It must be serendipity that caused (tee hee) me to write the previous post the day before I received my latest, and hopefully last, issue of CT. The stark black and red cover with the words "God Is Not Dead Yet." in 48pt bold type is meant to be arresting, as well as hearken back to the famous "Is God Dead?" Time Magazine cover from 1966. The graphical presentation is supposed to add up to "this is a serious issue about the new atheists." (Anyone else tired of new atheists, new evangelicals, new democrats...?) Unfortunately, instead of a serious treatment, we get William Lane Craig of Campus Crusade (always a reliable source for philosophy) and Talbot—you know, that super progressive seminary that's attached to the uber progressive Bible Institute of Los Angeles (Biola).
The piece opens with an illustration of ten "serious" Christian philosophers, including the author (nice). A glaring omission is Nicholas Wolterstorff, but that's probably because he's not a Thomist. Alvin Plantinga is included, but oddly doesn't appear in the story until we get to Anselm, probably because he's not a Thomist. After an introduction informing us how much young people care about apologetics and philosophy, we get the arguments. (By the way, where the Church ever got the idea that young people didn't care about philosophy until recently is befuddling. I teach philosophy, and the classes are always full and the arguments passionate. The Church spent too many years blinded by the Hybels glare, apparently.)
If you intend to follow this post, including the comments I'm going to quote from Leighton, you might want to read the article.
1. The cosmological argument. Does anyone take Aquinas's arguments seriously anymore except the Campus Crusade guys? The statement begins: everything that exists has an explanation of its existence, either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause. Apologists will say all created reality has an external cause, but they can't apply the same standard to God, so they will say that God exists as a necessity of his own nature (i.e., God must exist). So now you've taken the conclusion you hoped to prove and used it as an a priori premise. Nice.
Leighton: To Craig, "explanation" means "my Christian God," but the only interesting non-crazy definitions I know of are on the physical level, and we can't make this assertion in modern physics. "Its own nature" vs "external cause" carries essentialist baggage that isn't useful anymore, and "Everything" -> "every [each] thing" is problematic because it implies more of a hard distinction between events than is helpful in general relativity.
2. Kalam cosmological argument. First point: everything that begins to exist has a cause. This will, of course, be applied to the universe, but not God. The assumption, again, is that God already existed and didn't begin to exist. You've assumed something about the nature of God and then tried to prove it using the assumption you started with. If a student tried this in class, she'd get an F.
Leighton: All very nice as long as you don't go into great detail about what you mean by "cause" or "begins to exist" so that it might actually be useful for things other than converting people. I want to say there has to be an interesting way to talk about this stuff, but I haven't found it yet.
3. Teleological argument. I'll leave this one to Leighton. "I don't think our physical reality permits as clean a trichotomy as 1 sets up, and we cannot possibly know #2." And Leighton goes on to talk about the string theory paragraph.
"Three problems here: (1) Superstring theory and M-theory are not synonyms. M-theory is one kind of superstring theory, but there are superstring theories that compete with M-theory. (2) Neither has any experimental confirmation yet, nor have they persuaded a sufficient number of specialists to justify the claim that either is the 'most promising' candidate for a GUT. In fact, string theorists are considered a joke in many physics departments. (3) I've never seen the 10^500 figure, which leads me to suspect it's a secret Roger Penrose-style napkin calculation by a nonspecialist looking to wow people with a big scary number. (Note the distinct lack of footnotes characteristic of apologetics articles.) If you don't know where a number comes from, it's worse than useless.
More generally, this paragraph is indicative of Craig's trademark obfusticating style that is designed not to persuade opponents or help sympathetic listeners follow his reasoning, but to snow them and scare them so that opponents won't object to his arguments, and sympathizers will continue to buy his books and fund his lectures.
4. Moral argument. If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist. Sorry, folks, just saying it, doesn't make it true. Objective morality could still exist in the absence of God; only the source would be different. Each semester in ethics class I ask students to tell me something they believe is objectively immoral. They always come down to the same three answers: murder, child molesting, rape. Even the non-theists believe it. Wonder how they pulled that off without God.
Leighton: The moral argument is boring.
