Is It Impossible to Prove Atheism?

(Originally published on 1 September 2023; revised version published on 7 September 2023; revised again on 10 September 2023.)

1: Introduction

“Performative" or "pragmatic inconsistency arguments” attempt to show that some action with respect to some proposition is inconsistent with the proposition. You will sometimes hear people call such propositions “self-defeating,” but that isn’t technically accurate. It isn’t the proposition itself which is self-defeating; it is taking some action with respect to the proposition -- like asserting, believing, or defending it – which is self-defeating. For example, consider the proposition, “It is impossible to know anything.” It is logically possible that the proposition is true, but it is logically inconsistent to know that proposition is true. If you somehow knew that it was true, then you would know that it is false. That’s an example of a performative or pragmatic inconsistency argument.

Here are some other examples of propositions which lend themselves nicely to performative or pragmatic inconsistency arguments:

• "I do not exist."
• "I am dead."
• "I cannot assert or communicate anything."
• "I cannot talk."
• "I don't intend to be understood at all."

All of the above examples involve a first-person ("I") statement, but I'm not sure if a performative or pragmatic inconsistency must be a first-person statement. I'll leave that aside.

2: Exposition

Does atheism involve a pragmatic inconsistency? Before I can discuss this, I first need to define my terms. The word "atheism" is polysemous: it has multiple legitimate meanings. By "metaphysical atheism," I mean the proposition, "God does not exist." By "psychological atheism," I mean the psychological state in which a person lacks the belief that God exists. This post is about metaphysical, not psychological, atheism. For brevity, in the remainder of the post, I will use "atheism" to mean only metaphysical atheism.

According to some thinkers, the action of asserting the truth of atheism is a pragmatic inconsistency. For example, the late Christian philosopher Greg Bahnsen once said:

It's standard fare these days to point out that a universal negative cannot  be proven in an a posteriori fashion.  On the basis of experience, how could I prove universally there is no God? [...] God might be on the back side of the fourth moon of Jupiter.  Since I haven't examined the back side of the fourth moon of Jupiter, it's at least possible that God exists and I haven't encountered him yet.  So to say that there is no God is a very strong claim.  Atheists usually get hammered about that, that they're claiming too much.  In fact, in order to say 'there is no God,' ... you would have to be omniscient.  But if you were omniscient, you would be God. Therefore, the only person who could say 'there is no God' is God.  God  would not deny Himself.  So no one can say there is no God.[1]

This suggests the following argument, which I call the "unprovability of universal negatives argument."

(1) The only way to prove a universal negative in an a posteriori fashion is to exhaustively search for all possible sources of evidence of a thing and find no evidence.

(2) But it is impossible for finite, mortal beings to conduct such a search.

Therefore:

(3) It is impossible for finite, mortal beings to prove a universal negative in an a posteriori fashion.

Defenders of the "unprovability of atheism argument" add two additional steps:

(4) The proposition, "God does not exist," is a universal negative.

From (3) and (4), it follows that:

(5) It is impossible for finite, mortal beings to prove, "God does not exist," in an a posteriori fashion.

In the passage quoted above, however, Bahnsen suggests another argument which adds onto the first five steps. Atheism entails that there is no God, but the action of claiming to know that atheism is true presupposes that the person making that assertion has God-like knowledge. So we have:

(6) The action of claiming to know, "God does not exist," presupposes that the speaker is God. 

From (5) and (6), it follows that:

(7) If a finite, moral being claims to know, "God does not exist," then it is true that God does not exist and it is false that God does not exist.

From (7) and the Law of Noncontradiction, it follows that: 

(8) Any claims made by a finite, mortal being to know, "God does not exist," on an a posteriori basis should not be accepted.

I shall call the inference from (5) - (7) the "pragmatic inconsistency of knowing atheism" argument.  

3: Assessment

I shall argue that both the unprovability of atheism argument and the related pragmatic inconsistency of atheism arguments are unsound.

3.1: The Unprovability of Atheism Argument

Here, again, is the unprovability of atheism argument.

(3) It is impossible for finite, mortal beings to prove a universal negative in an a posteriori fashion.

(4) The proposition, "God does not exist," is a universal negative.

Therefore:

(5) It is impossible for finite, mortal beings to prove, "God does not exist," in an a posteriori fashion.

One immediate problem with this argument is its name. From the fact, if it is a fact, that it is impossible for finite, mortal beings to prove atheism in an a posteriori fashion, it does not follow that it is impossible for such beings to prove atheism in a priori fashion. One or more internal inconsistency arguments against God's existence might be sound. But let that pass.

Some philosophers deny the truth of the second premise, (4). For example, in his famous debate with Frank Zindler, William Lane Craig argued as follows.

[...] the statement that God does not exist is not a universal negative; it’s a singular negative statement. Certainly you can prove negative singular statements such as there is no planet between Venus and the Earth. You could provide arguments to show that a singular negative statement is true [...].[2]

Strictly speaking, the first quoted sentence is correct. Categorical propositions are propositions which assert or deny relationships between classes; universal negatives are categorical propositions which have the form, "No S are P." Atheism is not a universal negative in this strict sense. But the statement, "God does not exist," is the same as saying, "No (existing) thing is God." That restatement of atheism is a universal generalization; it is has the form, "There are no S's."[3] Therefore, a proponent of the unprovability of atheism argument might replace "universal negative" with "universal generalization" yielding the following revised version of the "unprovability of universal negatives argument," which gets renamed as the "unprovability of universal generalizations argument."

(1') The only way to prove a universal generalization in an a posteriori fashion is to exhaustively search for all possible sources of evidence of a thing and find no evidence.

(2) But it is impossible for finite, mortal beings to conduct such a search.

Therefore:

(3') It is impossible for finite, mortal beings to prove a universal generalization in an a posteriori fashion.

The "unprovability of atheism argument" would then become:

(4') The proposition, "God does not exist," is a universal generalization.

Therefore:

(5) It is impossible for finite, mortal beings to prove, "God does not exist," in an a posteriori fashion.

The meaning of the word "prove" is ambiguous, but the last two steps of the pragmatic inconsistency argument (steps 6 and 7) provide a clue. That argument targets not atheism, but what is sometimes called "gnostic atheism," the claim to know that God does not exist. This suggests that, at least for Bahnsen, to "prove" a universal generalization means to succeed in demonstrating that belief in the universal generalization can rise to the level of knowledge. So let's revise the first two arguments one more time.

The "unprovability of universal generalizations argument" gets renamed as the "unknowability of universal generalizations argument."

(1'') The only way to reasonably believe a negative universal generalization on an a posteriori basis is to exhaustively search for all possible sources of evidence of a thing and find no evidence.

(2) But it is impossible for finite, mortal beings to conduct such a search.

Therefore:

(3'') It is impossible for finite, mortal beings to reasonably believe a negative universal generalization in an a posteriori fashion.

Likewise, the "unprovability of atheism argument" becomes the "unknowability of atheism argument."

(4') The proposition, "God does not exist," is a negative universal generalization.

Therefore:

(5') It is impossible for finite, mortal beings to reasonably believe, "God does not exist," on an a posteriori basis.

Now consider the first two premises (steps 1'' and 2) in light of this clarification of "prove." 

The second premise (step 2) is false. Purely on the basis of experience, one can know that at least some negative universal generalizations are true. Some objects or beings are defined in such a way that, if they exist, they exist at a specific location and at a specific time. For example, consider the title, "Seattle Seahawks Superbowl 60 Most Valuable Player (MVP)." Let "NO SEAHAWKS MVP" refer to the negative universal generalization, "The Seattle Seahawks Superbowl 60 MVP does not exist." If the Seattle Seahawks do not advance to Superbowl 60 (or if they advance but do not win), then NO SEAHAWKS MVP is true: the person described by that title does not exist. In that case, an "exhaustive search" doesn't require superhuman or supernatural abilities. One could reasonably believe NO SEAHAWKS MVP by simply watching Superbowl 60 or reading about it after the fact.

