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>> Moderator: Good evening, welcome; come on in and let's have a seat. Thank you for
coming. And given the vastness of the audience that will
be watching this debate tonight here and across the world,
sometimes and at some places in America, we like to say, "Let's ready to rumble!"
It's going to be an exciting night. Welcome to the main event,
the symposium 2013 where the theme is, "The foolishness
of faith." The Christian faith is often viewed as foolishness by those who don't believe
it and it is viewed as life preserving and giving by those who
do. The purpose of this symposium annually is to explore and
debate some of the most probing questions about faith, reason and life through lectures,
panel discussions and debates such as this. We welcome
those of you attending tonight's debate here at Elliot
Hall of Music, Purdue University and we welcome those watching this live streaming - some
estimated 10,000. Those 10,000 people represent people
from every State in America, and as of 10:00 AM this
morning from over 60 countries from across the world. This is great. We're happy to include
translators tonight so that the deaf community can participate
in this for years to come when we put this on
YouTube by the end of the month. We're thankful for more than 40 sponsors, many of which were
included on the screen behind me. As you were entering, perhaps you saw that, or in the
brochures or on our website at www.symposiachristi.com
. We're also grateful to Purdue's Philosophy Department
for sharing the cost of flying in one of our debaters so that he can speak in their department
yesterday. My name is Curie Miller and I will be the
moderator for tonight's debate and the MC throughout the
weekend where we've got a fantastic series of talks scheduled for you by a dozen speakers,
maybe 35 talks on issues relevant to tonight's debate.
I'm on staff with faculty commons, the faculty ministry of
Crew and I direct the Christian Faculty Staff Network here at Purdue. I'm also a PhD candidate
in philosophical theology and teach adjunct courses
in Philosophy and Comparative Religions at Indiana
University in Kokomo. Our Purdue audience should have a pencil and paper that you were
given on your way in to fill out some basic information
including your vote on who won tonight's debate and you can
do that by pencil or complete it on-line at www.biola.edu/debate. It should go without
saying, but please wait until after the debate to decide
who won. I know some of us just love our guy. He's going to
be up here but it's more fun this way if you wait until after the debate. So we'll collect
this right after the debate and prior to the question and answer
time so please write legibly if you're writing. We also want
to welcome some special dignities who will help formally judge tonight's debate, wait
until all of them are announced and then please welcome the
judges. And judges once I announce you individually please
stand up and greet the audience. First of all, John Shultz - a fifth year PhD student
in Political Science, and head of the Purdue Petticrew Debate Forum.
He will head up the judge team and has helped organized and formed this judge team tonight;
Sheila Klinker - on her way - Sheila. She never misses a
beat, she'll be here. Sheila graduated from Purdue and is a member of the Indiana State
Senate - sorry, no - House of Representatives, a Democrat
representing - that's no, the enemy right - representing the
27th District since 1982. Ron Alting graduated from Purdue and is a member of the Indianan
State Senate, a Republican representing the 22nd
District, serving Tippecanoe County. Erin Thorn Bath, an
alumnus of Purdue's entrepreneurship and innovation program. He is the president and CEO of
Nano/Bio Interface Systems and Nano Technology based Diagnostics Company in Purdue's research
park. And before, he coached and produced speech and debate team, he was pretty successful
on debate himself, Professor Fenggang Yang from
Purdue University; professor of Sociology and Director of
the Center of Religion and Chinese Society. The Professor previously taught Philosophy
at a university in Beijing, China. Professor Martin Medhurst
is a distinguished professor or rhetoric and communication
and professor of political Science and Baylor University - silence - in Waco, Texas. Clark
Rountree another professor also flown in here just
recently like Dr. Medhurst. He is professor and chair of the
Communication, Arts Faculty, flown in tonight from the University of Alabama in Huntsville.
Let's welcome our distinguished guests. A colleague,
Paul Gould and myself will be editing a book to be
published by Raleigh based on the proceedings of tonight's debate which will include the
two debaters we will announce in a moment, the two rhetoric
professors we just mentioned and two other philosophers and two Physics professors with
an equal divide of Christians and Atheist along the lines.
So the debate tonight will continue under the forthcoming title, "Is Faith in God Reasonable
- Debate in Philosophy, Science and Rhetoric." We'll let
you know when that comes out through your contacting
information so make sure you give us the basic information. Turning the corner here, the
famous antitheist Samuel Clemens, otherwise known
as Mark Twain once said, "Faith, believes something you
know ain't true." I don't know if that has unanimous consent, the most famous of Jewish
and Christian philosophers perhaps of all time - at least
in a particular period - Moses Maimonides and Thomas
Aquinas believed that faith is a virtue. Indeed Aquinas went so far as to say that, "Without
faith, the virtue of faith, none of the other virtues
are even virtuous." John Calvin, the Protestant reformer
claimed that, "It will be the height of absurdity to label ignorance tempered by humility faith.
For faith consists in the knowledge of God." From Maimonides,
Aquinas and Calvin then, faith is part of a
knowledge tradition. Yet in the contemporary times the philosopher, Norman Malcolm has
said that, "In a Western academic philosophy religious belief
is commonly regarded as unreasonable and is viewed
with condescension or even contempt. It is said that religion is a refuge for those who
because of weakness of intellect or character, they are
unable to confront the stern realities of the world. The
objective mature, strong attitude is to hold beliefs solely on the basis of evidence."
So to this provocative statement, much can now should
and now will be said as we turn toward tonight's debate
over the question; "Is faith in God reasonable?" Our first debater will argue the affirmative
and consequently will go first as is the tradition when taking
the affirmative position. William Lane Craig is research professor of Philosophy at Talbot
School of Theology in La Mirada California. He had a
doctorate in Philosophy at the University of Birmingham,
England before taking a doctorate in Theology from Ludwig Maximilan University of Munich
in Germany. Prior to his appointment at Tolbert he spent
several years at the higher institute of philosophy of the
Catholic University, Leuven, Belgium. He has authored and edited over 30 books including
The Kalam Cosmological Argument, Assessing the New Testament
Evidence for the Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus, Theism, Atheism and Big *** Cosmology
and God Time in Eternity as well as over a 100
articles in professional journals of philosophy and theology such as The Journal of Philosophy,
New Testament Studies, Philosophical Studies,
Philosophy, The British Journal for Philosophy of Science. He is
considered to be one of the foremost defenders of the Christian faith. His book here third
edition "Reasonable Faith, Christian Truth and Apologetics"
matches his website which is reasonablefaith.org. Please welcome with me Dr. William Lane Craig.
Our next debater will argue the negative and consequently will go second. He will have
the final word in the debate. Alex Rosenberg is the R. Tailor
Cole professor of Philosophy and department head at Duke
University with secondary appointments in the Biology and Political Science Departments.
He completed his dissertation at the John Hopkins University
on the philosophical analysis of microeconomic laws. In
addition to nearly 40 articles and chapters, he is author of more than a dozen books, some
of which have been translated into multiple languages.
Dr. Rosenberg has been a visiting professor and fellow of
the Center for the Philosophy of Science, University of Minnesota as well as the department
- as well as the University of California, Santa Cruz and
Oxford University, and a visiting fellow of the Philosophy
Department at the Research School of Social Science of the Australian National University.
That's a long sentence. He has held fellowships from the
National Science Foundation, the American Council of
Learned Societies and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. In 1993, Dr. Rosenberg received
the Lakatos Award in the philosophy of science.
In 2006 and 2007, he held a fellowship at the National
Humanity Center. He was also the Phi Beta Kappa Romanell lecturer for the 2006, 2007
year. On one website listing the world fifty most famous
atheists in the world, Dr. Rosenberg ranks number 13. And
his recent book is "The Atheist Guide to Reality - enjoying life without illusions." Please
welcome with me, Dr. Alex Rosenberg.
The debate rules for tonight. The structure of the debate will be as follows, each speaker
will have a 20 minute opening statement followed by two 12
minutes rebuttals and then two eight minutes rebuttals.
The speakers will then provide a five minute closing statement, in all the actual debate
should take 90 minutes, 45 minutes for each position to make
their case. There will then be a 30 to 45 minutes Q&A
period according to which we will take questions from our live audience here at Purdue and
from our live streaming audience across the world perhaps.
