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The Case for Christian Theism | Aalborg University, Denmark - 2019

In March of 2019, Dr. Craig visited Denmark for a series of lectures and presentations. Here at the University of Aalborg he shares arguments for Christian theism.


DR. CRAIG: Thank you very much, and thank you for coming. This is my third visit to Denmark, and on each occasion I've had the privilege and pleasure of traveling and speaking to the University of Aalborg. I'm grateful to Peter Ostrom, the professor of philosophy here, for the invitation to participate in this week's Metaphysics of Time conference earlier in the week, and then as well in the Faith and Knowledge conference, of which this lecture is a part.

In our secular society, it's vitally important for Christians to be able to defend their belief in God. As a professional philosopher, I believe that the hypothesis that God exists explains a wide range of the data of human experience. In order to make this data clearer, I'm going to share with you some animated videos which we've developed at Reasonable Faith in support of Christian theism. These and others are all available on our website ReasonableFaith.org.

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 first video I want to share explains how the scientific evidence for a beginning of the universe points beyond the universe to its ground in a 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 premises of this argument.

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

One of the most startling developments of modern science is that we now have pretty strong evidence that the universe is not eternal in the past but had an absolute beginning about 14 billion years ago in a cataclysmic event known as the Big Bang. As explained in the video, in 2003 Arvind Borde, Alan Guth, and Alexander Vilenkin were able to show that in a universe which is on average in a state of cosmic expansion throughout its history it cannot be infinite in the past but must have a beginning. And that goes for multiverse scenarios, as well. In 2012, Vilenkin showed that models which do not meet this one condition still fail for other reasons. To avoid the beginning of the universe, Vilenkin concluded, “None of these scenarios can actually be past eternal. . . . All the evidence we have says that the universe had a beginning.”[1] In the fall of 2015 Vilenkin strengthened that conclusion. He wrote:

We have no viable models of an eternal universe. The BGV [Borde-Guth-Vilenkin] theorem gives reason to believe that such models simply cannot be constructed.[2]

The Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem proves that classical space-time 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, it will be the beginning of the universe. Either way the universe began to exist. Since something cannot come into being out of nothing, the absolute beginning of the universe implies the existence of the beginningless, uncaused, timeless, spaceless, changeless, immaterial, enormously powerful creator of the universe.

Point 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 anywhere in the cosmos depends upon a complex and delicate balance of initial conditions given in the Big Bang itself. Scientists once believed that whatever the initial conditions of the universe, eventually intelligent life might evolve somewhere. But now we know that our existence is balanced on a razor’s edge. The existence of intelligent life anywhere in the cosmos depends upon a conspiracy of initial conditions which must be fine-tuned to a degree that is literally incomprehensible and incalculable. The following video explains how this remarkable fine-tuning points to a personal designer of the cosmos.

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 1 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 in the video are all up-to-date, accurate, and well established. The question then we face is this: What is the best explanation of 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. Now, 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 existing by chance alone are on the order of 1 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 around 1 chance out of 10 to the power of 10 to the power of 60. This number, says Penrose, is “utter chicken feed” in comparison to 10 to the 10 to the 123.[3] What that means is that it is far more probable that we should be observing an orderly universe no larger than our solar system since a universe like that is 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 by a random fluctuation with illusory perceptions of the external world. So if you accept the multiverse explanation, you're obligated to believe that you are all that exists and that this auditorium, your body, your friends, the world around you are just illusions 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.

Data point 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: 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 moral epistemology. Now, 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 simply 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 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.

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 that in himself the Kingdom of God had come, and as visible demonstrations of this fact he carried out a ministry of miracles and exorcisms. But the supreme confirmation of his claims was his resurrection from the dead. If Jesus did rise from the dead then it would seem that we have a divine miracle on our hands, and thus evidence for God's self-revelation in Jesus.

I appreciate that most people would probably think that the resurrection of Jesus is something you just believe in by faith or not, but, in fact, there are actually three well-established facts which are recognized by the majority of New Testament historians today which I believe are best explained by the resurrection of Jesus, namely (1) his empty tomb, (2) his post-mortem appearances, and (3) the 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 found empty by a group of his women followers on the Sunday morning after his crucifixion. Just to be clear, the multiple independent sources attesting to the empty tomb spoken of in the video are not the books of the New Testament themselves but rather the sources used by the New Testament authors in writing their books – things like the pre-Pauline formula quoted in 1 Corinthians 15, the pre-Marcan passion story, Matthew's non-Marcan source material, and Luke's non-Marcan source material. According to Dutch scholar D. H. van Daalen, it is extremely difficult to object to the empty tomb on historical grounds; those who deny it, he says, do so on the basis of theological or philosophical assumptions.