One might object that, even in my highly specified example, the inference to NO SEAHAWKS MVP isn't deductively valid; it is at least possible that there is a global media conspiracy to spread misinformation about the outcome of Superbowl 60, one's sensory organs are defective, or one is literally delusional and imagining sense data not received by one's sensory organs. This objection fails because one does not need absolute certainty to be reasonable in holding a belief. Even if one did not know NO SEAHAWKS MVP, one would still be reasonable in believing NO SEAHAWKS MVP. Contrary to what Bahnsen implies, a person can reasonably believe something they don't claim to know. For the same reason, Bahnsen has not given us a good reason to believe that the first premise (step 1'') is true. 

A proponent of the unknowability of atheism argument might grant the above objections and concede that humans can reasonably believe at least some negative universal generalizations, while at the same time insist that there is something special about God such that humans cannot reasonably believe atheism. Here I think it is useful to follow Jeanine Diller in making a distinction between global and local versions of atheism.[4] "Global atheism" is the proposition, "God does not exist," for all concepts of God, including concepts of God which no one has yet even considered. In contrast, "local atheism" is the proposition, "God does not exist," for a specific concept of God. This distinction suggests two further versions of the "unknowability of atheism" argument.

I will call the first of these two versions the "unknowability of global atheism" argument.

(1*) The only way to reasonably believe global atheism on an a posteriori basis is to exhaustively search for all possible sources of evidence of God, for every possible concept of God, and find no evidence.

(2) But it is impossible for finite, mortal beings to conduct such a search.

Therefore: 

(5*) It is impossible for finite, mortal beings to reasonably believe global atheism on an a posteriori basis.

The second version, of course, is the "unknowability of local atheism" argument.

(1**) The only way to reasonably believe local atheism on an a posteriori basis is to exhaustively search for all possible sources of evidence of God, for a single concept of God, and find no evidence.

(2) But it is impossible for finite, mortal beings to conduct such a search.

Therefore: 

(5**) It is impossible for finite, mortal beings to reasonably believe local atheism on an a posteriori basis.

The first argument is, I believe, much more promising than the second. In light of the fact that there are surely legitimate concepts of "God" which no human has ever conceived, it is difficult to imagine how, on the basis of experience, one could be confident in the belief that all local theisms are false. In other words, in the context of global atheism, the second premise (step 2) seems to be true. Of course, the fact that I cannot conceive of such a justification does not rule out the possibility that one exists. But it seems unlikely that anyone in the year 2023 could reasonably believe global atheism is true. As John Schellenberg has persuasively argued, there are numerous signs of 

human intellectual immaturity at the macro level, and we've seen enough evidence of it to say that maturity--the realization (or near realization) of a deep and wide understanding of reality--may yet be a long way off.[5]

Further support for Schellenberg's immaturity hypothesis comes from the work of Paul Draper. In a recent article, Draper explores the conjunction of "merotheism" (God is a proper part of nature) and "monopsychism" (there is exactly one mind or subject of consciousness). He calls this novel version of theism "panpsychotheism" (all-minds-[are]-God-ism).[6] The important point to notice here is that, although some of the greatest minds in history have thought about God, there is no indication that anyone else had thought of this view. All by itself, this single example is evidence that there are other conceptions of God which no one has previously conceived. 

In contrast, I think the second argument fails and for essentially the same reason given earlier. At least some God concepts entail or make probable certain states of affairs which be confirmed or disconfirmed by experience. For example, suppose that, in honor of Richard Swinburne, we define a "Swinburne God" as

a being with most of the following properties: being a person without a body (that is, a spirit), present everywhere (that is, omnipresent), the creator of the universe, perfectly free, able to do anything (that is, omnipotent), knowing all things (that is, omniscient), perfectly good, a source of moral obligation, eternal, a necessary being, holy, and worthy of worship. [7]

Let "Swinburnian theism" be the proposition, "The Swinburne God exists." Swinburnian theism clearly entails other propositions; one does not need to know that one of those entailments is false in order to reasonably believe that one of those entailments (and, by extension, Swinburnian theism itself) is false.[8] This is why I think the second premise (step 2) of the "unknowability of local atheism" argument fails.

3.2: The Pragmatic Inconsistency of Believing Atheism Argument

In the last section, we saw that the unprovability of atheism argument is not successful, but can be at least partially repaired by transforming it into the unknowability of atheism argument. The conclusion of that argument is:

(5') It is impossible for finite, mortal beings to reasonably believe, "God does not exist," on an a posteriori basis.

Defenders of the pragmatic inconsistency argument should then revise the last three steps as follows.

(6') The action of reasonably believing, "God does not exist," presupposes that the speaker is God. 

From (5') and (6'), it follows that: 

(7') If a finite, mortal being reasonably believes, "God does not exist," on an a posteriori basis then it is true that God does not exist and it is false that God does not exist.

From (7') and the Law of Noncontradiction, it follows that: 

(8') It is impossible for a finite, mortal being to reasonably believe, "God does not exist," on an a posteriori basis. 

This argument fails for two reasons. First, its second premise, (6'), is false. Even if it is impossible for finite, mortal beings to reasonably believe atheism on an a posteriori basis, it does not follow that it is impossible for such beings to reasonably believe atheism on an a priori basis. One does not have to be omniscient in order to know, much less reasonably believe, that there is a successful a priori argument for local atheism.

For example, here is one schema for what I call an "internal inconsistency argument" for local atheism.

(9) If God existed, then He would have property P1.

(10) If God existed, then He would have property P2.

(11) Any being with property P1 would have some further property P3.

(12) Any being with property P2 would not have property P3.

(13) Therefore, it is impossible for any being to have properties P1 and P2. (from 11 and 12)

(14) Hence, it is impossible for God to exist. (from 9, 10 and 13)

The basic idea is to show that if God existed, then he would have two properties P1 and P2. The next step is to show that property P1 entails some third property P3, while property P2 entails the denial of property P3. Since it is impossible for any being both to have and not have P3, it follows that that being cannot exist. While it might or might not be the case that there are no successful arguments of this type for local atheism, it really doesn't matter one way or the other for the purpose of this post. The speaker does not need to be omniscient in order to know the truth of (9) - (12).

Second, the argument's conclusion, (8'), does not follow from (5') - (7'). (6') refers to the action of claiming to reasonably believe, "God does not exist," but does not specify that that knowledge is based upon an a posteriori basis.

As with the unknowability of atheism argument, let us now consider two versions of the pragmatic inconsistency argument based on the distinction between global and local atheism. The global version can be summarized as follows:

(5*) It is impossible for finite, mortal beings to reasonably believe global atheism on an a posteriori basis.

(6*) The action of reasonably believing global atheism presupposes that the speaker is God. 

Therefore:

(7*) If a finite, mortal being reasonably believes global atheism on an a posteriori basis, then global atheism is true and global atheism is false.

Therefore:

(8*) It is impossible for a finite, mortal being to reasonably believe global atheism on an a posteriori basis. 

There are two problems with this argument. The first is that it is invalid: (6*) refers to the action of claiming to reasonably believe global atheism but does not specify that that knowledge is based upon an a posteriori basis. It seems to me that this objection could be avoided by revising the argument again as follows:

(5**) It is impossible for finite, mortal beings to reasonably believe global atheism.

(6**) The action of reasonably believing global atheism presupposes that the speaker is God. 

Therefore:

(7**) If a finite, mortal being reasonably believes global atheism, then global atheism is true and global atheism is false.

