Questions on Mind/Body Dualism, Human Sacrifice, and Cosmology

DR. CRAIG: Hello, this is Wiliam Lane Craig. Up through December 31st of this year, any gift that you give to Reasonable Faith will be doubled by a matching grant of very generous donors. So this is a wonderful way for you to double the impact of your giving to the Lord’s work. I think that what’s happening at Reasonable Faith around the world is certainly exciting and well worth your support. Over three million engagements every month come through our social media platforms. We have hundreds of local Reasonable Faith chapters all around the world – throughout Latin America, Asia, even the Middle East – that provide a community and a place of fellowship and outreach for local believers often in hard-pressed circumstances. In addition to that, we have our Equip course which has now been taken by thousands of high schoolers and teenagers to equip them in the articulation and defense of the Christian faith. We have been so pleased with the enthusiastic reaction to this Equip platform. So, as you approach the year’s end and think about how best to invest the Lord’s dollar from your giving, we hope that you will think of Reasonable Faith and send a gift toward our ministry. It will be doubled, and thereby have double the impact. Thank you so much for your consideration.

KEVIN HARRIS: Next question,

Dear Dr. Craig, I am a mind-body dualist and have been wondering about your interpretation of the soul in that model. I ask this because my mother is suffering from dementia and a large portion of her mind seems to be disappearing as her body breaks down physically. My question to you is: Based on the requirement of the body being healthy to support the mind, how does this affect the soul? Personally I've thought of the mind somewhat synonymously with the soul. I stipulate that I may be in error on my perception of mind-body dualism and would appreciate any insight you may be able to provide. Thank you, sir. Chris, United States

DR. CRAIG: My heart goes out to you, Chris. I know what you're going through in seeing a parent decline through dementia. That is heartbreaking and difficult to bear. But in terms of your philosophical question, I think you're quite right to say that the mind and the soul are synonymous. The soul is the theological word for what philosophers call “the mind.” What is not identical is the mind and the brain. I think you appreciate and accept that fact. But the mind and the brain function intimately together for thought. When I was at the World Congress on Philosophy in Düsseldorf in 1978, I had the privilege of hearing the great Nobel prize-winning neurologist Sir John Eccles lecture on the relationship between the mind and the brain. He gave an analogy that has stuck with me ever since that so wonderfully illustrates this intimate connection. He said that the mind is like a pianist who plays a piano to produce music. In the same way that the piano is an instrument that the pianist uses to produce music, so the brain is an instrument which the mind uses to think. If the instrument is damaged – if the piano is out of tune or broken – then the musician, despite his ability and virtuosity, will not be able to produce any beautiful music. Similarly, if the brain is damaged or impaired then the mind will not be able to use the brain properly to think. I think what your mother is going through is this decline in the functioning of the brain that impairs the thought life of the soul or of the mind. But fortunately the mind or soul is not identical with the brain, and when the brain finally dies the soul will go to be with Christ. Paul said “to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord, and it's better to die and go to be with Christ than even to continue living in this frail and faltering body.” So that's how I would see it. It is a kind of dualism-interactionism in which we are psychosomatic functioning wholes comprised of soul and body.

KEVIN HARRIS: Next question,

Hi, Dr Craig. In question of the week #856 you wrote the following about the existence of the afterlife and its relationship to meaning.

It is the person who has no hope of an afterlife whose earthly life becomes objectively meaningless because the choices and actions he undertakes have no ultimate consequences. No matter what he does, he will wind up the same.

Does this mean that even if atheism could provide a sound foundation for objective moral values and duties it would still be true that our lives are ultimately meaningless? In other words, if we suppose there exists some foundation for objective moral values and duties on atheism I struggle to see why there is any ultimate meaning in my being moral or acting in accordance with moral duty. Whether I live as a saint or a sinner, the grave is still the end. And if moral duty conflicts with my own self-interest, it seems like whether I choose to follow or ignore what is morally right makes no ultimate difference to me. I've often heard you argue that there is no meaning to life without God, but would this still be true even if atheism could provide a sound foundation for objective moral values and duties? If so, can you explain how the existence of good and moral duty is related to ultimate meaning? Thank you for all you do. John, United States.

DR. CRAIG: In my analysis of this, John, I think that this is a package deal. If atheism is true – if God does not exist – then there is no ultimate meaning, value or purpose to life. However, if you could provide some sort of objective basis for the affirmation of ultimate value then I think meaning would come along with it. Because in that case even if your life ended at the grave it would still be meaningful that you aligned your life with the good as opposed to aligning your life with what is evil. So I think that meaning and value are intimately related in that way. Unfortunately for the atheist, in a godless universe I don't think he has any foundation for the affirmation of objective moral values.

KEVIN HARRIS: Next question:

Dr. Craig, I've heard Jews comment that the idea of Jesus atoning for our sins on the cross would entail God requiring a human sacrifice. How would you respond to the human sacrifice argument which seems barbaric to them? Thomas, United States

DR. CRAIG: I think that Christ's atoning death is an example of a human sacrifice. Christ was a human being, and he gave his life as a sacrifice for our sins to God. This was done on the pattern of the Jewish sacrificial system in the Old Testament, particularly those Levitical offerings that were made in the tabernacle and in the temple. These were animal offerings – sheep or goats or bulls. God forbade that there would be any human sacrifices even though it would seem odd to think that the sacrifice of an animal's life would do anything to atone for sin. Human sacrifice would seem much more logical – that it would require the giving of a human life to save a life rather than giving the life of a goat or a bull. But nevertheless God forbade that there would be human sacrifices. There could only be these animal sacrifices. But these sacrifices were only provisional. They did not really affect moral cleansing from sin and impurity. Christ's self-giving sacrifice was the fulfillment of this Levitical system of Old Testament sacrifices. If you read the book of Hebrews in the New Testament, the author of Hebrews describes how Christ is God's final sacrifice for sin where he gives his life as a substitutionary atonement for us. And that is noble. That is beautiful that he would die in our place, die for me. So God doesn't require that we perform human sacrifices of us. He forbids it, in fact. But what he did was that he himself took on a human nature, became a human being, and in the person of Christ he gives his own human life for the sake of ours and for the world, to redeem us and bring us back to him. So I find the idea of Christ’s substitutionary atonement to be a beautiful sacrifice and a very logical way of atoning for our sins.

