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English Schools Tour Compilation w/ Q&A | William Lane Craig | England - 2019

In May of 2019, Dr. Craig had the wonderful opportunity and privilege of conducting a speaking tour focused on some of England's finest schools. During his tour, he spoke at Wellington, Harrow, Eton, Bedales, Winchester, Canford, and Oxford Town Hall. Dr. Craig's lectures covered various arguments for the existence of God, utilizing Reasonable Faith's short animated videos to illustrate these arguments.


NARRATOR: In 2019, William Lane Craig conducted a speaking tour of public schools in the UK. These schools provided the invitations and the venues, inviting local state schools to join them. In all, some 1,500 students from 50 schools attended.

DR. CRAIG: Good evening. I am delighted to begin my lecture tour of English schools here at Wellington. On previous trips to the UK, I've always lectured on university campuses. So I'm looking forward to speaking to audiences this time around at several of England's finest schools, starting at Wellington.

Tonight, I want to share briefly three reasons to think that God exists, and why it matters. In order to make these reasons easy to understand, I'm going to be showing some videos that we've developed at Reasonable Faith. These are available for free on our website, ReasonableFaith.org.

Let me start with why it makes a big difference whether God exists. Far from being a matter of indifference, I think that the question of God's existence is the most important question that a human being can ask. People who just shrug their shoulders and say, “What difference does it make whether God exists or not?” merely show that they haven't thought very deeply about this question. Even atheist philosophers like Friedrich Nietzsche, Bertrand Russell, and Jean-Paul Sartre, who have thought deeply about this question, recognize that the existence of God makes a tremendous difference for man. These philosophers have argued that if God does not exist then human life is ultimately absurd. The absurdity of life involves three elements: meaning, value, and purpose. These three notions – meaning, value, purpose – though closely related are conceptually distinct. Meaning has to do with something's importance – why it matters. Value has to do with something's moral worth – good or evil, right or wrong. Purpose has to do with a goal – a reason for something. If there is no God then, according to these atheist thinkers, life is ultimately without meaning, value, or purpose.

The first video helps to explain the human predicament in the absence of God.

VIDEO: You know, nobody asked me if I wanted to exist. Yeah, one day – boom – there you are, and you think to yourself, “Why am I here?” Well, what do you think? Is there a reason we're here? Do our lives have any real significance?

Well, that depends.

On what?

On whether or not God exists.

Wait hold on, are you saying that my life has no significance because I don't believe in God?

No, not at all! I'm saying that if God doesn't exist, it doesn't matter what you believe; our lives would have no objective meaning, value, or purpose. Many atheists themselves recognize this. “If atheism is true life is absurd.”

Okay, and why do they think that?

To begin with, if God does not exist then the physical universe is all there is, which means you and I are just accidental byproducts of nature.

Right, so?

That means we were not intentionally designed, so there's no purpose for us being here.

Whoa!

It gets worse. If God does not exist, there is no absolute standard of moral value. You've heard of Richard Dawkins, the atheist. He points out that in a materialistic universe “there is at bottom no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pointless indifference.”

So you're saying atheists can't be good people?

No, I'm not saying that. Many atheists live good lives. What I'm saying is atheism fails to provide an objective basis for seeing any particular action as good or evil.

Oh, come on! After millions of years of sociobiological evolution, humans have developed a sense of morality. We all know it's good to feed a hungry child and bad to torture someone for fun.

Of course we do, but that's precisely what atheism cannot explain. If there's no God then what we consider right or wrong is nothing more than an accident of evolution or a human social convention.

So what? I'm good with that.

Really!? Evolution implies survival of the fittest, not morality. And social convention means that racism, intolerance, and cruelty are not really wrong; they just happen to be unpopular.

Okay, so atheists need to come up with some objective standard for rights and wrongs. How about this: If an action leads to human flourishing then we can say it's objectively good; and if it doesn't, it's objectively evil.

But why think that human flourishing is good? Aren't you being species-centric? Why not refer instead to the flourishing of rats or cabbages?

Well...

And who gets to decide what contributes to human flourishing? Hitler was convinced killing millions of Jews would promote human flourishing, and Margaret Sanger thought forcing poor people to be sterilized would lead to human flourishing. As Kai Nielsen points out, “pure practical reason will not take you to morality.” So if atheism is true, there is no legitimate basis for saying that behaving one way is worse than behaving any other way. So it really doesn't matter how you live your life. Your day-to-day choices are meaningless.

That's depressing.

So if there's no God, what happens when you die?

Well, nothing. You simply cease to exist.

Right. So one person lives a kind, generous, thoughtful life. Another lives a horrible, violent, selfish life. It doesn't matter! In both cases the outcome is the same: nothingness. So how can their life choices have any objective meaning?

Well, it's certainly meaningful if I discover a cure for cancer or save a child's life.

I agree completely! But atheism can't explain why! Scientists predict that eventually the whole universe and mankind with it will die out. So everything comes to nothing. That's why atheist Bertrand Russell says we must “build our lives on the firm foundation of despair.”

No thanks! I'd rather live a happy life.

You're not alone. Every atheist has to choose between being happy or being consistent. You can tell the whole world you're an atheist, but you can't really live like one.

Okay, so you're a Christian. If your God did exist, how would that change anything?

If Christianity is true then each one of us is here for a reason, and life does not end at the grave. And God? He's the absolute standard of goodness. He knows you, he loves you, and he intentionally created you. So your life ultimately does have objective meaning, value, and purpose. That means you can live a life that's both happy and consistent.

Well, that doesn't prove Christianity is true.

Agreed. I'm simply pointing out that for Christians living a life that is both happy and consistent is possible. For atheists, it's not. So what are you going to choose?

DR. CRAIG: Given the absurdity of life and the unlivability of atheism, it's imperative, I think, that we retrace our steps and ask anew whether God exists. As a professional philosopher, I believe that the hypothesis that God exists makes sense of a wide range of the data of human experience. This evening I'd like to share with you three reasons why I think that God does indeed exist.