If either of the debaters goes over, there are a lot of
time we will give time a 15 second grace period, we are very graceful, gracious and then promptly
ask them to terminate their time. We will have
a modesty interaction between the Professors in order to
give a response to maybe the answers that they give to you. Professor Craig will approach
the lectern first - Dr. Craig and then when he begins
the time begins. Timer, are you ready? >> Dr. William Lane Craig: Well good evening.
I am delighted to be able to participate in tonight's debate
and I count it a real privilege to be discussing this important issue with Dr. Rosenberg. Tonight
we are interested in discussing some of the arguments
that make belief in God reasonable or unreasonable. So
in my opening speech, I'm going to present several arguments which I think make it reasonable
to believe God exists. Then in my second speech,
I will respond to Dr. Rosenberg's arguments against the
reasonableness of a belief in God. I believe that God's existence best explains a wide
range of the data of human experience. Let me just mention eight.
1. God is the best explanation of why anything at all exists. Suppose you are hiking through
the forest and came upon a ball lying on the ground,
you would naturally wonder how it came to be there. If your
hiking buddy said to you, "Just forget about it, it just exists inexplicably." You would
think either that he was joking or that he wanted you to just keep
moving. No one would take seriously the idea that the ball
just exist without any explanation. Now notice that merely increasing the size of the ball
even until it becomes coextensive with the universe does
nothing to provide or remove the need for an explanation
of its existence. So what is the explanation of the existence of the universe? Where, by
the universe I mean all of space, time, reality. The explanation
of the universe can lay only in a transcendent reality
beyond the universe, beyond space and time, which is metaphysically necessary in its existence.
Now there is only one way I can think of to get
a contingent universe from a necessarily existing cause and
that is if the cause is a personal agent who can freely choose to create a contingent reality.
It therefore follows that the best explanation of the existence
of the contingent universe is a transcendent personal
being which is what everybody means by God. We can summarize this reasoning as follows;
1. Every contingent thing has an explanation of its existence.
2. If the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is a transcendent
personal being. 3. The universe is a contingent thing.
4. Therefore the universe has an explanation of its existence.
5. Therefore the explanation of the universe is a transcendent personal being, which is
what everybody means by God.
2. God is the best explanation of the origin of the universe. We have pretty strong evidence
that the universe is not eternal in the past but had
an absolute beginning, a finite time ago. In 2003, Alvin Bored,
Allan Gout and Alexander Vi Lincoln were able to prove that any universe which has on average
been in a state of cosmic expansion cannot be infinite
in the past but must have a past space time boundary.
What makes their proof so powerful is that it holds regardless of the physical description
of the very early universe. Because we don't yet have
a quantum theory of gravity we can't yet provide a physical
description of the first split second of the universe, but the Bored, Gout, Vi Lincoln
theorem is independent of any physical description of
that moment. Their theorem implies that the quantum
vacuum state which may have characterized the early universe cannot be eternal in the
past but must have had an absolute beginning. Even if our
universe is just a tiny part of a so called multi-verse
composed of many universes, their theorem requires that the multi-verse itself must
have an absolute beginning. Of course highly speculative scenarios
such as loop quantum gravity modules, string models,
even closed time like curves have been proposed to try to avoid this absolute beginning. These
models are fraught with problems, but the bottom
line is that none of these models even if true succeeds in
restoring an eternal past. Last spring at a conference in Cambridge, celebrating the
70th birthday of Steven Hawking, Vi Lincoln delivered a paper
entitled, "Did the universe have a beginning" which
surveyed current cosmology with respect to that question. He argues and I quote, "None
of these scenarios can actually be past eternal." He
concluded, "All the evidence we have says that the universe
had a beginning." But then the inevitable question arises; why did the universe come
into being, what brought the universe into existence? There
must have been a transcendent cause which brought the
universe into being. We can summarize our argument thus far as follows;
1. The universe began to exist. 2. If the universe began to exist, then the
universe has a transcendent cause. 3. Therefore the universe has a transcendent
cause. By the very nature of the case, that cause
must be a transcendent immaterial being. Now there are only
two possible things that could fit that description, either an abstract object like a number or
an un- embodied mind or consciousness; but abstract
objects don't stand in causal relations. The number seven
for example has no effect on anything, therefore the cause of the universe is plausibly an
un-embodied mind or person, and thus we are brought not
merely to a transcendent cause of the universe but to its
personal creator. Three, God is the best explanation of the applicability of Mathematics to the
physical world. Philosophers and scientist are puzzled
over what Physicist; Eugene Wigner called "the uncanny
effectiveness of Mathematics." How is it that a mathematical theorist like Peter Higgs can
sit down at his desk and by pouring over mathematical equations
predict the existence of a fundamental particle which
experimentalists 30 years later after investing millions of dollars and thousands of man hours
are finally able to detect? Mathematics is the language
of nature; but how is this to be explained? If mathematical
objects are abstract entities causally isolated from the universe, then the applicability
of mathematics is in the words of philosopher of mathematics
Penelope Maddy are happy coincidence. On the other hand
if mathematical objects are just useful fictions, how is it that nature is written in the language
of these fictions? In his book, Dr. Rosenberg implicates
that naturalism doesn't tolerate cosmic coincidences, but
the naturalist has no explanation of the uncanny applicability of mathematics to the physical
world. By contrast, the Theist has a ready explanation.
When God created the physical universe He designed it on
the mathematical structure He had in mind. We can summarize this argument are follows;
1. If God did not exist, the applicability of mathematics would be a happy coincidence.
2. The applicability of mathematics is not a happy coincidence.
3. Therefore God exists. 4. God is the best explanation of the fine
tuning of the universe for intelligent life. In recent decades,
scientists have been stunned by the discovery that the initial conditions of the "Big ***"
were fined tuned for the existence of intelligence life
with a precision and delicacy that literally defy human
comprehension. Now there are three life explanatory options for this extraordinary fine tuning;
physical necessity, chance or design. Physical necessity
is not however a plausible explanation because the finely
tuned constants and quantities are independent of the laws of nature and therefore they are
not physically necessary. So could the fine tuning
be due to chance? The problem with this explanation is
that the odds of a life permitting universe governed by our laws of nature are just so
infinitesimal that they cannot be reasonably faced. Therefore
the proponents of chance have been forced to postulate the
existence of a world ensemble of other universes preferably infinite in number and randomly
ordered so that life permitting universes will appear
by chance somewhere in the ensemble. Not only is this
hypothesis - to borrow Richard Dawkins phrase - "an unparsimonious extravagance" but it
faces an insuperable objection. By far most of the
observable universes in the world ensemble would be worlds
in which a single brain fluctuates into existence out of the vacuum and observes its otherwise
empty world. Thus if our world were just a member
of a random ensemble, we ought to be having observations
like that. Since we don't, that strongly disconfirms the world ensemble hypothesis. So chance is
also not a good explanation. It follows that design
is the best explanation of the fine tuning of the universe, and
thus the fine tuning of the universe constitutes evidence for a cosmic designer. Fifth, God
is the best explanation of intentional states of consciousness
in the world. Philosophers are puzzled by states of
intentionality. Intentionality is the property of being about something or of something.
It signifies the object directedness of our thoughts, for example
I can think about my summer vacation or I can think of
my wife. No physical object has this sort of intentionality; a chair or a stone of a
globe of tissue like the brain is not about or of something else, only
mental states or states of consciousness are about other
things. As a materialist, Dr. Rosenberg recognizes this fact and so concludes that on atheism
there really are no intentional states, Dr. Rosenberg boldly
claims that we never really think about anything; but this
seems incredible. Obviously I am thinking about Dr. Rosenberg's argument. This seems
to me to be a redo teal adapt sort of atheism.
By contrast, on theism because God is a mind, it's hardly surprising that there should be
finite minds, thus intentional states fit comfortably in
a theistic world view. So we may argue, 1. If God did not exist, intentional states
of consciousness would not exist. 2. But intentional states of consciousness
do exist. 3. Therefore God exist.
Number six, God is the best explanation of objective moral values and duties in the world.
In moral experience we apprehend moral values and duties
which impose themselves as objectively binding and
true. For example we all recognize that it's wrong to walk into an elementary school with
an automatic weapon and to shoot little boys and girls
and their teachers. On a naturalistic view however, there is
nothing really wrong with this. Moral values are just a subjective by-products of biological
evolution and social conditioning. Dr. Rosenberg is brutally
honest about the implications of his atheism. He writes,
"There is no such thing as morally right or wrong, individual human life is meaningless
and without ultimate moral value. We need to face the
fact that nihilism is true." By contrast the Theist grounds
objective moral values in God and our moral duties in His commands. The Theist thus has
the explanatory resources which the Atheist lacks,
the ground objective moral values and duties, hence we
may argue; 1. Objective moral values and duties exist.