Therefore:

(8**) It is impossible for a finite, mortal being to reasonably believe global atheism.

That solves the problem identified by the first objection, but brings into sharper focus the second objection. Even if we assume that premise (5**) can be adequately defended, premise (6**) does not seem to be true. If premise (5**) is true, then it seems that the action of claiming to reasonably believe global atheism presupposes that the speaker has knowledge which greatly exceeds that of any human being in history. But "has knowledge which greatly exceeds that of any human being in history" is not a sufficient condition for being God. First, it's far from obvious that such knowledge requires omniscience, and many conceptions of God posit an omniscient being, not just a really smart being. Second, even if the speaker's actions did presuppose that the speaker is omniscient, being omniscient is not a sufficient condition for being God. It is at least conceivable that there exists an omniscient being which does not have any of the other attributes typically associated with God, such as omnipotence, moral perfection, eternity, aseity, sovereignty, immutability, necessity, etc.  

I don't know how Bahnsen would respond to this objection. Perhaps Bahnsen could show that the speaker's actions require such a superhuman degree of knowledge that the speaker's actions presuppose that the speaker is not necessarily God, but at least a supernatural being. Since metaphysical naturalism rules out the existence of any supernatural beings, not just God, the argument could then be transformed into a pragmatic inconsistency argument against believing metaphysical naturalism. 

Now consider the local version of the pragmatic inconsistency argument, which can be summarized as follows:

(5#) It is impossible for finite, mortal beings to reasonably believe local atheism on an a posteriori basis.

(6#) The action of reasonably believing local atheism presupposes that the speaker is God. 

Therefore:

(7#) If a finite, mortal being reasonably believes global atheism on an a posteriori basis, then global atheism is true and global atheism is false.

Therefore:

(8#) It is impossible for a finite, mortal being to reasonably believe local atheism on an a posteriori basis.  

This argument suffers from the same defects as its global counterpart. Unlike the global pragmatic inconsistency argument, however, I am doubtful that the second premise, in this case (6#), can be repaired by replacing "God" with "supernatural being." For ordinary human knowledge is all that is needed to reasonably believe that some local theisms are false. Thus, the action of claiming to reasonably believe local atheism does not appear to be a pragmatic inconsistency, at least not in any sense related to the issues discussed in this post. 

4: Conclusion

In this post, I have considered two arguments: the unprovability of atheism argument and the pragmatic inconsistency of knowing atheism argument. The unprovability of atheism argument is best and most charitably understood as the unknowability of atheism argument, which has two versions. The unknowability of global atheism argument seems promising, but the unknowability of local atheism argument fails. For at least some concepts of "God," one can reasonably believe that local atheism is true. Finally, the pragmatic inconsistency argument fails because one does not need to be superhuman, much less omniscient, in order to reasonably believe the truth of the premises of an internal inconsistency argument. Perhaps there is a successful global pragmatic inconsistency argument (against the action of believing naturalism), but the local pragmatic inconsistency argument seems hopeless.[9]

Notes

[1] “Michael Martin Under the Microscope” audiocassette, tape 3.

[2] William Lane Craig, “Second Rebuttal Speech” Atheism vs. Christianity (January 1993), https://www.reasonablefaith.org/media/debates/atheism-vs.-christianity

[3] Thanks to Paul Draper for helping me to see this clearly.

[4] Diller, J. "Global and local atheisms." Int J Philos Relig 79, 7–18 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-015-9550-1

[5] J.L. Schellenberg, Progressive Atheism: How Moral Evolution Changes the God Debate (New York: Bloombsury, 2019), p. 50.

[6] Paul Draper, "Panpsychotheism." In Current Controversies in Philosophy of Religion (New York: Routledge, 1990), pp. 160-177.

[7] Richard Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism (2nd ed., New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), p. 1.

[8] For an example of such an argument, see Paul Draper's formulation and defense of his "Decisive Evidence Argument" in Draper, Paul, "Atheism and Agnosticism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2022 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2022/entries/atheism-agnosticism/>.

[9] Thanks to Paul Draper for some very helpful conversations which significantly improved the quality of this post. Any errors are, of course, solely my responsibility.

Assessing the Resurrection Hypothesis: McCullagh, Craig, Cavin, and Colombetti

In this post, I want to consider the assessment of historical hypotheses such as the alleged resurrection of Jesus (R), using the writings of William Lane Craig as a foil. In doing so, I will rely heavily upon a recent article by philosophers Robert Greg Cavin and Carolos Colombetti, but I want to be clear that I have not reviewed this post with them, so any mistakes in this post are entirely my responsibility.

While Craig's position regarding the use of Bayes' Theorem has evolved over the years, to my knowledge one thing which has not changed is his reliance upon the work of historian C. Behan McCullagh.[1] Following McCullagh, Craig argues for R using an argument pattern called "inference to the best explanation" (IBE).[2] In this post, I will argue the following three points contra Craig. First, Bayes' Theorem is the foundation for logically correct arguments for any historical hypotheses. Second, neither McCullagh's IBE criteria nor Craig's restatement of them are sufficiently clear to enable a rigorous assessment of historical hypotheses, whereas the Bayesian approach avoids these problems. Third, Craig's defense of R fails to establish that the alleged event is more probable than not.

Assessing the Transcendence-vs.-Personhood Argument for the Impossibility of God

Source: Alchetron

In this post, I want to assess an argument for atheism called the Transcendence-vs.-Personhood Argument (hereafter, "TvP Argument"). The first section is an exposition of the argument as formulated by Theodore Drange. The second section is a partial assessment of the argument. The work of William Lane Craig appears prominently in this section. Craig is a highly regarded philosopher of time and philosopher of religion who has written extensively on the relationship between God and time. He is also, of course, a theist. Thus, his work on divine eternity provides a useful "test case" for the TvP Argument. 

Paul Davies' Compound Argument against Timeless and Temporal Concepts of God

Credit: Christopher Michel; License: CC BY-SA 4.0

 

In his 1983 book, God and the New Physics, Paul Davies writes:

Christians believe that God is eternal. The word ‘eternal’ has, however, been used to mean two rather different things. In the simpler version, eternal means everlasting, or existing without beginning or end for an infinite duration. There are grave objections to such an idea of God, however. A God who is in time is subject to change. But what causes that change? If God is the cause of all existing things (as the cosmological argument of Chapter 3 suggests), then does it make sense to talk about that ultimate cause itself changing?

In the earlier chapters we have seen how time is not simply there, but is itself part of the physical universe. It is ‘elastic’ and can stretch or shrink according to well-defined mathematical laws which depend on the behaviour of matter. Also, time is closely linked to space, and space and time together express the operation of the gravitational field. In short, time is involved in all the grubby details of physical processes just as much as matter. Time is not a divine quality, but can be altered, physically, even by human manipulation. A God who is in time is, therefore, in some sense caught up in the operation of the physical universe. Indeed, it is quite likely that time will cease to exist at some stage in the future (as we shall see in Chapter 15). In that case God's own position is obviously insecure. Clearly, God cannot be omnipotent if he is subject to the physics of time, nor can he be considered the creator of the universe if he did not create time. In fact, because time and space are inseparable, a God who did not create time, created space neither. But as we have seen, once spacetime existed, the appearance of matter and order in the universe could have occurred automatically as the result of perfectly natural activity. Thus, many would argue that God is not really needed as a creator at all except to create time (strictly, spacetime). 

So we are led to the other meaning of the word eternal — ‘timeless’....