Number one: God makes sense of the origin of the universe. Have you ever asked yourself where the universe came from? Typically, atheists have said that the universe is just eternal and that's all. But is that plausible? The next video explains how the scientific evidence for the origin of the universe points beyond the universe to its transcendent creator.

VIDEO: Does God exist, or is the material universe all that is or ever was or ever will be? One approach to answering this question is the cosmological argument. It goes like this. Whatever begins to exist has a cause. The universe began to exist.Therefore, the universe has a cause. Is the first premise true? Let's consider. Believing that something can pop into existence without a cause is more of a stretch than believing in magic. At least with magic you've got a hat and a magician. And if something can come into being from nothing, then why don't we see this happening all the time? No; everyday experience and scientific evidence confirm our first premise. If something begins to exist, it must have a cause. But what about our second premise? Did the universe begin, or has it always existed? Atheists have typically said that the universe has been here forever. The universe is just there, and that's all. First, let's consider the second law of thermodynamics. It tells us the universe is slowly running out of usable energy, and that's the point. If the universe had been here forever it would have run out of usable energy by now. The second law points us to a universe that has a definite beginning. This is further confirmed by a series of remarkable scientific discoveries. In 1915 Albert Einstein presented his general theory of relativity. This allowed us for the first time to talk meaningfully about the past history of the universe. Next Alexander Friedmann and Georges Lemaitre, each working with Einstein's equations, predicted that the universe is expanding. Then in 1929, Edwin Hubble measured the red shift and light from distant galaxies. This empirical evidence confirmed not only that the universe is expanding, but that it sprang into being from a single point in the finite past. It was a monumental discovery almost beyond comprehension. However, not everyone is fond of a finite universe, so it wasn't long before alternative models popped into existence. But one by one, these models failed to stand the test of time. More recently three leading cosmologists, Arvind Borde, Alan Guth, and Alexander Vilenkin, proved that any universe which has on average been expanding throughout its history cannot be eternal in the past, but must have an absolute beginning. This even applies to the multiverse, if there is such a thing. This means that scientists can no longer hide behind a past eternal universe. There is no escape. They have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning. Any adequate model must have a beginning just like the standard model. It's quite plausible then that both premises of the argument are true. This means that the conclusion is also true; The universe has a cause. And since the universe can't cause itself, its cause must be beyond the space-time universe. It must be spaceless, timeless, immaterial, uncaused, and unimaginably powerful, much like... God. The cosmological argument shows that in fact it is quite reasonable to believe that God does exist.

DR. CRAIG: Here, once more, are the three simple steps of this argument.

  1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
  2. The universe began to exist.
  3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.

As explained in the video, the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem proves that classical spacetime, under a single very general condition, cannot be extended to past infinity but must reach a boundary at some time in the finite past. Now, either there was something on the other side of that boundary or not. If not then that boundary just is the beginning of the universe. If there was something on the other side then it will be a region described by the yet-to-be discovered theory of quantum gravity. In that case, Vilenkin says, that region will be the beginning of the universe. Either way, the universe began to exist. Since something cannot come into being from nothing, the absolute beginning of the universe implies the existence of a beginningless, uncaused, timeless, spaceless, changeless, immaterial, enormously powerful creator of the universe.

Number two: God makes sense of the fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life. In recent decades, scientists have been stunned by the discovery that the existence of intelligent life like ours depends upon a complex and delicate balance of initial conditions simply given in the Big Bang itself. The following video explains how this remarkable fine-tuning points to a personal designer of the universe.

VIDEO: From galaxies and stars down to atoms and subatomic particles, the very structure of our universe is determined by these numbers. These are the fundamental constants and quantities of the universe. Scientists have come to the shocking realization that each of these numbers has been carefully dialed to an astonishingly precise value, a value that falls within an exceedingly narrow life-permitting range. If any one of these numbers were altered by even a hairsbreadth, no physical, interactive life of any kind could exist anywhere. There'd be no stars, no life, no planets, no chemistry. Consider gravity, for example. The force of gravity is determined by the gravitational constant. If this constant varied by just one in 10 to the 60th parts, none of us would exist.To understand how exceedingly narrow this life-permitting range is, imagine a dial divided into 10 to the 60th increments. To get a handle on how many tiny points on the dial this is, compare it to the number of cells in your body, or the number of seconds that have ticked by since time began. If the gravitational constant had been out of tune by just one of these infinitesimally small increments, the universe would either have expanded and thinned out so rapidly that no stars could form and life couldn't exist, or it would have collapsed back on itself with the same result: no stars, no planets, and no life. Or consider the expansion rate of the universe. This is driven by the cosmological constant. A change in its value by a mere one part in 10 to the 120th parts would cause the universe to expand too rapidly or too slowly. In either case the universe would again be life-prohibiting. Or, another example of fine-tuning: if the mass and energy of the early universe were not evenly distributed to an incomprehensible precision of one part in 10 to the 10 to the 123rd, the universe would be hostile to life of any kind. The fact is, our universe permits physical, interactive life only because these and many other numbers have been independently and exquisitely balanced on a razor's edge. Wherever physicists look, they see examples of fine-tuning. The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life. If anyone claims not to be surprised by the special features that the universe has, he's hiding his head in the sand. These special features are surprising and unlikely. What is the best explanation for this astounding phenomenon? There are three live options. The fine-tuning of the universe is due to either physical necessity, chance, or design. Which of these options is the most plausible? According to this alternative [physical necessity], the universe must be life-permitting. The precise values of these constants and quantities could not be otherwise. But is this plausible? Is a life-prohibiting universe impossible? Far from it. It's not only possible; it's far more likely than a life-permitting universe. The constants and quantities are not determined by the laws of nature. There's no reason or evidence to suggest that fine-tuning is necessary. How about chance? Did we just get really, really, really, really lucky? No; the probabilities involved are so ridiculously remote as to put the fine-tuning well beyond the reach of chance, so in an effort to keep this option alive, some have gone beyond empirical science and opted for a more speculative approach known as the multiverse. They imagine a universe generator that cranks out such a vast number of universes that, odds are, life-permitting universes will eventually pop out. However, there's no scientific evidence for the existence of this multiverse. It cannot be detected, observed, measured, or proved, and the universe generator itself would require an enormous amount of fine-tuning. Furthermore, small patches of order are far more probable than big ones, so the most probable observable universe would be a small one, inhabited by a single, simple observer. But what we actually observe is the very thing that we should least expect: a vast, spectacularly complex, highly-ordered universe inhabited by billions of other observers. So even if the multiverse existed, which is a moot point, it wouldn't do anything to explain the fine-tuning. Given the implausibility of physical necessity or chance, the best explanation for why the universe is fine-tuned for life may very well be it was designed that way. A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super intellect monkeyed with physics and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question. There is for me powerful evidence that there is something going on behind it all... it seems as though somebody has fine-tuned nature's numbers to make the universe. The impression of design is overwhelming. The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge.

