debate with Frank Turek.

 


Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2NGJ7Jn