Questions from Facebook, Part Two

KEVIN HARRIS: Hey! Welcome back to Reasonable Faith with Dr. William Lane Craig. We're going to continue taking questions on the Facebook group Christian Apologetics Alliance. This is part 2. Benjamin wants to know if one should get a degree in philosophy and then pursue apologetics afterwards, or just get a degree in apologetics?

DR. CRAIG: If it's possible, get the degree in philosophy. This will give you much better grounding, and it will probably open more doors for you than simply having a degree in apologetics.

KEVIN HARRIS: Cody says,

I'm still having trouble with the Trinity. How can all three persons be necessarily existent? Are they all three necessary, or is the nature they derive from necessary and each person contingent upon the personal nature of God? Also, it seems that if it's possible to have three persons sharing God's nature, why not more? Would it contribute to maximal greatness to have more persons? Or is this a mere neutral factor that just so happens to exist this way because, I don't know, maybe a triad of persons in such a communion is perfect somehow?

DR. CRAIG: Well, what we can say is that God in his very nature is necessarily existent, but that doesn't mean that it's a contingent fact how many persons God is. This can also be essential to God's nature. God is essentially triune. There isn't any sort of further reason why this is so any more than there's a reason why God is omnipotent or God is omniscient or something of that sort. I don't think it would contribute to maximal greatness to have more persons or God would be more persons if it were inherent or contributing to maximal greatness. So this is either, as he says, neutral or perhaps in some way we don't quite fully grasp but a triad of persons in this communion is maximally great and it would be an imperfection to have a fourth person. But I just don't see any difficulty in saying that God exists necessarily and is essentially three persons.

KEVIN HARRIS: Alan asks,

Is there a way for a Christian apologist to combine the practical, relatable, and rhetorical communication techniques of someone like Jordan B. Peterson with the unassailable, though sometimes a bit wooden, truth that Dr. Craig speaks? If so, how?

DR. CRAIG: Well, I should hope that this would be combinable. I try to be a good public speaker, but I've found in my own ministry that it's a great advantage to speak with a text. So all of my talks are written out word-for-word. This helps me to make sure the formulation is correct and that I don't misspeak. It helps me not to go over the time limit involved and to be succinct and to the point. It also helps to remember what one has said so that if called to speak upon that topic another time you've got the text and can give the talk rather than trying to remember from an outline what it is that you wanted to say. So I find it to be tremendously helpful to have the talk written out word-for-word and then to practice it several times so that you're able to maintain good eye contact and just glance down quickly at your notes as you give the talk. Nevertheless, it is true that written speech and oral speech are very different, and there is a kind of woodenness or formality to written speech that isn't characteristic of extemporaneous speech. Even if you try to write in an oral style, which I have sometimes tried to do – I tried to write as though I were just talking, it's very difficult to do that because we generally don't talk using subordinate clauses and asides and things of that sort. So our sentence structure is much more complex usually when we write something out. But one could focus on trying to have a more oral style but still write it out. Maybe what you could do is have the talk written out word-for-word but then make an outline of it and speak from the outline rather than from the text itself. But I prefer just to put up with the woodenness as he describes it.

KEVIN HARRIS: In the academy, philosophers generally do that, don’t they?

DR. CRAIG: Oh, yeah. He's not talking here about reading a paper at a conference. I think the difference would be illustrated by the dialogue that I had with Jordan Peterson and Rebecca Goldstein in Toronto recently. I spoke from a manuscript. Goldstein and Peterson just spoke extemporaneously. I'll agree that their remarks were perhaps more casual and easy listening, but I didn't think that they were therefore better. I find that kind of rambling extemporaneous style less helpful, frankly, than a well-thought through presentations such as I tried to give.

KEVIN HARRIS: Conor asked four questions here. I'll run through them real quick. “Does the atheist have to shoulder a burden of proof or is atheism simply a lack of belief?”

DR. CRAIG: The atheist has to shoulder a burden of proof. Atheism is the claim that God does not exist. So if he's going to commend that claim to us he has a burden of proof to establish it. Even those like Antony Flew who supported the presumption of atheism recognized that they were using the word “atheism” in an unusual way. They were using it to mean a-theism, or non-theism. And non-theism isn't really a view. Non-theism can include traditional atheism, agnosticism, or acognosticism as my teacher Norman Geisler used to call it – the idea that theological sentences have no truth value at all. So the person who is an atheist who says there is no God is definitely making a knowledge claim that requires some sort of warrant.

KEVIN HARRIS: The second question, he says, “Is belief in God rational? If so, what does it mean for a belief to be rational?”

DR. CRAIG: Yes, belief in God is rational. Plantinga defines rationality in two different senses. One would be to be within your epistemic rights in believing something. A rational person is someone who violates no epistemic duty in believing what he does. By an epistemic duty one means a duty related to knowing, to epistemology. The other concept of rationality defined by Plantinga is that a rational person is someone whose noetic structure exhibits no defect. That is to say, his system of beliefs has no defects in it. It involves foundational beliefs and then beliefs inferred from those by means of sound arguments. There's no defect in his noetic structure. So a person who believes in God can be rational in the sense that he violates no epistemic duty in so believing, and he exhibits no defect in his noetic structure in so believing.