DR. CRAIG: The examples of fine-tuning mentioned in the video are all up-to-date, accurate, and well established. The question we face then is: What is the best explanation for the cosmic fine-tuning? There are three live options in the contemporary literature on fine-tuning: physical necessity, chance, or design. So our argument can be formulated in three simple steps:

  1. The fine-tuning of the universe is due to either physical necessity, chance, or design.
  2. It is not due to physical necessity or chance.
  3. Therefore, it is due to design.

As the video explains, the only serious alternative to design is the multiverse chance hypothesis. There are multiple problems with this hypothesis, but let me highlight just one of the most important. If our universe were just a random member of a multiverse then we ought to be observing a much different universe than we do. Roger Penrose of Oxford University has pressed this objection forcefully. He points out that the odds of our universe's initial low entropy conditions obtaining by chance alone are on the order of one chance out of 10 to the power of 10 to the power of 123. By contrast, the odds of our solar system suddenly forming by the random collision of particles is one chance out of 10 to the power of 10 to the power of 60. This number, says Penrose, is “utter chickenfeed” in comparison with 10 to the 10 to the 123rd.[1] What that means is that it is far more likely that we should be observing a patch of order no larger than our solar system since a universe like that is so unfathomably more probable than a finely tuned universe like ours. In fact, the most probable observable universe is one which consists of a single brain which pops into existence via a random fluctuation with illusory perceptions of the external world. So if you accept the multiverse explanation of fine-tuning, you're obliged to believe that you are all that exists and that your body, this auditorium, the Earth, everything you perceive in the world is just an illusion of your brain. No sane person believes such a thing. On atheism, therefore, it is highly improbable that there exists a randomly ordered multiverse. With the failure of the multiverse hypothesis, the alternative of chance collapses. Neither physical necessity nor chance provides a good explanation of the fine-tuning of the universe. It follows logically that the best explanation is design.

Number three: God makes sense of objective moral values and duties in the world. The following video makes this argument very clear.

VIDEO: Can you be good without God? Let's find out. [An atheist saves a cat stuck in a tree.] Absolutely astounding! There you have it; undeniable proof that you can be good without believing in God. But wait; the question isn't can you be good without believing in God. The question is, can you be good without God? See, here's the problem. If there is no God, what basis remains for objective good or bad, right or wrong? If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist, and here's why. Without some objective reference point, we have no way of saying that something is really up or down. God's nature provides an objective reference point for moral values. It's the standard against which all actions and decisions are measured. But if there's no God, there's no objective reference point. All we are left with is one person's viewpoint, which is no more valid than anyone else's viewpoint. This kind of morality is subjective, not objective. It's like a preference for strawberry ice cream; the preference is in the subject, not the object, so it doesn't apply to other people. In the same way, subjective morality applies only to the subject. It's not valid or binding for anyone else. So in a world without God, there can be no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. God has expressed his moral nature to us as commands. These provide the basis for moral duties. For example, God's essential attribute of love is expressed in his command to love your neighbor as yourself. This command provides a foundation upon which we can affirm the objective goodness of generosity, self-sacrifice, and equality, and we can condemn as objectively evil greed, abuse, and discrimination. This raises a problem. Is something good just because God wills it, or does God will something because it is good? The answer is: neither one. Rather, God wills something because he is good. God is the standard of moral values, just as a live musical performance is the standard for a high-fidelity recording. The more a recording sounds like the original, the better it is. Likewise, the more closely a moral action conforms to God's nature, the better it is. But if atheism is true there is no ultimate standard, so there can be no moral obligations or duties. Who or what lays such duties upon us? No one. Remember, for the atheist, humans are just accidents of nature, highly evolved animals. But animals have no moral obligations to one another. When a cat kills a mouse, it hasn't done anything morally wrong; the cat's just being a cat. If God doesn't exist, we should view human behavior in the same way. No action should be considered morally right or wrong. But the problem is good and bad, right and wrong, do exist. Just as our sense experience convinces us that the physical world is objectively real, our moral experience convinces us that moral values are objectively real. Every time you say, “Hey! That's not fair! That's wrong! That's an injustice!” you affirm your belief in the existence of objective morals. We're well aware that child-abuse, racial discrimination, and terrorism are wrong, for everybody, always. Is this just a personal preference or opinion? No. The man who says that it is morally acceptable to rape little children is just as mistaken as the man who says two plus two equals five. What all this amounts to then is a moral argument for the existence of God. If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist. But objective moral values and duties do exist. Therefore, God exists. Atheism fails to provide a foundation for the moral reality every one of us experiences every day. In fact, the existence of objective morality points us directly to the existence of God.

DR. CRAIG: Again, this argument can be very simply formulated.

