Back to School: Preparing Your Kids to Answer Tough Questions

Kevin Harris: Have you done your homework? That’s a question that we’ve all dreaded hearing, especially me. And even if you’re out of school like me, it sure brings back memories. As students head back to school after summer vacation, what are some of the intellectual as well as spiritual considerations for both parents and students as they go back to school? Dr. Craig has some important answers on this podcast today.

Welcome to Reasonable Faith with Dr. William Lane Craig. I’m Kevin Harris. And whether you’re still in school or you’ve been out a long time, I think you’ll agree that the questions Dr. Craig addresses today are some of the most common classroom and campus questions that come up again and again. And if you’re a parent with kids in school, you’ll especially want to hear this podcast.

As we head to the studio, please remember that your prayerful and financial support undergirds the work of Reasonable Faith. We appreciate your support. You can go to ReasonableFaith.org, give online, and check out all the free resources available. That’s ReasonableFaith.org. Now, let’s join Dr. Craig.

As we record this podcast, Bill, it’s the time of year when students and parents are getting ready for school to start across the nation, across parts of the world. So, we’ve come up with about 10 common back-to-school questions. We’ve done podcasts on every one of these. You’ve got to work on them. These come up most often in science and philosophy classes, but also in dorm room and lunchroom discussions. I’ve had many late-night dorm discussions on just about every one of these questions.

Looking at these 10 questions, I noticed that they’re the same questions I began asking in middle school, and those same questions continued all the way through college. Before we get to the first question, do you have any reminiscences of you and Jan getting your kids equipped and ready for school? I’m sure that, well, these same questions probably came up.

Dr. Craig: We certainly did try to train them in Christian doctrine so that they would have an understanding of what we believe and tried to model for them intellectual engagement. But we didn’t have exactly a discipleship program in apologetics per se. I just made myself available to answer questions that they might bring up.

Kevin Harris: These questions. Bill, how old do you think you were when you started pondering these? I know that you started feeling that angst, your mortality, and things like that. A lot of that was in high school.

Dr. Craig: Yes. And really even younger. I think I felt that existential dread of my own death and the meaninglessness of life if it simply ends at the grave. I felt that very early on. And then I do remember in high school – biology classes – thinking about evolutionary theory and how that would impact the stories of Adam and Eve and things of that sort.

Kevin Harris: Sure. And I bring it up because I’m willing to bet that with the advent of the Internet, that that age is probably younger, maybe fifth, sixth, seventh grade. The kids run into profound questions. And so, in many ways, this is an important podcast today, and we’re going to look at these back-to-school special questions, and get your thoughts on them. They’re in no particular order, but I think the first question is certainly at the top of the list, and that is this: number one: Does evolution show that the Bible is false?

Dr. Craig: I think that the only people who need to be worried about the biological theory of evolution is Young Earth Creationists who believe that the Bible teaches that the world was created a few thousand years ago in six literal consecutive 24-hour days. On that interpretation of Genesis 1, the theory of biological evolution certainly presents a challenge.

But if you are not such a literalist about Genesis 1, then what is striking is that the narrative says absolutely nothing about how God created animal and plant life on this planet. Instead, it actually suggests that God did use means, that they were not simply created out of nothing. For example, it says of the vegetation, “Let the earth bring forth vegetation, trees bearing fruit after their kind,” and so forth. And then of the animals, it says, “Let the earth bring forth these animals after their kinds.” So the Genesis narrative actually seems to contemplate God using means to bring about the various life forms.

So unless you’re a Young Earther, I think you can simply allow the evidence to lead you to wherever it points. Any doubts that I have about the biological theory of evolution would be scientific doubts, not theological doubts. I don’t think there is any theological objection to the theory.

Indeed, I think that the narrative of creation in Genesis 1 gives indications itself that it is not to be interpreted in this wooden literalistic way. To mention just one fact – the seventh day is clearly not a 24-hour period of time because the seventh day never ends. We are still in God’s day of Sabbath rest. So if that day need not be a literal 24-hour period of time, what confidence can you have that the others are? So I don’t think that the Bible-believing Christian is obligated to take a literal interpretation of the creation story in Genesis 1.

