Why Does Anything at All Exist? | Worldview Apologetics Conference 2017

Dr. Craig was invited to speak at the Worldview Apologetics Conference hosted at Westminster Chapel in Bellevue, WA in April of 2017. In this lecture, Dr. Craig expounds on Leibniz's contingency argument for why anything at all exists. The presentation is followed by a Q&A session.

DR. CRAIG: I grew up in Keokuk, Iowa, a small town on the Mississippi River. You, too? Yeah, right! Very good! In Keokuk, there weren't a lot of city lights so you could see the sky at night. You could see the stars clearly. I remember as a boy looking up at the stars and wondering, “Where did all of this come from?” It just seemed to me that there had to be a God who created all of this. So as long as I can remember I've always believed in a creator of the universe.

It was only years later that I realized that my boyhood question, as well as its answer, had occupied the minds of some of the greatest philosophers in Western world history for centuries. For example, Gottfried Vilhelm Leibniz, who was the co-discoverer of the calculus and a towering intellect of 18th century Europe, wrote that the first question which should rightly be asked is: Why is there something rather than nothing? In other words, why does anything at all exist? This, for Leibniz, is the most fundamental question that anyone can ask. And, like me, Leibniz came to the conclusion that the answer is to be found, not in the universe of created things, but rather in God. God exists necessarily and is the explanation why anything at all exists.

To make this difficult philosophical argument easy to understand, we've developed at Reasonable Faith an engaging animated video on this question which I'd like to view with you before I expand with some comments on it and then open the floor for discussion.

VIDEO: We live in an amazing universe. Have you ever wondered why it exists? Why does anything at all exist? Gottfried Leibniz wrote, "The first question which should rightly be asked is: Why is there something rather than nothing?" He came to the conclusion that the explanation is found in God. But is this reasonable? Everything that exists has an explanation of its existence. If the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is God. The universe exists. From these it follows logically that the explanation of the universe's existence is God. The logic of this argument is airtight. If the three premises are true, the conclusion is unavoidable. But are they more plausibly true than false? The third premise is undeniable for anyone seeking truth. But what about the first premise? Why not say, "The universe is just there, and that's all"? No explanation needed! End of discussion! Imagine you and a friend are hiking in the woods and come across a shiny sphere lying on the ground. You would naturally wonder how it came to be there. And you'd think it odd if your friend said, "There's no reason or explanation for it. Stop wondering. It just IS!" And if the ball were larger it would still require an explanation. In fact, if the ball were the size of the universe, the change in its size wouldn't remove the need for an explanation. Indeed, curiosity about the existence of the universe seems scientific - and intuitive! Someone might say: "If everything that exists needs an explanation, what about God? Doesn't he need an explanation? And if God doesn't need an explanation, then why does the universe need an explanation? To address this, Leibniz makes a key distinction between things that exist NECESSARILY and things that exist CONTINGENTLY. Things that exist NECESSARILY exist by necessity of their own nature. It's impossible for them NOT to exist. Many mathematicians think that abstract objects like numbers and sets exist like this. They're not caused to exist by something else; they just exist by necessity of their own nature. Things that exist CONTINGENTLY are caused to exist by something else. Most of the things we're familiar with exist contingently. They don't HAVE to exist. They only exist because something else caused them to exist. If your parents had never met, you wouldn't exist! There's no reason to think the world around us HAD to exist. If the universe had developed differently, there might have been no stars or planets. It's logically possible that the whole universe might not have existed. It doesn't exist necessarily, it exists contingently. If the universe might NOT have existed, why DOES it exist? The only adequate explanation for the existence of a contingent universe is that its existence rests on a non-contingent being - something that cannot not exist, because of the necessity of its own nature. It would exist no matter what! So "Everything that exists has an explanation of its existence"..."either in the necessity of its own nature, or in an external cause." But what about our second premise? Is it reasonable to call the explanation of the universe...God? Well, what is the universe? It's all of space-time reality, including all matter and energy. It follows that if the universe has a cause of its existence, that cause cannot be part of the universe - it must be non-physical and immaterial - beyond space and time. The list of entities that could possibly fit this description is fairly short - and abstract objects cannot cause anything. Leibniz' Contingency Argument shows that the explanation for the existence of the universe can be found only in the existence of God. Or, if you prefer not to use the term "God," you may simply call him: "The Extremely Powerful, Uncaused, Necessarily Existing, Non-Contingent, Non-Physical, Immaterial, Eternal Being Who Created the Entire Universe...And Everything In It."