A timeless God is free of the problems mentioned above, but suffers from the shortcomings already discussed on page 38. He cannot be a personal God who thinks, converses, feels, plans, and so on for these are all temporal activities. It is hard to see how a timeless God can act at all in time (although it has been claimed that this is not impossible). We have also seen how the sense of the existence of the self is intimately associated with the experience of a time-flow. A timeless God could not be considered a ‘person’ or individual in any sense that we know. Misgivings of this score have led a number of modern theologians to reject this view of an eternal God. Paul Tillich writes: ‘If we call God a living God, we affirm that he includes temporality and with this a relation to the modes of time.’ 3 The same sentiment is echoed by Karl Barth: ‘Without God's complete temporality the content of the Christian message has no shape.’

There is thus a grave and fundamental difficulty in reconciling all the traditional attributes of God. Modern physics, with its discovery of the mutability of time, drives a wedge between God's omnipotence and the existence of his personality. It is difficult to argue that God can have both these qualities.[1]

Thinking about Craig's Defense of the Kalam Cosmological Argument: Did God's Causing the Universe to Exist Itself Have a Cause?

William Lane Craig

Source: Wikimedia; License: Public Domain

I've been thinking about Craig's defense of the kalam cosmological argument again. In this post, I will sketch two arguments I've formulated and then briefly discuss what I perceive to be the key issue which kalam proponents (hereafter, "kalamists") are likely to dispute.

The Argument from the Psychological Relevance of Logical Laws

Introduction

In his book C.S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea: In Defense of the Argument from Reason, Victor Reppert lists nine presuppositions of rational inference.

1. States of mind have a relation to the world we call intentionality, or about-ness.

2. Thoughts and beliefs can be either true or false.

3. Human beings can be in the condition of accepting, rejecting or suspending belief about propositions.

4. Logical laws exist.

5. Human beings are capable of apprehending logical laws.

6. The state of accepting the truth of a proposition plays a crucial causal role in the production of other beliefs, and the propositional content of mental states is relevant to the playing of this causal role.

7. The apprehension of logical laws plays a causal role in the acceptance of the conclusion of the argument as true.

8. The same individual entertains thoughts of the premises and then draws the conclusion.

9. Our processes of reasoning provide us with a systematically reliable way of understanding the world around us.[1]

Commenting on this list of presuppositions, Reppert writes, "It seems to me that all of these elements of reasoning are prima facie difficult to fit within the framework of philosophical naturalism."[2] Here I want to quickly sketch how I would assess one of Reppert's supporting arguments for that claim.

Two "Impossibility" Arguments against (Craigean) Christianity

An Impossible (or Penrose) Triangle

Source: OpenClipArt; License: CC 

Introduction

In my recent video assessment of the late Dr. Gordon Stein's opening statement in his debate with Greg Bahnsen on, "Does God Exist?", I described two possible ways of defending the non-existence of something. First, I said that one way to defend a universal negative is to use what I call an "impossibility argument." Second, I said that one way to defend a particular negative is to use what I call an "improbability argument." 

As I explained in the video, there are two caveats. First, I do not claim that these two types of arguments are an exhaustive list of the various argument patterns which might be used to support universal or particular negatives. Second, my names for these argument patterns are not standard. For example, a standard name for one type of improbability argument is "evidential argument." The standard name for one type of impossibility argument is "logical argument." For example, J.L. Mackie's famous "logical argument from evil" argues that God is impossible because theism is logically inconsistent with evil. I don't like that name because it sounds funny to outsiders. Imagine an atheist saying, "I'm going to defend a logical argument for atheism." That invites the question, "As opposed to what? An illogical argument for atheism?" While my names are nonstandard, I think they are more intuitive than the standard argument names and so I prefer my names for that reason.

In this article, I will quickly sketch two impossibility arguments for a particular negative: the proposition, "Craigean Christianity is false," where "Craigean Christianity" means the version of Christianity defended by William Lane Craig.

New Video Series on My YouTube Channel: "The Verdict Is In"

I've decided to launch a new YouTube video series, which I call "The Verdict Is In" (a play on Josh McDowell's famous book, "The Jury Is In").

The first two videos are as follows:

1. Assessment of Frank Zindler's opening statement in his famous 1991 "Atheism vs. Christianity" debate with William Lane Craig: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5QAvmnRlfhbOAr8Aop4_beNmUi2UAimt
2. Assessment of Greg Bahnsen's opening statement in his famous 1985 "Does God Exist?" debate with Gordon Stein: https://youtu.be/tMlm0Ehz1ZU

Note: I do not intend to release further videos regarding the Craig-Zindler debate, but I do plan to record additional videos for the Bahnsen-Stein debate. Bahnsen's presuppositionalist approach is so unusual that it warrants the extra level of analysis. Plus, I intend to use Stein's performance as a case study in how not to debate.

To subscribe to my YouTube channel, go here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9sui0gw2ZxP2oGeXiVY_PA

Does Robert Adams Reject Craig's Moral Argument?

 

It is no secret that W.L. Craig relies upon the work of Robert Adams regarding metaethics, to defend his moral argument. It's therefore surprising no one has pointed out that Adams appears to reject a key premise of Craig's moral argument:

"What is true about goodness if God does not exist, or is not in fact a suitable candidate for the role of the Good? This is a conditional question about the actual world, not about other possible worlds; and I am confident of my answer to it. If there is no God, or if God is in fact not a suitable candidate for the role of the Good, then my theory is false, but there may be same other salient, suitable candidate and so some other theory of the nature of the good."

Robert Merrihew Adams, Finite and Infinite Goods: A Framework for Ethics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 46.

Adams' book is very dense and so I openly admit I may be misinterpreting him, but I don't think that I am. Adams seems to be saying, "I think the Good = God, but if I am wrong about that, then good (or even the Good?) can still exist even if God does not."

Now consider William Lane Craig's moral argument for God's existence:

1. If God does not exist, then objective moral values do not exist.
2. Objective moral values do exist.
3. Therefore, God exists.

If I am interpreting Adams correctly, then it would seem to follow that Adams rejects premise (1).

Craig-Lowder Debate?

I found the following post in my Drafts folder; it appears I never finished writing the post before I became inactive with blogging for over 5 years. At the outset, I want to make two points regarding this post so that it is put into the proper context.

First, I am posting this now solely to clear out the backlog of articles that were left in various stages of completion before I became almost completely inactive for several years on the blogosphere. I am not posting this article now as part of some attempt to pressure Craig into debating me right now; in fact, I'm in no rush to debate him, having been "out of the loop" for quite a while.

Second, I want to emphasize I am not calling into question Craig's integrity. First, I apparently was unable to locate my reply, if any, to a student's proposal for me to debate Craig at Harvard in 1999. Second, I was invited to debate Craig on Lee Strobel's television show, "Faith Under Fire," but I objected to the venue. Third, I have made no effort at all since 2005 to follow-up with Craig about debating.

What follows is the text I found in my Drafts folder from late 2005/early 2006.

William Lane Craig: Internet Infidels Websites "Are Literally Pornographic"

[This post was originally published on The Secular Outpost on October 31, 2011. It was republished here on November 9, 2021 with the date manually adjusted to reflect its original publication date.]

Similar to my last post where I quoted the Pope, in this post I am going to quote, without comment, what William Lane Craig has apparently written about the Internet Infidels. In response to a Christian struggling with doubt, Craig writes:

Be on guard for Satan’s deceptions. Never lose sight of the fact that you are involved in a spiritual warfare and that there is an enemy of your soul who hates you intensely, whose goal is your destruction, and who will stop at nothing to destroy you. Which leads me to ask: why are you reading those infidel websites anyway, when you know how destructive they are to your faith? These sites are literally pornographic (evil writing) and so ought in general to be shunned. Sure, somebody has to read them and refute them; but why does it have to be you? Let somebody else, who can handle it, do it. Remember: Doubt is not just a matter of academic debate or disinterested intellectual discussion; it involves a battle for your very soul, and if Satan can use doubt to immobilize you or destroy you, then he will.