KEVIN HARRIS: A couple more questions. This says,

Dr. Craig, first of all I want you to know that I truly consider your work a blessing. It has helped me tremendously in understanding why I believe what I believe about God, and why it is not at all irrational to hold such beliefs. My question is this. Is it possible that there is a fourth solution to the fine-tuning argument besides chance, natural law, and design? I've heard some atheists claim that it is essentially a false trichotomy and an argument from ignorance to say that only three options are possible in explaining the fine-tuning of the universe. That given time science will be able to discover why the universe is necessarily fine-tuned that there could be a fourth unforeseen option that is simply eluding us at present. Given that there could even theoretically be a fourth option, they would say that the assumption that the universe must have been intelligently designed seems shortsighted. How would you respond to this? Samuel, United States

DR. CRAIG: What I would say, Samuel, is that this is an objection from ignorance! They have no explanation to offer. No fourth alternative. But they just say maybe there is some unknown way of explaining this that we have no inkling of. Now, can you imagine offering such an explanation as an alternative to any other scientific theory? Say, the theory of biological evolution. We don't know how these organisms came into being, but it's some unknown explanation that brought this about. No one would take that seriously. There are three explanations for the fine-tuning that are recognized in the literature. These are the ones that are discussed. If someone has a fourth explanation, then he's welcome to add it to the list and it will be considered. But to simply appeal to no explanation is not explanatory at all! This is, in effect, to offer nothing to explain the fine-tuning. So this is not a legitimate alternative.

KEVIN HARRIS: Next question today.

Hello, Dr. Craig. Just wondering what your thoughts are on the recent simulation results by Claude-André Faucher-Giguère from Northwestern University finding the bright old universe anomalies found by the James Webb Telescope were actually due to dense clusters of stars formed in the last millions of years as opposed to massive galaxies. He says, “Because more massive stars burn at a higher speed they are shorter lived. They rapidly use up their fuel in nuclear reactions. So the brightness of a galaxy is more directly related to how many stars it has formed in the last few million years than the mass of the galaxy as a whole.” That's from Faucher-Giguère. By these results, the cosmological argument remains strong. Thank you for your time. Lance, United States.

DR. CRAIG: Well, you know, one is tempted to say, “I told you so.” We talked about this on a previous podcast where people were sounding the alarms over the Big Bang theory because of these anomalies. At least according to Faucher-Giguère this is simply the result of more massive stars burning at a higher speed relatively recently. So, in fact, these results are not anomalous and do nothing to call into question the standard Big Bang model of the origin of the universe.

KEVIN HARRIS: This next question from Canada,

Dear Dr. Craig, thank you for your unflagging commitment to the apologetics ministry. Your popular works and Reasonable Faith podcast were an important part of my faith formation in my teens. Now as I prepare to be ordained for Anglican parish ministry, I have rediscovered your work at the academic level. It has been a great encouragement and a source of intellectual renewal. My question emerges from atonement and the death of Christ. I am grateful for your defense of penal substitutionary atonement, but it seems to be only the first step (although the most important step) in a doctrine of salvation. Protestant theology has typically said that repentance and faith or “faith only” (if faith necessarily involves repentance) are the means by which the atoning sacrifice of Christ is applied to an individual. In your study of the atonement, have you discovered a necessary reason why faith and repentance have this role of applying the benefits of the atonement? To put it another way, is there some logic internal to penal substitutionary atonement which requires that faith be the principle by which this atonement is applied? Or is the necessity of faith for salvation added to the necessity of atonement for sin by the free choice of God so that the doctrine of salvation involves two or more ideas which might not have been conjoined. Is there a possible world in which Christ atones for sin and yet God chooses to apply the merit of the atonement on the basis of some other criteria, such as good works performed after regeneration or even something as inane as eye color? Benjamin, Canada.

DR. CRAIG: Thank you, Benjamin, for your question, and congratulations on your entering the parish ministry. In the book Atonement and the Death of Christ, I do discuss at some length what I perceive to be a very organic connection between the atoning death of Christ and the importance of placing our faith in Christ in order to appropriate the benefits of that atonement. This is in the chapters dealing with the idea of divine pardon. As I explain in the book, in order for a pardon to be efficacious it must be appropriated by the person pardoned. In our justice system, if a criminal refuses a pardon offered him by the governor or the president then, in fact, he is not released from the demands of justice for his crime. He must continue to serve out his sentence (or even to be executed) because he has rejected the pardon and therefore falls back under the justice and the penalty that justice demands for his crime. So in the case of the atoning death of Christ, it seems to me that it is on the basis of Christ's atonement that God then offers us a pardon for our sins and that we must appropriate it by receiving that pardon. That is what placing one's faith in Christ as Savior is all about. It is appropriating that divine pardon.^[1]