Fact number two: On separate occasions, different individuals and groups saw appearances of Jesus alive after his death. According to Gerd Lüdemann, a prominent German New Testament critic, “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.”[4] These appearances were witnessed not only by believers but also by unbelievers, skeptics, and even enemies.

Fact number three: The original disciples suddenly came to believe in the resurrection of Jesus despite having every predisposition to the contrary. Just think of the situation that the disciples faced following Jesus’ crucifixion. Number one, 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. Second, Jewish beliefs about the afterlife precluded anyone's rising from the dead to glory and immortality before the general resurrection after the end of the world. Nevertheless the original disciples suddenly 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. Luke Johnson, who is a prominent New Testament scholar at Emory University, has said, “some sort of powerful, transformative experience is required” in order to explain the sort of movement that earliest Christianity was.[5] N. T. Wright, an eminent British scholar, concludes, “that is why, as a historian, I cannot explain the rise of early Christianity unless Jesus rose again, leaving an empty tomb behind him.”[6]

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

  1. There are three established facts concerning the fate of Jesus of Nazareth: the discovery of his 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 someone or anyone 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 allegedly blasphemed has clearly vindicated those claims. The resurrection of Jesus is God's imprimatur indicating that Jesus was indeed 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 he live.” And what is eternal life? 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 trust in Jesus as your Savior and Lord. Trusting in Jesus as your Savior means trusting him to forgive you of all the moral failures that stain your life and separate you from God. Trusting 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 leap in the dark, but rather a rational commitment which is fully in line with the evidence, a commitment that I hope some of you will make, perhaps even today. It can change your life just as it changed mine.

MODERATOR: Thank you, Dr. Craig. That was very inspiring. . . .

QUESTION: I've been watching your talks for about ten years now, and this is new stuff to me. But I think one thing we should have talked about today was maybe in the case Christian theism; I think a strong case can be made for it when looking at countries that are actually Christian. They tend to be very successful, and we tend to have really good lives in Christian countries. So my question to you is: Do you think it's worth looking at how we can make people live Christian lives rather than having them believe in God? Or do you think those two things are inseparable?

DR. CRAIG: I do not think that the social benefits of Christian belief or of living in a Christian culture are a good argument for the truth of Christianity. I don't think that you can assess the truth of a worldview by its social benefits. Now, I think that you are quite right in saying, contrary to the general impression conveyed by the so-called New Atheist, that the social benefits of Christianity for the West have been enormous. Christianity has spearheaded the drive to found universities and maintain literacy. Its impact upon the arts and the humanities is incalculable. Its liberation of women and its improvement of the lot of human society is unbelievable. But none of this goes to show that it's true. It just shows that it's very beneficial. So I prefer not to appeal to those sorts of arguments on behalf of the truth of the Christian faith.

QUESTION: I think it’s a very nice attempt to demonstrate that Christianity can be reasonable, as you said. I think some of the arguments put forward weren’t very well argumented or didn’t make a lot of sense. I’ll take just one example and would like for you to comment on it. For the example of “Can we be good without God?” I really believe that there is no such thing as good and evil in an ontological way; it is all invented by man. This stems from the theory of institutions. So basically men try to organize a society by creating fictions such as money is a fiction, a country like Denmark is a fiction. It is things that don't actually physically exist but we all believe in to basically bring and organize a society together. This is why good and bad has kind of evolved during the times. When we go back to the Middle Ages, for example, it was completely considered good and okay to make medical experiments on dogs while they were still alive, so cutting them open because they were believed to not have a soul. At that point everybody believed it was good, as well as slavery was accepted throughout the world because it was believed back then that people, aborigines or I don’t know where from, did not have a soul either. That was then later obviously changed. But good and bad has changed over the years, over human experience. So if God has started everything from the beginning and good and bad hasn’t evolved, how does that make sense?