KEVIN HARRIS: The next question he asked is: “Which academic field might benefit most greatly from an influx of Christian scholars, thinkers, and apologists?”

DR. CRAIG: This question would probably be answered by saying, “Which fields are currently the most bereft of Christian scholars, thinkers, and influences?” I think it would probably be fields like anthropology, sociology, women's studies, those kind of soft sciences and humanities. Those seem to be the ones that seem to be so often arrayed against a theistic and Christian view of the world.

KEVIN HARRIS: He finally asked, “Could one run an argument from beauty akin to the argument from morality?”

DR. CRAIG: I hope so. I would like to see someone argue that God serves to ground objective aesthetic values in the same way that I've argued he grounds objective moral values. But I don't know how such an argument would look. I've not tried to formulate it myself.

KEVIN HARRIS: Eon says, “Last year on March 15th (3/15), I suggested we call this day “Apologetics Day” to raise awareness about the need for apologetics. That would be from 1 Peter 3:15, so March 15th was chosen.”

DR. CRAIG: Oh, that’s why they picked March 15th. OK.

KEVIN HARRIS: By the way, Atheist’s Day is April 1st, April Fool's Day. That’s an old joke. Anyway, March 15th – they are trying to get this off the ground. I've heard about this. There's kind of a groundswell.

I've written a blog that is going to be released in a few different parts leading up to that day which will be one of the days that you will be recording. I think it would be great to hear Dr. Craig's thoughts on how we can get the church to be more interested in and engaged with apologetics, and maybe some thoughts on why he thinks it is so difficult to get people and churches interested.

I'm really wanting the campaign for apologetics awareness to be bigger this year. I'm hoping to get more people in the Christian Apologetics Alliance involved and will probably be talking to people about it on the CAA over the next few days. But a Reasonable Faith podcast on it would certainly help. If you're interested in the blog about it, just PM me and I can send you the entire first draft.

DR. CRAIG: This is really a hard question. How do you motivate people to get interested in apologetics? I think that probably the most effective thing would be to convince them that they're going to lose their kids if they don't. I think every parent is worried about his teenagers and those kids leaving the faith and that therefore they need themselves to know why they believe as they do and be ready to answer their kids’ questions and to train them. But, then again, you still face the question: How do you get them into a class where they do that? And I don't know the answer to that. I have been teaching my Defenders class for upwards of fifteen years, and the class is still relatively small compared to the megachurch we attend. It's only a very tiny minority of people who are interested in it. I think one reason for this is probably that people are just so burdened and bothered by other things that intellectual engagement just isn't a priority for them. They're concerned about their marriage, their finances, their kids, their miserable job.  The burdens and worries of life are just so pressing, I think, for most people that the idea of engaging their minds with Christian theology and apologetics just doesn't meet people where they live. That's why I say if we could show them the value of this for their children that might help to motivate them.

KEVIN HARRIS: You know, Bill, but I find so much joy in apologetics that I'm not even aware of my financial problems! [laughter] So much joy! What an awesome thing that it encompasses – science, literature.

DR. CRAIG: What do you think? Why do you think that it is hard to get Christian laymen to be interested in . . .

KEVIN HARRIS: For the same reasons. It's easier to go into like a married couples class where you hang out.

DR. CRAIG: Exactly. Marriage enrichment.

KEVIN HARRIS: Because you hang out with others; have cookouts with other couples. And some people are intimidated because they think, I don't want to look bad. I don't want to look dumb. I'm afraid I'll ask bad questions. But then they realize they're smarter than they think. So often it's an anti-intellectualism. They don't go beyond the feelings. This is all about feelings. God gives me a quiver in my liver and don't bother me with engaging my mind. I hope that that's turning around the last several decades.

DR. CRAIG: It certainly has improved, and in that sense I am optimistic and encouraged. I would say to Eon don't wait around for people to get interested. Don't spend a lot of time trying to motivate uninterested people. Rather, I would give him the advice that Bill Bright used to give to Campus Crusade staff which is move with the movers. You identify that minority of people who are ready to move out and you move with them. You train them, you work with them, you mobilize them, and just don't spend the bulk of your time trying to motivate indifferent people who don't care. Move with the movers. One of the tools that we developed, I think, that's very effective for interested people is these Zangmeister animated videos on arguments for the existence of God. These are so engaging and laypeople love these short videos so much; they really do strike a chord and get people interested in the subject. So I'd encourage folks to use these animated videos that are available on our Reasonable Faith homepage.

KEVIN HARRIS: We’ll get behind this Apologetics Day. I think that's great. Next year, 3/15, will be Apologetics Day.

DR. CRAIG: Fantastic.

KEVIN HARRIS: Sheriff says,

Awesome. I love the podcast. A topic that might be new and useful is how to approach politics and political discussions. How should our Christian faith influence our political positions? How do our political beliefs and the way we might correctly or incorrectly commingle with them with our faith impact the effectiveness of our apologetics and our evangelism?

DR. CRAIG: I think that our political beliefs and positions need to be guided by our ethical beliefs. If, as a Christian, you are committed to certain ethical positions, that should work itself out like a leaven on your political beliefs. You should not be compromising your ethical beliefs because of political considerations or concerns. Rather, the ethical beliefs should determine and direct your political positions.[1]