William Lane Craig
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==Moral Beliefs== | ==Moral Beliefs== | ||
| − | William Lane Craig | + | William Lane Craig constantly argues in favor of [[objective morality]]. He defines objective morality as "To say that there are objective values is too say that something is right or wrong independently of whether anybody believes it to be so." His most common argument goes as follows: |
# If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist. | # If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist. | ||
# Objective moral values do exist. | # Objective moral values do exist. | ||
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This is a common argument among Christian apologists. However, it contains certain errors. For example: on what basis is the second premise made? Craig seems to enjoy moral absolutes over relativism, however simply liking them does not make them manifest into reality. | This is a common argument among Christian apologists. However, it contains certain errors. For example: on what basis is the second premise made? Craig seems to enjoy moral absolutes over relativism, however simply liking them does not make them manifest into reality. | ||
| − | In April 2011, on his Reasonable Faith site, William Lane Craig published an explanation for why the genocide and infanticide ordered by God against the Canaanites in the Old Testament was morally defensible. In summary: When guilty people get killed, they deserved it because they were guilty and bad. When innocent people get killed (including innocent babies), they went to Heaven. Here are some key points made: | + | In April 2011, on his Reasonable Faith site <ref>www.reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5767</ref>, William Lane Craig published an explanation for why the genocide and infanticide ordered by God against the Canaanites in the Old Testament was morally defensible. In summary: When guilty people get killed, they deserved it because they were guilty and bad. When innocent people get killed (including innocent babies), they went to Heaven. Here are some key points made: |
:"God had morally sufficient reasons for His judgment upon Canaan, and Israel was merely the instrument of His justice, just as centuries later God would use the pagan nations of Assyria and Babylon to judge Israel." | :"God had morally sufficient reasons for His judgment upon Canaan, and Israel was merely the instrument of His justice, just as centuries later God would use the pagan nations of Assyria and Babylon to judge Israel." | ||
Revision as of 08:12, 7 March 2012
Dr. William Lane Craig, born August 23, 1949 in Peoria, Illinois, is an American Christian apologist, philosopher, and theologian. He received a Bachelor of Arts from theologically moderate evangelical protestant Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois, a summa cum laude Master of Divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Chicago suburb Deerfield, Illinois, a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Birmingham (England), and a Doctor of Theology from the University of Munich.
He has authored numerous books on subjects ranging from cosmology, philosophy of science, theology, the Christian church, Christian apologetics, metaphysics and epistemology, and history.
He is best known for his attempted proof for the existence of the Christian god using the Kalām cosmological argument. His work is heavily dependent on the perspective of Reformed Epistemology, which, like presuppositional apologetics is criticized as circular for depending entirely on an unwarranted assumption of the existence of a god.
Contents |
Moral Beliefs
William Lane Craig constantly argues in favor of objective morality. He defines objective morality as "To say that there are objective values is too say that something is right or wrong independently of whether anybody believes it to be so." His most common argument goes as follows:
- If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist.
- Objective moral values do exist.
- Therefore, God exists.
This is a common argument among Christian apologists. However, it contains certain errors. For example: on what basis is the second premise made? Craig seems to enjoy moral absolutes over relativism, however simply liking them does not make them manifest into reality.
In April 2011, on his Reasonable Faith site [1], William Lane Craig published an explanation for why the genocide and infanticide ordered by God against the Canaanites in the Old Testament was morally defensible. In summary: When guilty people get killed, they deserved it because they were guilty and bad. When innocent people get killed (including innocent babies), they went to Heaven. Here are some key points made:
- "God had morally sufficient reasons for His judgment upon Canaan, and Israel was merely the instrument of His justice, just as centuries later God would use the pagan nations of Assyria and Babylon to judge Israel."
And:
- "Moreover, if we believe, as I do, that God’s grace is extended to those who die in infancy or as small children, the death of these children was actually their salvation. We are so wedded to an earthly, naturalistic perspective that we forget that those who die are happy to quit this earth for heaven’s incomparable joy. Therefore, God does these children no wrong in taking their lives."
And:
- "So whom does God wrong in commanding the destruction of the Canaanites? Not the Canaanite adults, for they were corrupt and deserving of judgment Not the children, for they inherit eternal life."
