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Alleged Evidence Against God

August 05, 2013     Time: 25:11
Alleged Evidence Against God

Summary

Unjustified evil? Incoherence of God's attributes? Worldwide demographics? A prominent atheist website lists evidence against God

Transcript Alleged Evidence Against God

 

Kevin Harris: Welcome, come on in. This is the podcast of Reasonable Faith with Dr. William Lane Craig. I’m Kevin Harris. Dr. Craig, I will look on the web from time to time and go to some of the more prominent websites that represent a naturalistic or atheistic point of view and will bring some the material to the podcast to discuss with you. I’m looking at one of the more prominent websites right here, and the author lists objections or evidence against God.[1] So, let’s take a look and get your thoughts.

Dr. Craig: Yes, and I think it is important, Kevin, to note right at the beginning a couple of positive things about this. First, the author recognizes that atheism is the view that God does not exist. He is not claiming that atheism is equivalent to the absence of belief in God, which would make it incapable of being either true or false - it would just be a description of a person’s personal psychology, but he is interested in whether or not God exist. He defines atheism to be the view that God does not exist. Second positive thing about it is that he’s willing to offer arguments for it. Although he says that atheists have no burden of proof, nevertheless, he is willing to put forward some arguments for it. I would think that if an atheist is commending his view that God does not exist he certainly does have a burden of proof, but at least this person is willing to try to shoulder that burden. So, that’s a positive thing.

Kevin Harris: He says there are two main categories of evidence that could be used, and he will divide his arguments into different sections for these categories. The first is called evidential arguments. These are arguments that some facts about the world are cited as evidence against God’s existence. For example, the large amount of suffering in the world and the argument from biblical defects. These arguments carry the probabilistic conclusion that God does not exist. The second is called logical evidence against God’s existence. These are philosophical evidences which site the proposition that God exists is logically incoherent in some way or the concept of God is incoherent in some way. What do you think about those categories?

Dr. Craig: That’s fine, that makes a clear differentiation, I think, between arguments about the coherence of theism and then evidential arguments against God.

Kevin Harris: First one up, surprise surprise, is the argument from evil and suffering. The problem of evil cites the large amount of suffering is evidence against God’s existence. Here is the syllogism.

1. If God exists, unjustified evil does not exist.

2. Unjustified evil does exist.

3. Therefore, God does not exist.

He goes on to say that the world is full of unnecessary, unjustified, suffering and evil.

Dr. Craig: Right, and that will be the key burden of proof that he will have to bear if he is the put the argument through. Now, many theist have denied the first premise, that if God exists, unjustified evil does not exist. Peter van Inwagen, for example, thinks that although God exists, that doesn’t mean that everything in the world that occurs has some justification for why it takes place. So, that first premise is not just obviously true; though, I myself, am inclined to agree with it. The burden for the atheist here will be to prove that unjustified evil exists. Indeed, Kevin, one can reverse this argument by saying:

1*. If God exists, unjustified evil does not exist.

2*. God exists. (and here one would produce all of one’s arguments for theism.)

From which it follows,

3* Therefore, unjustified evil does not exist.

Although certainly evils occur that appear to be unnecessary, or unjustified, purposeless, nevertheless, given the good arguments for God’s existence, this evil is not really unjustified. So, this atheist is going to have the very, very difficult burden of showing that evil is not simply apparently unjustified, but that it really is unjustified. That is to say that God has no morally sufficient reason for allowing the evil and suffering in the world to occur, and the question will be, can he bear that burden of proof?

Kevin Harris: I looked through here and I didn’t see any justification for why he thought that it was unjustified or unnecessary, but I saw a laundry list of evils that we can all recite. Of course, and you get sick reading them.[2]

Dr. Craig: Yeah, he mentioned things like hurricane Sandy and the Haitian earthquake, but there isn’t even an attempt to show that these are unjustified - that God had no morally sufficient reason for permitting the Haitian earthquake or hurricane Sandy. So, at face value, the argument fails because he doesn’t even attempt to defend its key premise.

Kevin Harris: The writer goes on to say, “The existence of evil is a terrible stumbling block for the theist. Pain, misery, crime, poverty confront the advocate of eternal goodness, and challenge with unanswerable potency his declaration of Deity all-good, all-wise and all-powerful. Evil is either caused by God or it exist independently; but it cannot be caused by God, as in that case he would not be all-good; nor can it exist hostilely, as in that case he would not be all-powerful.”

