Atheism and Theistic Hypotheses

KEVIN HARRIS: Dr. Craig, from time to time we talk about Keith Parsons. He continues to write, and to write about you, and to interact with you. That famous debate that occurred in the 90s – the first debate that I had a chance to be in attendance – was 4,000 people. I tell you what made that such a good debate. Not only the content, but also the fact that he was such a nemesis – blustery, loud, intimidating . . .

DR. CRAIG: Yes!

KEVIN HARRIS: . . . and yelling. It was like WWF almost! There was tension in the crowd like, Is Dr. Craig going to be able to answer this? Then this sigh of relief and lots of applause at your response. That has always been a good debate.

DR. CRAIG: Yes. And what we have now in this blog^[1] is a sort of kinder, gentler Keith Parsons where he says that he's changed his tune now. I couldn't help but reflect on that debate that you mentioned at Prestonwood Baptist Church with Keith back in the early 90s^[2] because at that time he was cantankerous. He was the one that was bludgeoning his opponent. I remember he showed up at the debate wearing a big floppy brim hat, and he boasted to me, “This is my butt-kicking hat.” And he had in his pocket a big stogie that he said, “I'm gonna go out and smoke this in the parking lot of the church after the debate just to congratulate myself.” This was the old Keith Parsons, and, as you say, people loved it. He was so cantankerous and entertaining. But now! Oh, my goodness! Now we have a new gentler Keith Parsons to deal with apparently.

KEVIN HARRIS: Yes. We've talked about his reaction to a book by Tim Crane: The Meaning of Belief: Religion from an Atheist’s Point of View, and here it is in a nutshell: Keith Parsons is saying, “Well, you can hardly blame us atheists for saying that the claims of Christian apologists, the claims of the religious, and so on are more than just identification and religious impulse but are really trying to say, ‘This has scientific merit.’” Then he includes William Dembski, Michael Behe, and yourself, Bill, in trying to make his case that you're not just saying that this is a religious impulse or feeling or wanting to identify with a community but that it's really truth and that you're making truth claims here about reality. Am I getting that right here?

DR. CRAIG: Partly. The essence of this new gentler, kinder Keith Parsons is his conviction that there are no good arguments for or against the existence of God and that religion isn't properly about explaining things. Religion is a sort of way of interpreting reality. The religious person interprets reality along the lines of God’s existence and so on, where the atheist doesn't interpret reality in that way. Parsons appeals, of all people, to my doctoral mentor, John Hick, who thought that the world is religiously ambiguous and therefore with equal justification could be interpreted either way and so you can be perfectly reasonable and disagree about questions like God's existence. Parsons seems to think that this somehow undercuts what I'm about in my own work and ministry. I think that's quite mistaken.

KEVIN HARRIS: Why do you think he's mistaken?

DR. CRAIG: Because I would agree with Crane (whom Parsons quotes) that religion is not posing an explanatory hypothesis. Religion is a way of life that involves worship and prayer and fellowship and all of the sorts of things that go to make up a religious way of life. But that doesn't follow that philosophically we cannot therefore ask ourselves what are the merits of a religious view of the world. Are there any reasons to think that it's true? Are there any reasons to think that God exists? As a philosopher, I think you can pose those kinds of questions and it's quite legitimate to ask whether or not the hypothesis that God exists makes good sense of the evidence. So I agree with Keith that religion as such is not the quest for an explanatory hypothesis. It's a way of life. But as a philosopher we can ask questions about truth and reality and ask whether or not there are any good arguments or evidence in support of theistic belief. Now, when I look at the world I don't agree with John Hick that the world is completely religiously ambiguous. Certainly God's existence could be a lot clearer than it is. No one is saying that it's compelling that every rational person has to believe that God exists on the basis of the evidence. I've avoided, I think if you look at my work, trying to bludgeon opponents as Keith seems to think I do. I don't think I've ever said that atheists are irrational. What I've argued is that faith is reasonable – reasonable faith – that it's rational in view of the evidence to have faith. And I don't think I've ever denounced atheists as irrational. Now, to be sure, I think that many atheists do believe some irrational things. For example, I do think it's irrational to believe that the universe popped into being uncaused out of nothing. I think it's irrational to believe, as some atheists do, that nothing ever begins to exist. I think it's irrational to think that time is not real, as some have claimed. But I've never tried to say that my opponents in these debates or the people I'm trying to persuade are irrational. Rather, I would simply disagree with Keith and Professor Hick that the universe is as religiously ambiguous as he would like to claim. I think that there are good reasons, there's good evidence for thinking that God exists. I noticed that just beneath the veneer of this new gentler, kindler Keith Parsons lurks, I think, the old Keith Parsons that we knew and loved. Because he says,

If Hick is right, what follows? Perhaps both atheists and religious apologists should cease their efforts to devise polemical weapons to bludgeon the other side into submission since we should know by now that this will not work.