I firmly believe, and I think the Bizarro-testimonies of those who have lost their faith and apostatized bears out, that moral and spiritual lapses are the principal cause for failure to persevere rather than intellectual doubts. But intellectual doubts become a convenient and self-flattering excuse for spiritual failure because we thereby portray ourselves as such intelligent persons rather than as moral and spiritual failures. I think that the key to victorious Christian living is not to have all your questions answered — which is probably impossible in a finite lifetime — but to learn to live successfully with unanswered questions. The key is to prevent unanswered questions from becoming destructive doubts. I believe that can be done by keeping in mind the proper ground of our knowledge of Christianity’s truth and by cultivating the ministry of the Holy Spirit in our lives. (emphasis mine)

(As an aside, in that same article, Craig also mentions the role that "popular" (read: non-scholarly) apologetics for the resurrection of Jesus had on his development; he specifically mentions Josh McDowell's, Evidence That Demands a Verdict.)
 
In another, unrelated Q&A; article regarding middle knowledge, he uses Internet Infidels in an illustration of the concept of "transworld damnation." He writes:

I’m not suggesting that those who die in infancy all suffer from transworld damnation. Under some circumstances those who died in infancy might have grown up to become wonderful Christians; under other circumstances, they might have joined the Internet Infidels. So how could God judge them for the different things they would have done under various circumstances? (emphasis mine)

LINK: Gianluca Di Muzio on Theism and the Meaning of Life

Abstract

Theists are inclined to assert that human life would be meaningless if there was no personal immortality and God did not exist. The present paper aims to evaluate the truth of this claim. The author first explores the conception of meaning that is at the roots of the theistic position. After pointing out some difficulties with it, the author shows that, on a plausible alternative interpretation of what it is for an activity to have meaning, human life would fully qualify as meaningful even if it were not inscribed in a universal divine plan.

LINK 

More Defense of William Lane Craig

[This post was originally published on The Secular Outpost on October 17, 2011. It was republished here on November 8, 2021 with the date manually adjusted to reflect its original publication date.]

Wow, my post defending William Lane Craig has generated a lot of feedback. Given the interest in that topic, I thought it would be valuable to go through in detail an example of the sort of unfair attack I've seen a few atheists heap on Dr. Craig. Over at the Rational Response Squad forums, I discovered this 2010 post by "HisWilliness" (HW), where the author comments on Craig's debate with Shelly Kagan. HW writes:

That's actually what I mean when I say "destroyed". Ordinarily, WLC's opponents are so flummoxed by him (because he's supposed to be a philosopher, and he seems to grant himself the luxury of not addressing questions posed to him) that they get caught up in the weight of the overwhelming insanity of his position. That can flat rattle a thoughtful person!

But because Kagan is so talented and practiced at lecturing (as evidenced by his online course on death) he's well suited to show Craig for the phony that he is. Kagan is the real deal, in that he can both rattle off an argument and also think about it on the spot. Craig merely appears to be a philosopher in that sense, especially in other debates where no-one is clever enough to take him to task for just one argument at a time.

And then further down the thread, HW writes:

Not a joke like WLC's education is apparently a joke, another kind.

I find these comments appalling, not to mention illogical. Consider the first quotation. In its logical form, HW's argument seems to be the following.

(1) If a debater is caught completely off guard by their opponents' comments in a single debate, then that debater is a phony and not a real philosopher.
(2) WLC was caught completely off guard by Shelly Kagan's points in their debate.
(3) Therefore, WLC is a phony and not a philosopher.

For the record, I agree with (2); Craig's performance in his debate with Kagan was quite out of character. But (1) is false. Just as in the National Football League anything can happen on "any given Sunday," any philosopher, even one who is usually very good at debating, can have a bad day in a given debate. Absolutely nothing follows from a single debate performance about a person's knowledge of philosophy. The conclusion of this argument is false.

Turning to HW's attack on WLC's education, again, I would offer the following reply. Look in the mirror. What are your philosophical credentials? Do you have a Ph.D. in philosophy? If not, why should anyone at all care what you think of WLC's--or, for that matter, anyone else's--credentials in philosophy?

And calling Craig a "phony" or dismissing his education as a "joke" is rude, a personal attack that is completely unjustified and has no relevance to the merits of his arguments. Just as we should not tolerate misbehavior by theists, we should not tolerate misbehavior by atheists, either. As a simple matter of common courtesy, I hope that HW apologizes to WLC for these remarks.

Summary and Assessment of the Craig-Drange Debate (1997)

[This post was originally published on The Secular Outpost on October 16, 2011. It was republished here on November 8, 2021 with the date manually adjusted to reflect its original publication date.]

(This is yet another old debate summary and assessment from my archives. I think I wrote this around 1998. I am posting it here unchanged.)

On February 26, 1997 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, William Lane Craig debated Theodore Drange of West Virginia University. The topic was, "Does God exist?"

Note: video of the debate is available online here.

SPECIAL NOTE REGARDING THIS DEBATE SUMMARY

Drange did not address each of Craig's theistic arguments in turn. Instead, he made three general observations about Craig's overall case. Thus, the numbering scheme I have used to summary the debaters arguments does not always match up. Each of the debaters tried to impose their own organizational structure on the arguments in the debate, and I did not consider it appropriate for me to choose one organizational structure over another in my summary.

Unfortunately, this necessarily makes the debate summary harder to follow than it would have been if both debaters had adopted the same organizational format, and I have more to say about that in my summary at the end. With respect to Drange's atheological arguments, the outline structure DOES match up. However, with respect to Craig's theistic arguments, the outline structure DOES NOT match up. This means that, for example, "II,A,1," in Craig's speeches DOES NOT match up with "II,A,1," in Drange's speeches.

CRAIG'S OPENING STATEMENT

I. No good reason to think atheism is true

II. Good reason to think theism is true
A. Kalam cosmological argument
(1) Anything which begins to exist must have a cause
(2) The universe began to exist
(3) Therefore, the universe must have a cause

B. Fine-tuning argument
- Life-permitting universes are vastly more improbable than life-permitting universes. The odds of a life-permitting universe like ours coming into existence by chance are so remote that our universe must be the result of intelligent design.

C. Moral argument
(1) If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist.
(2) But objective moral values exist.
(3) Therefore, God exists.

D. Resurrection of Jesus
- The Resurrection of Jesus is the best explanation for 3 historical facts:
1. The empty tomb
2. The post-resurrection appearances
3. The very origin of the Christian faith
- this entails a divine miracle and the existence of God

E. Religious Experience
- This isn't an argument for God's existence; rather, it's the claim that you can know God exists wholly apart from arguments

DRANGE'S OPENING STATEMENT

I. Arguments for Atheism
A. Argument from Evil
(1) God, by definition, is (among other things) an all-loving deity who strongly desires love and worship from humans and who wants everyone to be aware of his existence.
(2) Hence, probably, if God were to exist, then he would not have permitted there to be as much suffering and premature death among humans as there actually is.
(3) But there is that much suffering and premature death, and so probably God does not exist.

B. Argument from Nonbelief
(1) (same as above)
(4) Hence, probably, if God were to exist, then he would not have permitted there to be as much nonbelief (in God and the afterlife) among humans as there actually is.
(5) But there is that much nonbelief, and so probably God does not exist.

II. Craig's Arguments for Theism
A. Many of Craig's arguments attempt to explain alleged "facts" which are NOT facts.
1. "The origin of the universe" is not a fact to be explained. Craig should cite the existence of the universe.
2. "The complex order in the universe" is not a fact to be explained. Craig should cite as the fact to be explained the life-permitting  combination of physical constants.
3. Craig he takes objective moral values as a fact to be explained, but there are no objective moral values.
4. Craig takes the resurrection of Jesus as a fact to be explained, but it is obviously NOT that. It is illegitimate to regard the Bible as reporting historical fact.
5. Craig himself admits that the "argument" from religious experience is not an argument. Moreover, why shouldn't we accept atheism on the basis of atheist experiences?