Dr. Craig: So, here he poses a dilemma, and what he has done is he has lapsed back into the logical version of the problem of evil, Kevin. Now, he is no longer looking at evidential considerations as he claimed to be, now he has gone back to the logical version of the problem of evil and said if God is all good then he cannot be the cause of evil, if he is all powerful then there can’t be any independent source of evil, and therefore, evil should not exist if God is all good and all powerful. Well, the problem with the logical version of the problem of evil is that those assumptions are just not necessarily true. For example, if by evil you simply mean the pain and suffering in the world, well, then there is no reason to think that can’t be caused by God.

As C.S. Lewis nicely put it, Aslan is not a tame lion, and it may well be the case that God allows or causes suffering to come into our lives and into the world because he has morally justifying reasons for it, and the atheist would have to show that’s either logically impossible or highly improbable, and I don’t think he can do that. As Lewis said in another context, “What do people mean when they say, ‘I’m not afraid of God because I know that he is good,’ have they never even been to the dentist?” Lewis, remember, wrote that before dentists used novocaine. That was an unpleasant experience. So, I think it is not at all true that suffering can not be caused by God. Now, as for the other dilemma, nor can the evil exist hostilely because in that case he would not be all powerful. That fails to take into count the free will of creatures. With regard to moral evil, God cannot cause that, but if he creates beings who are truly free and allows them that freedom, then of course evil can exist hostilely to God. It is the great enemy of God which God will eventually overcome. So, I think that this logical version of the problem of evil is just a complete failure. It’s based on assumptions which are not necessarily true, or at least have not been shown to be necessarily true by the atheist.

Kevin Harris: One final note, he says, “This does not disprove the existence of all gods, however, it is strong evidence against a God that is supposedly all-loving, and all-powerful, and all-knowing.”

Dr. Craig: Right, and I think that we would agree that God is all-loving, all-powerful, and all-knowing. So, this would be relevant to the Christian concept of God. The problem is that neither the logical version of the problem nor the evidential version of the problem of evil has been successfully defended by this writer. He has not shouldered successfully the burden of proof that it would lay upon the atheist to show that God doesn’t have morally sufficient reasons for allowing the evil and suffering in the world.

Kevin Harris: Second argument is “The argument from demographics.

1. If the demographics of Theism are better explained by Atheism than Theism, then the demographics of Theism make Atheism more plausible than Theism.

2. The demographics of Theism are better explained by Atheism than Theism.

3. Therefore, Atheism is more plausible than Theism.”

He says, “We can begin by making some simple observations:

1. There are many more Muslims than Christians in Saudi Arabia;

2. There are many more Hindus in India than in the rest of the world ; and,

3. In the ancient world, every culture had its own mythology. In fact, these mythologies often contradicted each other and varied wildly.”

Dr. Craig: Well, this is a surprising argument in many ways. It doesn’t do anything to demonstrate atheism. At most, this would give some reason to believe in universalism, that God will save all persons, but it doesn’t do anything to show that God does not exist.[3] In fact, one of his examples is all the Muslims that exist, doesn’t he think that Muslims are theists? That is rather odd, I’d say. So, it seems to me, that this isn’t even an argument for atheism even if it were a sound argument. At the most, it might lead someone to believe in universalism, but I don’t think it even supports that very persuasively.

I am a Molinist, and I believe that God has so providentially ordered the world that people would come to know him and his existence and find him, and his existence is evident in nature and creation around us, and then through special revelation in the Gospel. I have argued that it is possible that God has so providentially ordered the world that anyone who would respond to the Gospel and be saved, is born at a time and place in history where, in fact, he does hear it, and that no one will be lost because of the accidents of geography and history. Indeed, in one sense, there are no accidents of geography and history. As Paul says in his address on Mars Hill,

The God who created the world has established every nation of men that they should inhabit the face of the whole earth, and He determined the exact times and places that they should live. He did this so that men might seek after God in the hope that they might feel for him and find him. Though, he is not far from any one of us, for in Him we live and move and have our being.[4]

So, Paul indicates there that God has providentially ordered the world in such a way as to maximize the number of persons that would freely come to know him, and I think this is a completely defensible view from a Molinist perspective that I have defended. Again, the author simply does not interact with these opposing points of view.

