Michael Tooley Debate at University of North Carolina Charlotte

Transcript Michael Tooley Debate at University of North Carolina Charlotte

Kevin Harris: Dr. Craig, we want to discuss some of the recent debates that you’ve had. In this debate with Dr. Stenger that we just did a podcast on, you mentioned the ontological argument – that you used that argument. We have podcasts on the ontological argument, we have your written material, so if you are not familiar with it please go and peruse the resources at ReasonableFaith.org and listen to some of the podcasts on it as well. But I am curious, reflecting back on that debate, how he responded to the ontological argument?

Dr. Craig: This was the first time I’ve ever put forward the ontological argument into a debate situation. He, as a non-philosopher, was rather flummoxed by the whole thing. He really didn’t know what to respond. So all he said was that if the ontological argument were sound then you could argue that there must be a maximally great pizza and that because a pizza that is maximally great would have to exist therefore if a maximally great is possible therefore there is a maximally great pizza. And as I pointed out, that is really not a very good parody of the argument.

Kevin Harris: The pizza I had last night was not maximally great by the way.

Dr. Craig: Well, I don’t think there is such a thing as a maximally great pizza. It is not even a coherent idea. Think about it, Kevin. A pizza is something that can be eaten and digested. Therefore, it cannot be metaphysically necessary. The idea of a metaphysically necessary pizza is just a logically incoherent idea.

Kevin Harris: Isn’t this an old response? What was it? The maximally great island?

Dr. Craig: Sure. That is exactly right. This is an attempt where you try to parody the argument by saying that if it is sound then it would lead to absurd conclusions like there is a maximally great island.

Kevin Harris: Coconut trees and beautiful beaches and things like that.

Dr. Craig: Exactly. And in this case a maximally great pizza whatever that might be. And the problem with the attempts to parody the argument is that the thing that is being used usually turns out to be plainly, logically incoherent. There just cannot be such a thing as a maximally great pizza because a pizza cannot be a necessary being. It is something that can be eaten. Therefore anything that is a pizza is not by concept maximally great. Similarly with an island, an island cannot be maximally great because there aren’t really any objective great-making properties of islands. What you might think is a great island would be one that is loaded with the top resort hotels and lots of things to do, but for me maybe a maximally great island would be one that is a desert island where I can be alone and secluded from civilization. So what makes for a great island is very subjective and dependent upon a person’s personal interests and tastes. So these attempts to parody the argument usually fail obviously because the thing that they are positing as maximally great isn’t something that is capable of being maximally great.

Kevin Harris: Didn’t Anselm respond to that by saying for one thing you are describing something that is limited and finite like an island and something that was composed. And an island is always limited, finite.

Dr. Craig: Yes, again, anything that would be metaphysically necessary just could not be what we ordinarily mean by an island. A metaphysically necessary being would have to be able to exist, for example, in a universe that was composed of a single singularity. And anything that could exist in such a state just would not be what we normally mean by an island, which is a piece of land surrounded by water. So these turn out really to be quite logically incoherent ideas that couldn’t possibly exist.

Kevin Harris: Is this how you responded to Dr. Stenger?

Dr. Craig: What I said was a pizza can be eaten and therefore can fail to exist and therefore it can’t be metaphysically necessary.

Kevin Harris: Ah, but this pizza can’t be eaten. Then it’s not a pizza!

Dr. Craig: Right, you sound like Lewis Wolpert in my debate with him about the invisible, intangible, changeless, immutable computer which is just, again, either God under another semantic label or an incoherent notion. [1]

Kevin Harris: A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Michael Tooley. This was the second debate you had with him. The first was quite famous. It has been all over the internet.

Dr. Craig: I had an earlier debate with Tooley around ten years or so ago that was a good exchange and is available as a pamphlet through ReasonableFaith in our online web store. [2] Having been a long time since I debated him and since we have both published a considerable amount since that time, I thought a second debate would be profitable particularly in light of Michael Tooley’s recent written, published debate with Alvin Plantinga on the existence of God. So I was eager to take him on again, and we had a substantive exchange. [3]

Kevin Harris: The subject of this debate was “Is God Real?” [4]

Dr. Craig: That was a result of the local organizers wanting that title. It really was the same debate as “Does God Exist?” but I think they thought that the title “Is God Real?” maybe would connect with students better.

