Questions from Facebook on Salvation, Mormonism, and The Grim Reaper Paradox

KEVIN HARRIS: Bill, a lot of people are asking you questions on Facebook. We have a sampling of those. This one says,

Dear Dr. Craig, I walked the aisle and made a profession of faith at my home church when I was 7 years old. I was baptized soon after, but it wasn't until my teen years that I began to understand important biblical truths like the atonement, the Trinity, and the lordship of Christ. My question is: Do you think I was really saved when I was seven, or did God perhaps put my attempt at commitment on hold until I more fully understood it? Samuel

DR. CRAIG: I want to say to Samuel that I think he was saved, born again to new life, at the age of seven when he made that commitment, and it's not at all unusual that one will make a commitment to Christ early on and then as one grows and experiences discipleship in the Christian life one comes to deeper understanding of the Christian worldview and of Christian doctrine. I think evidence of the fact that it was genuine is that during those teen years he did not walk away from that youthful Christian commitment but instead kept going deeper and deeper into it and that suggested indeed he was a regenerate Christian who was growing in his faith.

KEVIN HARRIS: Next question,

Dear Dr. Craig, I always considered Joseph Smith's most fatal flaw to be his use of peep stones in a hat, treasure digging, and actually being convicted of fraud in a treasure-digging case. How could such a man be the founder of a religion, Mormonism? And yet, a Mormon apologist online told me that God may have used Joseph Smith's background and interest in treasure hunting and seer stones in order to reveal the Book of Mormon and the LDS Church. Other than the fact that it stretches my credulity to the breaking point, I have no answer. Is it possible that God would accommodate fraud and occult practices to reveal something like Mormonism? Gerald

DR. CRAIG: I think the problem with Mormonism is not just in the character flaws of its founder but in the fact that these supposed revelations have been repeatedly falsified. They are not accurate, and you can get any book on Mormonism that can tell you about all of the historical mistakes that are contained in these Mormon documents. So wholly apart from Joseph Smith's personal life, I think the fact is that these are not revelations from God because they are, in fact, false.

KEVIN HARRIS: You see what he means about stretching his credulity? I mean you can stretch and stretch and stretch and stretch just to try to get around something. And he says that sounds like a stretch.

DR. CRAIG: Right. Mormonism does make a lot of incredible claims like the golden spectacles and the tablets that were seen by the certain witnesses and so forth. But in the end, I think one needs to assess the claims on their own merit, and they just don't hold up.

KEVIN HARRIS: Next question.

Professor Craig, I've often heard you talk about the girl who influenced you for Christ when you were in high school. I'm curious if you're still in touch with her, and if she knows her witness helped produce a prominent Christian spokesman – yourself? Jillian

DR. CRAIG: Jillian, the girl was named Sandy Tiffen, and when we graduated from high school we went our separate ways. I went off to Wheaton College; she went to Illinois State University. I rarely saw her after that. I heard then that she married and our ways more or less just separated and we had no contact for decades. After many decades, I received a speaking invitation at Bradley University back in my hometown of Peoria, and I decided to take it. So I gave a talk that evening at Bradley, and after the talk I was approached by this middle-aged woman who came up and extended her hand, took my hand, and she said nothing. She just looked at me in the strangest way, and I said, “I'm sorry. Do I know you?” And she said, “I'm Sandy.” And in that moment, the years fell away and I saw in her face the face of that 16-year-old girl that I remembered from my high school days. It was such a sweet reunion to see her again. She brought with her to the event her two teenage sons who attend a Peoria Christian high school, and she told me that in their apologetics class their teacher uses my debate videos to train her sons in Christian apologetics. I thought how wonderful that this girl who shared the Gospel with me now would have sons who would in turn be trained by watching these debate videos. The funniest thing was that when the teacher showed these videos in the apologetics class, her boy said, “Oh, yeah, we know that guy. Our mom led that guy to the Lord!” And the teacher wouldn't believe them! So they brought the teacher that night to the Bradley speaking engagement, and I got to meet him as well. So it was really funny. And since that time, we have stayed in contact and do occasionally write.

KEVIN HARRIS: Next question,

Dr. Craig, Does your wife, Jan, ever get tired of hearing you talk about theology and philosophy? Or is she also interested in these topics? Rosa

DR. CRAIG: It is so interesting with Jan. She is not herself a philosopher or theologian, but she wants to hear about these things. So we will typically go out for a morning walk for around 45 minutes or so, and she wants me to tell her about what I'm studying. So I'll talk to her about theories of the atonement or things I'm learning in the philosophy of law or other issues. She knows all about the A and B theory of time, for example. So, yes, we do talk about these things, and she never seems to get tired of it. That is one of the greatest supports for me in the ministry that I am married to a woman who is so supportive and so enthusiastic about the things that I'm learning and studying. She will often tell people, “My education began when I married Bill.” So she looks at me as sort of a resource to grow herself intellectually.

