#1014 Christianity on the Back Foot?

Dr. craig’s response

I commend you, Riley, for facing head-on the danger of losing your faith and writing me about your questions. Nevertheless, I find your situation tragic because your distress is so unnecessary, and that for two reasons: first, you seem to assume that the rationality or warrant for Christian Faith is exclusively evidential. But the work of philosophers like Alvin Plantinga over the last 30 years or so has shown that Christian belief can be a properly basic belief, not grounded on argument, but grounded in the witness of the Holy Spirit. You should read Plantinga’s Warranted Christian Belief (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). I also interact with cutting edge work on Plantinga’s epistemology in volume I of my Systematic Philosophical Theology (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2025). The very practical implication of the proper basicality of Christian belief is that we as Christians need to be walking daily in the fullness of the Holy Spirit, not quenching the work of the Spirit in our lives through sin or grieving Him through disobedience. This is thus a very practical motivation for righteous Christian living. If you are walking with the Lord, then you will not lose faith, even if you have unanswered questions. Indeed, I have often said that the key to victorious Christian living is not having all your questions answered but learning to live with unanswered questions.

Secondly, secularists have failed both (i) to refute the arguments for Christian belief and (ii) to justify their own nontheistic or non-Christian worldviews. I have taken these arguments into the lion’s den of the secular university and debated them with top secular opponents. You’ve doubtless seen these debates on YouTube. Do you think that my opponents manage to succeed in either (i) or (ii)? Their failure with regard to task (ii) is especially apparent. It is striking that your letter focuses entirely upon (i), but you seem to let the secularists off the hook when it comes to (ii). How well are they doing in offering arguments or evidence for their own worldview?

Now to consider (i), the purported refutations of arguments in support of Christian belief can hardly be deemed successes. With regard to the arguments of natural theology for God’s existence, the arguments of thinkers like Alexander Pruss and Joshua Rasmussen in support of the argument from contingency, Pruss and yours truly in support of the kalām cosmological argument, Luke Barnes and Robin Collins in support of the argument from fine-tuning, David Baggett and John Hare in support of the moral argument, and Alvin Plantinga, Rasmussen, and C’Zar Bernstein in support of the ontological argument remain unsurpassed. With respect to the evidence in support of Jesus’ resurrection, there is nothing to override the positive case made by thinkers like Dale Allison, N. T. Wright, Michael Licona, Gary Habermas, Stephen Davis, Richard Swinburne, and Timothy and Lydia McGrew. Have you read the work of these thinkers, Riley? Or have you contented yourself with non-peer reviewed pablum on the Internet?

So I was curious what you meant when you said that “the academic consensus is against us in most cases.” How so? It is true that most university professors, like most people in general, are not Christian believers, but that is hardly surprising. The question is how the arguments and evidence stack up. Now certainly, you’re correct in saying that popular level apologists often “do not exhibit the level of intellectual rigor and carefulness” that we desire and that “there is much more to the issue than Christian apologists initially make you aware of.” But please understand that these apologists are making material accessible to lay people. I, too, have to put the cookies on the bottom shelf in my public debates and lectures. But the above-named scholars cannot be faulted in their academic work for superficiality or a lack of intellectual rigor and care.

So what arguments are you talking about? Fortunately, you give an example for our consideration: abiogenesis, the thesis that life originated from non-life. Your example piqued my attention because in volume III of my Systematic Philosophical Theology on the doctrine of creation I have a long “Excursus on the Origin and Evolution of Life,” something rather unusual for a book on systematic theology!

Referring to the work of Professor James Tour of Rice University in Houston, you mention that despite finding much of what he said convincing, you were disturbed to discover that “1) his field is not abiogenesis, and 2) his views are controversial and frequently criticized as being influenced by Intelligent Design.” What remarkable reasons for thinking that what he said was not true! Neither of these points, even taken at face value, does anything to show that what he said was false. (You clearly need to be more critical in your thinking, Riley!) Regardless, with respect to (1) Tour’s field is organic chemistry, and he is extraordinarily eminent in that field. That is the field that investigates abiogenesis. Tour does not himself devote his research to abiogenesis because he is convinced that the effort is basically fruitless. His views on the meager results of origin of life research and the challenges facing a scientific account of the origin of life are expert views that are widely shared and cannot be dismissed. As for (2), this is precisely the sort of scurrilous, ad hominem attack that Internet critics too often engage in. What is truly controversial is the various suggested scenarios to explain scientifically the origin of life. Moreover, Tour is a methodological naturalist who rejects Intelligent Design theory! He has made it abundantly clear that he would never, as a scientist, infer that the origin of life is to be explained through divine creation. He is simply deeply skeptical of current origin of life scenarios. The criticism of him that you mention is nothing more than a personal smear.

It gets even worse! “My trust was further shaken when I learned that Tour rejects evolution.” How scepticism about the biological theory of evolution (which commences only once life does exist) is relevant to what he says about abiogenesis is unclear. This looks like another ad hominem attack. In any case, what do you mean by “evolution”? Today the so-called neo-Darwinian modern synthesis has come under such sustained criticism that no one knows what the mechanisms explaining biological evolution are. So even if the thesis of common ancestry is true, there remains plenty of doubt about the adequacy of current evolutionary theory to explain it. As for James Tour, I have no idea what he thinks about evolution, since, to my knowledge, he never addresses it.

Besides all this, abiogenesis is an open question for the Christian theist. We have no idea how God brought about the origin of life on this planet and can follow the evidence where it leads. This has no impact upon the cogency of the theistic arguments mentioned above.

So what about the evidence for Jesus’ resurrection? I appreciate your kind remarks about my work. When people online accuse a scholar “of intellectual dishonesty and reasoning toward conclusions you already believe,” then this is a red flag alerting you to the fact that you are dealing, not with an academic, but with a popularizer. Scholars never accuse a fellow scholar of intellectual dishonesty. They may criticize his arguments severely, but they do not attack his personal character. It is typical of Internet influencers that accusations of dishonesty and lying come all too quickly to their lips. Moreover, accusing someone of reasoning toward conclusions that he already believes is a textbook example of the genetic fallacy. One’s personal motivations or prior beliefs are irrelevant to both the logical validity of one’s argument and the truth of its premises. Therefore, you cannot just trust these people but must demand concrete evidence for their allegations.

Now, I appreciate that this leaves you “in a difficult position as a layman: I lack the expertise to independently evaluate the science, yet I also don’t know how to determine which experts I should trust.” I don’t know any easy answer to that question. You need to learn how to weigh the soundness of arguments so as not to be misled. This is hard work. I found that Prof. Tour’s agnosticism is widely shared in the origin of life community. You can learn to trust certain scholars like Alvin Plantinga by their proven track record.

So in answer to your specific questions:

1) Am I giving too much credit to the opinions of atheists online? YES! You need to graduate to actually reading the published work of scholars. Is Christianity a respected position academically? Yes, it is a respected minority position which has a place at the table, especially in certain fields.

2) If abiogenesis is proven, is it a threat to the Christian faith? I take it that you mean, if a naturalistic account of abiogenesis were proven, etc. Not at all! The Bible does not tell us how God created life on this planet. We should follow the evidence where it leads.

3) How can we distinguish legitimate theological development from ad hoc accommodation to scientific discoveries? This is a very good question which I confronted in my work on the historical Adam. It seems to me that we must first bracket the findings of modern science and exegete the biblical text to determine the meaning that the author and his audience would have ascribed to it. Only after we have determined what the text teaches are we ready to answer the question whether the text is compatible with the discoveries of modern science. See my book In Quest of the Historical Adam (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2021) for an exemplification of this method.