Paul Moser and the Hiddenness of God (Part 2)

KEVIN HARRIS: Welcome back to the podcast of Reasonable Faith with Dr. William Lane Craig. We've been listening to a great podcast from a couple of young atheist philosophers called Real Atheology. They bring on some top-notch philosophers and scholars on their podcast. We are listening to one with Christian philosopher Paul Moser – an interview with him. On the last podcast Dr. Craig agrees with the interviewers that Paul Moser's epistemology sounds a lot like Alvin Plantinga's even though Dr. Moser denies that. We will pick it up right there.

DR. CRAIG: Here my sympathies are with the incredulity expressed by the interviewers. I think that Moser's view is obviously very similar to Plantinga's Reformed Epistemology. Moser says that he differs from Plantinga in that Plantinga sees no need to answer the skeptic. That depends on whether or not you think the testimony of the Holy Spirit is self-authenticating. In Plantinga's earlier work he talked a lot about needing to have defeaters of any defeaters that are brought against your properly basic belief.

KEVIN HARRIS: Defeater-defeaters.

DR. CRAIG: Defeater-defeaters. That's right. So if the atheist brings up the problem of evil to defeat your properly basic belief in God, Plantinga said, Yes, you need to be able to defeat the problem of evil if you are to continue to hold to your belief rationally, otherwise you need to give it up. Later he modified this by suggesting there could be beliefs that are so powerfully warranted that they are intrinsic defeater-defeaters. That is to say, they simply overwhelm any defeaters brought against them. I am persuaded that that is a view that is more in line with the New Testament and its teaching about the witness of the Holy Spirit. But that is just a tangential aspect of his epistemology with which other Reformed epistemologists might disagree. It doesn't show a major difference. In fact, Moser goes on to say that on Moser's view it is the convicting of the Holy Spirit that grounds our belief in God and I presume in Christianity. This is exactly what Plantinga says. Plantinga appeals not only to the sensus divinitatis – this innate sense of the divine – but he appeals to the testimony of the Holy Spirit to the truths of the Gospel when we hear them preached or read them in God's word. So Plantinga is on the same ground with Moser in affirming the importance of the convicting work of the Holy Spirit.

Moser responds by saying no beliefs on his view are basic. On Moser's view all views are founded on evidence. But here he is using the word evidence in a very different way than Plantinga is. When Plantinga talks about beliefs based on evidence he means beliefs that are inferred from other beliefs which are more foundational in your system of beliefs. Plantinga would say ultimately you get to a foundational belief that isn't inferred from anything further down. These beliefs might be simply grounded in your experience such as your experience of the external world or your experience of God or your experience of other minds, for example. Plantinga has recently used the word “evidence” to describe this kind of experience. So Moser is simply using the word differently when he says that your belief in God is grounded on the evidence of your religious experience. He doesn't mean to be offering an argument from religious experience for the existence of God. As he said in the first clip we listened to, no argument is needed, he says, for the person who has this experience. So it is misleading when he says he endorses inference to the best explanation. Plantinga endorses inference to the best explanation for arguments of natural theology, but Moser would not say that my belief in God which is grounded on my experience of the convicting of the Holy Spirit is an argument of inference to the best explanation as if to say, I have this experience, the best explanation of this is that it is God, and therefore God exists. That is not Moser's view. It is much, much more akin to Plantinga's view that these beliefs are properly basic in the sense that they are not inferred from more foundational beliefs but they are grounded in experience of the world.[1]

When Moser says that in 1 John 4:1-3 we are commanded to test the spirits, he is misreading this passage in a very serious way. Let me read to you what John says. He says, “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are of God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world.” He talks then about these people who went out from them but were not really of them. These are pretenders, people who claim to be speaking by the spirit of God but really aren't. So John is really talking about testing others who come to you claiming to speak in the power of the Holy Spirit. He is not talking about testing the witness of the Holy Spirit in your own heart. There is nothing in the New Testament that says that we should test or be skeptical of the witness of the Holy Spirit to our own spirit. It is these other persons who come to us claiming an experience whom we need to test to see if they are genuine.

Moser closed by saying there are no good arguments for the existence of God because they do not issue in a being worthy of worship.

KEVIN HARRIS: Natural theology. Yes, that is his complaint.

DR. CRAIG: Arguments for the existence of God. I would have two things to say about this. First, I think that is false. I think there are good arguments for being worthy of worship, and this would include as one of its elements the moral argument for God as the Supreme Good and the locus of goodness. This gives you a God who truly is worthy of worship. The other arguments will supplement it with other characteristics of God. I think that natural theology does give you a concept of a being that is worthy of worship. Certainly the ontological argument does if it is successful because it gets you the greatest conceivable being, and a being that is worthy of worship is greater than one that is not. What Paul may be saying here is that the arguments of natural theology don't work, that he doesn't think they are good arguments. But that is very different from saying that they don't conclude to a being who is worthy of worship. They certainly do, I think.