Please bear in mind that William Lane Craig is not some cruel dogmatic wingnut. He’s not some extremist Fred Phelps type, ranting about how God’s hateful vengeance is upon us for tolerating homosexuality. He’s not some itinerant street preacher, railing on college campuses about premarital hand holding. He’s an educated, widely-published, widely-read theological scholar and debater. When believers accuse atheists or non-believers of ignoring sophisticated modern theology, Craig is one of the people they’re talking about.
Modern sophisticated theology cannot escape the dogmas of the cruel theology of the ancient times. Even educated apologists like Craig say that as long as God orders such things to happen, it’s perfectly moral take the lives of these people. Killing bad people is tolerable, because they’re bad and they deserve it. Killing innocent and good people is just as tolerable, because they wind up in Heaven. As long as God approves it, it’s acceptable to systematically wipe out entire races, including babies and children.
Craig said —not essentially, not as a paraphrase, but literally, in quotable words— "the death of these children was actually their salvation." This makes one wonder why this story did not make headlines or why was there not an appalled outcry from the Christian world? Why didn’t Christian leaders from all sects take to the pulpits to disavow Craig, and to express their utter repugnance with his views, and to explain in no uncertain terms that their religion does not, and will not, defend the extermination of races or the slaughter of children?
Divine Command
William Lane Craig accepts the Divine Command, as he describes as follows;
- The transcendent God sees the end of history from its beginning, and providentially orders history so that his purposes are ultimately achieved through human free decisions. In order to achieve his ends, God may well have to put up with various evils along the way. Evils, which appear pointless or unnecessary to us with our limited frame of reference, may be seen to have been justly permitted within God's wider frame of reference. We simply have no idea of the natural and moral evils that might be involved in order for God to arrange the circumstances with free agents in them. Necessary to some intended purpose.
So basically, God has ordered everything throughout history to unfold through free will. This means that God does not intervene with human life, otherwise freedom would be eliminated. This is also problematic because it begs the question and it does not answer any ethical problems. God allows necessary evil, it is all part of God's plan. Divine command theory implies that whatever God commands must be the morally correct course of action. Therefore, if/when God endorses genocide, infanticide, animal sacrifice, slavery, or rape, those things are good, whereas if/when he forbids eating certain foods or working on certain days or having certain kinds of kinky sex, those things immediately become bad. This makes divine command theory a subjective theory of morals, one which is arbitrary and can change at God's whim. Claims like "God wouldn't do that", but this doesn't help at all. For one, in many religious traditions he does do such things. For another, if God is the source of morality, he can do whatever he wants and it would still be just as "good" as anything else.
Whether divine command theory is true or not (and there seems to be no reason to think that it is), it is often not an effective method of settling moral dilemmas. For one, it's not clear which religious tradition is correct. For another, religious texts tend to contain many conflicting, arbitrary, or excessively specific rules. These rules rarely allow a clear method of generalizing these ideas to every possible situation, so a believer is forced to do much the same thing that an atheist does, which is to work out moral principles and ideas for herself. Often, the fact that the believer is bound to respect certain statements as absolute truth makes this process even harder, because those statements may not make good sense, or may make sense in most situations but be absurd in others. Divine command theory thus fails to provide moral guidance for much the same reason that religions often fail to provide moral guidance.
Apologetics
Kalam Cosmological Argument
Craig is well known for the Kalām cosmological argument (KCA). The KCA is a variation of the centuries old cosmological argument, originated in Islamic philosophy, that argues for the existence of a personal first cause for the universe. Cosmological goes back to Plato, but many are familiar with the Thomistic and Leibnizian forms. In 1979, Craig popularized this argument, and to many theists this has been a powerful tool to prove the existence of God. Craig presents the argument as the following:
- (P1) Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
- (P2) The universe began to exist.
- (C) Therefore, the universe must have a cause.
Why the Kalam Cosmological argument fails
The first premise of Craig's argument is flawed. In quantum mechanics, things happen that are not caused. Such as radioactive decay or when an atom in an excited energy level it loses a photon. No cause is evident in the decay of a radioactive nucleus. Craig has said that quantum events are still "caused" just in a non-predetermined manner - what he calls "probabilistic causality." Craig is thereby admitting that the "cause" in his first premise could be an accidental one, something spontaneous and not predetermined. he therefore destroys his own case for a predetermined creation. Even if the KCA was sound, why would the cause itself not be natural?
Begging the Question
The KCA is invalid and refuted because it commits the logical fallacy of begging the question. The phrase "whatever begins to exist" is not presumed to accommodate anything other than God, and that puts God into the definition of the premise of the argument that was supposed to prove his existence in the first place.