  1. If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.
  2. Objective moral values and duties do exist.
  3. Therefore, God exists.

Perhaps the most important thing to keep in mind about the moral argument is not to confuse moral ontology with morally epistemology. What do I mean by that? Moral ontology has to do with the objective reality of moral values and duties. Moral epistemology has to do with how we come to know moral values and duties. The moral argument has nothing to say about moral epistemology. It makes no claim about how we come to know objective moral values and duties. The argument is wholly about moral ontology – the grounding of objective moral values and duties in reality. So epistemological objections about how we come by our moral beliefs are irrelevant to the argument. From the two premises it follows logically that God exists.

The moral argument complements the cosmological and design arguments by telling us something about the moral nature of the creator and designer of the universe. It gives us a personal, necessarily existent being who is not only perfectly good but whose very nature is the standard of goodness and whose commands constitute our moral duties.

The arguments presented thus far give us a perfectly good personal creator and designer of the universe. That already narrows down the field of the world religions to the great monotheistic faiths such as Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Deism. Can we determine more specifically which, if any of these monotheistic claims, is most plausibly a revelation of the one true God? Well, that leads to my fourth point.

Number four: God makes sense of the historical facts concerning Jesus of Nazareth. The historical person, Jesus of Nazareth, was a remarkable individual. New Testament critics have reached something of a consensus that the historical Jesus came on the scene with an unprecedented sense of divine authority – the authority to stand and speak in God's place. That's why the Jewish leadership instigated his crucifixion on the charge of blasphemy. He claimed to be the long-awaited Jewish Messiah, the unique Son of God, and the divine-human Son of Man prophesied by the prophet Daniel. He claimed that in himself the Kingdom of God had come and, as visible demonstrations of this fact, he carried out a ministry of miracle-working and exorcisms. But the supreme confirmation of his claim was his resurrection from the dead. If Jesus really did rise from the dead then it would seem that we have a divine miracle on our hands and thus evidence for God's decisive self-revelation in Jesus.

Most people probably think that the resurrection of Jesus is something you just believe in by faith or not. But there are actually three established facts recognized by the majority of New Testament historians today which I believe are best explained by the resurrection of Jesus; namely, his empty tomb, his post-mortem appearances, and the very origin of the disciples’ belief in his resurrection. The following video summarizes some of the evidence in support of these three facts.

VIDEO: Why was Jesus of Nazareth crucified? Because he made outrageous claims about himself. He claimed to be the one and only Son of God. Why would anyone take his claim seriously? Well, that all depends. If Jesus actually rose from the dead, then his claim to be God's unique Son carries considerable weight. On the other hand, if the resurrection never actually happened, then Jesus may be safely dismissed as just another interesting, but tragic historical figure. Did Jesus rise from the dead? As we explore this question, we need to address two further questions. What are the facts that require explanation, and which explanation best accounts for these facts? There are three main facts that need to be explained: the discovery of Jesus' empty tomb, the appearances of Jesus alive after his death, and the disciples' belief that Jesus rose from the dead. Let's examine each of these. Fact number one: the discovery that Jesus' tomb was empty is reported in no less than six independent sources, and some of these are among the earliest materials to be found in the New Testament. This is important because when an event is recorded by two or more unconnected sources, historians' confidence that the event actually happened increases, and the earlier these sources are dated, the higher their confidence. Moreover, the Gospels indicate that it was women who first discovered that Jesus' body was missing. This is likely historical because in that culture a woman's testimony was considered next to worthless. A later legend or fabrication would have had men make this discovery. Our confidence in the empty tomb is further increased by the response of the Jewish authorities. When they heard the report that the tomb was found empty, they said that Jesus' followers had stolen his body, thereby admitting that Jesus' tomb was in fact empty. Most scholars by far hold firmly to the reliability of the biblical statements about the empty tomb. Fact number two: the appearances of Jesus alive after his death. In one of the earliest letters in the New Testament, Paul provides a list of witnesses to Jesus' resurrection appearances. “He appeared to Peter, then to The Twelve, then he appeared to more than 500 brothers at one time, then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Finally, he appeared also to me.” Furthermore, various resurrection appearances of Jesus are independently confirmed by the Gospel accounts. On the basis of Paul's testimony alone, virtually all historical scholars agree that various individuals and groups experienced appearances of Jesus alive after his death. It may be taken as historically certain that Peter and the disciples had experiences after Jesus' death in which Jesus appeared to them as the risen Christ. Fact number three: the disciples’ belief in the resurrection. After Jesus' crucifixion, his followers were devastated, demoralized, and hiding in fear for their lives. As Jews, they had no concept of a Messiah who would be executed by his enemies, much less come back to life. The only resurrection Jews believed in was a universal event on judgement day after the end of the world, not an individual event within history. Moreover, in Jewish law, Jesus' crucifixion as a criminal meant that he was literally under God's curse. Yet somehow, despite all of this, the disciples suddenly and sincerely came to believe that God had raised Jesus from the dead. They were so completely convinced that when threatened with death not one of them recanted. Even the Pharisee, Paul, who persecuted Christians, suddenly became a Christian himself, as did Jesus' skeptical younger brother James. Some sort of powerful, transformative experience is required to generate the sort of movement earliest Christianity was. “That is why, as an historian, I cannot explain the rise of early Christianity unless Jesus rose again, leaving an empty tomb behind him." These three firmly established facts cry out for an adequate explanation. How do you make sense of them? Down through history, various naturalistic explanations have been offered to explain away these facts: the conspiracy hypothesis, the apparent death hypothesis, the hallucination hypothesis, and so on. All of these have been nearly universally rejected by contemporary scholarship. The simple fact is that there is just no plausible naturalistic explanation of these three facts. The explanation given by the original eyewitnesses is that God raised Jesus from the dead. If it's even possible that God exists, then that explanation cannot be ruled out. For a God who is able to create the entire universe, the odd resurrection would be child's play. An empty tomb, Jesus' appearances alive after his death, and a group of dejected followers suddenly transformed by a radical new belief in a risen Messiah: these are independently established historical facts. How do you explain them?