But secondly, even if they didn't, they can increase the probability of the existence of a being that is worthy of worship. Tim McGrew gives a very good illustration of how you can have increasing probability of a conclusion without demonstrating that conclusion. He says suppose I tell my daughter that an old army buddy is going to be visiting me today. Later in the afternoon she is sitting at the window looking out and she says, “Dad! There is a man coming up the driveway!” In light of that evidence, that increases the probability of my statement that my Army buddy is coming to visit me today. It doesn't demonstrate it, but it is more probable given her testimony than it would have been if no one were coming up the driveway. Suppose she then says, “Dad! He is wearing a uniform!” In light of that additional information, it is even more probable that my Army buddy is coming to visit me today. Suppose she then says, “Dad! He is carrying a bouquet of flowers!” In that case it is probably not a policeman or some sort of other maintenance man or something of that sort. This makes it highly probable that my Army buddy is indeed coming to visit me today. So even if the arguments fall short of a demonstration of God in all his majesty and glory, the arguments of natural theology can serve to increase the probability of the existence of such a being. And I think that counts for success in natural theology.

KEVIN HARRIS: Psalm 19 says that the heavens declare the glory of God. I think that can be applied to examining nature and getting to the glory of God in the way that you just described. Psalm 19 certainly seems to give us that permission to examine natural theology. Here is the final segment of the interview.

INTERVIEWER: Dr. Moser, my audience would be super disappointed in me if I didn't ask something about the problem of evil. This is the question . . . I have wrestled with it myself. I always encourage my fellow skeptics and atheists and even my theistic friends to put yourselves in the shoes of theists and try to answer the problem of evil as best you can. I have always come back to John Hick. He was the theist that just always had a huge impression on me.[2] I was so building a universalist conception of heaven. Those were my best attempts at answering the problem of evil. So I am going to be a little selfish and ask the universalist question: if you are a universalist about salvation? If so or if not. What is your general approach to the problem of evil?

PAUL MOSER: I am glad you asked because I am finishing a paper on this now that I think takes a new perspective. It is called The Odyssey Meets Christology. It looks to some of the lessons from Jesus in light of the book of Job to give us some response. Regarding universalism, I am an aspiring universalist. I want it to be true. So does God, if God is real. It is just that God can't settle that now. If God acknowledges free agents and honors their freedom in choosing regarding God, God can't say everybody is going to come around. Some may not. Tom Nagel says he won't.

DR. CRAIG: Well, here he has simply titillated our taste buds a little bit but we didn't get sufficient details to comment. I think he is right that God is an aspiring universalist. That is why I am not a Calvinist. I think that God truly does desire all men to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth just as Scripture affirms. But as Moser says, given human free will people may frustrate God's absolute intention of achieving universal salvation and separating themselves from God forever. As for the type of theodicy I've defended, I think you are familiar with it, I employee the Free Will Defense that Alvin Plantinga has laid out in order to defeat the logical version of the problem of evil. I think you can easily undercut the two crucial assumptions that if God is all-powerful he can create just any old world that he wants. Given human freedom, that is not true. I think you can also undercut the necessity of the second assumption that if God is all-good then he prefers a world without suffering or evil. So I don't think the logical version goes through at all.

With respect to the probabilistic version, I've made three points. First of all, we are not in a position to say with any sort of confidence that God lacks morally sufficient reasons for permitting the suffering and evil in the world. Given our limits in time and space, our finitude in knowledge and insight, we are simply not in a position to say with any confidence when we see some incident of suffering or evil occur that God probably does not have a good reason for allowing that to occur. That is an enormously presumptuous judgment that the atheist makes, and we are not in a position to make that.

The second point is that probabilities are always relative to background information. Here is where especially my difference with Paul Moser comes out. I think that whatever improbability evil and suffering might throw upon the existence of God it is simply outweighed by all of the good arguments for the existence of God. Therefore, when you assess God's existence relative to the full scope of the evidence, as Plantinga says, it is more probable than not that God does exist.

The third point is that if Christianity is true then it is not at all surprising that the world would be filled with evil and suffering. I layout four Christian doctrines that increase the probability of the coexistence of God and evil and suffering. So it turns out that the existence of the evil and suffering in the world I think is much more probable on Christian theism than on some sort of a bare-boned theism like John Hick's theism that the interviewer mentioned. If Christian theism is true then it is not at all really improbable that the world would be suffused with suffering and evil. If our listeners want to hear more about this I recommend the two animated videos that we have done on the problem of evil: the first on the logical version[3] and the second on the probabilistic version[4]. This will lay this out in a bit more detail in an engaging and entertaining way.

KEVIN HARRIS: I have to applaud this podcast. Ben Watkins, this young atheist, is very well-versed in Plantinga's work and in your work. Justin Schieber. And they brought on a Christian philosopher to their show to explore these issues.

DR. CRAIG: I agree. This is the kind of dialogue that one craves and looks forward to as opposed to the sort of snarky comments that one often gets on Facebook or other social media. This is the way civil and intelligent discourse should be done.[5]