That's the old Keith Parsons! If you disagree with him that the universe is religiously ambiguous and that there is some good evidence for God's existence then you are guilty of devising polemical weapons to bludgeon the other side into submission. It seems to me that it's Keith here who's saying, “If you don't agree with me that the universe is religiously ambiguous then I'm going to bludgeon you into submission by characterizing your position in the way that I just described.” I think if Keith wants to be kindler and gentler then he has to recognize that people can also disagree about the religious ambiguity of the universe, and people can offer arguments and evidence for their religious beliefs without thinking that we are trying to bludgeon people with the use of polemical weapons.

KEVIN HARRIS: He goes on to say,

In a 2018 podcast of “Reasonable Faith,” Kevin Harris interviews Professor Craig about Crane’s book and my review of it:

https://www.reasonablefaith.org/media/reasonable-faith-podcast/how-atheists-get-it-wrong-part-one/

. . .

Professor Craig argues that, while theistic hypotheses are explanatory, it is “tendentious and inaccurate” to characterize them in general as “semi-scientific” or “proto-scientific.” Craig does admit that the ID theorists regard their hypothesis as scientific. However, they claim that their arguments for intelligent design are religiously neutral, so I err in identifying this hypothesis as a specifically religious or theistic hypothesis.

ID theory is religiously neutral? How can that be when it was developed and promoted explicitly as part of an aggressive apologetic program?

DR. CRAIG: I share his skepticism that ID was religious or is religiously neutral. When you look at its proponents, these are very often committed Christians and do want to persuade people to believe in God and in Christ. But as an intellectual position, I am quite convinced that these ID theorists like Dembski and others are not being disingenuous when they say that ID is not a religious hypothesis. They do not identify the designer with God even if they believe in their personal lives that the designer is God. The design inference is to show simply that there is an intelligent designer of the cosmos, and this could be a number of different alternatives. It could be aliens. It could be that we are microscopic beings in a gigantic laboratory where people are creating worlds like ours. It could be Zeus rather than someone like the God of the Bible. The ID program is simply an attempt to show that the best explanation of biological complexity is an intelligent designer. Now, as for myself, what I meant in saying that my work is not an attempt to offer a quasi-scientific hypothesis is that I am not proposing some sort of alternative to contemporary science. Rather, what I'm claiming is that contemporary science can provide evidence for a premise in a philosophical argument leading to a conclusion that has theological significance. So, for example, scientific evidence can be marshaled in support of the second premise of the kalam cosmological argument that the universe began to exist. And that philosophical argument leads to a conclusion that is theologically significant. Or, again, scientific evidence can support the second premise in the fine-tuning argument that the fine-tuning of the universe is not plausibly attributed to chance or design. And that can serve as a premise then in a philosophical argument for a conclusion having theological significance. That's what I meant when I said that I'm not trying to offer quasi-scientific hypotheses in support of theism. To repeat, the scientific evidence provides support for a premise in a philosophical argument that leads to a conclusion having theological significance. In the end, I think that Parsons comes to admit this in his blog. He says,

Craig’s theistic hypothesis appears intended to provide a deeper and more inclusive explanation than physical cosmology. Physical cosmology is not falsified by Craig’s theistic hypothesis, but rather is subsumed by it.

And for that reason I would say it's metaphysical. It is a metaphysical hypothesis that subsumes physical cosmology. And in the end Parsons says,

Let’s concede the point for the sake of argument and say that Craig’s hypothesis is a “metaphysical” hypothesis rather than a “scientific” or “quasi-scientific” one.

I think that's right. I think he should concede that, and that is correct. But he says the point remains,

. . . the reasoning underlying religious belief is interpretive rather than hypothetical.