DR. CRAIG: I think that your question illustrates the danger that I tried to alert us to of confusing moral ontology with moral epistemology. The claim that objective moral values exist is not a claim that moral values are easy to discern or that we have infallible moral perceptions, any more than we have infallible sense perceptions. What your argument merely shows is that our apprehension and grasp of moral values and duties has evolved and developed over the years, and in many cases involves moral improvement. We can look back both in history, and I think in our own personal lives, and see that in fact things we once thought were good were really bad, and now we've come to see and apprehend these moral values more clearly. So you mustn't confuse the argument about the objectivity of moral values with thinking that this implies the universality of moral values or that there are no gray areas where moral values are difficult to discern. But so long as you think that there are any moral values, anything that is really right or wrong, then the argument will follow. It seems to me that just as we believe that we are surrounded by a physical world of objects based on our sense experience in the absence of some sort of a defeater of that sense experience, so we should believe in the realm of objective moral values and duties that we grasp in moral experience in the absence of some defeater. That isn't to say that our moral apprehensions are infallible or indefeasible any more than saying that my sense perception is infallible or indefeasible. But in the absence of a defeater, I think we're entirely rational to believe in the reality of that which we apprehend and perceive. I might just say that in my debate with the atheist philosopher Louise Antony, who is a moral realist, she put it in such a pithy way. She said, “Any argument for moral skepticism will be based upon premises which are less obvious than the reality of moral values and duties themselves.” I think that's true. And if it is true, it means there can be no good argument for moral skepticism.

QUESTION: I have a question regarding the moral argument. Concerning the first premise, that is God does not exist if moral values and duties do not exist. But to the best of my knowledge, Immanuel Kant tried to establish ethics based on the reason of man apart from God and a theistic worldview. Would you say that Kant has failed?

DR. CRAIG: Yes, I would. I think that Kant has no basis for thinking that human beings have intrinsic moral worth. He just starts with that point. God does play a critical role in Kant's ethical theory as you may know. For Kant, God is the necessary condition that conjoins virtue with happiness. In this life it is not always the good man who is the happy man. Think of Jesus who died a horrible death by crucifixion despite his goodness. For Kant, there needs to be an afterlife and a God who will apportion happiness to virtue so that we do live in a moral universe after all. So even though Kant didn’t ground moral values and duties in God, as I think he should have, still God does play an absolutely crucial role in his ethical system.

QUESTION: The conscience we have inside – is it possible to think that it is caused . . . the conscience we have saying what is not right; what is wrong to do. . . . The consciousness we have inside of us – is that God’s voice speaking to us?

DR. CRAIG: Our moral conscience? Well, that is what the Bible says. The Bible says that God has written the demands of his moral law on the hearts of all people so that even those who do not have the benefit of biblical revelation have an intuitive sense of the difference between good and evil, right and wrong, and can sense their moral responsibility before God and know that they need moral forgiveness and moral cleansing. I do think that in conscience, yes, the voice of God does speak to us. But, again, I want to emphasize that that's not part of the moral argument I presented. That would be an aspect of moral epistemology, wouldn't it? How do we come to know the content of the good? How do I come to know my moral duties? And I think that you're right that God speaks to us through our conscience, but that would be in addition and apart from the moral argument that I've defended here today.

QUESTION: When Paul mentions the list of appearances Jesus has, he mentioned “himself at last.” Paul’s experience was sufficient. So what is the argument that the other disciples’ experience, that the 500’s experience, shouldn't be a vision in Paul’s thinking when he's comparing his own vision to the list.

DR. CRAIG: I've frequently encountered this objection in my doctoral studies in München when I was working on this subject. It seems to me that the objection here really shows a misunderstanding of why Paul adds himself to the list of witnesses to the resurrection. Paul was not trying to drag down the other witnesses to the visionary nature of his own experience. Rather he was trying to bring his experience up to the objectivity and reality of the others. Paul’s apostleship was contested in Corinth. There were those in Corinth who denied that he was a real apostle. And so for Paul to be able to claim to be a witness of the resurrection of Jesus would help to ratify his apostolic status. So Paul is anxious to include himself in the list of witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection appearances. He's not talking about the mode of the appearance to them. The mode to Paul was semi-visionary in nature because it was so much later than the others. It was three years later after the ascension of Jesus. But Paul is not in any way trying to say that these earlier experiences that the disciples had were somehow of a semi-visionary nature like his. Quite the opposite. He's not trying to lower their status; he's trying to elevate his.

QUESTION: I have a question regarding . . . You are making this distinction between the moral ontology and the moral epistemology. I'm quite interested in the moral epistemology. Myself, personally, I would consider myself as somebody who is seeking a personal truth, maybe also a connection to other people and possibly God. Though I would say I am more like an agnostic. I have a very hard time committing to any type of religion. But that aside, how would you say that personally believing in a moral ontology has possibly guided you to a way for the personalogical aspects of that endeavor. Does that make sense to you?