DR. CRAIG: To review, the three facts which require explanation are these.

Fact number one: Jesus’ tomb was discovered empty by a group of his women followers on Sunday morning. To be clear, the multiple independent sources referred to in the video are not the books of the New Testament, but rather they are the sources on which the New Testament authors relied in writing their books, such as the pre-Pauline formula quoted in 1 Corinthians 15:3-5, the pre-Marcan passion story, Matthew's non-Marcan source, and Luke's non-Marcan source material.

Fact number two: On separate occasions, different individuals and groups experienced appearances of Jesus alive after his death. These appearances were witnessed not only by believers but also by unbelievers, skeptics, and even enemies.

Fact number three: The original disciples suddenly and sincerely came to believe that God had raised Jesus from the dead despite having every predisposition to the contrary. Just think of the situation facing the first disciples following Jesus’ crucifixion. (1) Their leader was dead, and Jewish messianic expectations included no idea of a Messiah who, instead of triumphing over Israel's enemies, would be shamefully executed by them as a criminal. (2) Jewish beliefs about the afterlife precluded anyone's rising from the dead to glory and immortality before the general resurrection of the dead at the end of the world. Nevertheless, the original disciples evidently came to believe so strongly that God had raised Jesus from the dead that they were willing to die for the truth of that belief.

The question then that we face is: What is the best explanation of these three facts? The following video explains the current state of scholarship regarding this question.

VIDEO: It's a matter of historical record that Jesus of Nazareth died and his body was placed in a tomb. It's also been firmly established that after his death and burial, his tomb was found empty. Various individuals and groups saw appearances of Jesus alive, and his disciples somehow became absolutely convinced that Jesus had risen from the dead. These are the historical facts. How do you explain them? Down through history, various naturalistic explanations have been offered to explain away these facts. Let's examine the four most popular ones. First, the conspiracy theory. According to this view, the disciples faked the resurrection. They stole Jesus's body from the tomb and then lied about seeing Jesus alive, thereby perpetrating the greatest hoax of all time. However, this theory faces overwhelming objections. It's hopelessly anachronistic; it looks at the disciples’ situation through the rearview mirror of Christian history instead of from the standpoint of a first century Jew. Jews had no concept of a Messiah who would be defeated and executed by Israel's enemies, much less rise from the dead. In Jewish thinking, the resurrection of the dead was a general event that takes place only after the end of the world and has no connection at all with a Messiah. The conspiracy theory also fails to address the disciples' obvious sincerity. People don't willingly die for something they know is not true. An honest reading of the New Testament makes it clear these people sincerely believed the message they proclaimed and were willing to die for. For these and other reasons no scholar defends the conspiracy theory today. A second attempt to explain the facts is the apparent death theory. Jesus didn't really die; he revived in the tomb somehow, escaped, and managed to convince his disciples he was risen from the dead. This theory also faces insurmountable obstacles. First, it's medically impossible. The Roman executioners were professionals. They knew what they were doing and made sure their victims were dead before taken down. Moreover, Jesus was tortured so extensively that even if he was taken down alive, he would have died in the sealed tomb. Second, this theory is wildly implausible. Seeing a half-dead man who crawled out of the tomb desperately in need of bandaging and medical attention would hardly have convinced the disciples that he was gloriously risen from the dead. As a result, no New Testament historians defend this theory today. A third explanation is the displaced body theory. Perhaps Joseph of Arimathea placed Jesus' body in his tomb temporarily because it was convenient, but later he moved the corpse to a criminals’ common graveyard, so when the disciples visited the first tomb and found it empty, they concluded that Jesus must have risen from the dead. Once again, this theory cannot make sense of the facts. Jewish laws prohibited moving a corpse after it was interred except to the family tomb. What's more, the criminals’ graveyard was located close to the place of execution so that burial there would not have been a problem. Also, once the disciples began to proclaim Jesus' resurrection, Joseph would have corrected their mistake. So once again, no current scholars endorse this theory. Finally, the hallucination theory. The disciples didn't really see Jesus, but just imagined that he appeared before them. They were all hallucinating. This theory also faces considerable problems. First, Jesus appeared not just one time, but many times; not just in one place, but in different places; not just to one person, but to different persons; not just to individuals, but to groups of people; and not just to believers, but to unbelievers as well. There is nothing in the psychological case books on hallucinations comparable to these resurrection appearances. Second, hallucinations of Jesus would have led the disciples to believe at most that Jesus had been transported to heaven, not risen from the dead in contradiction to their Jewish beliefs. Moreover, in the ancient world, visions of the deceased were not evidence that the person was alive, but evidence that he was dead and had moved on to the afterworld. Finally, this theory doesn't even attempt to explain the empty tomb. Thus, the four most popular naturalistic theories fail to explain the historical facts. Where does that leave us? Another possibility is the explanation given by the original eyewitnesses: God raised Jesus from the dead. Unlike the other theories, this makes perfect sense of the empty tomb, the appearances of Jesus alive, and the disciples' willingness to die for their belief. But is this explanation plausible? After all, it requires a miracle, a supernatural act of God. Think about it – if it's even possible that God exists, then miracles are possible, and this explanation cannot be ruled out. And surely it's possible that God exists. So how do you explain the resurrection?

DR. CRAIG: Naturalistic attempts to explain the empty tomb, the post-mortem appearances, and the origin of the disciples’ belief in Jesus’ resurrection have been almost universally rejected by contemporary scholarship. The simple fact is that there just is no plausible naturalistic explanation of these three facts. Therefore, it seems to me the Christian is amply justified in believing that Jesus rose from the dead and therefore was who he claimed to be. But that entails that Christian theism is true. We can summarize this argument as follows.