B. All of Craig's arguments put forward the God Hypothesis as the best explanation there is for something, but the God Hypothesis cannot be that, for the simple reason that it is unclear, obscure, and hard to understand. Craig takes God to be a timeless, changeless, immaterial person, and that is a totally incomprehensible notion. Such a notion is useless for purposes of explanation, since the purpose of explanation is to clarify, enlighten, and create greater understanding than before. For that reason, it is impossible for the God Hypothesis to be the best explanation for anything whatever, and so each of Craig's arguments is a failure on that basis alone. God is no more of an explanation than the hypothesis that "Santa Claus is operating through the fifth dimension."

C. After we have gotten straight about what the actual fact is to be explained, for each of Craig's arguments there are alternate  explanations at least as good as the God Hypothesis:
1. Kalam cosmological argument
a. Universe might be beginningless
b. Time began with the universe. The universe did not come out of nothingness.
c. Maybe there is a hyperuniverse
2. Fine-tuning argument
a. Other combinations of physical constants might be equally unique and special in some way.

CRAIG'S FIRST REBUTTAL

I. No good reason to think atheism is true
A. Argument from Evil
1. Premise (2) does not following from premise (1)
2. It is not obvious that God wants to remove suffering. God's purpose may be to have people come to know God (e.g., El Salvador)

B. Argument from Nonbelief
1. Premise (4) does not follow from premise (1). It may not be within God's power to make people freely believe. Also, the  issue here is NOT awareness of God, but belief IN God.
2. God has an overriding desire to have people believe in God (which again is not the same thing as having people believe that God exists). Even demons are theists.
3. God does not want to reveal the gospel message to people He knows will reject it. (my paraphrase)

II. There is good reason to think theism is true.
- Drange has the burden of proof to show an incoherence in the idea of a timeless God. Quoted The Timelessness of God by John Yates  to support the coherence of God.

A. Kalam cosmological argument
1. Contradicted by a priori and empirical arguments to the contrary.
2. Quotes Barrow and Tipler, the universe came into existence out of nothing.
3. Vacuum fluctuation models abandoned in the 1970s. Quotes Christopher Isham: vacuum fluctuation models have been  abandoned on empirical grounds. If vacuum fluctuation models were true, then universes would collide with one another and coalesce.
4. The atheist position, "that the universe just popped into existence uncaused out of nothing", takes more faith to believe than theism.

B. Fine-tuning argument
1. It's irrational to believe the complexity in the universe came about by chance.

C. Moral argument
1. Quotes Michael Ruse. Objective moral values do exist. Does Drange believe that rape is morally permissible?

D. Resurrection of Jesus
1. No assumption of Biblical inerrancy; the New Testament
accounts of the Resurrection should be believed on the basis that a consensus of New Testament scholars accept them as  historical.

E. Religious Experience
1. Theists have no reason to deny the veridicality of their experiences in the absence of defeaters to Craig's arguments.
2. Craig's theistic arguments constitute defeaters of atheistic experiences; therefore, atheists have reasons to disbelieve such experiences.

DRANGE'S FIRST REBUTTAL

I. Arguments for Atheism
A. Argument from Evil
1. The argument from evil is based on an inductive inference
2. Why does God permit so many children to suffer and die?

B. Argument from Nonbelief
1.1. Don't understand "freely believe". We believe according to the evidence.
1.2. Can't believe IN God without believing THAT God exists. Once people know the truth of theism, they can make a free  will decision to follow God. However, if they are not even  aware that God exists, how can they choose to follow or not  follow God?
2. Eternal damnation should motivate God to increase awareness of the gospel message.

II. Craig's Theistic Arguments
A. Many of Craig's arguments attempt to explain alleged "facts" which  are NOT facts.
3. Objective moral values do not exist.

B. It is impossible for the God Hypothesis to be the best explanation for anything whatever.
1. Craig's God is very obscure.
2. Certain passages in the Bible (e.g., Gen 6:6, Ex 3:2, etc.) contradict Craig's conception of a timeless God.

C. There are alternate explanations at least as good as the God Hypothesis.
1. The existence of the universe:
b. What does it mean to cause time? Causes must temporally precede their effects.
c. Vacuum fluctuation models ARE supported by empirical evidence. Cosmology is a rapidly changing and growing field.

2. The life-permitting combination of physical constants:
a. A theory of everything would explain why the physical constants have to be the way they are.
b. Then again, the constants may be a brute fact. Other values of the physical constants might have supported other highly-interesting arrangements, including the possibility of minds, and so there is no reason to claim that our particular combination of constants is anything special.
c. Many Worlds Theory.

3. Our moral intuitions about rape:
a. Moral feelings and intuitions may be genetically based.
b. Morality is the product of social conditioning.
c. Even if there are objective moral values, God is not necessary to explain them.

CRAIG'S SECOND REBUUTAL

I. No good reason to think atheism is true
A. Argument from Evil
1. My hypothesis is not improbable. In the context of suffering, people come to know and believe in God.

B. Argument from Nonbelief
4. God is evident in nature, conscience, etc.
5. This argument is a joke. People could make God not exist by
not believing in Him. This argument is the ultimate in
buck-passing.

II. There are good reasons to think theism is true.
- the timelessness of God
1. Biblical passages may contain anthropomorphisms
2. God can cause effects in time.

A. Kalam cosmological argument
2. Causes do NOT have to precede their effects in time; they can be simultaneous. God's causing the universe was simultaneous with the Big Bang.
3.1. Vacuum fluctuation models don't work
3.2. atheism has no explanation of the existence of the universe

B. Fine-tuning argument
1.1. Structure in sand analogy: nobody would believe that came about by chance.
1.2. No theory of everything will ever be discovered.
1.3. Certain boundary conditions would have to be put in by hand
2. No physical, carbon-based life would be possible in a universe with different physical constants.
3.1. Speculative. Moreover, theism is simpler.
3.2. No known mechanism for generating many worlds. Any such mechanism would itself require fine-tuning.
3.3. No evidence to believe this is true, apart from the existence of intelligent life.

C. Moral argument
1. Do you believe that rape is objectively wrong?

D. Resurrection of Jesus
1. Drange did not address

E. Religious Experience
1. Drange did not address

DRANGE'S SECOND REBUTTAL

I. Arguments for Atheism
A. Argument from Evil
1. Reducing suffering would increase theistic belief. Will all the non-Christians in the world be tortured forever in Hell?

B. Argument from Nonbelief
2. God should provide more evidence for His existence, and He should not be reluctant to do so.
3.1. Why are there so many nonbelievers in Asia?
4. How is God evident in nature? Craig's abstract appeals to alleged evidences for the existence of God are NOT evident in nature. Conscience can be explained in other ways.
5. People are not responsible for their nonbelief.

II. Craig's Theistic Arguments
A. Many of Craig's arguments attempt to explain alleged "facts" which are NOT facts.
3. Craig takes objective moral values as a fact to be explained, but there are no objective moral values.
a. No objective procedure for settling moral disputes.
b. Objective moral values are not observable.
c. There are ambiguous moral issues.

B. It is impossible for the God Hypothesis to be the best explanation for anything whatever.
1. Craig has not yet presented a cumulative case. How does Craig know that each of the gods allegedly established in each theistic argument is in fact the same god?

C. There are alternative explanations at least as good as the God Hypothesis.
1. The existence of the universe:
b. Bowling ball on pillow not simultaneous causation. The cause comes before the effect.