Kevin Harris: Do you agree with me when I said that that’s probably, at least that category, is pretty close to the top of the list? It’s always, “Yeah. What about evolution?” Do you agree it’s pretty . . .

Dr. Craig: I do, and I think for many students it’s not a matter of raising an objection to the Bible, which is properly the way the question should be framed, but they think that it’s an argument for atheism. They think that this somehow disproves God’s existence, which is just wholly misconceived.

Kevin Harris: Number two is a variation of the problem of evil. If God exists and doesn’t want evil in the world, then why in the world is there evil?

Dr. Craig: I think that it’s possible that there is no world of free persons feasible for God in which nobody ever sins. I suspect that in any world of free persons that involves as much good as the actual world, there will also be this much evil. And therefore, evil is part of the cost-benefit analysis of creating a world in which millions and millions of people come to know God and his love and salvation forever. So I think that it’s a function of the free will of creatures.

Kevin Harris: Let me just do a little promo here. We have a podcast coming up that deals with this topic in a little more depth, and so stay tuned for that. That’ll be in a couple of weeks.

Number three: If there is a mistake in the Bible, does that mean Christianity is false?

Dr. Craig: No, not necessarily. The great American philosopher W. V. O. Quine spoke of a person’s worldview as being like a web of beliefs. And beliefs that are closer to the center of the web are more deeply ingrained and are less easily given up. Because if you were to pluck out one of those strands near the center of the web, the whole web would be disrupted and might even be destroyed.

But as you move farther and farther and farther out toward the periphery of the web, then those beliefs are not so deeply ingrained. And to remove one of those beliefs would not cause great reverberations through one’s web of beliefs.

If we think of Christianity as like a web of beliefs, what would be the beliefs that would be right at the center of the web? It seems to me it would be beliefs like the existence of God, the deity of Christ, Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, the Trinity, his death for our sins. These are beliefs that are right at the center of our web of beliefs. So that if one of those were to be falsified or given up, I think the web would be destroyed.

But belief in the inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible is one of those more peripheral beliefs. It is a belief that is held by some Christians but not by all. And if you were to abandon that belief by being convinced that there’s a mistake in what the Bible teaches, that would cause you to revise your beliefs a little bit, but it wouldn’t cause a tremendous reverberation throughout the web of your beliefs.

So the short answer to the question is, if someone were to show that the Bible is mistaken in its teaching in some respect, that would not mean that Christianity is false, unless you’re talking about one of those core beliefs at the center of our web of beliefs.

Kevin Harris: Number four: How could God blame us for sinning if he already knows what we’re going to do? I think that needs a little unpacking, Bill. There’s kind of a question behind the question, and that is, if he knew we were going to sin, then why did he create us? That’s one version of it. Knowing what we were going to do in advance, well, then he shouldn’t have let us ever be born and be separated from him in hell and things like that. So, this is kind of multifaceted, perhaps.

Dr. Craig: Yes, it is. I took it to mean that if God knows in advance what you’re going to do and God is infallible, then can you really do it freely? Aren’t you constrained to do it? So that divine foreknowledge robs you of freedom. Everything becomes set in concrete because of God’s infallible foreknowledge.

The fallacy of this reasoning is that God’s foreknowledge does not determine what we will do. Rather, what we will do determines what God foreknows. The arrow of influence doesn’t go from God’s foreknowledge to our choices. Rather, it goes from our choices to God’s foreknowledge.

So God’s foreknowledge has been very aptly compared to an infallible barometer of the weather. If you had an infallible barometer of tomorrow’s weather, then you would know exactly and with certainty what the weather will be like tomorrow. But does the barometer determine the weather? No, of course not. The weather determines the barometer.