DR. CRAIG: If I understand the question, you're asking a very personal question here about how it has impacted or guided my life. I would say two things. I would say that it is a powerful disincentive to rationalize one's own behavior. We have a tremendous capacity to rationalize our own behavior and to excuse it, even as we are so judgmental of others. To believe that there are objective moral values and duties that God has ordained and that when you transgress his moral law you are in effect spitting in the face of God and defying him, that is a real remedy, I think, to rationalizing your own behavior. Rather it is an incentive for rigorous self-examination and honesty in saying, “Yes, I am guilty. I was wrong.” And I think this can help you in your marriage relationship, too! Because sometimes you have to say to your spouse, “I was wrong. Will you please forgive me?” And knowing that there are objective right and wrong really helps with that. At the same time, I have to say as well in all candor, there is a wonderful feeling of having a clear conscience. When you wake up in the middle of the night, can't sleep, maybe you need to go to the toilet, and your mind is just wandering, it's a wonderful blessing not to be burdened with guilt and regret for the things that you've done because you know that you've been forgiven. You've been pardoned. Christ has paid for those sins and now you are clean and free of them. The blessings of a clear conscience should not be underestimated. In that same debate that I had with Louse Antony that I mentioned a moment ago, in her final closing statement she made a very poignant remark. She said there is one tremendous drawback to atheism. She said it is that, on atheism, there is no redemption. When you've done something wrong, it will never be made right again. There is no undoing that wrong. There is no redemption available as there is in Christ who forgives and pardons and pays the penalty for your sin. So the blessings of redemption and of a clear conscience, I think, are very great for the person who believes in the objectivity of moral values and duties as grounded in God.

QUESTION: We’ve heard a lot of arguments about the existence of God . . . But would you say that these arguments point towards the Christian God or just a God in general? Let’s not focus on the resurrection argument; I think that's pretty obvious. But the moral argument or the fine-tuning, would you say that points to the Christian God or a God like the God in Islam or Buddhism or whatever?

DR. CRAIG: Very good question. It's so important to understand that in the case for Christian theism I presented, this is what is called a cumulative case. It's like a case in a court of law where any single piece of evidence may not establish the guilt of the accused, but it will be the cumulative force of all the evidence together that will establish the case that the prosecution wants to make. So in the arguments I presented, it begins with a very general kind of theism – that there is a creator of the universe. This is and has been affirmed not only by Christians but by Jews and by Muslims and by deists. This is common property to the world's great monotheisms. Same with the fine-tuning of the universe and the moral argument. These give us a kind of generic monotheism – a creator and designer of the universe who is the locus of absolute goodness. And then the question will become: Has that creator and designer revealed himself in the world in some way more specifically that we can know something about him? Or has he remained aloof and distant from the world that he has made? And here, I think, Jesus of Nazareth is the key figure. How do you explain Jesus of Nazareth? This is the stumbling block on which I think Islam and Judaism both fall. They fail to give a plausible, adequate historical account of the person and particularly the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. So it is the claims and the resurrection of Jesus, I think, that carry us onto Christian theism rather than generic monotheism.

QUESTION: This might be a little bit of a personal question so I hope it will make sense. Sometimes I find it difficult to connect the reasons and logical explanations for the evidence of God with the mystery of God. We try to explain and have an answer for everything, but it seems to take away from the mystery. What would be your recommendation, or maybe also something practical, for connecting the two?

DR. CRAIG: I want to respond to this question as honestly and sincerely as I can. I would say that my work as a professional philosopher has deepened my awe and worship of God because it has given me a more profound and richer concept of God than I ever had before. When you study subjects like the origin of the universe and the existence of God – timeless, spaceless, immaterial, uncaused – this is enormously fascinating and almost incomprehensible. Study the attributes of God like omniscience or his eternity or his moral perfection and I think you will find yourself almost drowned in a sea of mystery. It is a sea so deep that it can never be completely fathomed. But at least with our reason we can comprehend something of the infinite majesty of God, and that will deepen our appreciation of God and his person and our worship of him, I believe. So I don't see this as any way detracting from the mystery of God. On the contrary, I think it will deepen our concept of God and enrich it.

QUESTION: If you are right in these things that you have presented today, and I would say that I'm fully inclined to agree, how do you explain the Trinity of God? Could you comment on the existence or the possibility of the Holy Spirit as a key concept of the Bible?