Kevin Harris: In the logical arguments, his first one is, what is God? It deals with the definition of God.

Before one can make a rational conclusion on whether or not God exists, we must first create a coherent definition of God . . . Consider the following dialogue:

● Person 1: "A Blorb Exists."

● Person 2: "Prove it."

● Person 1: "The universe must have had a cause and that cause was the blorb."

We can plug and chug any type of evidence for the existence of the blorb. However, we still cannot make a rational basis for the existence of the blorb until person 1 defines it. As W. T. Blackstone argues:

Until the content of a belief is made clear, the appeal to accept the belief on faith is beside the point, for one would not know what one has accepted.

Dr. Craig: Well, I agree with that. We need to understand what kind of being we are talking about, and I think the concept of God is a perfectly coherent concept. So, what he needs to show would be that God is undefinable or that there is no coherent concept of God.

Kevin Harris: And he goes on to say, “Not only does the definition of God need to be coherent but it must also be able to be falsified.”

Dr. Craig: That’s a mistake, you can’t falsify a definition. That’s not what definitions are. Definitions are not truth claims.

Kevin Harris: Here’s the syllogism.

1. If God were to exist, then an agreement upon the definition of God would be able to be reached;

2. However, there is no unified agreement on the definition of God. Even religions have disagreements within itself about what or whom God is;

3. Therefore, God probably does not exist.

Dr. Craig: Well, this is a horrible argument, Kevin. There is no reason to think that if God exists then there would be agreement upon the definition of God. Given the diversity of human opinion, it is not at all surprising that different people would have different concepts of God. What you can do is argue with each one of these persons, does his concept of God have an instance? Is there an instance or an example of that concept of God? So, there is just no problem. You take it on a case by case basis with regard to what that particular person believes.

Kevin Harris: I’ve noticed in your debates from time to time, Bill, you don’t necessarily offer up this exhaustive definition of God. You say the God of Christian theism or the God of classical theism, and if people want to know what that is there is plenty of literature on it and your material, as well. Do we need to perhaps define God more often if this guy’s complaint is right?

Dr. Craig: Well, it’s interesting, Kevin, in my arguments, the properties of the being which is reached at the conclusion of the argument are deduced from the argument itself.[5] So, one isn’t dependent on definitions, rather one can deduce the properties. So, for example, in the Kalam argument, on the basis of the argument for a cause of the universe, this cause would have to be uncaused because we have argued that there can not be an infinite regress of causes. So, you have to get back to a first uncaused cause. It would have to be beginningless because if it began to exist then it would have to have a cause according to the first premise, and we have seen that this is an uncaused cause. So, it’s an uncaused cause, beginningless, and since it created time and space it has to transcend time and space, and therefore, be timeless and spaceless. Because it transcends time and space it has to be immaterial because anything material would be constantly changing and would, therefore, be in time and space. So, we have got and uncaused, beginningless, timeless, spaceless, immaterial being. It brought the universe into existence, and therefore, must be enormously powerful as the cause of space and time, matter and energy. Then, I argue on several grounds for the personhood of this being as well. So, from the argument itself we are able to recover a number of striking properties of this cause of the universe that are theologically significant. It is an uncaused, beginningless, timeless, spaceless, immaterial, enormously powerful, personal creator of the universe.

Kevin Harris: And, Bill, we're recovering those attributes of God and that definition of God and deducing it from natural theology, general revelation. Where would special revelation come in on defining God?

Dr. Craig: Well, that would come in if one wants a theologically full-blooded definition of whom God is. For example, the Kalam argument, I don’t think, tells you anything about the moral character of this creator of the universe. He could be an absolute stinker for all we know, and I find that feature of the argument very attractive; it is modest. It gives you an uncaused, beginningless, timeless, spaceless, immaterial, enormously powerful, personal creator of the universe, but it doesn’t tell you whether he is good or not. This is, as you know, became quite the point of contention in my debate with Stephen Law in 2011 in Central Hall Westminster[6], where he would not argue about the Kalam argument, but insisted that because I hadn’t shown the goodness of this being, I hadn’t shown that God exists. I am quite happy to say that if that’s troublesome, that the Kalam argument doesn’t prove that God exists in that full, rich, theological sense. What it proves is that there is a personal creator of the universe that has these striking properties who may also be good, and then one might look to special revelation or other sources like the moral argument to find out if this being is in fact good.