DR. CRAIG: Here again are the premises of Leibniz’s argument:

1. Everything that exists has an explanation of its existence.
2. If the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is God.
3. The universe exists.

From those three premises, it follows:

4. Therefore, the universe has an explanation of its existence.
5. Therefore, the explanation of the universe’s existence is God.

This is a logically airtight argument. The only question is whether the three premises are more plausibly true than false. If the atheist wants to reject the conclusion then he has to say that one of these premises at least is false. But which one will he reject? Premise 3 is undeniable, I think, for any sincere seeker after truth. Obviously the universe exists. So the question will be what about premise 1 and premise 2?

Premise 1 seems to be open to a possible objection; namely, if everything needs an explanation of its existence then what is God's explanation? Leibniz distinguished two types of things that enabled him to answer this question: things which exist necessarily and things which are produced by some external cause. Things which exist necessarily exist by a necessity of their own nature. It's impossible for them not to exist. As the video explained, many mathematicians would say numbers, sets, and other mathematical objects exist in this way. They're not caused by anything else; rather, they just exist by a necessity of their own nature. By contrast, things that exist contingently are caused to exist by something else. They exist because there is some external cause which produced them. Familiar physical objects like people, planets, and galaxies belong in this category. So when Leibniz says that everything that exists has an explanation of its existence, what he means is that that explanation may be found either in the necessity of its own nature or in some external cause. But in this case, the objection then falls to the ground because the explanation of God's existence lies in the necessity of his own nature. Even atheists recognize that it's impossible for God to have a cause. So Leibniz’s argument is really an argument for the existence of God as a necessary, uncaused being. So, far from undermining Leibniz’s argument, this objection actually serves, I think, to clarify and magnify who God is. If God does exist then he is a necessarily existing, uncaused being.

What reason might be offered for thinking that premise 1 is true? I think if you reflect on it, it has a sort of self-evidence about it. Consider the illustration of walking through the woods and finding a ball lying on the floor of the forest. You would naturally wonder how it came to be there. If your hiking buddy said to you, “Forget about it. It just exists. There is no explanation of its existence. It's just inexplicable.” You either think that he was crazy, or you’d think that he was just joking and wanted you to move on. Nobody would take seriously the suggestion that the ball just literally exists with no explanation. Now, suppose you increase the size of the ball so that it's the size of a car. Same problem. Suppose it's the size of a house. Same problem. Suppose it's the size of a planet. Same problem. Suppose it's the size of the entire universe. Same problem. Merely increasing the size of the ball does nothing to remove the need for, or to provide an explanation of its existence. So it seems to me that premise 1 is very plausibly true.

What about premise 2 that if the universe has an explanation of its existence then that explanation is God? Is that more plausibly true than false? What's really awkward for the atheist at this point is that the typical response to Leibniz’s argument is logically equivalent to premise 2. What does it mean to say two statements are logically equivalent? What that means is that it's impossible for one to be true and the other one to be false. They stand or they fall together. They're either both true or they're both false. How do atheists typically respond to Leibniz’s argument? They typically say that if atheism is true then the universe has no explanation of its existence. Given atheism, the universe is just a brute fact. If atheism is true, the universe has no explanation. This is logically equivalent to saying if the universe does have an explanation of its existence then atheism is not true. If you say if atheism is true, the universe has no explanation, that's logically equivalent to saying that if the universe has an explanation then atheism is not true. But that statement is virtually synonymous with premise 2: if the universe has an explanation of its existence then that explanation is God. Thus the typical atheist response to Leibniz’s argument actually concedes the truth of premise 2.

Besides that, premise 2 is very plausible in its own right. Just think of what the universe is – all of space-time reality including all matter and energy. It follows that if the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation must be a transcendent, non-physical, immaterial being beyond space and time which is just amazing.