DR. CRAIG: Now, I'm not sure I understood the question. It was: How do I explain the role of the Holy Spirit?

FOLLOWUP: In the Trinity.

DR. CRAIG: Oh, in the Trinity. You mean the concept of the Trinity; not the work of the Holy Spirit, but the person of the Holy Spirit and the Trinity. OK. In my book with my colleague J. P. Moreland called Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, I include a chapter on the Trinity where I offer a possible model for understanding the Trinity that I think is logically coherent and biblically consistent. The Trinity is not in any way illogical. It does not say that three persons are one person, or that one being is three beings. Rather it says that three persons are one being. That may be mysterious and difficult to understand, but it's not a logical contradiction. Here's the model I give. Think of my soul. I am a soul connected with a body. I have a set of rational faculties sufficient for personhood: intellect, will, consciousness, and so forth. God is like a soul without a body. He is an unembodied, spiritual substance. Suppose then that God is so richly equipped that he has three sets of rational faculties each sufficient for personhood. In that case, God would be, not a uni-personal soul as I am; he would be a tri-personal soul. And I think that is what the Trinity is. God is a tri-personal being. He is a single, spiritual substance or entity endowed with three sets of rational faculties each sufficient for personhood.

QUESTION: There is a concept or an idea (whatever you want to call it) – God of the Gaps. I know Richard Dawkins uses that very often. What bothers me, to be honest, is that we often tend to use that argument in one way or the other. For instance, all these fine-tunings, the beginning of the universe, and all of that – it's so way out from our daily experiences. I mean, I have no idea or understanding anything in the universe basically, apart from I can look up at the moon and that's it. What I can conclude is that I don't understand all of this. But to me that is actually just a more advanced God of the Gaps argument. My question to you now is: Why aren't we a bit more, let's say, humble towards all these questions? If you take the cosmological ideas out there today, they are not even 100 years old. I mean, Einstein postulated the first general relativity and then you have Lemaitre and Friedman and all of these people starting to work with them. In 50 years, who knows what's going to happen. The multiverse is one possibility, but there are all sorts of other possibilities. I would like to be a bit more, let's say, careful. Instead of stating that according to . . . and that points to mysteries. Why don’t we be a little bit more careful?

DR. CRAIG: OK. Can we bring up the first argument – the premises for the cosmological argument. It's very important to see that this is not a God of the Gaps argument. What is the God of the Gaps argument? A God of the Gaps argument is that there's something that we can't explain through modern science. There's a gap in our scientific knowledge. And so you postulate God to plug up the gap. The danger of God of the Gaps arguments is that as time goes on and science progresses God gets squeezed out progressively as the gaps close. Now, in both this cosmological argument and in the design argument, I am not appealing to God to plug up a gap in our scientific knowledge – something that we don't know. In this argument the scientific evidence simply goes to establish the probability of premise (2) (“the universe began to exist”) which is a religiously neutral statement that can be found in any textbook on astronomy and astrophysics. And you're quite right in saying that in another 50 years science could theoretically reverse. But we have absolutely no reason to do so. That would be in fact a sort of Naturalism of the Gaps to say that, well, it's got to change. On the contrary, the prediction of a beginning of the universe has now stood for about 100 years through a period of the most revolutionary advances in physics and astrophysics and stands even more secure today than it did initially. So this is not an argument from science to the existence of God. Rather, the scientific evidence supports a religiously neutral premise in a philosophical argument for a conclusion having theological significance. The scientific evidence supports a religiously neutral premise in a philosophical argument for a conclusion having theological significance. Now let's see the fine-tuning argument. Here the scientific evidence goes to support premise (2) once again – that it's not due to physical necessity or chance. For example, in Richard Dawkins’ book The God Delusion he discusses at some length why physical necessity is not a good explanation of the fine-tuning of the universe. Therefore he opts for chance. By contrast, Roger Penrose (his colleague at Oxford University) argues against the chance multiverse hypothesis as an explanation of fine-tuning. Neither of these are religious believers, and neither of them is appealing to any kind of God of the Gaps. Rather, they are saying that on the basis of the evidence we have, the best explanation for fine-tuning is neither physical necessity nor chance. That, again, is a religiously neutral statement that is certainly susceptible to scientific proof. And, again, while scientific evidence is never certain or conclusive, nevertheless I think we are within our rights to follow the evidence where it leads and therefore to believe the second premise in both of these arguments. In any case, I think it's very clear that this isn't God of the Gaps reasoning. Let me just note as well that we also have, in addition to these arguments that appeal to premises that enjoy scientific evidence, things like the moral argument which are not in any way based upon science but appeal to ethical intuitions, or the ontological argument which is a metaphysical argument. We have, as I say, a wide range of the data of human experience (scientific, metaphysical, ethical) which the God hypothesis I think serves best to explain.