5. Ontological argument. Now we're to Anselm, and this one is just as silly as Aquinas. God is the greatest being conceivable. You need to read all seven steps in the equation, but suffice it to say that if humans can dictate what a maximally great being is and that being by virtue of the limits of our imagination is God, they could do a far better job than the being created by the Church. This is another argument that requires that you already believe in God, and that you have assumptions about good being better than evil, strength better than weakness, and eternity better than the present. Not to mention that you'd need to define the first pair without knowing, by means of revelation, anything about the character of God.
Craig wants to resurrect natural theology, but it falls apart at the point where you have to move from "there is a God" to "God is Jesus" or "God is personal" or "God is good." In For the Time Being Annie Dillard considered natural theology by ruminating on Teilhard de Chardin, birth defects, sand, and clouds. What she demonstrates so ably in her writing is that beginning with natural theology leads to the apparent absence of God, or as she calls it, benign neglect. I'll go ahead and argue against the benign part, but I still love Dillard's writing. I would be forever grateful if Christians recognized that their system of belief is utterly dependent upon revelation. To prove God exists, as quixotic as that effort is, would simply leave them with the god of the deists, at best. More likely, they'd create some sort of maltheistic sect when they consider the bizarre birth defects that Dillard chronicled.
Next post I just have to talk about how Craig handled postmodernism. I'm gonna miss CT.
I still consider myself a Christian, some might argue against that based on my views on soteriology (I wouldn't call myself a universalist, but I'm probably closer to that than to your typical evangelical soteriological view).
I started perusing Christianity Today last week to see if it was really as bad as you say and even I could see that it was a load of B.S.
I'm really tired of the moral argument because it can be easily refuted by evolutionary psychology. I hold to a morality worldview, but I'm not under the impression that it makes a good argument for the existence of God.
Posted by: Fremen66 | July 11, 2008 at 03:55 PM
Respectfully...
Repsonse to #1:
Aside from the "no true Scotsman" variant regarding Campus Crusaders let's ask ourselves: can we prove categorically that this argument is wrong? No. Does all created reality have a cause? Yes. Is God created? No. Therefore He does not have to have an outside cause. Can I "prove" this? No more than you can disprove it.
Response to #2:
Is it agreed that everything that had a beginning must have had a cause? Yes. Did God have a beginning? No. Therefore He did not have to have a cause. Obviously I assume He did not have a cause, but do those who say He did not have proof that there is nothing that can be eternal? No. Those who argue (if there are any left) that the universe is eternal don't think so. The laws of logic cannot preclude something that exists eternally because such assertions cannot be proven. That may not be "proof" that God is eternal, but it gives just as much (or more) difficulty to those claiming that just as the universe had a beginning, so must God.
Response to #3:
Not quite as sure on this on since Greg did not address it directly. It is not absolute proof, but the "fine-tuning" spoken of seems far from random. It appears much more problematic for the anti-god crowd to explain why such optimal conditions exist with nothing but "chance" to credit.
Response to #4:
It's hard to refute "This one's boring" but your assesment of the big three (Rape, molestation, murder) might also be used to insist that God has placed a basic understanding of morality in all of us.
Response to #5:
Here Greg goes toe to toe with Plantiga (and others). Without dealing directly with the points of the argument, this fact does show that much greater minds see its validity (albeit a "modified" version).
Greg, you make the point that tyring to prove God's existence is quixotic but I don't think any of these arguments are meant to "prove" God exists in the way you propose. They are, more aptly put, meant to show valid reasons to accept the fact that there is a God or that belief in God makes sense. Again, "prove" can mean different things. When we see "... therefore God exists" we still have no "smoking gun." Instead we have bolstered our support for accepting the fact that a "Supreme Being" does exist.
I think the article is written mainly from a standpoint that says, "Hey, you think all the leading scholars have come to the conclusion that believing in God doesn't make any sense,... well, these leading scholars think belief in God still makes the most sense. Here's why..."
Posted by: Russell | July 11, 2008 at 04:55 PM
Russell,
leading scholars? You'll notice that Craig said Plantinga used a modified version of the ontological argument. He also didn't go into detail about that modification. Wolterstorff, the most respected Christian philosopher by far, isn't even in the article. These aren't leading scholars. They are apologists.