There are only two sorts of things that could fit that description of an immaterial, transcendent, non-physical object beyond space and time: either an abstract object (like a number or other mathematical object) or else an unembodied mind. But abstract objects can't cause anything. That's part of the definition of what it means to be abstract. The number “7” for example has no effect upon anything. Therefore the cause of the universe must be an unembodied, transcendent mind which is exactly what believers understand God to be.

So I hope you grasp the power of Leibniz’s argument. If it's successful it proves the existence of a necessary, uncaused, timeless, spaceless, immaterial, personal creator of the universe. This is not some sort of ill-conceived Flying Spaghetti Monster but rather an ultra-mundane being with many of the properties of the God of traditional theism. So this is, I think, truly mind-blowing.

That summarizes the argument. Let me throw it open now for any discussion that you might have or any questions that you might have. Can we get our microphone guys going at this point?

QUESTION: I was just wondering if you could comment on whether there are other objects that exist necessarily besides God, and how that relates to our Christian faith?

DR. CRAIG: This has been the focus of my research over the last dozen or more years. I have been trying to understand the relationship between God and abstract objects. This has taken me deep into the philosophy of mathematics and questions about the reality of numbers, sets, functions, shapes, and other mathematical entities. It seems to me that theologically one cannot admit the existence of uncreated, necessary, eternal objects other than God. The Bible is very clear that God is the sole ultimate reality and the creator of everything that exists apart from himself. John 1:3 says of the Logos, Christ, the pre-incarnate second person of the Trinity, “all things were made through him, and without him nothing was made.” So it seems to me that a consistent biblical view will have to say that these mathematical objects do not really exist. In my recent work which has been published in the book God Over All, I argue for anti-realism about these abstract objects. I don't think that they really exist, but that God is the only necessary being, the only being that exists by a necessity of his own nature.

QUESTION: I'm wondering if we must logically conclude that God exists, why the Christian God? We, as Christians, hear that and we think, yes, that's my God. Thank you for that argument. But Muslims might hear that and say, yes, that's my God. Thank you for that argument.

DR. CRAIG: Yes, and they should. This is a generic monotheism that is common to Jews, Muslims, and Christians, and deists as well. The field of apologetics falls into two broad divisions: natural theology and Christian evidences. Natural theology comprises arguments for the existence of God. It will establish the existence of a creator and designer of the universe, a source of moral values, and so forth. The being of supreme perfection. And that is consistent with any of the great monotheistic faiths in the world. Indeed, among the greatest proponents of some of the arguments that I have defended (like the one last night) are Muslim thinkers. I have learned a great deal from reading medieval Muslim philosophers on the cosmological argument for God's existence. If you want to move from monotheism to Christian monotheism then you need to look at what are called Christian evidences. And these would be things like evidence for the reliability of the Gospels, the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus, fulfilled prophecy, and so forth. This conference has a very nice balance between natural theology and Christian evidences if you notice. I tend to be handling the area of natural theology. Professor Evans is handling the area of Christian evidences. So you're quite right in saying that arguments such as Leibniz’s don't lead to the Christian God in particular. They lead to a kind of generic monotheism that would require then the addition of Christian evidences to move to Christianity.

QUESTION: The reason why God is a necessity type of being – is that because the universe exists therefore it's necessary that God exists?

DR. CRAIG: The idea is that the universe has to have an explanation of its existence. The first premise requires that anything that exists has an explanation of its existence. So there has to be an explanation of the existence of the universe. Well, what is it? Premise 2 says that the best explanation is God, and I give two reasons for that. One is that premise 2 is logically equivalent to what atheists typically say, but then secondly that when you think about the best candidate for a transcendent, immaterial cause of the universe, God is the best candidate. That would be the reason for thinking that the contingent universe is grounded in this metaphysically necessary being that isn't grounded in anything else but exists by a necessity of its own nature.

QUESTION: When we talk about God being the cause – if the universe has an explanation, it's God – oftentimes we can fall into the God of the gaps fallacy. I tried to address it a little bit this morning with Sean McDowell, and I don't think I did a terribly good job, but I've heard you address the difference between the God of the gaps and what we mean by transcendent God and how you're not defending the God of the gaps. You don't believe in the God of the gaps. But it's so easy to fall into that. I'd like for you to try to address it and help us learn to not make that mistake.