2. But if God not exist, objective moral values and duties would not exist. From which it
follows; 3. Therefore God exist.
7. God is the best explanation of the historical facts about Jesus of Nazareth. Historians
have reached something of a consensus that Jesus came on
the scene with an unprecedented sense of divine authority; the authority to stand and speak
in God's place. He claimed that Himself, the kingdom of God
had come. And as visible demonstrations of this fact He carried out a ministry of miracle
working and exorcisms, but the supreme confirmation of
His claim was His resurrection from the dead. If Jesus did
rise from the dead, then it will seem that we have a divine miracle on our hands and
thus evidence for the existence of God. Now I realized that
most people probably think that the resurrection of Jesus is
something you just accept by faith or not, but there are actually three facts recognized
by the majority of historians today which I believe are best
explained by the resurrection of Jesus. Fact 1: On the Sunday after His crucifixion,
Jesus tomb was found empty by a group of His women
followers. Fact 2 On separate occasions difference individuals
and groups of people saw appearances of Jesus alive
after His death. Fact 3 The original disciples suddenly came
to believe in the resurrection of Jesus despite having every
predisposition to the contrary. The eminent British scholar N.T Wright near
the end of his 800 page study of the historicity of Jesus'
resurrection concludes that the empty tomb and the post mortem appearances of Jesus have
been established to such a high degree of historical
probably as to be and I quote," virtually certain, akin to
the death of Caesar Augustus in AD17 or the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70." Naturalistic
attempts to explain away these three great facts like the disciples
stole the body or Jesus wasn't really dead have been
universally rejected by contemporary scholarship. The simple fact is that there just is no plausible
naturalistic explanation of these facts, and therefore it seems to me the Christian is
amply justified in believing that Jesus rose from the dead and
was who He claimed to be; but that entails that God exists.
Thus we have a good inductive argument to the existence of God based on the facts concerning
the resurrection of Jesus.
8. Finally, God can be personally known and experienced. This isn't really an argument
for God's existence rather it's the claim that you can
know God exists wholly apart from arguments simply by
personally experiencing Him. Philosophers call beliefs like this, properly basic beliefs.
They aren't based on some other beliefs; rather they are part
of the foundations of a person's system of beliefs. Other
properly basic beliefs will be belief in the reality of the past or the existence of the
external world. In the same way, belief in God is for those who seek
Him, a properly basic belief grounded in our experience of
God. Now if this is so then there is a danger that arguments for God could actually distract
our attention from God Himself. The Bible promises, "Draw
near to God and He will draw near to you." We mustn't so
concentrate on the external proofs that we fail to hear the inner voice of God speaking
to our own hearts. For those who listen, God becomes
a personal reality in their lives. In summary then we've seen
eight respects in which God provides a better explanation of the world than naturalism.
God is the best explanation of why anything at all exists;
God is the best explanation of the origin of the universe; God is
the best explanation of the applicability of mathematics to the physical world; God
is the best explanation of the fine tuning of the universe
for intelligent life; God is the best explanation of
intentional states of consciousness in the world; God is the best explanation of objective
moral values and duties in the world; God is the best explanation
of the historical facts concerning Jesus' resurrection,
and finally God can be personally known and experienced. For all of these reasons I think
that belief in God is eminently reasonable. If Dr. Rosenberg
is to persuade us otherwise, he must first tear down all
eight of the reasons that I presented and then in their place erect a case of his own
to show why a belief in God is unreasonable. Unless and until he
does that, I think that we should agree that it is reasonable
to believe in God.
>> Moderator: Do we have a timer on this side or is it just, okay. Okay that ends Dr. Craig's
opening statement. Dr. Rosenberg will now approach
his lectern and when I say begin, then Professor Rosenberg
may begin his 20 minutes opening statement. Timer, are you ready? Okay, Dr. Rosenberg,
you may begin.
>> Dr. Alex Rosenberg: Thanks Corey and thank you for the invitation. As Yogi Berra the
famous Yankee catcher once said, I appreciate you're making
this unnecessary. So I don't know whether to laugh or to
cry. I hope you didn't pay money to come to tonight's debate because everything that Dr.
Craig said, almost everything actually - he said many
times before in many different debates almost in the same
order and all of them available on the internet, so you didn't need to come out in this really
cold night here in West Lafayette to hear this debates
again, and to hear this arguments again. And in particular
what's remarkable about them is how impervious they are to the previous discussions and criticisms
that they've been exposed to, they're exactly the same as seven or eight or nine internet
presentations of his arguments in the past. And what it
leads me to ask is, is Dr. Craig infallible or does he just not
listen - probably the latter. He probably doesn't' listen to what his interlocutors
have suggested. And I don't think that he listens because he's really
not interested in getting at the truth, he is interested in
scoring debate points. The two moves that Dr. Craig almost always makes are first, there
is the burden of proof claim as though we are in a court
of law, as though it was a question of the defending attorney
and the prosecuting attorney engaged in an adversarial procedure. And the other thing
that you often hear is, all I need to show to win is, so
for example at the very end of his remarks, he said I've got eight
arguments and he's got to refute all eight of them or else I win. Philosophy and Theology
don't proceed by courtroom style debate, we're engaged in
a cooperative search for the truth, both Theist and Atheist,
not an adversarial contest for victory; this is the wrong format for a profitable discussion
of faith or God or science and reason; but let's turn to the
substance of the matter. Our topic is whether faith in God is
reasonable, but of course faith is belief in the absence of evidence, so I'm going to
give Dr. Craig the benefit of doubt and accept the change that
he has made in the terms of the debate. It now turns out
that what we're arguing about is whether a belief in God in reasonable. And the God we're
talking about is the God of Abrahamic religions; the God
of Islam, of Christianity and Judaism. It's not the milk and
water Deism of for example the Founding Fathers - Jefferson, Adams, Monroe, perhaps even George
Washington. The God we're talking about has the following features, if He exists; He's
got the three Omnis and benevolence. He's got omnipotence,
omniscience, omnipresence and an unqualifiedly good
will. If these four features are incompatible with some obvious fact, then of course the
Atheist - the Theist God is none existent. So let's be clear
that we're arguing about theism here. And in thinking about
theism and in thinking about science there is something else that we had better keep
in mind. Dr. Craig is very confident about is take on fundamental
Physic, on important and controversial questions about
which physicist have not attained consensus, but the important thing to bear in mind in
thinking about his take, the side that he chose, the confidence
with which he presents his take, the important thing to
bear in mind is this; there are 2000 members of the National Academy of Sciences, the most
important body of the most distinguished scientists
in the United States, of which four are a faculty here at Purdue
and the two Noble Prize winners in Chemistry of course are both members of the National
Academy of Science. Of these 2000 people, 95% of them
are Atheist and the percentage for the physicists is even
higher. "What do these people know about Physics that Dr. Craig doesn't know - is it a coincidence
that this number of the members of the National
Academy of Science are unbelievers?" I think it isn't and I
think it requires us to take with a certain lack of confidence the claims that Dr. Craig
makes about science. And I'm going to controvert some
of those claims right now. In particular, many of the
arguments that Dr. Craig gave tonight and which he has given repeatedly in the past
rests on the first cause argument; an argument that goes back
certainly to Saint Thomas Aquinas and probably to
Aristotle. And it rests on, of course the principle of sufficient reason, the principle
that everything that exists must have a cause. Now the remarkable
thing about this argument and the principle of sufficient
reason as is called on which it rests is that the principle is plainly false - okay. It's
refuted trillions of times every second throughout the universe,
it's refuted in this room and I will give you a pretty full
explanation of why. Take two uranium, 238 atoms - okay, that are absolutely indistinguishable.
In a given moment these two indistinguishable atoms,
atoms of exactly the same mass and energy state
have the following difference; one produces an alpha particles spontaneously and the other
doesn't and there is no cause whatsoever for that difference.
That's what quantum mechanics tells us. Suddenly one
emits an alpha particle and the other doesn't and there is no cause whatever for that difference
between them. Now you might think that that's not a very important fact of nature, but one
mole, or one other god knows number of uranium 238
molecules emits three million alpha particles a second.
