Dr Craig, My question is based on your formulation of the argument from contingency, specifically, your restricted version of the PSR. Restricted PSR: everything that exists has an explanation for its existence, whether in the nature of its own necessity or an external cause. There are good reasons to prefer a restricted PSR over the strong version - it avoids the famous objection by Peter Van Inwagen, which argues that the PSR is false because it has the absurd consequence on making all facts necessary. I am aware that you have of Alexander Pruss's work on defending the strong version and am on the fence at the moment as to whether Inwagen's objection succeeds ...
Hello, Dr. Craig. You have often said that a deductive argument is good if it meets two conditions: It is valid, and each premise is more probable than it's denial. Furthermore, in a recent newsletter, you said, "in a deductive argument the probability of the premises establishes only a minimum probability of the conclusion: even if the premises are only 51% probable, that doesn't imply that the conclusion is only 51% probable. It implies that the conclusion is at least 51% probable." But why would the probability of a premise establish minimal probability of a conclusion? Shouldn't it establish maximal probability? ...
"Another example would be the warrant for Christianity's truth that comes from the inner witness of the Holy Spirit. To assume that the experience of the Holy Spirit's witness to the truth of Christianity is mere emotions is question-begging. If God does exist, He is certainly capable of communicating His truth to you in an interior way as well as through external evidences. Again, certain Christian beliefs are, I'm convinced, known to be true in a properly basic way, grounded in the inner witness borne to us by God Himself. Interestingly, beliefs based on testimony--like my belief that your name is Grant--is a properly basic belief which I am rational to hold unless and until a defeater for that belief comes along. Similarly, many Christian beliefs are beliefs warranted to us by testimony--God's own testimony. Don't be too quick to dismiss it, lest you fail to hear the voice of God speaking to you." Okay then. We have two properly basic beliefs: (1) The testimony of others (2) Inner witness ...
Dear Dr. Craig, In the Leibniz' Contingency Argument, the premise 2 states that "If the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is God". This requires that the universe does not exist by the necessity of its own nature, and that anything that could possibly exist outside the universe, could not be the cause of the universe, except for God. The universe is further defined as all of space-time reality, including all matter and energy. You have previously answered the question "Is Part of the Universe a Necessary Being?" (Question #235), essentially by stating that it would be absurd to suggest that a specific set of elementary particles would exist necessarily in all possible worlds, while being the cause of all the other similar particles ...
Dear Dr. Craig I was reading the part of your book "Time and Eternity" that talks about perdurantism, and I have a question over your objection to the Perdurantist's view of personal consciousness. You claim that on Perdurantism, personal continuity from moment to moment is an illusion and that they believe that I was a different person one second ago than I am now, which you claim to be absurd. However, it appears to me that by the same token, we can argue against Presentism, because Presentism states that only the present exists ...
Dear Dr. Craig, I am currently a high school student extremely interested in both philosophy and theology. My question is one that has puzzled me for a long time, and I believe that if there is anyone who could explain the answer in an understandable way, that person would be you. To be clear, I am a Christian and affirm the existence of God. In a theistic view, why does God exist? Did He choose to exist, and to have the attributes that He does? For example, did He choose to exist in a Trinitarian form? ...
Question I work at an aerospace firm, and I always assumed that if I were to be convinced of God's existence, it would probably be by something like the teleological argument. The appearance of design in the universe itself and so many things therein is truly intriguing, but has never been enough to persuade me. I understand why theists find it compelling, but I currently still find the counter case sufficiently compelling to remain unpersuaded ...
The topic of God and time is complicated and unclear. Christian theologians and philosophers disagree about God’s relationship to time. Theorists disagree about whether only the present moment exists, or if the past and the future are equally real. One question that comes up in teaching theology is God’s knowledge of the future: how does God know the future, and how does God’s knowledge fit with human freedom, God’s providence, and the reality of the future? ...
