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Questions on Resurrection, Creation, Ghosts, and Multiverse

December 12, 2011     Time: 00:12:30
Questions on Resurrection, Creation, Ghosts, and Multiverse

Summary

Dr. Craig answers a variety of questions he's received including Paul's word for "resurrection", the definition of "Creationist", the existence of ghosts, and the so-called "multi-verse."

Transcript Questions on Resurrection, Creation, Ghosts, and Multiverse

 

Kevin Harris: So glad you're here; come on in. This is the Reasonable Faith podcast with Dr. William Lane Craig. I'm Kevin Harris. And as we get started today let me tell you about something new. The new Reasonable Faith app for iPhone and iPod touch or iPad is here, and you can go to our web community at ReasonableFaith.org and get it right there. ReasonableFaith.org—the new Reasonable Faith app. Several questions we want to talk about today that listeners have sent us.

This one, Bill, is on the resurrection:

Dear Dr. Craig, my question is on the term 'resurrection' in 1 Corinthians 15. The word for 'raised' is agero, which means to 'wake up' or 'come to'. Paul did not use the word for resurrection – anastasis or anastami – here, though he certainly knew it. Is there a conflict with Paul using the word agero rather than anastasis or anastami?

Dr. Craig: No, not at all. Greek had two words that could be used interchangeably to connote the raising of the dead. The one has the sense of 'to get up' or 'stand up' or 'to raise up,' and the other had the idea of 'to wake up'—the dead were thought to be sleeping in the tombs and they would wake up. And either of these are terms for the resurrection. Interestingly enough both of them pass into German, Kevin. If you read German theology they talk in equal terms about either the aufstehenof Jesus, which is literally the sort of standing up of Jesus, the aufstehen. Or the aufwachen, of the waking up of Jesus; the aufwachenis the waking. So these terms are used synonymously in Greek and they're used synonymously in modern theology in German. In English we just have the single word 'raised.' But in Greek there's no problem. Now, I think where the questioner errs is by saying that these words cannot be used in a different context to mean something else. That's certainly true. In a different context they could be just as English words can. I can say 'he raised a question at the meaning.' Does that mean he lifted the question up above his head or something? Obviously not. Words can be used to different meanings. But if I say 'Jesus was raised from the dead,' there I'm using it in that context to talk about what happened to his body. So context is everything. You cannot use the etymology of words independently of context as a hermeneutical tool. You always have to look at the context. And obviously in 1 Corinthians 15 the sequence of events – he died, he was buried, he was raised, he appeared – is clearly talking about the resurrection of Jesus. And by the way, Kevin, no New Testament scholar denies this. The two people that he quotes in this question that you asked me about which I've seen are not Greek specialists or linguists. They're just internet infidel types who are not experts in this area.

Kevin Harris: Okay. There's a reason I'm asking this simple question that we've got here, Bill, and I think you'll pick up on it, and, again, bring forth some definitions that are necessary in communicating, today. He asks, “Are you a creationist? By your affiliates you seem to be so.”

Dr. Craig: Oh, by my affiliates. [laughter] You know, this is this McCarthyism, again, that I've spoken of in other contexts where if you affiliate with some young earth creationist – he's your friend or colleague – then you are, too.

Kevin Harris: Well, now, see, that's the issue, Bill. If you believe in a creator, are you a creationist?

Dr. Craig: Well, he says, 'because of my affiliates,' Kevin. And I certainly do have colleagues who are young earthers and friends who are, but that doesn't make me one. Now, in terms of being a creationist, I'm a creationist in the loose and broad sense that I believe that God created the universe ex nihilo, that is to say, without any material cause. I think that God created space, time, matter and energy, and so in that sense I'm a creationist. But I'm not what passes in today's parlance as a young earth creationist who thinks the world was made ten to twenty thousand years ago. And you can't judge a person by his affiliates.

Kevin Harris: Well, true. But when you say 'creationist' today, what does it mean?

Dr. Craig: Well, I think it tends to mean young earth creationist.

Kevin Harris: That's what it means. That's what it has come to mean.

Dr. Craig: Right.

Kevin Harris: For better or worse, whether we can help it or not, it's one of those things.

Dr. Craig: Right.

Kevin Harris: So, if someone were to come to me and say “Are you a creationist?” my first response would be to say, “What do you mean?” [1]

Dear Dr. Craig, in Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology your rebuttal to an infinite amount of past events included an analogy to an infinite library where there exists a one-to-one correspondence between all numbers and all books. If so, there you cannot add a book to this set because it is already infinitely full. However, in response to this aren't you supposing that an infinite reality would act like a finite reality such that a fullness in finitude would be the same as a fullness in infinitude? In other words, what if there was no fullness in an infinite reality, and thus more events can be added to the existing infinite set of past events?