Kevin Harris: What was his major argument? I think he really faces the non-existence of God on evils in the world.

Dr. Craig: That’s right. On instances of terrible suffering, which he thinks would be wrong for God to permit. So he uses, for example, the Lisbon Earthquake as an example of a horrible case of suffering which would be wrong for God to permit and therefore it is likely probable that God does not exist since this thing did happen.

Kevin Harris: Was your response basically dealing with the problem of evil?

Dr. Craig: Yes, because this was, as I anticipated, the centerpiece of his case, I studied in some detail his book with Alvin Plantinga where he develops this argument in great detail and prepared my responses based on that. And just as I expected, this was the version of the argument that he gave in the debate. As Plantinga points out in his book, Tooley has, in a sense, done the theist a tremendous service because he has developed the argument from evil with such detail and such care that if it fails, it is very unlikely that anybody else is going to come up with a better version of it. So if Tooley’s argument fails, it makes it very likely that the evidential or probabilistic version of the problem of evil won’t go through. Plantinga is convinced, and I am also convinced, that Tooley’s case doesn’t go through in the end.

Kevin Harris: You commented on the debate that he’s very familiar with your work and so he prepared and that made him perhaps maybe a little inflexible because really debates involve how you are going to respond to the rebuttals. You can’t really predict those.

Dr. Craig: Yes. This was very unfortunate. Professor Tooley had obviously done his homework. He had PowerPoint slides prepared. He had quotations from me prepared. He basically, in a sense, rehearsed our old debate from about ten years ago and even said, “This is what Bill said then, and here is why that response is inadequate.” He basically was rehashing our earlier debate. As a result his responses were just irrelevant to much of what I was saying in the debate that evening. I felt as though I wasn’t even there. It was a very strange feeling because Tooley just got up and gave four canned speeches that were all prepared in advance and it was as though I were a ghost, that I wasn’t even there, that I hadn’t said anything. So all it was was a four part monologue by Professor Tooley that really failed to engage with my arguments or my responses to him, particularly to his version of the problem of evil which I attacked on multiple grounds and which he just didn’t care to respond to.

Kevin Harris: If you go to ReasonableFaith.org and go to our newsletter section you can see more on this debate. Just go to April of 2010. You’ve got a link that shows your critique to his argument. It brings me to ask what can laypeople take from this debate? What is it about his argument that deals with the evils in the world that we need to be aware of and able to think about and respond to?

Dr. Craig: I think one of the things to take away from the debate is that it is highly presumptuous when some bad thing happens to us – when some instance of suffering enters our lives – it is highly presumptuous to say it would be wrong for God to allow that to happen. I don’t think we can say that with any sort of confidence for a number of reasons. One reason is that God has certain rights that we don’t have. For example, he has the right over life and death. If he wants to take my life right now, that is within his prerogative. Yet, I don’t have that right. I wouldn’t have the right just to end another person’s life arbitrarily. But God as the creator and author of life does have that right. So he has moral rights, so to speak – maybe a better way to put it is he doesn’t have the same moral duties that we have – and therefore it is very presumptuous to say that God would be violating some duty by allowing certain instances of suffering to enter my life.

Kevin Harris: Sure, we certainly wouldn’t have God’s wisdom, foresight, knowledge, power on the issue.