  1. There are three established facts concerning the fate of Jesus of Nazareth: the discovery of the empty tomb, his post-mortem appearances, and the origin of the disciples’ belief in his resurrection.
  2. The hypothesis “God raised Jesus from the dead” is the best explanation of these facts.
  3. The hypothesis “God raised Jesus from the dead” entails that the God revealed by Jesus of Nazareth exists.
  4. Therefore, the God revealed by Jesus of Nazareth exists.

The significance of the resurrection of Jesus lies in the fact that it is not just anybody or somebody who has been raised from the dead, but Jesus of Nazareth whose crucifixion was instigated by the Jewish leadership because of his allegedly blasphemous claims to divine authority. If this man has been raised from the dead then the God whom he had allegedly blasphemed has publicly and dramatically vindicated his claims. The resurrection of Jesus is God’s imprimatur indicating that Jesus was who he claimed to be.

But that means that Jesus holds the key to eternal life. Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, though he die, yet shall live.” And what is the eternal life that Jesus gives? Jesus said, “And this is life eternal, that they might know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” If you want to discover the eternal life and the relationship with God that you were created to have then you need to place your trust in Jesus as your Savior and Lord. Trusting in Jesus as your Savior involves trusting him to forgive and cleanse you of all of the moral failures that stain your life and separate you from God. Trusting in him as Lord means trusting him to make you into a new person, filling your life with his presence and changing you from the inside out. Trusting in Jesus is not a blind step or leap in the dark but rather, as we have seen, a rational commitment that is fully in line with the evidence.

QUESTION AND ANSWER

QUESTION: Do these arguments for God’s existence also stand for polytheistic religions?

DR. CRAIG: The arguments presented here today are consistent with any of the great monotheistic religions of the world: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, or even Deism. That doesn't mean, however, that they are compatible with every world religion. These arguments exclude such religions as polytheism, atheism, any form of pantheism such as Hinduism or Buddhism or Taoism, because those religions are incompatible with the existence of a personal transcendent creator and designer of the universe who is the locus of absolute moral goodness. So these arguments alone actually do winnow down the field of the world's religions to the great monotheistic faiths. Now, beyond that, if I had more time, I would want to talk about who Jesus of Nazareth was – Who did he claim to be? How should we understand him? Jewish monotheism, Christian monotheism, and Muslim monotheism have very, very different views of Jesus of Nazareth. So the question will be: Which of these provides the most historically adequate and accurate understanding of Jesus, and as a Christian I'm persuaded that Christian monotheism explains the person and the claims of Jesus better than competing monotheisms.

QUESTION: Is the kalam guilty of being an argument from composition?

DR. CRAIG: You've been reading garbage on the Internet. I've heard these objections. The moment you said “This argument commits the fallacy of composition” I knew where this stuff is coming from because that is completely wrong. The fallacy of composition is the fallacy of inferring that because part of something has a property that the whole thing has the same property, and that's clearly fallacious. Every tiny part of an elephant is light in weight, but it doesn't follow that the whole elephant is light in weight. But the argument doesn't reason by composition. The objection just has no purchase against the first premise which doesn't reason by composition. It doesn't say every little part of the universe has a cause, and therefore the whole universe has a cause. What it says is everything that begins to exist has a cause. Now, I think you also said what would be God's cause or God would require a cause – and that's relevant to the question posed by the gentleman in the back row. As I said there, the premise is carefully formulated so as to require anything that begins to exist – that comes into being – to have a cause. But if something is eternal then it doesn't need to have a cause. It never comes into being. In fact, how could it have a cause? There can't be anything before it. So something that exists eternally, if you're going to maintain that that has a cause, you're going to have to do some more metaphysical work because the first premise won't get you there. That applies only to things that begin to exist. Now, I know there were some other good points that you made that I can't remember now because there were so many, but most of these objections are dealt with in my published work. If you look at a book like On Guard or my book Reasonable Faith, I go through these sorts of objections. In fact, I have a talk on YouTube that you should watch called “Objections so bad I couldn't have made them up” – “The world's ten worst objections to the cosmological argument”[2], and one of them is that it commits the fallacy of composition and some of these others. So look at that YouTube video on objections so bad I couldn't have made them up. But thank you for your question.

QUESTION: Why do the authors of the BGV theorem differ on its interpretation?

DR. CRAIG: Alright. This is very, very interesting. I'm going to give you a backstory on this that is fascinating. I had a debate a couple years ago with a naturalist cosmologist named Sean Carroll[3] in which I explained the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem and how it points to a beginning of the universe. And Carroll put up a slide of Alan Guth holding a little sign saying the universe is probably past-eternal. A very good rhetorical debating point. And I thought, what is going on here? How can one proponent of the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem – Alexander Vilenkin – say that it proves that the universe is finite in the past, and another of its formulators say the universe is probably past-eternal. It didn't make sense. Well, the revelation to what was going on here came through a debate I had with the British philosopher Daniel Came about a year ago at Trinity College in Dublin. Daniel Came, who is a friend of mine, in preparation for the debate corresponded with Guth and Vilenkin about this, and asked them, “Why did you say this [Guth] that your theorem doesn't imply the beginning of the universe as Vilenkin does?” And Vilenkin wrote a very strong letter chastising Alan Guth for ignoring the implications of the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem. The reason that Guth postulated for denying that implication of the theorem was his appeal to the Carroll-Chen model of the universe – the very model which I had criticized in my debate with Sean Carroll. This is a model of the universe that avoids the beginning of the universe by saying that at some point in the past the arrow of time flips over and runs in the opposite direction so that there's a sort of mirror universe on the other side at some point in the past. Well, now, there are two obvious problems with this model. First, it's physically impossible. It makes no sense to say that time runs in a backward direction – that the arrow of time flips over. But if it does (if you say, alright this is what the model postulates) then what that means is that that mirror universe is in no sense in our past. It isn't earlier than our universe. Quite the contrary, what you have is two universes with a common beginning point running in opposite directions. Do you see the point? It's really a kind of forked universe or multiverse scenario. Therefore, far from avoiding the beginning of the universe, it actually implies the beginning of the universe because both of the arrows of time spring from an original beginning point. That, for me, was hugely significant when I saw this correspondence that Came shared with me from Guth and Vilenkin.