DR. CRAIG: The God of the gaps is a pejorative label for appealing to God to stop up the gaps in our scientific knowledge. The classic example would be: We don't know how life evolved, we do not know how complex biological organisms came about, therefore God did it. The charge is that this is an appeal to God of the gaps. You just punt to God to explain the gaps in your scientific knowledge. I think it's very obvious that Leibniz’s argument cannot be charged with God of the gaps because it's not a scientific argument. This is a pure metaphysical argument – it is purely philosophical. It has nothing to do with science. Don't confuse this argument with the argument that we talked about last night which was based on the beginning of the universe. This argument is consistent with the universe being eternal in the past. Leibniz said you can still ask the question why does an eternal universe exist rather than nothing? So there just is no gap to be filled with respect to this argument. It's a purely philosophical argument.

QUESTION: I think I heard you say the term “metaphysical being.” I like that a lot because I've been understanding God as consciousness which doesn't have physical form. I like the idea in the Bible that we worship a God who is spirit and truth in spirit and truth. Therefore sometimes people say to me that so-and-so is going to hell because he doesn't take Jesus Christ as his personal Lord and Savior, and Jesus taught us and God the Father. I can't see a compassionate Father sending anyone to hell because he doesn't see God in the way in which some people think he ought to. I think of the scientist Einstein. Somebody said to me, “Einstein's in hell” and that troubles me to think that way. I do believe that Einstein believed in a metaphysical being. When Einstein said – I just came across this recently, and you're probably very familiar with it, but Einstein said, “it is enough for me to contemplate the mystery of conscious life perpetuating itself through all eternity which we dimly perceived and to try humbly to comprehend even an infinitesimal part of the intelligence manifested in nature.” And I think that's what you're talking about.

DR. CRAIG: Well, that would be a little more related to the argument last night probably about the fine-tuning of the universe, the intelligence manifested in nature. Your comments about whether or not unbelief in Jesus is culpable or condemnatory was raised in the last session as well. That is not on the topic of this lecture obviously. I would just record my view that I think that unbelief is culpable because ultimately one is not simply resisting arguments and evidence, but one is resisting God himself. One is resisting the testimony that God bears to his own existence in refusing to come to him in faith, and therefore that is culpable and one will be responsible for that. But I do underline what you said about God being a metaphysical being in the sense that it is beyond physics. God is not something that can be found in the physics laboratory. He transcends the laws of nature. He transcends matter and energy. He transcends space and time, and is the source of all of these things. So the Christian or the Muslim or the Jewish concept of God is of a truly exalted being that is a transcendent being that plausibly exists by a necessity of its own nature and is the source of the existence of everything else. So don't think that I'm using the word metaphysics here in the sense that the New Age section in your local Barnes & Noble is using metaphysics. I'm not talking about that. I mean literally beyond physics, not part of the realm of physics. In that sense God is metaphysical. He is a mind without a body. I would say he is an infinite mind without a body.

QUESTION: The first argument basically goes: everything that exists will require an explanation. But it seems to be a little bit loaded in the sense that – relative to what? Would any explanation do? I can’t come to the teleological argument and say this chair is there because it’s meant to be there, it is meant to serve me. That I can say is an explanation, right?

DR. CRAIG: I think that that is where the second premise would come in. Premise 1 requires that everything that exists has an explanation, but as you rightly indicate it needs to be an adequate explanation. Right? You can't just say the explanation of the universe is me! Or it's my wristwatch – that's why the universe exists. It needs to be an adequate explanation, and that's the burden of premise 2. If the universe does have an explanation of its existence as 1 requires then that is plausibly God. Again, I gave two reasons in support of that. So you're quite right in saying that the explanation needs to be an adequate one, and that's what premise 2 is claiming.

QUESTION: Francis Schaeffer in about seven of his books talks about Jean-Paul Sartre said that the ultimate philosophical question is why is there something rather than nothing. I needed to know was he mistaken and meant Heidegger? Or is there actually references in Being and Nothingness that talks about that question?

DR. CRAIG: That's interesting because that's exactly what I thought when you began asking your question. I thought, “He means Heidegger – Martin Heidegger – the German existentialist.”

