Is Dr. Craig Wrong About Deconstruction? Part Two

KEVIN HARRIS: He talks a little bit more about emotions in this next clip. Check this out:

BRANDON: So let's just take emotion out completely, and the funny thing is that Dr. Craig is not following his own advice. Dr. Craig is saying that even without evidence or argument one can know truth, know that Christ is the truth, because of the witness of the Holy Spirit. I'm not trying to be pedantic but what more do you attribute the witness of the Holy Spirit to than feeling? Than emotion? I've never heard anyone describe their encounter with the Holy Spirit – the Spirit of God, the witness of the Holy Spirit – in any other way than emotional or feeling. “Oh, I felt this stirring and I just knew,” “Oh, the most amazing peace came upon me,” “I had a tugging at my heart like I had never had before,” “I felt a conviction in my spirit that I was certain.” These are all feelings. These are all emotions. And yet they're good enough for Dr. Craig without some other defeater. But this is my point. It's hypocritical. He is willing to say emotion creates truth, it can create knowledge, as long as it's the correct one, and it's tied to the thing I already believe in. This is not truth. This is more emotional special pleading.

KEVIN HARRIS: This comes down to whether the witness of the Holy Spirit is only emotional or if it's more than emotional even though I suppose we may have an emotional response to the witness of the Holy Spirit. Bill?

DR. CRAIG: You're exactly right. Brandon fails to differentiate between an experience (which is by definition subjective) and the object of that experience which may well be an objectively existing reality. For example, my experience of the physical world around me is subjective. I seem to see things. I seem to feel things. I seem to hear things. I smell things. These are all subjective experiences. But they ground belief in the reality of a physical world around me as an objective reality. So all of our experiences are subjective or feelings, but that doesn't mean that the object of those experiences is subjective or illusory. I would say that the witness of the Holy Spirit is an objective external reality that can be subjectively experienced. What we're talking about here is properly basic beliefs which are grounded in experience. One's experience is, of course, subjective because it is one's experience. But the object of the experience can be very real. So I can have a subjective experience of an objectively existing external world, or a subjective experience of objective moral values and duties. There is no reason to think that properly basic beliefs are not part of what reason delivers to us. We are justified in holding to such properly basic beliefs unless and until we have some overriding defeater of those beliefs. Now, I'm completely open to the atheists defending atheism as a properly basic belief grounded in our experience. The problem is I don't think that there is such an experience. What is the experience that would ground atheism as a properly basic belief? It is certainly not anger and disappointment that so often motivates the deconstruction on the part of Christians. Moreover, I think we've got good defeaters for atheism because we've got good arguments for the existence of God. So even if it seems to the atheist that God does not exist, I think that that is not properly basic for him because we've got overriding defeaters.

KEVIN HARRIS: A few more clips from Brandon. Let's check out this next one.

BRANDON: Unfortunately, to many Christians it can feel and seem and is told to be downright blasphemous: How dare you question God. How dare you doubt. Who are you? What intellect do you have that you think allows you to see better, know better, or even conceive of the idea that you could by looking into these things? These things have been handled. You're not special. Look what the church fathers did. Don't you trust your Bible? Don't you have God working in your life? All of these things that lead to so much shame, and it can just turn to such awful negative. Anything other than the peace that is promised to be surpassing above all understanding. Wrong. If we are not free to actually question our beliefs, if we are not free to actually deconstruct why we believe what we believe, we are not free. So Christians can't have this both ways. You cannot say don't look into it, don't doubt, don't question, and you also can't say look into it, doubt, and question without the possibility of you being wrong. It's not really looking into it or doubting or questioning if you can't arrive at a different conclusion.

KEVIN HARRIS: Well, which is it, Bill? Are we supposed to look into it or not look into it? What's his complaint here?

DR. CRAIG: I don't think I've ever told anybody not to think about their Christian faith. I would simply differentiate between deconstruction, which I think is an essentially destructive, negative, skeptically motivated process of dismantling one's faith, and what I would call critical thinking. I think we all should develop critical thinking skills to weigh whether or not we believe what we believe is true. So there's really no difference here between us. I think we're just calling it by different labels.

KEVIN HARRIS: Here's the next clip from Brandon.

AUDIO OF DR. CRAIG: And I am not in the least interested in deconstructing someone's faith. I'm interested in constructing.

BRANDON: And by the way, biblically, do you think the Bible lines more up with what I'm saying or what Dr. Craig is saying? Let's look at a few verses here just to be sure. 1 Thessalonians 5:21, “Test all things. Hold fast what is good.” That is the definition of deconstruction. I'm going to test all of it. Nothing's off limits. Nothing is taboo. Nothing is sacred. And then I'll hold on to what's left. What is good. What passed the test.