QUESTION: Does God act immorally in the Old Testament?

DR. CRAIG: Well, in the first place, I'm not defending biblical inerrancy. If you find those stories in the Old Testament to be historically incredible, you're at liberty to regard them either as legends or as the disobedience of Israel to the commands and the goodness of God. The stories are simply irrelevant to the moral argument. Just think about it. Which premise of the moral argument would these stories call into question? Does it call into question the first premise that if God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist? No. It does nothing to call into question that premise. What about the second premise that objective moral values and duties do exist? Well, it doesn't call that into question either; in fact, it presupposes the truth of that by saying that God here has commanded Israel to do something that is immoral, that is objectively wrong. So it actually presupposes that premise. So when you think about it, this objection based on these Old Testament stories just is irrelevant to the moral argument. So what is it relevant to? What does this objection prove? Well, I think at most it would disprove a doctrine of biblical inerrancy – that the Bible is entirely accurate in recording God's commands to kill the Canaanite tribes. And that's an in-house issue among Christians. That's not an issue that separates theists and atheists. That's a debate among people who are already biblical believers – the degree to which they think that biblical inerrancy is true. I think that's important to understand because you can then see that the objection really doesn't have the teeth that one might think at first that it does have. But how might one address the objection itself? On our website, in question of the week number 16, I address this question.[4] It is a mischaracterization of God's command to call this genocide. It is not a command to commit genocide. The command by God is to drive the Canaanite tribes out of the land of Canaan and to deliver the land to Israel. The Canaanite tribes were under the judgment of God for their incredible evil. God had allowed Israel to languish for 400 years in Egypt before giving the land of Canaan to them. Why? Well, God says to Abraham, “the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.” They were not fully ripe for judgment. So God waited 400 years until this culture, these peoples, were so morally degenerate that now they fell under the just judgment of God for their wickedness. Just as, hundreds of years later, God would use the armies of Babylon to judge Israel itself, his own people, when it fell into wickedness. So God was destroying these Canaanite states as nations. It wasn't a command to hunt down all of these Canaanites and kill them. No such command was ever carried out. Rather, they were being destroyed as national or political entities. They were being divested of the land and driven out. Had none of them chosen to fight – had they simply retreated in the advance of the Israeli army – no one needed to be killed. The judgment was to divest them of the land, and it is the land that is so all important to these Middle Eastern peoples. It is the land that is the blessing of God, and now the land of Canaan was being given to Israel, and these Canaanite tribes were being divested of it. So I think that God's judgment upon these Canaanite nations was entirely just, and I've argued that in doing this he wronged no one. He did not wrong the Canaanites, he did not wrong the Israelites. This was fully compatible with his love and justice. So I don't see any reason to think that this narrative is an example of God’s issuing an immoral command or something that is morally contrary to our intuitions.

QUESTION: Do objective moral values actually exist?

DR. CRAIG: If you ask moral realists – people who believe in objective moral values – why they do so, they will typically say it is on the basis of our moral experience. I remember in my debate with Stephen Law, an atheist, in Central Hall, Westminster. Law said, “I seem to experience objective moral values and duties. I see no reason to deny the reality, and therefore I believe in them.” He had no grounding for them, but he believes in them on the basis of his moral experience. I think that would be the majority view of moral realists. We have a moral experience in which a realm of objective moral values and duties impose themselves upon us, and we have no reason to deny their objective validity. Therefore, it's perfectly rational to believe in them. As the video explained, it's very analogous to our belief in the reality of the external world on the basis of our sense perceptions. We have no way of getting outside of our sense perceptions to prove that they are veridical. You could be a brain in a vat of chemicals wired up with electrodes being stimulated by a mad scientist to think that you're here in this auditorium at Canford listening to this lecture when in fact none of it is real. But you'd have to be crazy to believe such a thing in the absence of any evidence for it. On the basis of your sense experience of a world of physical objects around you, you're perfectly rational to believe in the veridicality of those perceptions unless and until you have some defeater of those perceptions. In exactly the same way, we have, I think, moral perceptions of objective moral values and duties, and in the absence of a defeater of those we are perfectly rational to believe that they exist. So I would invite you to reflect on your own moral experience. Do you really think that raping a little child is a morally indifferent act? I agree with Michael Ruse in the video – the man who says that raping little children is morally acceptable is just as mistaken as the man who says two plus two equals five. Just as I believe that two plus two equals four with logical necessity is true, so I believe that raping little children is morally wrong with a logical necessity comparable to that mathematical truth.

QUESTION: What about different moral standards in other societies and cultures around the world?

DR. CRAIG: This again, I think, is an epistemological objection, not an ontological objection. To claim that there are objective moral values and duties is not to say that these are easy to discern or that they are universally held. Objective doesn't mean “universal.” Objective means “valid and binding independent of human opinion.” But clearly there are going to be vast areas of gray where our moral duties are not clear to us. This requires rational reflection in order to discern our moral duty. People can and do disagree on these issues, as you mentioned. But that doesn't mean they're not objective. I think in many cases there are instances of black and white where, as in the case of raping little children, it is clearly morally evil and wrong to do such a thing. When you look at these fundamental sorts of moral principles, I think you'll find a great deal of cross-cultural agreement. These cross-cultural values may often come to expression in different ways in different cultures, but you will find that there is across humanity a broad system of common and shared values. So although, epistemologically speaking, there are areas of gray, although there are people who are simply wicked and hold immoral beliefs, although moral development and change is possible, none of this goes to undermine the fact that there are objective moral values and duties that do exist.