Question A 17 year old Indian from the Middle East who's a big fan of your work for Christ. My question deals with recent discoveries in physics. How would the new discovery of gravitational waves affect Lorentzian relativity, the Kalaam argument and the A-theory of time? Xavi India
Dear Dr. Craig, The Moral Argument seems to have a flaw. Premise 1 has a semantic problem. 1. If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist. What if we can imagine a supernatural, God-like entity, that is in some important respect distinct from God as such, which could also ground objective moral values? Perhaps omnibenevolent, but not omnipresent, say? ...
Hello, my name is Lana, and I took a course at Purdue called "Metaphysics." I saw you at your debate with Alex Rosenberg. Anyways, And I'm glad I took the course, but I didn't take nominalism, or as you dub it, anti-realism, very seriously. I came out of it being a very strict platonist, but then I re read the gospel of John and I realized I was in huge trouble, I came to all the same conclusions about platonism as you did, I was a platonist, until now. So I floundered about wondering what the truth could be. I didn't take divine conceptualism very seriously at first because it was introduced to me initially by Berkleyianists, and I really do loathe idealism. I don't think it's compatible with Christianity. But I gave it another look and realized divine conceptualism can work with a worldview rejecting Berkley and his type. I don't remember the course too well so if I make a mistake that's why, and maybe I don't understand the same jargon but you did answer my question somewhere out there, I need some guidance ...
Dr. Craig, Thank you for your diligent work for the kingdom of God. I hope you understand and appreciate how your work has impacted the faith of countless people across the world. My question has to do with the concept of God in Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. I am sure that you are aware of the current controversy over the "same God" comments of the professor at Wheaton College. As you can imagine this has caused a firestorm of debate between theologians, pastors and preachers. I understand from your work that you would say that while Muslims and Christians might worship the same God historically (the God of Abraham and Moses), their concept of God is fundamentally different (please correct me if I misunderstood your view). This refutes the "same God" idea because at the very core we worship a very different God even if the religions share a common background ...
Dear Dr Craig, In your work on abstract objects, you have mentioned that there could exist necessary beings which exist "ab alio", that is, dependent for their existence on other necessary beings. My question is this: Let's suppose for the argument's sake that such ab alio necessary beings exist, is their existence an exception (or somehow relevant) to the premise of the teleological argument according to which everything which exists exist in virtue of a necessity of its own nature or in virtue of an external cause? ...
Dear Dr Craig, I have noticed of late that Richard Dawkins often states that Neo-Darwinism is non-random. Dawkins recently repeated this line in an interview on a Scandinavian talk show Skavlan when asked, "What is the most common misconception about Evolution?" His response was, "That it is a theory of random chance. It obviously can't be theory of random chance. If it was a theory of random chance it couldn't possibly explain why all animals and plants are so beautifully ... well designed." He goes on to say that, "[W]hat Darwin did was to discover the only known alternative to random chance which is natural selection". A few years ago he made similar comments on an Australian television show Q&A where he said, "There's random genetic variation and non-random survival and non-random reproduction". He goes on to say that, "that is quintessentially non-random" ...
Each age has its particular hazards. Each age encourages certain vices and devalues certain virtues. Because we are immersed in our age, these hazards are often invisible to us. We simply cannot see the effects of certain cultural ideas and practices on our characters ...
I am 15 years old. But I have been drawn to philosophy and logic for their huge ability of proving immaterial things. For example, 1+1=2, this is a completely logical answer and what is nice about it, there are no other possibilities. Of course that doesn’t apply for all logical conclusions but it follows. I understood the kalam cosmological argument, the evolution theory, the big bang, and a lot of other logical and scientific arguments and theories. That is because I never wanted to believe in anything which I can’t prove for myself 100%. I even reached a moment where I thought everything is possible, surely nothing can be proved 100%. However, at that time, mathematics came and explained a lot to me. As I mentioned before 1+1=2, that is an example of an absolute answer. In other words, proven 100%. From here I started wondering about many other scenarios in real life. From all of these information I thought about from the environment around me I reached a system of thought which I always follow ...