QUESTION: My thought is – I find your arguments very persuasive. So my question is: If your arguments really are this good and this persuasive, why isn’t everyone a Christian? Or a deist?

DR. CRAIG: Well, I want to ask you – why do you think? You said you thought the arguments were persuasive. I agree with you! I do, too! So how would you answer that question? Why do you think not everybody is a believer?

FOLLOWUP: I become suspicious that maybe . . . so there's a lot of people who maybe don't know about this.

DR. CRAIG: Right. That’s true. Ignorance could be one explanation.

FOLLOWUP: Maybe they have reasons for judging the arguments differently. Maybe there are problems elsewhere. You have only talked about possibilities.

DR. CRAIG: What sort of problems might there be elsewhere?

FOLLOWUP: The problem of pain and suffering, for example.

DR. CRAIG: Suffering. Oh. OK. They might have other objections to theism. OK. That’s possible.

FOLLOWUP: I wanted to hear your opinion.

DR. CRAIG: OK. One thing you haven’t mentioned. I think all of those are good answers that you've given. But one thing you haven’t mentioned is personal psychology. Some people don't want to believe. Thomas Nagel, the philosopher, has said, “I don't want God to exist.” And he said, “I'm troubled by the fact that some of the most brilliant of my philosophical colleagues are firm believers in the existence of God.” He says, “I don't want there to be a God. I don't want to live in that kind of universe.” Similarly, T. H. Huxley didn't want God to exist because he wanted to live a libertine lifestyle. I think there's any number of people who don't want God to exist because then they couldn't be sleeping with their girlfriend or engaging in some other activity than would be immoral. So there are all sorts of psychological and moral and spiritual considerations that go into this. And that's why, by the way, becoming a Christian is not just a matter of arguing somebody into the Kingdom of God. For someone whose heart is closed, the arguments will fall like water on a stone. But in sharing these arguments, the prayer is that the Holy Spirit of God will open their hearts to follow the convicting power of the evidence where it leads and will overcome our sinful proclivity to rebel against God and to ignore the evidence. So I don't think that the arguments in and of themselves are going to bring people to God. This has to be a work of the Holy Spirit, and he can use these arguments as one of the many vehicles to do so.

QUESTION: On that note, can you explain a little bit about the level playing ground between theism and atheism. Because, as I hear it, you assume they are completely equal. It's either-or, because that follows from the definition. But why isn't atheism the neutral resting ground? I hear bright atheists coming up with this objection all the time: Since you haven't convinced me with the case of theism, I can rest on my atheism as the starting point and the resting point I can come back to. So why isn’t, I assume, this the case?

DR. CRAIG: The reason that atheism is not a default position is because atheism, like theism, is a claim to knowledge. It's a claim to know something. The theist claims, “There is a God.” The atheist claims, “There is no God.” And that's a claim to knowledge, too, and requires justification just as much as the claim, “There is a God.” To give an analogy, suppose one person says, “There is gold on Mars.” That would be a claim that would require justification. Suppose somebody else says, “There is no gold on Mars.” That's not a default position. That would require justification as well. The default position, if there is one, would be agnosticism – “I don't know if there's gold on Mars. Maybe there is, maybe there isn’t.” “I don't know if God exists. Maybe he does, maybe he doesn't.” And that's not atheism; that's agnosticism. So what you have are a lot of people who are representing themselves as atheists but in fact are unable to justify their worldview. It's really agnosticism. One other thing that might be said in this regard is that notice that agnosticism is not a view. It's just a confession of ignorance: either God exists or he doesn't exist. The view that, “I don't know if God exists or not” is just a personal psychological report that is neither true nor false. Even little children or pets are agnostics in that sense. They lack a belief in God. They lack God-belief. But that doesn't make them atheists. They don't believe that there is no God. So agnosticism is simply a psychological state of not knowing whether or not God exists, but the minute you make a claim then you need to give some sort of justification for that claim if this is to be a rational discussion.