As for your arguments, if you can't prove God isn't created, and you can't prove he is, then you might as well be saying that the primary cause of all that is created is a nine-legged centipede with hemorrhoids that is invisible to everyone who searches for him. It's equally valid in terms of defining what kind of think god is. As far as God having a beginning, that is an assumption you make. Without a referential object to point to in the world, it's impossible to say "the definition of god is x."
You seem to have missed that as the larger point. Even if you can prove God's existence, you can't clearly define his character, preferences, expectations, values, etc., without resorting to revelation. These arguments get Christians no further than deism. I'll happily accept a deistic god; that would at least explain why he appears not to give a shit.
Posted by: greg | July 11, 2008 at 05:47 PM
Really the apologist movement is anti-atheist more than anything. All these different religions use pretty similar thinking in their apologetics.
They then resort to pseudo-philosophical arguments and "what would you rather believe in" questions to root out the competition from the other religions.
The atheist is seen as the main enemy, the anti-Christian. Whereas all the other religious people are uncomfortable allies who are all going to hell.
Posted by: Fremen66 | July 11, 2008 at 07:13 PM
The list of things that imply that he does give a turd (funnier word than "shit") is much longer to some, than the list that implies that He does not.
Given all of the religious evidence, the Christian view makes the most historical and reasonable sense to me. That being said, you are absolutely correct that "proof" is not a realistic expectation. The Bible itself claims that faith is required and faith isn't needed with a "smoking gun." You may reply that the "faith requirement" is akin to some form of circular reasoning or begging the question (you teach logic and are more qualified to catagorize such terms than I) but the possibility that it is one of those doesn't, technically, mean that they still couldn't be true.
I won't try to convince you because I don't think arguing with you would accomplish anything. You have not been anything but gracious with me and (as you mentioned) I am free to believe what I want, as are you.
Enjoy your weekend and thanks for the dialogue.
Posted by: Russell | July 12, 2008 at 09:29 PM
@Russell
In Response to #1, you said, 'Can I "prove" this? No more than you can disprove it.'
But the burden of proof is on you--on the person who says God doesn't have to have a cause. You have to be able to tell an at-least-plausible story about how God gets a free pass on not needing a cause.
Posted by: Jay Kelly | July 13, 2008 at 12:45 AM
These arguments only work or not work, I guess, if God exists within the realm of the universe and natural science and philosophy.
If he is immanent in the universe, then let's build a spaceship and hold a God conference.
If he/she/it/they is/are absent from the universe and transcendent, then we may need some kind of string theory wormhole to get there. :-)
--Jinglett
Posted by: Jon Inglettt | July 13, 2008 at 07:08 AM
Hm,
I whipped this out in a religion thread on some random forum and got shot down, but I think it's pretty solid:
Point 1: everything that had a beginning had a cause
Point 2: for anything to exist, something has to have existed for eternity past
Both seem self-evident to me, but were challenged by the others participating.
I don't mean these as arguments to prove God's existence of course. They're just things I worked out on my own that seem obvious to me.
Point 2 seems to follow from Point 1, but I notice you discuss point 1 above. Is there some problem with it, or is there just a problem using it as evidence of God's existence?
Posted by: bobstevens | August 10, 2008 at 03:56 PM
Bob,
Not a problem with it, per se. It's just that there is a silent assumption there that makes the logic "work." The assumption is that God did not have a beginning, therefore, she's exempt from causation. That allows the theist/deist to argue for everything else being contingent, except for God. But if you're going to justify foundational claims, why not all of them? Since it's impossible to a) prove God, and b) prove claims about God, you can make any foundational statement you want about God. Your conclusions may be valid, as they will follow from the unspoken premise that God has no beginning, but we'll never know if they're sound.
Posted by: greg | August 11, 2008 at 12:01 AM
Quantum physics seems to be telling us that Point 1 isn't true. If it turns out to be, then I agree that Point 2 follows, but that something could as easily (and much more conceivably) be matter as an extra-universal deity.
Posted by: cheek | August 11, 2008 at 10:20 PM