QUESTION: Does God have a cause?

DR. CRAIG: Notice what the first premise of the argument states. It does not say “everything has a cause” or “everything that exists has a cause.” I think that statement is false. The premise rather says “everything that begins to exist has a cause.” That is to say, something cannot come into being from nothing. There must be a cause which brings it into being. But if something exists eternally, never begins to exist, then it would need not have a cause. Indeed, it's difficult to see how it even could have a cause. God is, as I say, an uncaused eternal being.

[During the following answer the power unexpectedly went out, but . . . the Q&A continued!]

QUESTION: Can you have objective moral values without God?

DR. CRAIG: I do not think you can on utilitarianism or on the virtue ethics because both of these begin with the assumption that human beings have intrinsic moral value. And that's begging the question. Given atheism, I'm inclined to agree with thinkers like Friedrich Nietzsche, Bertrand Russell, and Jean-Paul Sartre that see no reason to think that on an atheistic naturalistic view human beings would have intrinsic moral worth. So these sorts of ethics begin with the assumption that human beings have intrinsic moral value objectively, and that's what's called into question and needs explanation. Now, Platonism is different. Platonism would posit a realm of abstract moral values that exist objectively. Justice exists, Love exists as abstract ideas. And these would provide the basis for objective moral values. I have three difficulties with this Platonic point of view. First, I find it unintelligible. I don't even understand what it means to say Justice exists. I understand what it is for a person to be just or some action to be just, but in the absence of any people I draw a complete blank when I'm told that Justice just exists. Platonism seems to posit these abstractions that are just floating in the air in an unintelligible way. Secondly, I don't see any basis in Platonism for moral duties. Even if you have these objective values, what makes me obligated to align my life with these objectively existing abstract objects? Who or what lays such obligations upon me? Indeed, on Platonism there are presumably also abstract moral vices like Lethargy, Greed, Hatred, and so forth. So what obligates me to align my life with one set of these abstract moral values than with these other abstract moral entities? I can't see any basis for moral duty on Platonism. Finally, number three, Platonism posits a coincidence that is utterly improbable; namely, that out of the blind evolutionary process just that sort of being would evolve which corresponds to the causally unconnected abstract realm of moral objects. It is far more plausible to think that both the abstract moral realm and the natural physical realm are under the rulership of a giver of both the moral law and the natural laws of the physical universe. Therefore, theism is a superior worldview because it provides a unified explanation of reality whereas Platonism is saddled with this incredible coincidence.

MODERATOR: We will wait for the lights to go back on. Why not, while we do that, I'll raise my voice for the next question. Hopefully you can hear me.

DR. CRAIG: Hopefully, my answers will be illuminating. [laughter]

QUESTION: What is the grounding of human purpose?

DR. CRAIG: . . . it is eternal and everlasting, whereas human beings on an atheistic view are going to peter out someday and die in the heat death of the universe. Scientists tell us that as the universe expands, its energy is used up and it grows colder and colder. Eventually all the stars will burn out, and then they will collapse into dead stars and black holes. The universe will continue to expand into infinite darkness. There will be no light. There will be no heat. There will be no life. Just a thin gas of elementary particles expanding into the endless recesses of space – a universe in ruin. And so, in light of that, all human endeavor and loves and purposes are ultimately futile. No matter how you live, no matter what you do, it all comes to nothing in the end. By contrast, if God exists, life does not end at the grave and we have the opportunity of knowing the source of absolute moral goodness – God himself. And our family relationships and our loves and our friendships will have an eternal and undying significance. So every day you get up your life is charged with meaning because these things are viewed in this divine perspective. It gives a framework within which these daily acts and friendships and so forth have an everlasting and eternal significance. If I might say, when I became a Christian, the greatest difference in my life that it made was not the love or the joy or the peace of mind that it brought, as wonderful as those things were; the biggest change for me was meaning. It meant that now my life was of eternal significance and that every day I got up, the things that I was going to do that day were meaningful and had an everlasting significance. That just filled my life with meaning, in contrast to my pre-Christian days.

QUESTION: Are the New Testament documents biased?

DR. CRAIG: Most all of them are from Christian followers, and therefore could be charged to be biased. That's quite true. This is a challenge for ancient historians. You see, that's the case for virtually all of ancient history. It's all written from a particular perspective and therefore, in that sense, it's all biased. Part of the challenge of the modern historian is to try to weigh and sift through these documents to discern what elements are the historical nuggets that can be found in them. That's why, for example, finding independent sources that are early and relate the same account is an important earmark of historicity because it's highly improbable that two sources would have made up, independently, the same story. If you can have independent early sources for some event, that increases historians’ confidence that this is not just due to the bias or prejudice, but this represents a historical element in the narrative. Similarly, you remember in the video with respect to the empty tomb. Having the tomb discovered by women is so countercultural for first century Jewish society. If this were a legendary story that arose over the decades after Jesus was dead and gone then undoubtedly male disciples would have been made to discover the tomb of Jesus empty, not female disciples whose witness was worthless in that culture. So there are any number of indications like this that help us to sift through the biases and define the historical kernels that are contained in the narratives. I said almost all were from Christian sources, but one especially is significant that is not and that is the Jewish response to the early proclamation “He is risen from the dead.” Remember in the video it said that the way in which the Jewish authorities responded to their proclamation was to say the disciples came and stole away his body. In Matthew's Gospel, he's very concerned to refute this Jewish counter-explanation of the disciples’ proclamation. What were the Jewish authorities saying in response to the Christian proclamation “He is risen?” That his body still lay in the tomb there in the garden? That these men are full of new wine? No, they said the disciples came and stole away his body. The earliest Jewish polemic against the Christian proclamation was itself an attempt to explain why the body was missing. So we have in this Jewish polemic evidence from the very enemies of the early Christian faith that the tomb was empty.

 

[1] See Roger Penrose, The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), pp. 762-5.