QUESTION: I've heard an objection to the case of Christian theism which is that a God which reaches into our world with miracles like the resurrection, healing, walking on water, is going against the law of nature and therefore God could change the laws – moral or natural – all the time if he likes. Therefore, it seems as though a belief in God makes the laws of nature non-trustworthy. What would you say to this?

DR. CRAIG: I would say that one must distinguish between laws of logic, the moral law, and physical laws of nature. I do think that the laws of nature are contingent. Cosmologists play all the time with models of the universe operating according to different laws of nature. But when it comes to things like the laws of logic and fundamental moral laws, I don't think these are contingent. I would say these are necessary and therefore even God could not change the laws of logic or the laws of morality lest he change himself. Remember we saw in the video that the moral law is grounded in the very essence of God and therefore is necessary. It cannot be changed. It's not subject to God's will; it is the result of his nature, not of his choice. But with regard to physical laws, those are a result of his will, not a result of his nature. And miracles involve things that the laws of nature can't explain. Now, I should add, too, in all fairness that I don't think even miracles break the laws of nature. That's a misunderstanding when people say that a miracle violates the laws of nature. Rather, the laws of nature have included in them implicit what are called ceteris paribus conditions; that is to say, they implicitly state what will happen, all things being equal. But they do not state what will happen just absolutely. It is what will happen, all things being equal. That is to say, the laws of nature are idealizations which will predict what will happen so long as no natural or supernatural factors are interfering. For example, I'm told that it's a law of nature that potassium and chloride will combust if brought into – or is it potassium and sodium? – will combust when brought into proximity with each other. But we have both of these in our bodies, and they don't combust. Why? Because there are other natural factors interfering with that, and therefore the law doesn't apply. Similarly, when Jesus changes water into wine, he doesn't violate the laws of nature. Rather, there's a supernatural factor here operating so that the law doesn't apply in that case. The law is an idealization stating what will happen if no natural or supernatural factors are interfering. So even in the case of miracles, it's not as though God breaks the laws of nature. It's that he can do events in the natural world which the natural causes could not bring about themselves unaided.

QUESTION: I would like to ask a question about the morals of God because it seems like the morals of God changes throughout the Bible. For example, we hear about God in the Old Testament where he does things . . . . For example, the story about the angel that sweeps over Egypt and kills all the first born of the families. That seems like a very cruel thing to do, and it leads me to question the morals of God.

DR. CRAIG: And there are other stories, I think, even more difficult than the plagues upon Egypt. Let me say two things about that. In the first place, I do think that God is able to adopt certain arbitrary commands to the nation of Israel that do not represent absolute commandments for all times in all places. Think, for example, of commands about clean and unclean foods – not eating pork or not mixing certain types of fabrics and so forth. God could set up for the people of Israel certain laws that are to be observed in this theocracy at that time and place which may not apply at other times and places in non-theocratic situations. So we're under no obligation today in our political system to adopt Old Testament laws. We're not a theocratic state like ancient Israel was. Now, in addition to that, I do not think, however, in the second place, that there is a fundamental difference between the character of God in the Old Testament and the character of God in the New Testament. The reason I say that is on the basis of Jesus’ attitude toward God. Who was the God of Jesus of Nazareth? Who was the God, the heavenly Father, that he worshiped and proclaimed? Well, it was the God of the Old Testament. It was the God of Israel. Jesus saw absolutely no contradiction between the God of the Old Testament and the heavenly Father whom he proclaimed and worshiped. So if he didn't see a contradiction, I guess I don't see why I should either. In the cases like the judgment on the people of Egypt, I think that this demonstrates the sovereign prerogative of God to give and take human life as he wills. We don't have that prerogative. You don't have the right to pull a gun out of your backpack and kill me. But I think if God wants to strike me dead, that's his prerogative. He is under no obligation whatsoever to prolong my life another instant. So it is a divine prerogative to take the lives of whatever Egyptian people he wanted to and preserve the lives of those who put the blood of the sacrifice on the doorpost of their homes. One would simply add that God doesn't do this capriciously or arbitrarily; he has good reasons for doing this. In this case, it was to convince the Pharaoh of Egypt (the ruler of Egypt) to let these Hebrew slaves go and release them from bondage and to let them become a free and independent state. So this harsh judgment fell upon Egypt as a means of securing the release of these people who had been enslaved for some 400 years.

QUESTION: I just wanted to ask this on a more personal level. I saw a few of your videos on YouTube. . . . Given the age you were when you had these questions . . . Yesterday, for the first time, I heard of your personal conversion which was . . . do you think that there was a reason . . . Do you think that God . . .