And similarly with God’s foreknowledge, God’s foreknowledge is based upon what we will freely choose to do. So at the time of our choice, we are free to either do A or to refrain from doing A. And if it is true, if God knows that we will do A, then we will do A, but we could do not-A instead. And if we were to choose not-A, then God’s foreknowledge would have been different.

So we have the power to do A or not-A. And whichever one we choose, God will have foreknown.

Kevin Harris: I love that question. I really do. I think it’s great.

The Gospels, number five, were written way after Jesus died. How can we be sure that Jesus actually rose from the dead if all we have are stories written decades later?

Dr. Craig: New Testament historians have developed quite a number of tools for excavating the historical Jesus and figuring out exactly what can be known historically about Jesus. You see, the Gospels are historical documents about real people, real events, real places that you can read about in secular literature of the first century.

These events in the Gospels in the life of Jesus are multiply attested by different sources. In addition to that, some of them would be embarrassing for the early Christian church and therefore unlikely to have been made up or invented. Others are quite dissimilar to either antecedent Judaism or subsequent Christianity and therefore most likely go back to the historical Jesus.

One of the most important considerations is that these texts were written within the first generation of the events, within the lifetime of the eyewitnesses, and therefore have a very good claim to go back to eyewitness testimony.

Now compare this with secular literature concerning events of the ancient world. For example, the earliest biographies of Alexander the Great were written by Arrian and Plutarch around 400 years after Alexander’s death. And yet classical historians still regard them as largely reliable accounts of the life of Alexander.

So when you come to the Gospels, we’re talking about multiple biographies of Jesus and letters of Paul that are written within the first generation of the events, in the lifetime of the eyewitnesses.

Moreover, one of the most exciting features of contemporary historical Jesus research is the identification of the sources that the New Testament authors used. The sources that lie behind the New Testament documents, and these go back even earlier than the Gospels do.

So, for example, the material that Paul transmits in 1 Corinthians 15 about the death, burial, resurrection, and appearances of Christ have been dated to within 5 years of Jesus’ crucifixion. Similarly, the passion story that Mark relates goes back, I think, to around AD 40 or so, around 10 years after Jesus’ death.

So, we’re not talking here about narratives that developed over the centuries and over the decades, long after the eyewitnesses were dead and gone. We are talking about events and sources that go right back to the first few years after Jesus’ death, and that are multiply attested and exhibit many other signs of historical veracity.

Kevin Harris: I like these questions because they’re just like how kids talk and what kids usually ask, like this one. If Christianity is true, why are there so many different religions in the world?

Dr. Craig: Yeah. Well, think about that for a moment. For most of human history on this planet, various populations have been very isolated from one another. There was no sort of communication between these cultures.

So think of the people in what is today South America and North America. Until Columbus or at least the Vikings, there was no contact of these peoples with peoples in the Middle East or in Europe. Think of the peoples in Africa and the peoples in Central Asia and the South Pacific.

For most of human history, these populations were very isolated from one another. And so, of course, different religions grew up in those different areas. And when they finally did come in contact with each other, these differences became evident.

So, for example, Shintoism grew in Japan. Buddhism in China and the Indochina, Hinduism in India. Polytheism of various sorts in Africa. So it’s quite natural that there would be many different religions in the world even if Christianity is true. Christianity didn’t originate until around 2,000 years ago. It was focused in Israel. And then over the centuries, it gradually expanded and spread and spread and spread until today, Christianity has filled the entire globe with its influence. But that’s been a gradual process. And so naturally, Christianity would then encounter the native religions in these other lands.

And so really the question I think here to be asked is: Is there any good reason to think that Christianity is true? And of course, at Reasonable Faith, that’s what we’re all about: giving good reasons to believe that a personal creator God exists and that he’s revealed himself especially in Jesus of Nazareth and has vindicated Jesus’ radical personal claims by his resurrection from the dead.

Kevin Harris: You’ve already addressed most of this – question number seven – but it’s come up again. The Bible says everything was created in 6 days, but scientists say the universe is billions of years old. Who’s correct?