Compositional Errors
The two premises that support the conclusion both commit compositional errors. This is because the premise, "Whatever begins to exist has a cause" commits the fallacy of composition because, to quote Francois Tremblay, "The first premise tries to infer a necessary causality on a whole, the universe, on the basis of observation of such attributed in the parts, the existents around us. The attribute being transposed here, being caused, is relational and therefore cannot be transposed. Thus the KCA cannot generalize from caused entities around us to the universe in this matter."
The second premise, "The universe began to exist" forces us to draw an inference between the items in the set (things within the universe) and apply it to the set as a whole (the universe itself). For that to be valid, one must fallaciously presuppose a realm beyond the universe, in which the universe can be taken as an item in a larger set itself, within which it is contained, limited, and defined.
Which gives away to the compositional error, via the fallacy of Begging the question, since such a realm beyond the universe, is entirely unproven and in question itself.
Defining Essentials
The KCA fails to identify, either through its syllogism, or subsequent explanations for it's syllogism, it is defining its essentials. And the word that is essential for it to define is the word universe.
The KCA depends upon the Big Bang Theory, being the beginning of everything, for if not, then there's a part of existence that is unaccounted for, that itself, maybe eternal, or may never have begun to exist, or caused our Big Bang, as a local inflationary expansion, or caused the rest of the universe in it's overall entirety.
Even if the universe in the KCA is defined as the totality of existence, the argument is again rendered impotent and refuted, because the universe could not have been created by something outside itself, since for something to create the totality of that which exists, one can only appeal to that creating agent as being non-existent. Further, for the universe to be labeled the totality of existence, it can never be caused as a whole, since that would assert that at one point, existence, was non-existent, which is impossibly incoherent.
Who Created God?
Another reason why the KCA is invalid and refuted is because it can be expressed in a competing syllogism.
- (P1) Everything that has sentience has a cause.
- (P2) The Judeo-Christian God is said to have sentience.
- (C) Therefore the Judeo-Christian God has a cause.
This syllogism can easily be ported to any god, since most, if not all gods, are said to be sentient in some form or fashion; and all referrals to reality, attest that sentience does not arise without antecedent causation.
Ontological Argument
- It is possible that a maximally great being exists.
- If it is possible that a maximally great being exists, then a maximally great being exists in some possible world.
- If a maximally great being exists in some possible world, then it exists in every possible world.
- If a maximally great being exists in every possible world, then it exists in the actual world.
- If a maximally great being exists in the actual world, then a maximally great being exists.
- Therefore, a maximally great being exists.
Counter-Ontological Apologetics
Most philosophers would agree that you can’t prove anything with the ontological argument, but using the same modal logic it can be shown that God does not exist (among many other bizarre entities). Example 1,
- It is possible that a maximally great sock stealing coffee pot exists.
- If it is possible that a maximally great sock stealing coffee pot exists, then a maximally great sock stealing coffee pot exists in some possible world.
- If a maximally great sock stealing coffee pot exists in some possible world, then a maximally great sock stealing coffee pot exists in every possible world.
- If a maximally great sock stealing coffee pot exists in every possible world, a maximally great sock stealing coffee pot exists in the actual world.
- If a maximally great sock stealing coffee pot exists in the actual world, then a maximally great sock stealing coffee pot exists.
- Therefore, a maximally great sock stealing coffee pots exist.
Example 2,
- It is possible that a maximally great being does not exist.
- If it is possible that a maximally great being does not exist, then a maximally great being does not exist in some possible world.
- If a maximally great being does not exist in some possible world, then a maximally great being does not exist in any possible world.[2]
- If a maximally great being does not exist in any possible world, a maximally great being cannot exist in the actual world.
- If a maximally great being cannot exist in the actual world, a maximally great being does not exist.
- Therefore, a maximally great being does not exist.
Circular Evidence
The KCA is also dependent on the controversial A-theory (i.e "Tensed" Theory) of Time, which states the present moment is uniquely real. Craig quotes in The Nature of Time, "The moments of time are ordered by past, present, and future, and that these are real and objective aspects of reality. The past is gone, it no longer exists. The present is real. The future has not yet come to be and is not real." The common objection to the A Theory comes from Einsteins theory of relativity, that states there is no absolute present moment and time is relative.