And every helium atom on this planet is one of those alpha particles. And the smoke detectors
that operates all through this auditorium to protect
us from fires, those operate because of the indeterminate unexplained completely spontaneous
appearance of an alpha particle out of a uranium atom in these systems. For Dr. Craig to insist
on the argument that rest on the claim that every event
had a cause that had to have brought it into being is just bluff -right. It's not a principle
accepted in Physics. And you can't argue from it for or
from its intuitive attractiveness. Let's consider the fine tuning
argument; another of the claims about science that Dr. Craig makes. This is the argument
that the charge on the electron, the gravitational
constant, the mass of the electron, planks constant, the hobble
constant, the cosmic density parameters, that they're all so beautifully arranged to make
human life actual, that there must have been some purpose
or design that brought them into being in order to do
that; that's the best explanation. Well to begin there with, this is terrible Calvin
chauvinism. If these constants had been slightly different, maybe
there will be intelligent life in the universe, that's
germanium based or silicon based - look at the periodic table of the elements, look at
the atoms around carbon in the periodic table and ask yourself
whether if some of these constants had been slightly
different, whether there might not be intelligent creatures in the universe that are differently
composed from us. More important, Physics ruled out
the kind of theology, the kind of purpose of thinking that Dr.
Craig invokes here 400 years ago. And if there is one thing that Physics is not going to
go back to and turn around and accept in its search for the
fundamental nature of reality, it's the invocation of
purposes. There are of course in physical theory at least two different ways in which,
the particular way in which the constants of our part of the
universe could have come into existence while there have been
an indefinite large number of other combinations of constants making up other inaccessible
regions either of this universe or of other universes.
So the inflationary period soon after the "Big ***"
produced regions of space by completely quantum mechanical in-deterministic symmetry breaking
which are inaccessible to us, which are beyond our horizon, our event horizon. And there
are possibly indefinitely many of these, okay. And for
all we know there may be life or there may not be life in them.
And then of course string theory and M theory tell us that there are minimally 10 to the
500th different kinds of possible universes or actual universes
bobbling up out of the quantum foam of the eternally
existing multi-universe. I'm not going to take sides on these varying theories, but
I defy Professor Craig to argue from authority that it is impossible
for something to have been created from nothing, the
symmetry breaking which is characteristic of the cascade of events that occurred in
our universe and which produces our universe in addition to
the indefinitely many other universes bobbling up out of the
quantum foam of the multi-verse. That symmetry breaking is another example of the violation
of the principle of sufficient reason on which Dr.
Craig stake so many of his arguments. Let's turn to something
much more accessible - objective values. Now Dr. Craig's argument that only God can underwrite
objective values was refuted by Plato in 390 BC in an argument that he gives in the first
and in the simplest of his dialogues "The Euthyphro."
I'm very tempted to say that Dr. Craig, what part of no
Euthyphro, don't you understand. The question that Plato raises in "The Euthyphro" goes
like this; "Take your favorite moral norm, gay marriage is
forbidden or FGM is required or thou shall not kill. Take your
favorite moral norm, ask yourself this question; is it morally right because God chose it or
did God choose it because it's morally right? We all
know the answer to this question, the answer to this
question is God chose it because it's morally right and what means of course is the moral
rightness of thou shall not kill is an entirely independent
fact from God's choosing it, is because He recognize the
moral rightness of thou shall not kill that He imposed it on us. And that means that the
mere fact that it's God who imposed it on us doesn't explain
the nature or the objective value, it's that further fact that
He was wise enough and smart enough to detect about thou shall not kill that made it the
morally right value for us." Okay. And this is a point that
Socrates made to Euthyphro in the first and simplest of the
dialogues and it is a problem that in fact theological ethics has wrestled with ever
since. The only option in responding to this argument is the divine
command theory, a theory that has had its exponents all the
way back to William of Ockham. And the trouble with divine command theory is that in order
to articulate that theory, in order to defend
it, in order to make it sound plausible, you have to already
commit yourself to there being some normative facts or moral facts about the moral rules
that make them right independent of God saying, "You
do it or you go to hell" - okay - there is a rightness about
moral norms that cannot be exhausted by the mere fact that it was handed down on a mountain
by Moses from God. Now natural selection is a
theory, of course about how we came to be moral, why we
are moral, about what the ecological conditions are that made us moral; it explains our morality
but it doesn't necessarily explain away our morality;
that requires something else - okay. And the suggestion
that without God, the Naturalists, the Darwinian has no basis on which to underwrite his normative
commitment, that again is bluff and in fact it's the person who claims that it's God that
gave it - gave normative morality to us that explains its
normative rightness is the person who has regrettably to use
the expression that Dr. Craig so invokes, the burden of proof of explaining what is
it about God that makes for the moral rightness of the ethical
norms that He imposes on us. And there are of course any
number of alternative ethical theories that underwrite the objectivity of ethics among
them utilitarianism and social contract theory
and ideal observer theory and Hum's theory of the sympathies
and the quotient theory of the categorical imperative. And the real problem of Dr. Craig
is he needs to refute each of these normative theories in
order to show that there is no other basis for ethics than God
and the resources that he will use to cast out on these theories also cast out on the
divine command theory. Let's turn to the argument from the
New Testament. I am sort of gob smacked as a philosopher
that he should persist in propounding this preposterous argument. Ask yourself the following
argument; In 1827 Joseph Smith got 11 people to certify
that they observed the golden tablets which he an
illiterate person was able to translate from reform Egyptian - okay - and convey "The Book
of Mormon" to the Mormon - to the Latter Day Saints.
Do we believe on the basis of those 11certificates that are
only about 160 years old that "The Book of Mormon" is the revealed word of God? The Koran
tells us that Mohammed ascended to heaven from the
Al-Aqsa Mosque, the dome of the rock in Jerusalem on
the 26th of February 621, and there are millions and millions of Muslims all over the world
who are committed to that great truth. Do you think
we in this room should believe it - right? Scientology that
claims eight million adherents throughout the world - Scientology tells us that seventy-five
million years ago, somebody named Zeno brought billions
of people to earth on spaceships that looked like DC8s and
who are we to believe that there are 55,000 people in the United States or eight million
people around the world who really believe this too; is
there any reason why we should accept the certification of
Enron Hubbard and the Church of Scientology that this actually happened - No, of course
not. How many of you are familiar with the statues
of Madonna taken out from their churches once a year which
shed tears? Of course as scientists we know exactly what the physical properties are of
these statues and how the rapid and sudden change of temperature
between the inside and the outside of the Cathedral produces condensation which the
devote believe to be tears, but that's no reason for us to
believe it. Think about this, 53 of the first 62 DNA exonerations of people who turned out
to be innocent of charges of capital crimes in the United
States, 53 of these people were convicted on eye witness
testimony. We know from cognitive social science how unreliable eye witness testimony is today.
Why should we suppose that eye witness testimony
from 33 AD is any more reliable? This as an argument for
God's existence seems to me to be bizarre. Of course the killer argument for - against
God's existence is the argument of evil. It's enough to show
that theism is unreasonable and it of course is the principle
reason for apostasy from the Christian faith and the Jewish faith and Islam all through
the centuries. And the argument is simple and terrible - okay.
And it goes like this; 1. If the Theist God exists, He is omnipotent
and benevolent. A benevolent creature eliminates suffering
to the extent that the benevolent creature can. Therefore if
there is a God and He is omnipotent and benevolent He eliminates all suffering, but as we know
it's obvious that there is plenty of suffering
in the world - both manmade and natural suffering. So if there
is a God, then He is either not omnipotent or not benevolent or not either omnipotent
or benevolent and theism is false. The problem of evil is
theism's problem from hell. Now I want to say one last thing
about the problem of evil and about the potential responses that Dr. Craig will make and that
he has made in the past. And I need to make something
about my own personal history clear here. There are a
lot of responses to the problem of evil that I find morally offensive, and I find them
morally offensive for a certain reason, I'm the child of Holocaust
survivors; all of my family except my parents were killed by
the Nazis including two half brothers of mine - okay. I will not take kindly to a suggestion
that Dr. Craig has made repeatedly in debate flora like this,
that the innocent children who died in the Holocaust
including or died in the hands of Israeli - of the soldiers of Israel in Canaan - that
these innocent children like my half brothers were more fortunate,
were luckier because they ascended to heaven directly than the SS soldiers who killed them
and lived very nice, very comfortable, very long lives in
West Germany after World War II. I am not going to take kindly to that kind of an exculpation
of theism. In particular Dr. Craig has said before and
said in one sentence at least tonight that nobody has ever
shown the incompatibility of theism and suffering. That is part of the divine plan that's beyond
our cognizance. Well the argument that I sketched,
the argument for evil is a logical deduction which shows
the incompatibility of an omnipotent and benevolent creature with suffering on this planet, and
is not enough to farb it off on the mystery of God's
plan or on the mere logical compatibility of these two
views. Now I'm going to stop and in the reply I'm going to want to take up the two new arguments
that Dr. Craig introduced; the argument from mathematics
and the argument from intentionality, but I think
I've put enough on the table for him to rejoin, thank you.