KEVIN HARRIS: Are you not in line with the Scripture?

DR. CRAIG: I hope that I'm certainly in line with this Scripture. I think that the difference here between us is merely semantic. What I call critical thinking, Brandon calls deconstruction. And I'm fairly confident that that's not the way the word is typically used in social media circles these days. So if we're talking about two entirely different things then really there is no issue of disagreement between us.

KEVIN HARRIS: Here's the next clip from Brandon. Let's go to that.

BRANDON: 1 Peter 3:15, “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have, but do this with gentleness and respect.” How can you do that if you haven't first examined it. It says to be prepared. That means to have done work ahead of time. That work is deconstruction. Now, if you want to call it a different term because you think deconstruction is inherently negative or has a negative connotation, fine. But, again, I think it is this fundamental misunderstanding or purposeful misunderstanding from Dr. Craig that says stop deconstructing, start constructing. They're one and the same, my friend.

DR. CRAIG: Brandon thinks that constructing is the same as deconstructing, but surely that's not correct. The prefix “de” is from the Latin meaning “to take something away from.” For example, you defang a snake, you defrost the windshield, you degrade something as opposed to upgrading. So I would just ask the members of our audience as you hear these terms used: Do you think that construction and deconstruction are synonymous terms?

KEVIN HARRIS: Here's the next clip.

AUDIO OF DR. CRAIG: I'm interested in constructing a Christian world and life view that is biblically coherent.

BRANDON: What is that, Dr. Craig? What is it? Now, I'm sure he's going to have an answer. Some people will tell you pre-trib, some people will tell you post-trib. You don't have a biblically coherent worldview. You simply do not. And I could give literally a thousand more examples about what Christians do not agree on. So before you tell someone not to start looking into it, not to deconstruct it, and then instead to construct it off of a biblically coherent worldview, you need to be able to agree as Christians what that worldview is. And, by the way, I'm going to say it's going to be near impossible to do without the process of deconstruction.

KEVIN HARRIS: It sounds like he's saying that Christians don't agree on everything, therefore Christianity is false. Bill?

DR. CRAIG: Again, I repeat that I am not telling people not to look into things. When I talk about biblical coherence, what I mean is a worldview that is in accord with the teachings of the Bible. And that in no way implies that there is only one such biblically coherent worldview. There are many different interpretations that are biblically consistent. I think people who are familiar with my Defenders lectures on Christian doctrine know that I very typically share different views on various topics from Catholics, Lutherans, Wesleyans, Calvinists, Arminians, and so on. So I think that there is a diversity of biblically coherent worldviews on offer for us to decide among. And the way we will decide is by thinking critically about these different doctrinal formulations. Now some views would not be biblically consistent. For example, atheism or unitarianism or views that deny Jesus’ physical resurrection. Those would be views that the criterion of biblical coherence would preclude as viable options.

KEVIN HARRIS: One more clip from Brandon. This is near the end of his video.

BRANDON: Test everything and hold on to what is good. It doesn't mean you have to have the answer for everything else. This is where so many people get tripped up. And sorry I know I'm preaching now, but all I can hear is all the believers who say. Well, test everything, hold on to what is good. What's good about atheism? It's true. That's what's good about it. I don't have to have an answer for exactly how the world came into being before I can say that this particular God doesn't exist. I can know many things while still having no idea about a ton of others. There's so much junk that gets stuck in our brain that prevent us from the truth.

KEVIN HARRIS: I didn't want to leave that excerpt out because one can defend the Christian faith because one thinks it's true, not because one has all the answers. He's defending atheism because he thinks it's true even though he admits that he doesn't have all the answers.

DR. CRAIG: Of course no one has all the answers. The Christian can say exactly the same thing that Brandon does. I know that God exists even though I don't have the answers about everything. So the question is whether Brandon has truly tested his own atheistic beliefs. Has he applied his techniques of deconstruction to his own atheistic worldview? I noted, as I said earlier, that in this clip he admits that he's preaching, and he begins to employ those same rhetorical techniques of raising his voice and punching his point home which he condemned when Christian preachers do it.

KEVIN HARRIS: As we wrap up today, I think that persons who are going through some kind of deconstruction process need both educational and pastoral care. It's difficult to be pastoral in a public forum like YouTube, but since it's been put out there publicly we have to deal with the objections and the accusations publicly.

DR. CRAIG: Yes. I think that Brandon is right that emotional factors certainly play a leading role here. We are not cold and calculating thinking machines. We are flesh and blood people. And so people who have been wounded emotionally in the church or had other negative experiences may need to seek, as you suggest, pastoral counseling more than philosophical advice.^[1]