DR. CRAIG: OK. What the student is referring to is how I, myself, became a Christian as a student in secondary school. I wasn't raised in Christian belief, though it was a good and loving family that I came from. But I became a Christian in what we in the United States would call high school – secondary school. I did not become a Christian for intellectual reasons. I make no pretense about that whatsoever. I had never read the New Testament. But I met one day a girl who sat in front of me in my German class who was a radiant Christian. And when I asked her why she was so happy all the time, she said, “It was because I know Jesus Christ as my personal Savior.” And I had never encountered anything like this before. And I said, “Well, I go to church.” And she said, “That's not enough, Bill. You've got to have him living in your heart.” And I said to her, “Well, why would he want to do a thing like that?” And she said, “Because he loves you, Bill.” And that just hit me like a ton of bricks. She said here there was someone who really loved me, and who was it but the God of the universe. And that thought just staggered me. I went home that night and began to read the New Testament for the first time, and as I did so I was absolutely captivated by this man Jesus of Nazareth. There was a wisdom about his teaching that I'd never encountered before, and there was an authenticity about his life that was undeniable. So, for me, the person of Jesus of Nazareth was so captivating, so arresting, that he just seemed to me to be true. There was never a question in my mind that this was really the truth. The only question was would I become a Christian, and that seemed inconceivable to me. I remember saying to this girl one day, “I just can't look five years into the future and see Bill Craig as a Christian.” And she said, “Don't worry about five years from now, Bill. Just think about right now and what you should do.” And it was clear to me what I needed to do right now. So, as I say in my closing remarks earlier, I hope that some of you who haven't yet made this discovery of a personal relationship with God through Christ, might this day make a similar decision to invite Christ to be your Savior and Lord as I did. It was later, as I went on to university and studied philosophy and theology and so forth, that my appreciation for the intellectual riches of Christianity became deeper and more a part of my life.

QUESTION: If you will excuse, one more trip to the moral argument. I think I completely understand the differentiation between the ontological and the epistemological in the argument. What you are saying is that it's just in principle: Can objective moral values exist? Do they exist in principle? That is what we are arguing in this argument. What I am worrying about is: You are not specifying what those moral values are. In a sense you are saying we just know that it is possible that they exist for the argument to work. But if we do not have access to know what they are, why should we want to believe that they are there in the first place? So my question is: Can we know what objective moral values are outside of revelation? And if the answer is no then why should we?

DR. CRAIG: I think we definitely do, and are able to do so. You're quite right that the argument as I presented it doesn't give any examples, but the video did give some examples. Remember that horrifying photo in the video of the two large masculine hands clasped over the little girl's face – about child abuse. Or the lynching of the blacks in that one photo. Or the terrorist people who go into a grade school and kill little children and their teachers with automatic weapons. I think these things are evil – intrinsically evil and obviously evil. In cases like that, it's obvious that objective moral values exist, and we know some of them. Those would be negative examples. On the positive side, the intrinsic value of other persons, I think, is something that we apprehend. Indeed, this question is inescapable because every day we get up we answer by how we treat other people whether we think that they have intrinsic moral value or not. Are they to be treated as ends in themselves, or are they really means to be used for my ends? So the moral argument is inescapable, I think, by the way we relate to one another. And, by the way, you expect others to treat you not as a mere means to their ends, but as an end in yourself. So, yes, I do think that there are many moral values and duties that we do apprehend. But the argument doesn't depend upon any one of those. As long as you think there's something that's truly evil or there's something that's good then the argument will go through.

 

[1] Audrey Mithani and Alexander Vilenkin, “Did the universe have a beginning?” arXiv:1204.4658v1 [hep-th] 20 Apr 2012, p. 1; cf. p. 5. For an accessible video, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXCQelhKJ7A where Vilenkin concludes, “there are no models at this time that provide a satisfactory model for a universe without a beginning.” See also: A. Vilenkin, cited in “Why physicists can't avoid a creation event,” by Lisa Grossman, New Scientist (January 11, 2012).

[2] Alexander Vilenkin, “The Beginning of the Universe,” Inference: International Review of Science 1/4 (Oct 23, 2015).

[3] 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.

[4] Gerd Lüdemann, What Really Happened to Jesus? Trans. John Bowden (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995) p. 80.

[5] Luke Timothy Johnson, The Real Jesus (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1996), p. 136.

[6] N. T. Wright, “The New Unimproved Jesus,” Christianity Today (September 13, 1993), p. 26.