>> Moderator: All right, Dr. Craig will now begin his 12 minutes rebuttal. The timer will
go ahead and begin when he begins to speak.
>> Dr. William Lane Craig: I noticed that in Rosenberg's opening speech he didn't' really
present many arguments against the reasonableness of belief
in God. He gestured in the direction of the problem of
evil but he didn't really develop it. The problem is that argument is based upon controversial
premises such as if God is all powerful, He can just
create any world that He wants and that if God is all good, He
would want to create a world without evil and neither one of those is necessarily true
and that is why among philosophers, even Atheist, the logical
version of the problem of evil is widely rejected. So what
Dr. Rosenberg needs to show is that it is impossible that God could have morally sufficient
reasons for permitting the suffering in the world and
until he does that he hasn't even begun to offer a problem of
evil that disproves theism. Rather when you read Dr. Rosenberg's work, what you discover
is that his skepticism about God's existence is really
rooted in his Scientism or Naturalism, which make it
unreasonable to believe in God, but here I think is absolutely crucial that we distinguish
between two types of Naturalism that Dr. Rosenberg tends
to blur together. Epistemological Naturalism which says
that science is the only source of knowledge and Metaphysical Naturalism which says that
only physical things exists - let me say a word about each
one of these. 1. With respect to Epistemological Naturalism,
I want to make two points. First it's a false theory of
knowledge for two reasons. First it's overly restrictive; they aren't truths that cannot
be proven by natural science. And the success of natural
science in discovering truths about the physical world does
nothing to show that is the only source of knowledge and truth.
2. It's self refuting. The statement, natural science is the only source of knowledge is
not itself a scientific statement and therefore it cannot
be true. For these two reasons, epistemological naturalism
is a false theory of knowledge that is widely rejected by philosophers, but leave that point
aside , the really important point for tonight's debate
is the second, that epistemological naturalism does not imply
metaphysical naturalism. A case in point will be William Klein, the most famous epistemological
naturalist of the 20th century. Klein showed himself to be commendably open to the reality
of non physical entities. He wrote, "If I saw indirect
explanatory benefits in positing possibilia, spirits, a Creator,
I would joyfully accord them scientific status too on a par with a avowedly scientific posits
as quarks and black holes" And in fact Klein was as good
as his word, for he did posit the existence of immaterial none
physical objects, namely mathematical objects like sets. Klein's case shows that the epistemological
naturalists need not be a metaphysical naturalist, but secondly my arguments for the existence
of God. Many of my arguments do just what Klein said.
They show on the basis of scientific evidence the
explanatory evidence of posting God, and so they are acceptable to the epistemological
naturalist. The Epistemological Naturalist can and I think
should be a theist. So the real issue in the debate tonight is
not epistemological but metaphysical naturalism and Dr. Rosenberg hasn't given us any reason
to think that metaphysical naturalism is true.
So what can we say about metaphysical naturalism? Well again I want to make two points. First,
my arguments for the existence of God show that
metaphysical naturalism is not true. There is a personal
transcendent reality beyond the physical universe. But secondly I think that metaphysical naturalism
is so contrary to reason and experience as to
be absurd. And in the following arguments, the first premise
in every case is taken from Dr. Rosenberg's own book. So,
2. The argument from intentionality; according to Dr. Rosenberg if naturalism is true, I
cannot think about anything, that's because there are no
intentional states, but; 1. I am thinking about naturalism from which
it follows 2. Therefore naturalism is not true, so if
you think - that you ever think about anything you should
conclude that naturalism is false. Secondly, the argument from meaning; according
to Dr. Rosenberg if naturalism is true, no sentence has
any meaning. And he says that all the sentence in his own book are in fact meaningless, but
premise two, premise one has meaning, we all understood
it. And therefore it follows that three, naturalism is
not true. 3. Argument from truth - According to Dr.
Rosenberg, if naturalism is true there are no true sentences
and that's because they're all, meaningless, but,
2. premise one is true, that's what the naturalist believes and asserts from which it follows,
3. Therefore naturalism is not true. 4. The argument from moral praise and blame;
according to Dr. Rosenberg if naturalism is true then I am
not morally praise worthy or blame worthy for any of my action because as I said on
his view, objective moral values and duties do not exist but,
2. I am morally praise worthy and blame worthy for at least some of my actions. If you think
that you've ever done something truly wrong or
truly good then you should conclude that, 3. Therefore naturalism is not true.
5. The argument from freedom; according to Dr. Rosenberg, if naturalism is true I do
not do anything freely, everything is determined but,
2. I can freely agree or disagree with premise one from which it follows.
3. Therefore naturalism is not true.
6. The argument from purpose; according to Dr. Rosenberg, if naturalism is true, I do
not plan to do anything but,
2. I planned to come to tonight's debate, that's why I'm here. From which it follows,
3. Therefore naturalism is not true. 7. The argument from enduring; according to
Dr. Rosenberg if naturalism is true, I do not endure for two
moments of time, but, 2. I have been sitting here for more than
a minute. If you think that you're the same person who walked
into the room tonight, then you should agree that,
3. Therefore naturalism is not true. And finally, the argument from personal existence;
this is perhaps the coup de grass for naturalism. According to Dr. Rosenberg, if naturalism
is true I do not exist. He says there are no selves, there are no
persons, no first person perspective, but, 2. I do exist; I know this as certainly as
I know anything from which it follows therefore naturalism is not
true. In a word, metaphysical naturalism is absurd.
And notice that my argument is not that it is unappealing;
rather it is that metaphysical naturalism flies in the face of reason and experience
and is therefore untenable. So, in sum epistemological naturalism
consistent with theism and metaphysical naturalism is
absurd. So let's now return to the arguments that I offered for God's existence and see
how Dr. Rosenberg responded to some of them. He didn't
respond to the first argument, why anything exists
rather than nothing. As for the origin of the universe he says, but not everything has
a cause. In quantum mechanics virtual particles come to
be without a cause. Notice that he misstates the first
premise which is that the universe began to exist and then the second if the universe
began to exist, the universe has a transcendent cause. That's
because the universe can't come into being out of nothing.
And virtual particles don't come out of nothing; they come out of the quantum vacuum which
is a sea of roiling energy. Moreover in quantum mechanics
it's not clear that these entities are in fact uncaused,
they are deterministic interpretations of quantum mechanics according to which the behavior
of these particles is fully determined. And finally,
3. I would say in response to this that - the origin of the universe you have to believe
the entire universe could come into being from none being. In
order for it to come to exist without a cause and I think that
takes more faith than believe in the existence of God. He didn't reply to the argument about
of the applicability of the mathematics in the world.
As for the fine tuning argument he simply appealed here
once again to the multi-verse hypothesis, but I refuted that in my opening speech. If
we were just a random member of a multiversial world ensemble
then we ought to be having totally different observations than the ones that we in fact
have, and therefore that's why physicists like Roger Penrose
have concluded that multi-verse hypotheses are impotent to explain the fine tuning of
the universe. He says perhaps you can ever know the basis for
life like silicon, what he doesn't appreciate is that in the
absence of fine tuning there wouldn't even be matter. There wouldn't even be Chemistry,
much less stars and planets where life might evolve,
so I don't think he really understands the extent of the fine
tuning of the universe and the catastrophic consequences that it will ensure if it were
not finely tuned. Intentional states of consciousness he didn't'
respond to. As for objective moral values, in his book, he
admits that naturalism faces an even worse problem than the Euthyphro dilemma. For the
Theist, the Euthyphro dilemma is easy to solve, namely
you craft a third alternative that God Himself is the good
and that His commands are necessary expressions of His moral nature. So they are neither arbitrary,
nor is the good something external to God. But
on Dr. Rosenberg's view there is no basis for moral value or
moral objectivity and that's why he is a moral nealist who doesn't think that anything is
truly right or wrong. As for the resurrection of Jesus, he
just doesn't understand I think the credibility of the New
Testament documents in this regard. You can't compare them to Joseph Smith which were probably
lies or to Mohammed's assertion which is probably
a legend, because in this case we are dealing with early
eye witness testimony that is not the result of conspiracy or a lie, these people sincerely
believe what they said and that's why most historians accept
those three facts. And therefore the naturalist has got to
come up with some alternative explanation. You can't indict eye witness testimony in
general and then use that against a specific case. You'll have
to show in the specific case of the Gospels that this
testimony is unreliable and that is not the opinion of the majority of historians who
have investigated these documents. So for all of tense reasons,
I think his metaphysical naturalism is wholly unreasonable
whereas theism by contrast I think is eminently reasonable and plausible.