I don't disagree with that. Remember, I said, “Yes, religion is a matter of a way of life, a way of seeing reality.” But what is hypothetical, what does offer hypotheses, is philosophical reflection upon the material of religion and asking: Is there any good reason to think that these religious claims are true? And that, I think, is just unavoidable for any philosophical thinker.

KEVIN HARRIS: Can you talk a little bit about Keith Parsons’ mention of Richard Swinburne’s illustration that there are scientific explanations and personal explanations? He doesn't seem to buy that.

DR. CRAIG: I think that there, at least, he's misusing it in the way I understand it. One of the arguments I give for the personhood of the creator of the universe proved by the kalam cosmological argument is based upon this distinction that Swinburne makes. Swinburne says that causal explanations can be one of two types. They can either be scientific explanations in terms of laws of nature operating on initial conditions, or they can be personal explanations in terms of a personal agent and his volitions. Swinburne's point is that a first physical state of the universe cannot be given a scientific explanation because there are no prior initial conditions on which the laws of nature operate to produce a first physical state. So if there is a cause of the first physical state of the universe it must be a personal explanation in terms of a personal agent and his volitions. And that seems to me to be entirely correct. I think that's a very good argument for the personhood of the cause of the universe. That is not at all a misuse of Swinburne's categorization of two types of causal explanation.

KEVIN HARRIS: He continues on his blog here,

Craig does not reply to Hick’s view directly, but chiefly expresses surprise that I have supposedly so softened my view of theism that I am now willing to endorse Hick’s view that religious belief can be as rational as naturalism. (n.b., Actually, I have always regarded some religious belief as rational and some definitely not.) What, then, do I have against the apologetic enterprise that he represents? Why do I harshly characterize it as an attempt to “bludgeon” opponents into submission? After all, he is only trying to show that his belief is rational and not to show that atheists are irrational. Why do I persist in seeing the apologetic enterprise as coercive, i.e. as an effort to show not just that their belief is justified, but that mine is not? That is not his aim at all.

. . . I cannot read his presentation and defense of that argument in any other way. In this case, the argument is not a modest claim about what he is justified in believing, but the much stronger and more aggressive claim that atheism is demonstrably false and groundless. In other words, he seems to be arguing that he is right and that atheists are dead wrong.

DR. CRAIG: That again is Keith's caricature of what I'm doing. I am not arguing that atheism is demonstrably false and groundless. Rather, I'm saying that when you look at the evidence, the preponderance of the evidence weighs in favor of theism. How much stronger it weighs in the favor of theism? That's up to you to determine for yourself. I present what I regard as good arguments and evidence for the existence of God. I think that it tips the balance in the favor of theism rather than atheism. But that's not to say that these arguments are demonstrations and that I have shown the atheists are dead wrong. I think they are wrong. I think they're mistaken, but it's based upon probability. I think the evidence shows that God probably exists and therefore tips in the favor of the theistic hypothesis. And that is not coercion. That is not bludgeoning. And it is not caricaturizing my opponents in the way that Keith tends to caricaturize me.

KEVIN HARRIS: I wonder if Keith feels bludgeoned. I wonder if he feels a little bludgeoned here.

DR. CRAIG: It sounds like it which I think is so strange because I haven't bludgeoned Keith. I'm just saying, “Look, I disagree with you that the world is as religiously ambiguous as you and Professor Hick think it is. When I look at the evidence, I think on balance it supports theism.” And I invite him to look at the evidence and see if he doesn't agree. But if he doesn't agree, I'm not going to bludgeon him or denounce him or try to coerce him.

KEVIN HARRIS: This is how he ends the blog.

The debate between apologists and atheists therefore does appear to have an oppositional and aggressive character; it is not about what one may believe but what others must believe. However, if I have been misreading Craig all these years, and his aim all along has only been to affirm the rationality of his view and not to debunk mine, then I would suggest that Hick’s position provides a much better basis for such a softer and gentler apologetic.

DR. CRAIG: This is clearly a false dichotomy. I am not trying to coerce people into belief, but I am saying that theism is more reasonable in light of the evidence than non-theism. I would simply invite Keith to consider the evidence and see if he doesn’t agree. But that is not being aggressive, coercive, or bludgeoning.^[3]