FOLLOWUP: I know that Leibniz said it in around 1690 or something, and Heidegger in the early 1900's, but we can't find anywhere where Sartre actually was talking about this ultimate philosophical question. So I was wondering if Schaeffer may be mistaken.

DR. CRAIG: Probably, if he did say that. I don't know that Schaeffer did, but if he did say that it seems to me the reference should be to Martin Heidegger who made statements very similar to Leibniz’s. Something like “The last desperate question of mankind is: Why is there something rather than nothing?” This fundamental question has been one that has possessed the minds of many great philosophers down through the centuries.

QUESTION: I have two questions. If God is metaphysical and transcends space and time, is there anything that God is constrained to. Are there any rules?

DR. CRAIG: Let’s take the questions one at a time. I would say that God is constrained by his own nature. That is to say, God has certain essential properties, and he cannot act contrary to his own nature. For example, although in my talk last hour on the problem of evil, I talked about an evil god. You would have to have a lowercase “g” in talking about an evil god. In fact, it's impossible for God with a capital G to be evil because God is the greatest conceivable being and therefore a morally perfect being. God cannot do evil. He cannot be evil. And I would say that God is perfectly logical as well so that God cannot make logical contradictions come true. Logic is a reflection of the ultimate rationality of God's own mind. So the only constraints I would see upon God would be those that are imposed by logic or his own nature.

FOLLOWUP: Interesting. I guess the continuing point I want to ask is what would be your counterpoint to somebody saying that there's multiple universes and therefore multiple gods or multiple realities?

DR. CRAIG: I don't see any reason to think that multiple universes would require multiple gods. If there is a multiverse, as suggested by some cosmological models, these other universes are physical, space-time, material realities just like ours. They're sort of like bubbles in an expanding foam, and God will be the transcendent necessary creator of the multiverse. In fact, as I said last night in my talk, really God is the best hope for the existence of a multiverse because the multiverse hypothesis really faces insuperable, I think, objections unless there is a God who has created the multiverse and ordered its worlds so as to give preference to finely-tuned worlds like ours. So a transcendent being can create either a single universe or a multiverse. For him it's a triviality.

QUESTION: In reference to this premise number 2, how enthusiastic should Christians be with the introduction of the concept of intelligent design and stopping there instead of going that one step further and naming that intelligent designer.

DR. CRAIG: That's a very different argument – the intelligent design argument. That would be more akin to the argument I defended last night from fine-tuning. Most intelligent design theorists today are looking for explanations of biological complexity. But the fine-tuning argument is also an argument for an intelligent designer. But it is, I think, more powerful in the sense that an explanation of mere biological design on Earth could be extraterrestrial intelligence, as even Richard Dawkins has conceded. You could have the intelligent designer be some other finite being in the universe. But what the fine-tuning argument gives you is a transcendent God or transcendent designer – let me say that, a transcendent designer – who has established the laws of nature and set the physical constants and quantities that govern the universe. And that type of being is much more plausibly identified with God. The inference that this is God is almost irresistible, I think in the case of the fine-tuning argument because of the transcendence of his being.

QUESTION: My question is: is this argument against polytheists and pantheists?

DR. CRAIG: I’m having a little difficulty because of your accent. . . .

FOLLOWUP: This argument, I think, supports theists. My question is: Does this argument support or is against pantheists and polytheists?

DR. CRAIG: OK, if I understood the question right, you are saying these arguments would be against pantheists as well as atheists or polytheists? Yes, that is absolutely right. When we talked before about natural theology and I said that these arguments will give you a kind of generic monotheism that is common to Jews, Muslims, Christians, and deists, that's actually a sweeping dramatic conclusion because what it means is that these pantheistic religions (like Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism as well as polytheistic religions or secular religions like Marxism) are swept away by these arguments and invalidated. This winnows down the field of the world's great religions to those few monotheistic faiths that believe in a transcendent personal creator and designer of the universe. So this is huge. This is a huge conclusion in terms of narrowing the field of competitors for our religious allegiance.