>> Moderator: All right, as soon as Dr. Rosenberg begins, he has his 12 minute rebuttal, timer
begin when he begins.
>> Dr. Alex Rosenberg: "Gee, what a lot to cover." So I guess the way to begin is to
say I wrote this book, "The Atheist Guide to Reality." I actually
didn't want to call it "The Atheist Guide to Reality;" I
want to call it something else but my editor said you'll sell a lot more books and even
get yourself invited to a debate like this if you title
a book like this. But, of course the important thing to remember
about that book, "The Atheist Guide to Reality" is the structure of its argument, which was
science, has a number of important implications. In fact
the first couple of pages in my book, I identify 14 of these
implications and most of them sound really bizarre, just the way Professor Craig suggested
in his remarks, but the real issue is that among
these14 real issues of science that I argued - follow in my
book, one of them is atheism and the others are that set of doctrine that Dr. Craig described
as absurd. None of them is supposed to follow from atheism,
none of the things that he says are manifestly false
and that I have argued for in my book, "Fall Off from Atheism" and therefore of course
the 'modus tollens argument' as we call it in logic that
Professor Craig is trying to advance is based on a complete
misrepresentation of what it says in that book. What it says in that book is that all
these alleged absurdities along with atheism follow from
the truth from science. Now you can reject all of these
alleged absurdities but if I am right about the logical of structure of my argument, you've
got to reject science, and I don't think Dr. Craig wants
to reject science because he's building God on his
interpretation of what science is supposed to show. The other thing you can do of course
is as many of my philosophical colleagues all want to do
is reject the argument that I mount for about what science
shows regarding these issues like free will and the nature of the self and the grounds
of morality and the purposelessness of the universe. That's an
interesting and important set of issues in philosophy, and
they are issues in the philosophy of science about the relationship between science and
the agenda of the persistent questions of philosophy. They
are not questions about the relationship between atheism
and these persistent questions and it is simply a callow mistake to suppose that you could
refute atheism by controverting these controversial
doctrines that I argue for in philosophy. We didn't come
here tonight to debate metaphysical naturalism or epistemological naturalism, we came here
to debate whether the belief in God, faith in God or
as I have insisted we ought to substitute belief in God is
reasonable or not. And that question has practically nothing to do with whether the strange thesis
that I argue for in this book are right or not. I
would cherish the opportunity to discuss the details of these
arguments with Professor Craig. Let's just take one example, the problem of intentionality.
The problem of intentionality is a really hard problem
to understand in philosophy, Dr. Crag mentioned a couple of
times that is the - intentionality is the fact that our thought appear to be about stuff
that I'm thinking about Craig now and I'm thinking about the
timer that says I've got eight and a half minutes to finish my
rebuttal, and I'm thinking about stuff. How is the possible - how is it possible for one
chunk of matter, my brain to be about - intrinsically about
another chunk of matter, Dr. Craig or the timer now says
eight minutes. That is a profound mystery in philosophy with which philosophers have
been trying to wrestle certainly since Descartes and I think
since Plato made the point in "The Minor," one of his other
dialogues. How is it possible for one chunk of matter - the brain to be intrinsically
about, directed at, pointing at another chunk of matter. Now you
may think that's not a problem, that's not very difficult,
but if you start reading Descartes and you read Maimonides__ 1:12:52 and you read the
philosophers in the tradition of Western philosophy; you'll
see that it's a huge problem - okay. And it's a problem for
science, for neuroscience - okay. How is it that the wet stuff in the brain can do this
- okay? There are two answers to this question. One is Descartes'
answer of dualism, there is mind and it's independent of
the brain, it's a totally different spiritual substance; theists love this argument for
obvious reasons. If there is a spiritual substance in us, a soul
or a person, a self independent of our brain, well then of
course if it is not physical, it's indestructible and it's well on its way to immortality which
is just what the Christian religion wants us to believe - okay.
That's dualism - okay - most scientist aren't dualists is the
odd exception echoes in even some philosophers like Descartes or Popper, but most scientist,
most neuroscientist think that cognition is a brain
process and the problem is to explain how the process, one
chunk of matter can have this property of aboutness. And that question has nothing to
do - nothing interesting to do with atheism or theism.
Let's take the matter of numbers. Dr. Craig says is a miracle,
it's a wide coincidence that mathematics is applicable to science on my view. Well he
hasn't reckon with the remarkable number of alternative mathematical
objects that mathematics have conjured up, have
thought about, have theorized about, all about the remarkable range of possible mathematical
functions relating these objects. The fact is that we
know that there are indefinitely many mathematical objects
and indefinitely many functions relating these mathematical objects and is a sheer argument
from ignorance to suggest that the number is so
small, the number that apply to the world of this vast range
is so small that it demands divine authority to make it come out that way. Just the geometries
alone, the non-nuclei geometries alone, there are indefinitely
many of them. And it happens that in the small - one
of them appears to apply on this planet and in larger spaces another applies, but anyone
of an indefinitely large number could perfectly
well apply in the universe. And the suggestion that is some
mystery that could only be explained by God's good graciousness to the physicists just seems
to me bizarre again, just something that beggars
the imagination. So I guess the last thing I want to talk about
is Dr. Craig's brief rejoinder that I somehow need - that he can get away with showing or with asserting
that there is no logical incompatibility between God's being omnipotent and benevolent and
the existence of suffering. Now Christian philosophers
have been worried about this problem from hell at
least since the greatest of them Maimonides 1:16:28 okay. And they have done handsprings
and twisted themselves up in nuts to try to find
some explanation because logically speaking if God is
omniscient and God is omnipotent and God is truly benevolent, has a totally good will
and would never will anything but for the best, then the existence
of suffering on our planet - human suffering and
natural suffering of other animals for example is something that needs desperately to be
explained. And we've had over the course of 400 or 500years
of wrestling with this problem the free will defense and
the mystery mongering gets - God's will defense and nobody has managed to provide a satisfactory
explanation, and I insist that the problem is logical, and Dr. Craig needs to tell us
exactly how an omnipotent God and an entirely benevolent
God had to have the holocaust in order to produce the
good outcome, whatever it might be that He intends for our ultimate providence. Couldn't
He have just gotten away with World War I or the Great
Leap Forward or The 30 Years War which killed untold
millions or the Bubonic Plaque that killed 40% of the population of Europe? Did He have
to have every one of those in order to produce the kind
of beneficent outcome which is His divine providence to
expect? I just don't see it, I cannot understand that, I find it offensive and I find it perplexing.
And in all honesty if Dr. Craig could provide me with
any kind of a logical coherent account that could reconcile
the evident fact of the horrors of human and info human life on this life planet over the
last three-point- five billion years with the existence of a
benevolent, omnipotent agent, then I will turn Christian. Thank
you. >> Moderator: Okay, we now begin our eight
minute rebuttals. Dr. Craig anytime you are ready? Timer,
begin when he starts speaking. >> Dr. William Lane Craig: I am really excited
about that last statement that Dr. Rosenberg made.