Hi Dr. Craig, I'd like to thank you and your team for all the work you do. It's amazing to see how God has gifted individuals to articulated and present His truth in academically rigorous environments. In the past few years, especially since getting into grad school, I've come to appreciate your work and your approach more. I've been debating on when, or how, to ask you the question on my mind. Most likely due to my own discomfort with the subject. In the past year I've had the pleasure of catching up with a friend of mine who has tragically turned his back on the faith. On multiple occasions we conversed about his philosophical misgivings about Christianity and any other faith claiming absolute morals. He expressed his distrust in absolutes derived from the ever-evolving medium of language. He now considers himself a moral relativist who has principles and takes moral stances. Maybe something akin to Harris. This leads me to a version of a question raised in conversation: How can absolute truth be communicated through the medium of language? ...
Dr Craig I always enjoy hearing you speak, and I especially love the cross-examination and Q&A parts of your debates. It was a pleasure to meet you in person at the conference in Atlanta. ... I have noticed that many skilled apologists (yourself included) do NOT argue for the inspiration of scripture in debates, but rather their historical accuracy. My question is - do we really need to argue over inspiration or inerrancy? Wouldn't we be better served to make the argument that the scriptures are reliable? In doing so, we silence those (like Bart Ehrman or Shabir Ally) who quibble over minor discrepancies between accounts (most of which are easy to explain anyway) ...
I am a Christian theist and working towards a doctorate in philosophy. I have a question that I think is relevant for both laymen and academics, and I would really appreciate your thoughts. I often find myself "gestalt-shifting" between naturalistic and supernaturalistic (especially theistic) worldviews. When I consider certain things, the theism to which I assent seems eminently reasonable, but when I consider other things naturalism (or at least non-theism) also seems plausible, and it is understandable to me why so many philosophers and scientists are naturalists (or at least non-theists) ...
Hi Dr. Craig, I just finished watching your rematch with Austin Dacey at CSU ... One point he made seemed to me to be a good one and I was wondering how you might have responded to it if you had the time ...
Dear Dr Craig, As the Christmas season is upon us, I'd be interested to hear your wisdom regarding Christian families celebrating the Santa Claus tradition. To be more precise, do you think it's consistent with Christian values to pretend that Santa is real? As a parent of two young children this is particularly relevant to me at the moment. On one hand we recognise that as a Christian family, we always want Jesus to be at the centre of the Christmas celebration. We also highly value telling our children the truth in all things. But I also can see a place for fantasy and make believe and see the fun and joy that this can bring to a family ...
Dear Dr. Craig, Thank you for your relentless study and work to communicate truth to the world. You have impacted my faith more than any other Christ follower in the world today. With that said, however, I am having a hard time with one of your recent statements. In your recent Q&A blog you made a comment that I reluctantly disagree with ...
Dear William Craig ... how do you know then whether you're making the right ethical decision? It seems to be a bit problematic to know whether you committed a sin since your sin (such as a murder for example) could be the greatest good for the humankind ...
Hello Dr. Craig, ... I wanted to ask about the moral argument's second premise. I've been trying to hash this out in my mind and I feel like I might be missing something. I read your QOW on the grounding of the second premise of the moral argument and I understand that we are not appealing to God as the foundation for moral values in that premise. Rather, we are appealing to moral experience. Now, the atheist might give a defeater for our experience because he says that evolution ingrained us with this "herd morality". But, of course this is the genetic fallacy. So, he might then say that our moral values have no justification even if they are true because evolution aims at survival and not truth. Here I get a little fuzzy ...
Greetings Dr. Craig, I'm a Yemeni Muslim, born and raised in Saudi Arabia, currently studying for a short term in Canada. I came across your work, and highly appreciate your contributions to modernizing and polishing, the scholarship from great men like Imam Al Ghazali and Thomas Aquinas. As a fairly conservative Muslim (perhaps because of my biases?), I find your arguments specifically for the Christian faith to be overall weaker than those generally for monotheism ...
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