KEVIN HARRIS: And I've noticed that she really keeps up with the news and then kind of passes it along to you. Is she your resource as to what's going on?

DR. CRAIG: Yeah. How did you know that?

KEVIN HARRIS: Well, just when we've been out to eat and some things like that, I did notice. We're busy doing the podcast all day and have no idea what's going on in the world, and she's been paying attention. She knows and so she fills us in. I imagine that she does that for you all the time.

DR. CRAIG: She does. That is absolutely true. She stays abreast of current affairs and particularly of the financial markets and talks to me about the McClellan Oscillator, and the 200-day moving average, and what's going on with the PPI, and the CPI numbers, and Powell is going to speak today, and will the Federal Reserve raise or lower rates. She's very informed about current events all across the board.

KEVIN HARRIS: Next question,

Dr. Craig, I recently heard the podcast where you talked about the Grim Reaper Paradox. Is Hilbert's Hotel still your favorite illustration when talking about the kalam or has it been assassinated by the Grim Reaper? Monroe

DR. CRAIG: The Grim Reaper is really a charming paradox. It really, really is a great visualization. But I'm loyal to Hilbert. I so admire Dr. Hilbert, the great German geometer and mathematician, and Hilbert's hotel is an engaging illustration as well. So it's still my favorite, I think.

KEVIN HARRIS: Here's some questions that we've received at ReasonableFaith.org.

Dear Dr. Craig, In your book Time and Eternity you write, “Two objects – say, two asteroids – could be in motion relative to each other and yet one of them at rest in absolute space.” Isn't this like saying that the sun is in motion relative to the Earth? Dwight

DR. CRAIG: Right! That's right, Dwight. You could theoretically say that the Earth is stationary in absolute space – it is not moving – but that the sun is moving relative to the Earth, and we would not be able to detect the difference.

KEVIN HARRIS: Next question,

Dr. Craig, In a friendly debate with an atheist, I challenged their typical assertion that it is impossible to prove a negative by citing modus tollens. They responded that modus tollens is only valid in classical logic. It doesn't hold in relevance logic, intuitionistic logic, or paraconsistent logic. So your proof methodology is conditional upon your justification as to why you've chosen the logic that you've chosen. They went on to tell that classical logic went out of fashion 100 years ago and has now been replaced. I had no idea where to go from there. Any insights? Darren