Craig has written a lot of books on the subject of time in which he puts in the interpretation of relativity that he calls the Neo-Lorentz interpretation, which includes an absolute present moment. Craig claims that his interpretation is observationally equivalent to special relativity. Of course this is very disputed, but even if this is the case there is no reason why we should prefer Craig's interpretation (which is very complex) to Einstein's interpretation (which is simpler and works completely fine by itself). In Criag's book Time and the Metaphysics of Relativity he writes "we have good reasons for believing that a neo-Lorentz theory is correct, namely, the existence of God in A-theoretic time implies it, so that concerns about which version is simpler become of little moment" (pg. 179).
So it seems that Craig is saying the existence of God implies the Neo-Lorentz Aether Theory, which is needed for A-theory of time to be correct, which is then necessary for the KCA to work, so Craig can prove the existence of God. That is clearly circular.
Craig does have four other argument for God, such as the fine tuning argument. The common objection to the fine tuning is that it is a tautology, weakened by the multiverse theory (Craig never says a multiverse is impossible). Craig explains this in the debate book God?, "the hypothesis of a Cosmic Designer...is again the better explanation because we do have independent evidence of the existence of such a Designer in the form of other arguments for the existence of God." {pg. 14). So now we cannot rely on the Kalam to tip the scale in favor of the cosmic designer hypothesis, because that just gets us in the same circle we were in before.
What about the resurrection of Jesus? The common objection is that any other naturalistic explanation, no matter how crazy it may seem, is much more probable than the resurrection story. But Craig addressed this an a debate with Bart Ehrman that the resurrection was a supernatural event caused by God. So he proves the existence of God by presuming God already exists to explain the resurrection. Again, circular.
And finally, the moral argument, another favorite of Craig. Craig says if God does not exist, then objective moral values do not exist. Craig argues that objective moral values do exist. Basically that our personal experiences of morality makes it true, which is another argument for God. Craig says (in his own words)
“”The way in which I know Christianity is true is first and foremost is the basis of the witness of the Holy Spirit in my heart. And this gives me self-authenticating means of knowing Christianity is true wholly apart from the evidence. And therefore, even if in some historically contingent circumstances the evidence that I have available to me should turn against Christianity, I do not think that controverts the witness of the Holy Spirit."
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This makes it seem that all of Craig's arguments for God are tied to personal experience that are dependent on the existence of God, which he uses to support the moral argument to prove the existence of God. Again, circular.
Craig's debating tactics and criticism of opponents
William Lane Craig likes to boast that he is a "professional philosopher" and engage in "academic" debates that concentrate on the arguments, not on personalities. Despite this, he disses New Atheist authors like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris as 1) non-intellectual 2) angry, bitter diatribes against religion. Craig states that while Richard Dawkins may be a good scientist, he is a "layman" in philosophy and theology and The God Delusion is a "very unsophisticated book. As a philosopher, I was just appalled by the arguments he offers in that book. It is an embarrassment, really, I think."
Within debates, Craig uses the Gish Gallop, strawmans his opponents arguments, uses arguments from authority, quote mines, appeals to emotions, and as in his debate with Bart Ehrman, tries to paint his opponent as a bumbling moron while he's the supposed academic scholar.
William Lane "Two-Citations" Craig
As scientist and YouTube user thunderf00t pointed out in a recent video,[3] to be an academic or professional whatever, is determined how many papers you write and how many citations you get. Thunderf00t pointed out that Craig has published a wide range of books over the years, but the h-index reveals that Craig gets an average of two citations per book in total. This does not tell if a person is right or not, but it does reveal a person's academic achievements during their career. Thunderf00t shared that while TF is far from the greatest scientist in the world, TF generates on average 18 citations per article — nearly 10 times that of Craig — and TF is 20 years younger than Craig. Thunderf00t then compared Craig to Richard Dawkins, revealing that Dawkins top cited paper (up to date: 361)[4] has received more citations than Craig ever achieved in his whole career. Despite Craig's supporters boasting that Craig is a world-leading academic defender of faith, Thunderf00t concluded that Craig's poor scholarly work revealed what a academic "midget" William Lane 'Two Citations' Craig really is.
External Links
Footnotes
- ↑ www.reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5767
- ↑ Because if a maximally great being existed in some other world, than it would also exist in every world, including the one where it does not exist. =><=
- ↑ William Lane 'Two Citations' Craig, Academic Midget
- ↑ Parental investment, mate desertion and a fallacy