Kevin Harris: Number four, he offers the incoherence of God. He says, “The standard definition of God is largely incoherent. According to the National Catholic Almanac there are 22 attributes of God.” He says, “At least two of the above attributes ("incomprehensible" and "ineffable") contradict the others. How can the other attributes of God be known if he can be neither understood nor described?”

Dr. Craig: Well, the problem with that argument is, we need to know what the Catholic Almanac means by the words incomprehensible and ineffable. With regard to incomprehensibility, this is usually meant in the literal sense that God is so great that the human mind can not fully take him in; it can not comprehend him, it can not encompass God completely. But it doesn't mean that the concept of God is unintelligible and that we have no conception of the way God truly is. Indeed, it lists quite a number of God’s attributes in this definition. So, I think it is just a failure on the author’s part to understand what traditional theology means by incomprehensible. As for ineffable, again, I’m not sure what the Catholic Almanac means. If that means that God’s nature is just utterly inexpressible by human language, then I agree with this author, that that would be contradicted by saying things like God is immortal, immense, loving, merciful, and so forth.[7] So, that makes me suspect that they mean something other than that by ineffable. If one means that it is incapable of being expressed in human language, than I would agree with the author that ineffability is not an attribute of God since we clearly do know many of his attributes.

Kevin Harris: It’s a good point though, that usually if you take incomprehensible at face value, that is troublesome, but like you pointed out, it just means that we perhaps can not exhaustively know God.

Dr. Craig: Sure, it’s just a failure to understand the theological term here. He is taking it in the popular sense of the word, rather than the way theologians use it.

Kevin Harris: He goes on to say, “If God has free will , as some Christians believe that he does, then how can he know everything?”

Dr. Craig: Well now, this is an expression of theological fatalism, I believe. The idea here is that if God knows what will happen then everything happens necessarily, and therefore, God cannot act freely. The problem here, I think, is that the argument for theological fatalism is simply flawed. It goes something like this:

1. Necessarily, if God foreknows that X will happen, then X will happen.

2. God foreknows that X will happen.

3. Therefore, necessarily, X will happen.

So, if X happens necessarily it means it doesn’t happen freely, and therefore, this would be incompatible with freedom. The problem is that conclusion doesn’t follow from those two premises. That commits a fallacy in modal logic. From those two premises, all that follows logically is that X will happen, but it doesn't follow that necessarily X will happen. X will happen, yes, but it will happen contingently. It could fail to happen, and if God were to will differently then X will not happen, in which case, God would have had different foreknowledge. So, God’s foreknowledge tracks the events like an infallible barometer predicts the weather, and if the weather were to be different or the event were to be different than the reading of the barometer or God’s foreknowledge would have been different. From the fact that the barometer reads what it does or God knows what he does you can infer what will happen, but it will not happen necessarily. It could fail to happen, but if it were to fail to happen then God would have foreknown differently or the barometer would have read differently. So, he has simply committed a modal fallacy and logical reasoning here that God’s free will is incompatible with exhaustive foreknowledge.

Kevin Harris: Bill, as we wrap up today, it looks like still number one with a bullet on many atheist apologist charts, is the problem of evil, and it often devolves into the old logical problem (which has been answered time and time again) with strong hints of the emotional problem of evil by listing these gut wrenching evils that make you want to cry.

Dr. Craig: Yes, we didn’t mention that before, but I think you are absolutely right. They think that simply by emotionally moving persons by listing atrocities and horrors, that that serves to demonstrate the second premise that unjustified evil exists, but they never explore whether or not God might have morally sufficient reasons for permitting these atrocities to occur. So, that it really does, I think, go back to just the emotional problem of evil. I think that the good thing about this is that we have drawn this person into the debate over the existence of God, and I think that that is really positive. So long as the person resists argumentation and dialogue, he can resort simply to ridicule and contempt and treat theists dismissively. But once they are drawn into dialogue and the argument then I think this is frankly a fatal move on the part of the atheist, because it will become very apparent how weak these arguments really are. So, this really represents the best hope for someone like this coming to believe in the existence of God by engaging in a rational discussion of these arguments. He has engaged an argument, and insofar as he has done that, I think, as the spider said to the fly, “Come into my parlor,” and he has come into the theist’s parlor here to engage in dialogue, and I think that represents the best hope that he might be won to theism.[8]