Honestly Dr. Rosenberg if you would read the work of people like Alvin Plantinga, Peter
Worden Wagon and others on this problem of evil, you will
know that hardly anyone to date defends the logical version
of the problem of evil, because the atheist simply hasn't been able to show the burden
of prove required to put it through. Listen to what
Paul Draper who is an Agnostic philosopher here in the
department of Purdue says. He says, "A logical arguments from evil are a dying parenthesis,
dead breed. For all we know even an omnipotent and omniscient
being might be forced to allow evil for the sake of
obtaining some important good. Our knowledge of good and evil and the logical relations
they have to each other is much limited to prove that this
could not be the case. In particular the atheist assumes
that if God is all powerful He can create just any world He wants, and that's not necessarily
true. If God wills to create free creatures, then He can't
guarantee they will always do right. it's logically impossible
to make someone freely do something. So God's being all powerful doesn't mean He can do
the illogically impossible. So the atheist will
have to prove there is a world of free creatures which God could
create which has as much good as this world but without as much evil. How could he possibly
prove that, that's pure speculation? What about
the other premise that if God is all good then He will create
world without evil. Well the problem here is we are assuming that God's purpose is just
to make us happy in this life, but on the Christian view
that's false. The purpose of life is not worldly happiness as
such but rather the knowledge of God, an there may be many evils that occur in this lifetime
that are utterly pointless with respect to producing
worldly happiness, but they may not be pointless with
respect to producing a knowledge of God and salvation and eternal life. It's possibly
- it's possible that only in a world that is suffused with natural
and moral evil that the optimal number of people would
come to know God freely, find salvation and eternal life. So the atheist will have to
prove that there is another possible world that has this much
knowledge of God and Hs salvation in it but which is
produced with less evils. How can he possibly prove that - is pure conjunction, it's impossible
to prove those things, and that's why the logical version
of the problem of evil is been widely abandoned. Peter
Worden Wagon, professor of philosophy at Notre Dame says, "That it used to be held that evil
was incompatible with the existence of God that
no possible world contains both God and evil, so far as I am
able to tell, this thesis is no longer defended." So Dr. Rosenberg, I want to invite you to
think about becoming a theist tonight because the main
obstacle that you presented is - need not be an obstacle for
you anymore. Now what about the positive arguments that I offered for God's existence? The first
one is why anything at all exits, and there's been
no response in tonight's debate to this first argument. You
can't just say the universe exists without an explanation of its contingent. If its contingent
as Dr. Rosenberg says in his book, there could have
been nothing, so why is there something rather than
nothing? The theist has an explanation, but the atheist by his own admission has no explanation.
What about the problem of the origin of the universe?
I showed that it's no avail to appeal to quantum mechanics, because in quantum mechanics things
don't come into being from none being, from nothing
they come out of the energy in a vacuum, but for the universe to come into being, it will
have to come from literally nothing because the beginning
of the universe is the beginning of all matter and energy
and space and time. Again theism has an explanation for how the universe came into being, but
atheism is impotent in this regard. The applicability
of mathematics, all that Dr Rosenberg could say is there are
various alternatives mathematics like none nuclei in geometry, that doesn't go one inch
toward explaining why our physical universe is structured
on this incredibly complex mathematical structure and foundation. Again the theist has an easy
explanation; God constructed the universe on this
mathematical structure, the naturalist is at a loss to explain it. What about the fine
tuning of the universe? I explained the disastrous results
that would ensue if the universe were not fine tuned and I
also explained why you can't dismiss this problem by the multi-verse hypothesis and
there's been no response to that. Intentional states of consciousness;
Dr. Rosenberg says how can one chunk of matter be about another one? I agree with him on
this, it can't - that leads him to deny that we really don't
think about anything, it leads me rather to say, but I do think about things, therefore
there must be minds and minds fit nicely into atheistic
world view because God is the ultimate mind. And so the
presence of finite minds in this world is nothing mysteries, it fits into a theistic
world in a way that it doesn't fit into an atheistic world. As for
objective moral values, it's the same situation; Dr. Rosenberg
rightly understands that if atheism is true, if metaphysical naturalism is true, there
are no objective moral values and duties. He and I actually
agree on a great deal, but, what I will say is obviously it is
wrong to do certain things and therefore it follows that there must be a foundation for
moral values beyond the physical world in God the transcendent
personal being. The resurrection of Jesus, again you
can't discuss this responsibly without getting your fingers dirty and looking at those documents,
you can't attack other documents like Joseph Smith
and Mohammed and use those to impugn the credibility of the Gospel sources. The fact is that majority
of New Testament historians who have investigated these documents have concluded to those three
facts that I mentioned. Remember, N.T Wright says
that is firmly established as the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70, but the naturalist has
no explanation. Finally God can be personally know and experienced,
why can't God be a properly basic belief for me grounded
in my experience of God - I don't see why not. Finally what about metaphysical naturalism,
how is this relevant in tonight's debate? He says these
bizarre consequences that he affirms don't follow from
atheism, they follow from scientism. My argument was that scientism or epistemological naturalism
doesn't imply metaphysical naturalism - remember the case of W.V. O Klein, but if God does
not exist then I think metaphysical naturalism is true.
Metaphysical naturalism doesn't follow from epistemological naturalism, but it does follow
from atheism. The most plausible form of atheism is I
think metaphysical naturalism, but there are all those absurd consequences that results
from that that I described. He bites the bullet and affirms
these bizarre consequences - why not? Step back and say no
this is crazy, this is not the world we live in, our must be a theistic world. If his only
obstacle is the logical problem of evil, then that obstacle has now
been removed and Dr. Rosenberg should find himself freed
to embrace joyfully the existence of God as he answer to these deep questions.
>> Moderator: Professor Rosenberg may now begin his eight minute rebuttal - timer.
>> Dr. Alex Rosenberg: So just as of course Dr. Craig is repeating himself, I guess I don't have much
recourse but to repeat myself because just as he suggested I haven't answered one or
another of his points. He somewhat hasn't answered any number
of mine. But, that's the problem with this kind of a
debate and this kind of a performance, it doesn't work, it doesn't work because what
I would like to be able to do is ask William Lane Craig a question
and listen to his answer, and formulate a reply and listen
to his answer and then give a view and listen to his question, which is the way in which
philosophical dialogue proceeds, and which enables us to
at least find out where the crucial issues are between us and
how we could mutually agree to adjudicate this matter. So now I really need to know
why he is so committed to the principle of sufficient reason
which underwrites a good half of the arguments from
science which he advances for us. I made the point that the principle of sufficient reason
is false, it's not just that its' not know to be true, is just
that it's plain out flat false and disconfirmed all over the galaxy,
all over the universe, all over the multi-verse, indefinitely many times in infinitesimally
small units of time. And I don'[t understand why he insists
that its' just intuitively obvious, it's just - what could be
more obvious if something exists there had to be a prior entity of some sort which brought
it about. We know that alpha particle come into existence
for no reason at all every moment in this room, why
should we assume that the universe is any different, why should we assume that purely
quantum mechanical fluctuations symmetry breaking
which we understand is the explanation for why there is
matter in the universe and not anti matter, why this process which produces the characteristic
features of our universe and does so without there
being a cause for it happening one way or the other , why the
symmetry gets broken one way or the other, couldn't be the nature of reality as far back
as we can possibly dig in cosmology. Now let's talk
about the argument from evil. I keep hearing these quotes,
he's even invoking my best friend Peter Worden Wagon, asserting that nobody anymore believes
the argument from evils is a problem for theism.
Where I come from, that's the first thing that we worry
about, how can you reconcile theism and evil? Now you can reconcile God and evil if your
reduce His power from omnipotence or you reduce His benevolence
to only well He's pretty good or he's good most of the time, but even a philosopher like
Peter Worden Wagon who I think is probably the best
metaphysician working in our filed today, even he can't go any further than in his book,
"The Problem of Evil," his Gifford lectures in 2004, he can't
go any further than saying that he thinks that the argument
from evil is not decisive, that it doesn't absolutely and completely destroy theism,
its' not. Is not as he says a successful argument, and I reasons
that he gives, I would be embarrassed to lay before you
because they have to do with an argument called "The Sureties" an argument that's been known
since the time of the Greeks and that is the sort
of argument that give philosophy a bad name among more
well rounded less theoretical people. Professor Craig invoke the free will defense that God
gave us free will and because He gave us free will He gave
us the power to do evil and the evil is done by us as a
result of our exercise of free will. Well I have three things to say about that, the
first is He didn't need, He didn't need - He could have given us free
will without giving us the Holocaust or the Bubonic Plague
- okay - He could have done it with - given us free will without giving us all the horror
of the history of our species. The second is He made some people
apparently and gave them free will and the caused no
suffering at all, whether it's small children or the saints of the Catholic Church or whoever
your favor it, a person without sin may be. And the third
thing is this; let's think about the following very simple
thought experiment. Suppose I give you all an arithmetic test, you all have free will,
you can all choose, I give you an arithmetic test, its' a 100 questions
there are of the 3 + 5 = , or 16/2 = , or the 42 = and I
offer you a $1000 for each right answer and excruciating pain for each wrong answer. You
all have free will, how many of you are going to give me
any wrong answers? None of you, you're going to have
$10,000 at the end of the 10 question arithmetic test, you all chose freely and you always
give me the right answer. Why couldn't God have arranged
the universe and us so that we all have free will and
temptation was never presented to us, or when it was presented to us we always chose rightly?