QUESTION: The original question in the video was: Why does something exist rather than nothing? I think the third premise here states that something does exist, namely the universe. So I guess I'm a little confused. Are we answering that question, or why is it not logically possible that literally nothing exists including God?

DR. CRAIG: Because it does presuppose premise 3 that the universe exists. So it is not the case that nothing exists. Premise 3 rules that out. And even if you say that the universe is an illusion, that still requires that you at least exist to have this illusion of the universe. So it seems to me that for any honest inquirer it's undeniable that something exists. And then the rest of the argument will unfold from there. And the ultimate question as to why something exists rather than nothing is actually that the existence of nothing is impossible because there is a metaphysically necessary being which exists by a necessity of his own nature and therefore it is metaphysically impossible that there be nothing.

QUESTION: Can you explain how there can be a cause without time? Because you keep on saying that God exists outside of space and time or perhaps existed before space and time . . .

DR. CRAIG: All right. This gets into profound issues in the philosophy of time. Prior to my work on God and abstract objects, I spent 11 years studying the subject of divine eternity and God's relationship to time. Six books flowed out of that study. I would refer you to those works if you're interested in this question, particularly the book Time and Eternity which is published by Crossway. But let me give you my nutshell answer. My view is that God existing alone without the universe is timeless, but that with the creation of the universe he enters into time and therefore is temporal from the moment of creation on. So I would agree with you that God's causing the universe to exist is a temporal act, and that with the creation of the universe God becomes temporal. So my studied view is that God is timeless without the universe, without creation, but in time since the moment of creation. It is difficult. It's a strange view. It's a strange view. But I have yet to see any good objection to it. It seems to me to be quite coherent. God existing alone changelessly is timeless; with the creation of the universe (the creation of the first moment of time) God's act of creation is simultaneous with the creation’s coming into being. What else could it be? There couldn't be a time gap. So his act of creating the world is simultaneous with the world's coming into being. So God enters into time at the moment of creation.

FOLLOWUP: But if he’s changeless before time is created then how did he change to create time?

DR. CRAIG: OK. The question was: If God is changeless without creation then how did he change to create time? Notice how I worded it. I was careful. Philosophers are careful about how they use words. I did not say that God was unchangeable. I said that he was changeless. I think that God is changeable but without creation he's changeless. Then he creates the world, and I think God is now changing. He's changing in his knowledge constantly as time goes on. He knows it's now 10-to-11:00 [10:50] Pacific Standard Time. In another moment he'll know it's 9-to-11:00. Then he'll know it's 8-to-11:00. So his knowledge is constantly turning over as new propositions become true and true propositions become false. I would say that God is really related to changing things and so is changing in his relations with things. I would say that while God is immutable in his nature – in his essential properties (his omniscience, omnipotence, holiness, eternity, and so forth) – nevertheless God can change in these trivial contingent ways and that he begins to do so at the moment of creation.

QUESTION: Earlier you stated that God is an infinite mind without a body in relation to the universe being in existence. I'm just curious that with us being made in the image of God what prevents us from being nothing but a figment in the mind of God and does this then rely on the necessity of the physicality of Jesus Christ?

DR. CRAIG: That's a good question. In fact, some Christian theists do think that we're ideas in the mind of God. George Berkeley was an Anglican bishop in England just around the time of David Hume, and this is what Berkeley believed. Last year in San Antonio at the annual philosophy conference of the Evangelical Philosophical Society, I attended a panel of modern-day evangelical Berkeleyians. These guys are idealists. They don't believe that physical space and physical objects exist. They think that they're just ideas in the mind of God. Well, I raised a number of objections to this view. I think that theologically it's unacceptable because the Hebrew idea of creation is the idea of a material, physical world which is good. God looks at the world that he has made and he said “This is good.” I think that the Hebrew view of the material and the physical resists any attempt to spiritualize it and to extol the realm of the spiritual over the realm of the material. That's why Christians and Jews believe in the resurrection of the body and not just the immortality of the soul. The body is good, and it's part of human nature. For a soul to exist without its body is to be an incomplete human being. So the vision of immortality in Christianity and Judaism isn't the immortality of the soul; it's the resurrection of the body which, I think, should be taken seriously to imply the materiality and physicality of the body. I would say that theologically we have very good reasons for affirming the physicality and the materiality of the world and no good philosophical arguments against it. You would need some really powerful defeater to compel you to think that there are not other physical persons around you in physical environment and that this is all in the mind of God. And there just are no defeaters of what our senses tell us.