Dr. Craig: Right. That is the other point. He could have morally sufficient reasons for allowing this to take place. [5] This is easy to illustrate on a human level. Think of the commander at D-Day who told these GIs to take the Pointe de Hoc on the beach where there was a German machine gun nest overlooking the beach. These men had to climb this cliff right into the face of German fire, knowing that many of them would be killed. They were charging right into the guns. Yet, the commander had to take that machine gun nest or the whole operation could have failed. They couldn’t have taken the beach unless that nest was taken out. So he commanded those men to take that nest knowing that it would cost many of them their lives. Well, he didn’t do a wrong thing in doing that because he had morally sufficient reasons for commanding them to do something that meant terrible suffering and even death for many of them. Similarly, God can allow suffering to come into our lives because he has overriding morally sufficient reasons for permitting this to happen – reasons that we may not be in any way privy to because they might not emerge until hundreds of years from now or many even in another country or in a way that is so complex that we couldn’t even begin to conceive of the causal connections between what we suffer and God’s overriding morally sufficient reason. So when an atheist like Tooley says, “It would be wrong for God to permit the Lisbon Earthquake” I think he is making a moral judgment which is simply beyond our capacities to be warranted in making.

Kevin Harris: What a huge burden of proof that you are going to try to bear if you are going to say, “God could not possibly have sufficient reasons for allowing this to happen.”

Dr. Craig: Or even more modestly, Kevin, to say God “probably” doesn’t have a morally sufficient reason for allowing this. I don’t think that you are anywhere in a position to make those kinds of probability judgments.

Kevin Harris: I noticed that this is an internal question. I guess it would be an attempt to disprove God by showing it internally inconsistent?

Dr. Craig: I think that there is a difference among how philosophers understand this version of the problem of evil. I do think that ultimately it is an internal problem in the sense that the atheist is saying that the Christian holds to beliefs which are improbable relative to one another. For example, the Christian holds that there is a God who is all-loving, all-good, and all-powerful, and yet he holds that there are terrible moral evils in the world, like the Lisbon Earthquake and that these beliefs are improbable with respect to each other. Therefore there is this sort of internal problem for the Christian. For that reason, I think the Christian is quite within his rights to appeal to various Christian doctrines like immortality beyond the grave, like God’s purpose for human history not being human happiness in this life but rather the knowledge of God, which may warrant allowing enormous amounts of suffering in the world in order to maximize the knowledge of God in this world. Christian doctrines like the Fall of man into sin where people are under a spiritual darkness that has alienated them from God and leaves them in terrible moral evil. God allows this human depravity to run its course. All of these Christian doctrines, if true, greatly increase the probability of the co-existence of God and suffering in the world. So if the atheist is alleging there is some sort of internal improbability within the Christian worldview, he would have to show that those beliefs are improbable, that those doctrines are improbable. It is not up to us as Christians to show that they are probable. All we need to show is that given this view of Christian theism, it is not at all surprising that the world should be suffused with natural and moral evil. It is in that sense, I think, an internal problem. Now there are other versions of the problem of evil that are external to the Christian worldview but I don’t think this is one of them.

Kevin Harris: I noticed that some of my atheist friends were backing off of the word “evil” because they were called to task so often on “How can you say something is evil in a natural world.” In a naturalistic worldview is there even anything such as evil? So they started using the word “harm.”

Dr. Craig: Right. And I think that is a better move on the atheist’s part. I don’t think that the atheist can consistently push a problem of evil because it is impossible, I think, on a naturalistic worldview to define an objective difference between good and evil. So I think what the atheist needs to do is to press the problem of suffering. [6] That is the way Tooley frames his argument. He doesn’t say that the Lisbon Earthquake was bad. He doesn’t make a moral judgment on the quake itself. He just says it involves intense suffering. Then where he makes his move is to say it would be wrong of God to permit this suffering. It is a subtle argument. He is not saying the Lisbon Earthquake was bad per se but he is saying what is wrong here – what is evil – is to permit it to happen. That is where we need to engage him. Why, Professor Tooley, should we think that God’s permitting the Lisbon Earthquake would be a morally wrong act on God’s part? I don’t think he can justify that for many reasons among which are the two I mentioned, namely that God may well have different prerogatives that we have and therefore wouldn’t be wrong for him to permit. Then secondly, he may have overriding morally sufficient reasons for allowing it that we don’t discern and therefore we can’t say with any confidence that it would be wrong to permit the Lisbon Earthquake on God’s part. [7]