2. The life-permitting combination of physical constants:
b. Structure in sand analogy is a bad analogy. Don't have relevant background knowledge about the universe.

3. Our moral intuitions about rape:
c. The existence of objective moral values is compatible with the non-existence of God.

CRAIG'S THIRD REBUTTAL

I. No good reason to think atheism is true
A. Argument from evil
1. False and question-begging. Drange has to prove that reducing suffering would increase theistic belief. Indeed, in areas of intense suffering, people come to know God.

B. Argument from nonbelief
2. The actual world contains an optimum balance of belief and suffering.
3.1. Asia has more evangelical believers than North America
3.2. God IS achieving his purpose in evangelizing the world. In AD 100, there were 360 unbelievers per 1 evangelical Christian believer. Today, there are only 9 unbelievers per 1 evangelical believer.

II. Good reason to think theism is true
A. Kalam cosmological argument
2.1. Cushion and ball could have been in contact from eternity. Moreover, is not a physical object and is therefore not bound by finite signal velocities.
3.2. Takes more faith to believe the universe popped into existence uncaused out of nothing, than it does to believe in God.

B. Fine-tuning argument
1.1. In cases where we do NOT have relevant background knowledge (e.g., unknown archaeological artifacts, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, etc.), that does not prevent  us from inferring design. Why should the universe be any different?
1.2. Alternative hypotheses are not plausible.

C. Moral argument
1.3. Unclear cases don't undermine the clear cases. God is the foundation for the clear cases.

D. Resurrection of Jesus
1. Not addressed by Drange

E. Religious Experience
1. God can change your life just as he has changed mine.

DRANGE'S THIRD REBUTTAL

I. Arguments for Atheism
A. Argument from Evil
God could kill 2 birds with one stone by appearing (or in some other way making everyone aware of his existence). It would eliminate much moral evil and it would solve the problem of nonbelief as well.

B. Argument from Nonbelief
Why did he send missionaries? Why did he command people to love him? Why did he empower his disciples to perform miracles? Why did he allow the rise of Islam?
2. 2/3 of the world is not Christian. How is that an optimum balance?

II. Craig's Theistic Arguments
A. Kalam cosmological argument
2.1. Craig's response contradicts his arguments against an actual infinite.

C. Moral argument
Agreed that there are certain cases which are clearly morally wrong.
1.3. Yet the clear cases were apprehended by genetics, social conditioning, etc.

D. Resurrection of Jesus
1. Not a historical fact
2. Contradictions in the Resurrection accounts
3. Gospels could have been embellished given how late they were written after the events they allegedly describe. The authors were not objective and neutral; they were proselytizers.

LOWDER'S ASSESSMENT OF SPECIFIC ARGUMENTS IN THE DEBATE

I. Craig's Theistic Arguments
A. Kalam Cosmological Argument (Draw)
In Drange's opening statement, he objected to Craig's argument on the grounds that time began with the universe. Therefore, Drange argued, the universe did not come out of nothingness.

B. Fine-Tuning Argument (Craig)
Although Drange presented in his second rebuttal what I consider strong objections to the fine-tuning argument, Craig presented prima facie defeaters to those objections in his third rebuttal and Drange totally dropped the argument in his last speech.

C. Moral Argument (Craig)
Again, Drange did not present any objections to Craig's argument until Drange's second rebuttal. In Craig's third (and final) rebuttal, Craig only addressed 1.3, totally dropping Drange's objections 1.1, 1.2, and 3. In Drange's third (and final) rebuttal, he also dropped 1.1, 1.2, and 3, causing the entire debate around the moral argument to center upon 1.3. Drange argued that our moral intuitions about, say, rape and child abuse are apprehended by genetics and social conditioning. Yet I'm not sure I find that line of argument convincing -- I know many of the audience members did not. Drange instead should have focused the debate on 3, which is really the heart of the controversy, anyway. The simple fact of the matter is that, contra Mackie, Craig has not given us any reason at all to believe that the existence of objective moral values makes the existence of God more likely than it would have been otherwise. Whether moral values are objective is an incidental issue for the atheist debater trying to refute the moral argument for theism. Not only is it false that objective moral values make theism probable, but it is good debate strategy for debaters to avoid contradicting the audience's intuitions.

4. Resurrection (Craig)
Unfortunately, Drange's sole objection to this species of the argument from miracles was weak. Drange disputed Craig's claim in only general terms and he presented no arguments (philosophical or historical) for the opposite conclusion, that Jesus was not Resurrected from the dead. Moreover, the objections Drange
presented in his final speech were too little, too late.

5. Religious Experience (Craig)
Drange's objections in his opening statement were solid, prima facie defeaters of Craig's "argument". Yet Drange did not defend those defeaters in subsequent speeches, whereas Craig attacked Drange's defeaters and carried the argument through the entire debate.

II. Drange's Arguments for Atheism
A. Argument from Evil (Drange)
In response to Drange's argument from evil, Craig presented his Suffering Brings about Acceptance Defense, which claims that God has an overriding desire to have people trust in Him. God's purpose does not always mean making us happy. Yet as Drange pointed out, reducing suffering would cause more people to believe in God.

B. Argument from Nonbelief (Drange)
The bulk of the debate on this argument centered on Craig's objections 2-4. Under objection 2, Craig claimed that God is not primarily interested in producing theists per se, but rather having people coming to trust in God and letting Him change their lives and so forth. In his first rebuttal, Drange responded by arguing that the possibility of eternal damnation should cause God to want to save people, therefore God should want everyone to become theists. In my opinion, this did not directly refute Craig's objection, but Craig dropped the point in his second rebuttal.

Craig revived the issue in his third rebuttal, claiming that the world contains an optimum balance of belief and suffering. Yet Drange, in his third rebuttal, noted that 2/3 of the world's population is non-Christian and it is difficult to believe that that is the best that God could do. In my opinion, this was decisive and I flowed this objection to Drange.

As far Craig's objection 3, Craig asserted that, in a nutshell, God does not want to reveal the gospel message to people He knows will reject it. Drange's reply was that it fails to explain the geographical distribution of nonbelievers. As Drange put it, why there are so many nonbelievers in Asia (and presumably elsewhere)? Moreover, I can think of two responses to Craig which Drange neglected to mention. First, Craig himself refuted his own objection. According to Craig the increase in believers in Asia and other parts of the world is a direct result of Christian missionaries. In other words, the increase in Christians can be explained naturalistically as the result of Christian proselytizing. Second, in Craig's third rebuttal, Craig pointed out how the percentage of Christians in the world population has increased over the years. But why has God taken so long -- nearly 2000 years -- to get the word out? On Craig's hypothesis, it seems incredibly unfair to the now deceased non-Christians who lived in times and places where there were no Christian missionaries to present them the Gospel message.

This leaves only objection 4. Craig claimed that God is evident in nature, conscience, etc. Drange responded by pointing out that the existence of God is NOT obvious to many people, and Craig never addressed that point.

LOWDER'S OVERALL ASSESSMENT OF THE DEBATE

So how, then, do we pick a "winner" of the debate when the theist wins 4 of his 5 arguments, while the atheist wins both of his arguments?

One approach might be to say that, "whoever wins the most arguments (from either side) wins the overall debate." Yet this is hardly a satisfactory approach, for it assumes that all arguments in a debate should have equal weight, and that is far from obvious. Moreover, since neither of the debaters gave us explicit instructions on how they think the arguments should be weighed, this sort of approach does not seem very fruitful for assessing the debate.

Another approach might be to adopt the principle that, "in the absence of decisive evidence for the existence of God, we should assume that God does not exist." Thus, on this approach, even though Craig won 4 of the 7 arguments in the debate, we should assume that God does not exist, for Craig did not win all of the arguments in the debate.