Dr. Craig: I think that the evidence does indicate that the universe is around 13.8 billion years old and that the earth is older than 4 billion years. So there is a long history of life on this planet regardless of whether or not you think that all of this life is interconnected with one another and goes back to common ancestors.

So I think there is a long history of life on planet Earth. What I would question, though, is whether Genesis 1 teaches that the world was created in six consecutive 24-hour days. And as I’ve already indicated, I think that there are clues in the text itself that indicate this isn’t to be taken literally.

When you look at the type of literature that Genesis 1 belongs to, it is the type of literature rather like poetry that isn’t intended to be taken literally. And so while Genesis has important truths to teach us, we need not regard it as a scientific account of the origin of life on this planet.

Kevin Harris: Here’s a good one, Bill. Your ministry is called Reasonable Faith. But isn’t faith believing in something without evidence?

Dr. Craig: No, it is not. That is not the biblical conception of faith. Faith is trusting in what you have good reason to think is true. Let me repeat that. Faith is trusting in what you have good reason to think is true. So faith is not a way of knowing something. Faith is trusting in something. It’s a repose of the heart and mind in something that you are justified in believing to be true. So faith can be quite reasonable if you have good justification for what you believe.

Kevin Harris: Question number nine, and it’s a variation of “Where did God come from?” Or “Who created God?”

Dr. Craig: I think that the answer is that God is a self-existent being, or what philosophers call a metaphysically necessary being. That is to say, he exists by a necessity of his own nature so that it is metaphysically impossible for God not to exist.

Now if that’s right, that means that God could never begin to exist and never cease to exist. He will exist eternally or permanently. And therefore the idea that God could be created by anything is precluded. God, as a maximally great being, has the property of self-existence and therefore is both uncreated and uncreatable.

Kevin Harris: Here’s number 10. Can we use scientific experiments or evidence that God exists?

Dr. Craig: I would put it this way. Science can provide evidence in support of a premise in a philosophical argument for God’s existence. Again, let me repeat that: science can provide evidence in support of a premise in a philosophical argument for God’s existence.

So, to give a couple of examples, take the cosmological argument. It goes like this. Premise one, whatever begins to exist has a cause. Premise two, the universe began to exist. Three, therefore, the universe has a cause. And then you unpack what it means to be a cause of the universe. And a number of theologically striking properties of this first uncaused cause emerge.

Now the second premise of that argument – the universe began to exist – is a proposition to which scientific evidence is certainly relevant. You will find that proposition discussed in any contemporary textbook on astrophysics and astronomy. Did the universe begin to exist or is it past eternal? What is the evidence for the beginning of the universe?

So this would be an example of scientific evidence that can be adduced in support of a premise in a philosophical argument for God’s existence.

Another example would be the argument from fine-tuning. It goes like this. The fine-tuning of the universe is due to either physical necessity, chance, or design. Premise two, it is not due to physical necessity or chance. Three, therefore, it is due to design. So this is an argument for a cosmic designer of the universe.

Now again, notice that second premise. The fine-tuning is not due to physical necessity or to chance. That is a premise to which scientific evidence is relevant. For example, Richard Dawkins, no friend of theism, argues against physical necessity as an explanation of fine-tuning. Roger Penrose, the eminent cosmologist, argues against chance as an explanation for the origin of the fine-tuning.

So, scientific evidence, again, can be brought to bear on a premise in a philosophical argument for the existence of God.

Kevin Harris: Well, that’s just 10 questions, and we could keep going, but I think that these 10 cover variations of some of the most common things that are asked, Bill. As we conclude, this probably will take your pastoral and your academic side. Do you have any advice for parents who hope to prepare their children intellectually and spiritually for the school year?

Dr. Craig: I think that one thing parents need to do is to prepare themselves to give answers. As I said, with our own children, I would often wait to hear their questions and then I would address them.

But I think many parents, many laymen, in our churches are not themselves intellectually engaged, and therefore they’re ineffective in answering the questions that their children confront in school. So I would say the very first thing they need to do is to equip themselves and then worry later about equipping their kids.