DR. CRAIG: In order for our listeners to understand this question we need to provide some background. Many popular-level atheists will say that they don't have to prove atheism because it's impossible to prove a negative like “God does not exist.” And since it's impossible to prove a negative, they are therefore off the hook and therefore the atheist needs to provide no justification for his beliefs. The entire burden of proof lies upon the theist. Now, this is such a stupid argument that it's hard to believe that the people who were talking to Darren about relevance logic, intuitionistic logic, and paraconsistent logic could really sincerely be pressing this objection because it's so bad. It is easy to prove a negative. For example, there are no Muslim senators in the United States Senate, or there are no Tyrannosaurus Rex alive on the Earth today. Or if you can show that a concept is internally incoherent, you can prove it doesn't exist. There are no married bachelors, for example. There are no square circles. So it is patently false that you cannot prove a negative. Of course you can. And in the case of God, the idea that you cannot prove atheism ought to be a weapon in the theists’ arsenal. This ought to be an objection that the theist presses. If it's really true that you cannot prove atheism, then what rational justification is there for atheism? Most of these atheists are evidentialists who will tell you that you should not believe anything without evidence – that if you believe something without adequate evidence you are irrational. And in saying that, they condemn themselves if it's true that atheism cannot be proved because you can't prove a negative. So this objection is just wholly misconceived. Now, what Darren apparently attempted to do was take the hard way of disproving this objection by using the inference form of modus tollens. Now, what is that? Well, this is an inference rule of standard logic that says if P implies Q, and not-Q, then it follows logically that not-P. For example, if it has been raining outside, it will be wet outdoors. But it is not wet outdoors. Therefore, it has not been raining. Therefore, you've proved a negative via modus tollens. You've proved that it's not raining. So what do these fellows respond to this very evident point? Well, they said the modus tollens is valid only in classical logic, but it doesn't apply (or is valid) in these deviant logics. A couple of things can be said here. There certainly are deviant logics where logicians experiment with different kinds of logics. For example, there is three-valued logics instead of two-valued logics. In these logics, you don't have just true and false, but you have a kind of intermediate, maybe indeterminate, or maybe a truth-value gap. Now, those sorts of logics certainly exist, but in the first place the uninterpreted logical symbols don't have anything to do with truth and falsity and propositions. These uninterpreted logics are simply symbolic structures that feature, for example, the elements P, Q, R, S and so forth, and the values 0 and 1 and then certain operations like negation and disjunction that you can do on these elements. And that is an uninterpreted symbolic framework. It is only when you add a semantics that you give an interpretation to that framework and say the elements P, Q, R, S are propositions and the values 0 and 1 are truth and falsity. And when you do that, there is no grounds at all for saying that propositions are not true or false and that modus tollens applies as a valid rule for the way propositions are related to one another. You can give an alternative interpretation to these three-valued logics. For example, it could apply to electronic circuitry where 0, 1/2, and 1 are three different positions of a switch on that circuit, and the switch can be at either position 1, position 1/2, or position 0. It has nothing to do with truth values or intermediate truth values or truth-value gaps. It's just a description where this three-valued logic has an application for electric circuitry. So the existence of these deviant logics doesn't do anything to suggest that propositions are not either true or false or that these rules of inference do not hold for them. The second thing that can be said about this is that even the proponents of these logics admit that these logics don't apply in everyday life. For example, take this paraconsistent logic. This is a logic that allows there to be true contradictions. It allows there to be true contradictions. But the proponents of this logic will admit that this logic doesn't apply to mathematics or biology or physics or even theology. When you deal with those disciplines you are dealing with good old ordinary classical logic where contradictions cannot be true and inference rules like modus tollens, modus ponens, disjunctive syllogism, and so forth are necessarily true. So basically what I'm saying is these guys that Darren is talking to are being really disingenuous with him. If they know about these things and are able to throw around the lingo then they should know, in fact, that what they're telling him is bogus, and they're just putting up a smoke screen to fool Darren.

KEVIN HARRIS: Intuitionistic logic. I think I butchered that, but thanks Darren for the question. Next question is from Spain:

Dr. Craig, Some skeptical biblical scholars say that Mark's account of Jesus’ trial before the Sanhedrin is pure fiction. There are several aspects of the hearing that doesn't fit with what we know about Jewish customs regarding capital trials. Is this a resolved issue? Thanks, Mario David, Spain

DR. CRAIG: I would say to Mario that it is a largely resolved issue that Markan commentators think that Mark's trial narrative is a historical account even though it does involve some aberrations in Jewish practices, for example the Sanhedrin convening at night. But these were extreme circumstances that were catapulted by the arrest of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane that evening and so the Sanhedrin broke some rules in meeting this way. But the account of the trial is so realistic and so true to the sort of trial proceedings that would have gone on at that time that I think that most New Testament scholars will say that we have a fundamentally historical account of the trial in Mark.

KEVIN HARRIS: Next question,

Hello, Professor Craig. I appreciate your work and want to know what your opinion is on the view that evil is a privation. I do not think that you have ever made your thoughts known on the subject so I would love to read your reply on whether you subscribe to it or not. Thank you for taking the time to reply to my question and take care. David, US

DR. CRAIG: Again, in order to answer David's question, we need to provide some background so our listeners will understand the question. A privation is the absence of something. It is not a positive reality but it is a lack. For example, in physics darkness is not a positive reality. It is a privation of light. It is the absence of light. Or, again, cold is not a positive reality. Cold is the privation of heat. Now, obviously in saying that these things are privations rather than positive realities we in no way imply that they are illusory. If you go outside on a cold winter's day you feel the reality of that privation. There really is an absence of heat that can be bone-chilling. So the question is: Is evil a privation? Is evil a positive thing that exists? If so, God (as the creator of all things) would have to have created evil, and that seems wrong to say. So Christian thinkers like St. Augustine and others say that evil is not a positive reality. It is a privation; specifically, it is a privation of right order in the creaturely will. Take the human will, for example. The human will should rightly be ordered to God as the greatest good. This is what we should will and desire. But human beings turn their wills to lesser goods like money and fame and power and popularity and so forth, and thus their wills become disordered. They are not properly oriented toward God as the ultimate good and that disorder or privation of right order in the creaturely will is what we mean by evil. In answer to David’s question, I would say, yes, I think that is correct that evil is indeed a privation.^[1]