QUESTION: [off-mic]

DR. CRAIG: She asked: In saying that God is an infinite mind without a body, am I implying that there is some eternal physicality? Not at all. As I was saying to this fellow here in the front row, I think that there is a state of affairs in the actual world which can be described as God existing alone with nothing else. No world. No universe. No creatures. God existing alone in pristine isolation. And then he creates space and time and matter and energy and brings a physical universe into being. So the physical world is real but it's not co-eternal with God. Quite the contrary, it began to exist according to our best evidence around 14 billion years ago.

QUESTION: A few moments ago you were talking about how God will know it's 9-to-11:00 or 8-to-11:00 and how time is counting down and God's presently aware of what is happening at a specific moment. Does that change, I guess, what we might call the knowledge bank of God or talk about middle knowledge of God? Maybe if God even is learning or progressively knowing more about the universe? Or does God actually completely exist out of time?

DR. CRAIG: The view that I’ve defended is that God is in time now. Since the beginning of the world God is in time. So he knows what time it is. He knows it is now 5-to-11:00. That knowledge is constantly turning over as time goes on. It's not as though he's learning anything new in the sense that there are facts that he didn't know before like that in one minute it will be 4-to-11:00, and then one minute later he knows it is now 4-to-11:00. That's sort of like learning something new – isn't it? – but it's not as though it caught him by surprise or he was ignorant. So I would say, yes, God's knowledge is constantly changing in virtue of him being in time and knowing what time it is. He knows the exact state of the universe. He knows the location of every particle in the universe and its velocity right now. In that sense, because that's always changing, his knowledge will always be changing, too.

QUESTION: This might be too lengthy of an answer for a follow-up question here but how does that maybe affect the doctrine of salvation or how God actually knows us and has called us to be children whether we're actually able to make a decision.

DR. CRAIG: Yeah, that's probably too lengthy a question. [laughter] No, seriously. Prior to my work on God and abstract objects and my work on divine eternity, I spent seven years studying divine foreknowledge and omniscience, in particular the claim that God's foreknowledge of future free acts is incompatible with human freedom. The argument there is that if God knows that you will do X then you must do X. It's fated. It's necessary that you do X. What I show is that that's a logically fallacious argument. From the fact that God foreknows that you will do X, it only follows that you will do X, but not that you must do X. You could refrain from X, but if you were to refrain then God would have foreknown not-X instead. So I don't think there's any incompatibility between God's foreknowledge and our freedom, in particular his foreknowledge of those who will place their faith in Christ and be part of the elect.

QUESTION: You had mentioned that this was resistant to even if the universe was past-eternal.

DR. CRAIG: Consistent with the universe being past-eternal.

FOLLOWUP: Yes. I found that difficult. I was wondering if you could kind of go over that again.

DR. CRAIG: All right. Look at the argument. There's nothing in this argument that suggests that the universe began to exist. None of the three premises says the universe began to exist. So Leibniz is quite willing to say the universe is eternal, but you still want to know why does an eternal universe exist instead of nothing? Or why does an eternal universe exist instead of a universe with a beginning? Those seem to be good questions, don't they? So just positing the past eternity of the universe doesn't suffice to explain why there is a universe. This argument doesn't depend on the universe beginning to exist in the way that last night's argument did. Last night's argument was a different version of the cosmological argument that appeals to the beginning of the universe. Leibniz’s contingency argument doesn't depend on the universe having a beginning.

FOLLOWUP: If the universe was past-eternal, but it would still exist contingently would it be true to say it's uncaused because it was past-eternal?

DR. CRAIG: It wouldn’t have a temporally prior cause, right? If it's past-eternal there can't be anything before it, but it could still have a cause in the sense of a sustaining cause that keeps it in existence. Think for example of a chandelier hanging from the ceiling. They could hang from the ceiling from eternity past and it would still be the chain that sustains the chandelier in its position. Causal dependence doesn't necessarily require temporal priority.

Thank you very much for this interesting discussion.