Why couldn't God have arranged matters that way,
given those free will and so arrange matters that in our
exercise of free will we never chose evil, we never chose the outcome that produce suffering
for anybody? That seems to me a logically coherent
possibility and is enough to show that the problem of
evil remains with us. New Testament scholarship, I have great respect for New Testament scholars
and for the higher criticism and for the deep
scholars of the Christian religion who studies the new
Testament. Some of them have told us that 75% of it was forged and all of it tell us
that it was written by people who were illiterate and most of them
recognize that the writings ; Mathew, Mark, Luke and John
could not have dated from any earlier than 30 or 40 or 50 years after Jesus lived and
of course the Aramaic in which they were written was completely
lost and all the extent New Testaments are in Greek
and therefore the opportunity for misrepresentation or mistranscription or other kinds of mistakes
was huge and indeed has been documented by scholarship
over the last 200 years, but most of all, why
should we accept the credibility of Christian scholars writing about Christian documents,
no more than we should accept the scholarship of Islamic
scholars writings about Islamic documents or Scientologist
writing about Scientology? >> Moderator: Dr. Craig will now begin his
closing statement, he has five minutes. >> Dr. William Lane Craig: Well I want to
thank Dr. Rosenberg for a very stimulating debate this evening;
I hope that you've enjoyed them as much as I have. In my closings statement I would like
to draw together some of the treads of this debate
and see if we can come to some conclusions. In tonight's
debate, I presented eight reasons why it's reasonable to believe in God and the eight
reasons why metaphysical naturalism is unreasonable, in
fact absurd. Now Dr. Rosenberg has presented only one
argument for atheism tonight and that is the problem of evil. And it was very clear in
his last speech that he hasn't understood it. He says; "Why couldn't
God have created people with free will so that they
always chose to do the right thing?" This has been dealt with by theism dealing with
the problem of evil, and the reason is because the wrong are subjunctive
conditional of freedom might be true for God to
actualize such a word. There are possible worlds which are not feasible for God to actualize,
because if He would have created the creatures in certain
circumstances and leave them free, they would go
wrong. And as far as we know, for all that we know in nay world of free creatures in
which there is this much good in the world, there will also be
this much evil, and it may not be feasible for God to actualize
a world having this much good without this much evil. That doesn't mean the Holocaust
is necessary - not, not at all, but it would mean that in
a world in which say the Holocaust didn't occur, other events
would have occurred that would have been comparably evil. So what Dr. Rosenberg again will have
to show, the atheist will have to show is that
there is no - he would have to show that God has the ability
to create another world, another possible world of free creatures that would involve
this much knowledge of God and internal salvation as
in the actual world but without as much suffering, and there
is no way that the atheist could prove that. Is utter speculation and that's why the argument
is regarded today as bankrupt. Now with respect to the
arguments for metaphysical naturalism I think what Dr.
Rosenberg has done for us to describe brilliantly what an atheistic world would be like. It
is a world in which there is no meaning, no truth, no thoughts
about anything, no moral values, no enduring selves,
no first person perspectives. His only mistake lies in thinking that that world is our world,
but it manifestly is not our world, its' not Dr.
Rosenberg's world. Our world is a world in which we do exist, we
do have thoughts about things and in which there is therefore meaning, truth and value.
And Dr. Rosenberg admits that theism provides a better
explanation of such a world than does atheism and
since our world is evidently such a world, it follows I think that it is reasonable to
believe in God. In addition to that I presented eight arguments
for a belief in God. In his last speech he said why are you so
committed to the principle of sufficient reason, because a very modest version of that is plausibly
true, namely that if a contingent thing exits, there
is a reason or an explanation why it exists rather than not.
And given that principle which is very plausible and modest, you need an explanation for why
the universe exists. This is a especially evident
that the universe came into being at some point in the finite
past; it can't just come from none being. I won't repeat what I said about the applicability
of mathematics, intentional states of consciousness,
objective moral values, the resurrection of Jesus. The
sources we have for the resurrection of Jesus go back to it in five years of the event,
and they were not written in Aramaic, it's just incorruptibly
written in Greek and we have the New Testament in the
original language in which it was written in the text is 99.8% authentic and pure. So
doubts on the head are simply groundless. The one thing that
we haven't talked about tonight is my eight point that God
can be personally known and experienced, and I want to close by saying this; I myself wasn't
raised in a believing home, although it was a god and
loving home, but when I was in high school as a junior, I met a
Christian who sat in front of me in German class, who shared with me her faith about
God's love. I have never heard of this before. I began to read
the New Testament, and as I did I was captivated by the
person of Jesus of Nazareth. Well I went through a period of about six months of soul searching
at the end of which I just came to the end of my
rope and gave my life to Christ and I experienced the inner
spiritual rebirth that I've walked with day-by-day, year-by-year now for over 40 years. A spiritual
reality that I believe you can find as well if you
would seek Him with an open mind an open heart. So as I close
tonight I will encourage you if you're seeking for God, do what I did, pick up the New Testament
, begin to read and ask yourself could this really
be the truth, could there be a God who loves me and cares for
me and gave Himself for me. I believe it could change your life just as it changed mine.
>> Moderator: Professor Rosenberg will now give his five minute concluding statement
>> Dr. Alex Rosenberg: I'll say here is another posit argument for atheism, it's sort of so
obvious that I hadn't thought I should introduce it and I
certainly didn't think I was going to have time but this back
and forth has gone on long that I have got this last chance and I'm going to use it.
So, why is that God is a hypothesis that science has so little use
for? You may recall when the King of France, Louise XIV
approached, the Laplace, the great, 18th Century Physicist and said, "But what is the role
of God in your system? The answer was, "I have no need to
that hypothesis." And of course the reason that science
has no need of the hypothesis is that God makes no contribution to the predictive power
of any part of any of the sciences, and for that reason there
is no basis on which invoke God either for explanatory or
any other purposes in science. And therefore science has no more need for and indeed a
considerably reason to deny the existence of God than it
has to accept the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy or Santa
Claus. The absence of a role for God in the predictive and explanatory content of science
is quite apart from the problem of evil, the principal reason
why 95% of the members of the National Academy of
Science of the United States are atheist, and why science can provide not only no good
basis for theism but an excellent against it. Indeed if we
think back to the invocation of Willard Van Orman and Quain
the great American philosopher, but Professor Craig will recall that he pointed out that
Quain adopts abstract objects, the objects of mathematics
as exiting even though they are abstract, even though they
are not concrete, even though they are not physical items the world - why, because they
were indispensable to the predictive power of science.
And because they were indispensable, Quain had no
good argument against them and said that, science not only had no good argument against
them but in fact it had a good argument for their existence
because of the contribution they made to enabling us to
predict detail experiments, meter readings of scientific experiments, which is the litmus
test of reasonability among scientist. And to invoke
the objects of mathematics as part of an argument for the
existence of God fails to reflect this indispensable fact about the reasons that scientists are
committed to them. If God could do as much for science
as the number '2' physicists will be much more receptive to
His existence. So let me end this debate with a little advice from an atheist. Dr. Craig
has ended by a personal statement about the importance of
Jesus Christ to his own character and wellbeing, his own
spiritual state - believe if you want to, have faith in Jesus Christ of you need to,
but do not make yourself vulnerable to reason and evidence.
Do not demand that your belief be reasonable. You will be
threatened with the loss of your faith, you may well lose your faith, those who have lost
their faith in God are generally those who have felt the
need for good reasons for evidence, for argument. Better that
you should take as your slogan "Credo qui absurdum; I believe because it is absurd."
That's a far sure basis, it's not an epistemologically respectable
one but it's a psychologically far firmer basis to believe in
the existence of God -okay. You cannot accept that faith is reasonable but that doesn't
stop you from believing. And of course those friends of
mine who are devote Christians, of whom I count a number of
people that Professor Craig mentioned tonight and even Professor Craig with whom I am sure
I would have a friendly exchange after this debate
is over, even Professor Craig I'm sure will tell you that that is
in many ways the firmest basis for commitment to Jesus. Faith
and not reason, thank you.