But is the principle true? It assumes that if God were to exist, that there would be decisive evidence for his existence, such that no honest, rational person could deny it. This assumption forms the basis for an atheological argument which Ted Drange calls, "The Lack-of-Evidence Argument" (LEA). This line of argument is well beyond the scope of this paper, however, so I shall not pursue it here.

Instead, I shall argue for the more modest approach that, if there appears to be good evidence for the existence of God and good evidence against the existence of God, and if the evidence is evenly balanced, then the rational course would be to "sit on the fence" until something comes along that would tip the balance one way or the other. A person who believes the evidence is so constituted and who sits on the fence might be called a "data-vs.-data agnostic."

I am highly skeptical that if God really did exist, that he would allow the evidence for his existence to be so ambiguous. But when we only consider the arguments in the debate, the "data-vs.-data agnostic" position seems to encapsulate the outcome of the debate. I therefore consider the debate a draw.

However, much remains to be said. In writing this article, I have had the benefit of 1) a videotape of the debate which they can replay several times, and 2) an e-mail dialog with Drange about the debate. For people without either of these advantages, I have no doubt that Craig appeared to be the victor. Craig has several (8?) years of high school and college debating experience, as well as numerous Campus Crusade-type debates under his belt. In contrast, Drange lacks debating experience and it showed:

* Drange did not present a point-by-point refutation of Craig's theistic arguments. Instead, he adopted a highly confusing format that made it extremely difficult to match up Drange's objections with Craig's arguments. This allowed Craig's rebuttals to (superficially) sound much more stonger than they really were.

* In his opening statement, Drange easily wasted over a minute of his precious speaking time making a correction to the debate program, which contained Drange's arguments in syllogism form. He then proceeded to talk about one of the premises of his argument in an abstract way. However, an opening statement (speech) is supposed to be a forceful presentation of a debater's point of view which clearly paints a picture in the minds of the audience. In an opening statement, a debater should never say "look at my premise (2)". That would be appropriate for a philosophy class, but not for a lay public debate. Instead, the debater should just say whatever premise (2) is, and without using the word premise. In other words:

Don't Do this: "My premise (2) argues that if God were to exist, ... he would not allow as much nonbelief as there actually is."

Do This Instead: "According to the 1997 World Almanac, there are over X billion non-Christians in the world. But how could that be, if Christianity is true? If Christianity is true, then there is an all-loving God who could tell the nonbelievers His gospel message. Yet there are many people who do are not even aware of the Gospel message. Therefore, God does not exist."

I do not deny that having a summary of the arguments in the debate program can be extremely useful. However, my point is that a debater's opening statement should not rely upon the debate program at all.

* This leads to my next criticism of Drange's delivery. Drange would often present significant philosophical arguments in the debate, but he did not present any "impacts" to his arguments. An "impact" to an argument puts the argument into perspective. It answers the "So what?" question that an audience member might ask with respect to a given argument. The upshot is that Drange often appeared to win his battles without winning the war. To cite but one example, in  Drange's third rebuttal, the debate over the kalam cosmological argument boiled down to simultaneous causation. Although the significance of that objection is obvious to anyone who has studied the kalam cosmological argument, from the point of view of a lay audience member, the objection may very well have been utterly pointless because Drange failed to explain its significance. In other words:

Don't Do This: "Craig said that the bowling ball and the cushion could have been in contact from eternity. But this contradicts his own arguments against an actual infinite."

Do This Instead: "In my first speech, I argued that the universe did not come out of nothingness because, on the Big Bang theory, causes precede their effects in time, and Craig hasn't refuted that claim. He tried to argue that causes and effects can be simultaneous, but he has given us no reason to believe this ever actually happens: the bowling ball and the cushion are not simultaneous, and if they were in contact from eternity, that would contradict his own arguments against an actual infinite. Therefore, the beginning of the universe provides no reason to believe that God exists."

* Drange was unable to get all of his arguments out in the time allowed. Drange was not even able to finish his opening statement before his speaking time was up.

* Drange also sometimes used terminology inappropriate for a lay audience (e.g., "strong inductive inference", "hyperuniverse", etc.).

Although Drange is to be commended for doing as well as he did given his lack of debating experience, his speaking skills were no match for those of Craig. This was only Drange's second oral debate; his first oral debate was against Michael Horner, another Campus Crusade for Christ speaker. Debating is a skill that takes years to master. As a general rule, people who do not have years of debating experience should decline opportunities to participate in oral debates against polished speakers like Craig.

In Defense of William Lane Craig

[This post was originally published on The Secular Outpost on October 14, 2011. It was republished here on November 8, 2021 with the date manually adjusted to reflect its original publication date. The link was also updated to its current location.]

After my last post on William Lane Craig and debating, I decided to do several web searches related to William Lane Craig and debating. While I obviously disagree with his arguments, I have no problem with him as a person. I suspect the majority of atheists (who know who he is) also do not. But a few of his critics have engaged in personal attacks which I think are unfair and inaccurate. As a freethinker, I think it's important to follow the evidence wherever it leads and avoid sloppy thinking. This includes sloppy thinking about our critics.

Objection: Craig is not a good philosopher.

Reply: I'm going to be blunt. This is a stupid objection. Not only does he have a Ph.D. in philosophy, but he is widely regarded as a leading expert on the philosophy of time. Before someone makes an objection like this, I would encourage them to look in the mirror. Do they have a Ph.D. in philosophy? If not, then why do think they are even competent to attack the philosophical competence of someone who does? In my experience, when I have talked to nontheistic professional philosophers of religion about Craig, they have always had respect for his philosophical abilities.

Objection: Craig is dishonest.

Reply: Maybe I am old-fashioned, but I take the charge of dishonesty extremely seriously. Anyone who levels the accusation of dishonesty has the burden of proof, and they had better make sure they attempt to get the other person's side of the story before publicly concluding that dishonesty is the best explanation.

If Craig has been dishonest, I have yet to see any evidence of that. For example, one person suggested Craig was dishonest in a debate because he used a probability calculation in a debate. According to this critic, the 'problem' was not that Craig was being dishonest in his calculations, but that he used a calculation in a debate, which was supposedly unfair to his opponent. Huh? I don't call that "dishonest." I call that making an argument.

A second allegation is that Craig is dishonest in his public debates because he uses arguments which he "knows" are false. Really? I do wonder how these people "know" what Craig thinks.

In summary, I don't agree with his arguments, but there is no need for unwarranted personal attacks. Let's focus on the arguments, please.

Some (Very Incomplete) Thoughts on Luke Muehlhauser's "How to Debate William Lane Craig"

[This post was originally published on The Secular Outpost on October 12, 2011. It was republished here on November 7, 2021 with the date manually adjusted to reflect its original publication date. The link was also updated to its current location.]

After writing a post about William Lane Craig and John Loftus debating, I remembered that Luke Muehlhauser (Common Sense Atheism) posted an article in April 2009 about debating William Lane Craig. (LINK) Here are some very incomplete thoughts about Luke's article.

1. I agree with Luke that many of Craig's debate opponents were unqualified, in the sense that they did not have both (a) the relevant knowledge (e.g., of philosophy of religion, metaethics, etc.); and (b) suitable debating experience.
2. I strongly disagree with Luke's assumption that Craig has 'won' literally "all" of his debates, but I do think he has 'won' most of them. Off the top of my head, I think the following opponents 'won' their debates with Craig:
   • Paul Draper
   • Doug Jesseph (the first debate, not the second debate which I consider a draw)
   • Shelly Kagan
   • Keith Parsons (both the debate on God and the debate on Christianity)
   • Michael Tooley
3. I agree with the five specific points in his section, "How to Win." On the other hand, in my experience, the people who would most benefit from following Luke's advice tend to be the same people least likely to follow it.