Dr. Craig: I think that this question is based on a misunderstanding. I don't recall that I ever used the word 'full' or 'fullness' in connection with the library. I'm not arguing that the reason you couldn’t add to the library is because the shelves were full – if that's what he thinks – I never said that. You could build more shelves, right? That's not a problem—build more shelves. The reason I said was all the numbers have been used up, and so there aren’t any more numbers to add. That's all the numbers there are, the natural numbers to number these objects. And so you'd have to have a new natural number, and there is no such thing. So that was the argument I was attempting to offer.

Kevin Harris: Okay, so fullness doesn't really come into the picture, then.

Dr. Craig: No, not in this illustration.

Kevin Harris: Okay. From California:

Dr. Craig, can the kalam cosmological argument be extended and effectively applied to the hypothetic metaverse, with the second premise being “the metaverse (or multiverse) began to exist” showing that if part of the metaverse, namely the universe, began to exist then an array of multiple invisible universes or multiverse, by virtue of the second law of thermodynamics, began to exist?

Dr. Craig: Well, if you read my work, Kevin, you'll know that when I use the word 'universe' in that second premise I'm talking about all space-time reality, including any other universes that might be thought to exist alongside ours in a sort of expanding vacuum space. And so I regularly deal with multiverse theories in defense of premise two: that the universe began to exist. So, yes, I don't think of it as an extension because when I use the word 'universe' I mean all space-time reality. But certainly the philosophical arguments apply to any wider multiverse that one might imagine and even the empirical arguments would apply. The Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem applies not simply to our bubble universe but applies to the expanding false vacuum in which our universe is thought to exist. It also must have a beginning. So, yes, the arguments do apply to any multiverse that one might want to hypothesize.

Kevin Harris: Here's an interesting question, Bill, and I don't think we're ever discussed this on the podcast. “Dear Dr. Craig, do you believe in the possibility of ghosts? This is something that many people have claimed to have seen or experienced.” One of the reasons I want to bring it up, Bill, is that this is everywhere. Ghost Hunters is a huge show on the SyFy channel. The Travel channel has a ghost hunters thing. And they do capture some pretty weird things, nothing every conclusive, but . . .

Dr. Craig: Well, I guess that would depend on what a person means by a ghost. If you mean by a ghost some departed or dead individual I guess I don't believe in ghosts because, even though I believe in disembodied souls after death, it seems to me that those souls are either in Paradise with Christ in the case of the righteous dead, or they're confined in Hades, the place of the unrighteous dead, where they await the final resurrection. And therefore they are not haunting earthly habitats. On the other hand I do believe in such a thing as demonic beings, and if ghosts are demons who impersonate people then I don't have any reason to think that that is impossible.

Kevin Harris:

Dear Dr. Craig, is it a category error to say that a happy and blessed existence in God's Kingdom is better than no existence, or that an existence of misery in Hell is worse that no existence? I've been told that this is a category error because if a didn't exist he could be none the better nor the worse. I can't put my finger on it, but something seems wrong with this logic to me. [2]

Dr. Craig: Right, this comes out in the ontological argument as Anselm originally developed it. He said a being is greater if it exists than if it doesn't exist. Now, on one level that seems obviously right. Something that exists is greater than if it doesn't exist, and yet on the other hand you can say, “You can't make a comparison between something that exists and something that doesn't exist” because if something doesn’t exist there's nothing to compare it to—right? There's just nothing. But I think that we can make sense of this in a way that wouldn't require us to refer to non-existent objects. I think what we could say, for some existing person, that it's better for me, referring to me, that I exist than if I hadn't existed. And that seems to be intuitively right. We're not making a comparison between an existent and a non-existent being. We're talking about an existent being – me – and we're saying “I'm better off existing than if I hadn't existed,” because if I hadn't existed I wouldn't have had any value – right? – because there wouldn't be any person at all. And similarly a person in Hell, I think you could say, is worse off than if he hadn't existed in the sense that the person in Hell is miserable whereas if he hadn't existed he wouldn't be miserable—right?

Kevin Harris: Right, that's what I tend to think.

Dr. Craig: So, I think you just put it in these counterfactual terms that a person's state is better than if he hadn't either existed or been in this other state.

Kevin Harris: And you've discussed in past podcasts that the actuality that people will tragically end up in Hell does not have veto power over God's desire to create and his purposes for creating.

Dr. Craig: Right, right. They're there of their own volition; they've rejected and spurned God's grace and so have no one but themselves to blame for their miserable state.

Kevin Harris: Okay, and once again, go to ReasonableFaith.org and get that new app for your iPhone, your iPod Touch, or your iPad at ReasonableFaith.org, and well see you next time. [3]