Faith, Verifiability, And William Lane Craig's Perspective

William Lane Craig is an American analytic philosopher, Christian apologist, author, and Wesleyan theologian. He is a proponent of Molinism, an idea that reconciles God's providence and foreknowledge with human free will. Craig has written and spoken in defence of a version of the cosmological argument called the Kalam cosmological argument. He has also published work arguing for the historical plausibility of the resurrection of Jesus.

Craig's philosophical and theological views are often discussed and debated by a variety of commentators. James Fodor, for instance, has written a book titled Unreasonable Faith: How William Lane Craig Overstates the Case for Christianity, in which he rebuts Craig's Kalam argument, fine-tuning argument, moral argument for the existence of God, and arguments for the resurrection of Jesus.

Craig's work has resulted in contemporary interest in the Kalam argument and cosmological arguments in general.

William Lane Craig's philosophical and theological views

William Lane Craig is a philosopher, theologian, and Christian apologist. He is a proponent of Molinism, an idea that reconciles God's providence and foreknowledge with human free will. Craig is also a Wesleyan or Wesleyan-Arminian, and a critic of Calvinism. He has written extensively on the Kalam cosmological argument, the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus, and divine aseity.

Craig's philosophical and theological views are summarised below:

Kalam Cosmological Argument

Craig has written and spoken in defence of the Kalam cosmological argument, a version of the cosmological argument that originated in medieval Islamic philosophy. The argument is as follows:

• Everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence.
• The universe began to exist.
• Therefore, the universe has a cause of its existence.

Craig's defence of the argument focuses on the second premise. He argues that the past is finite and has a beginning, using Hilbert's example of an infinite hotel and the idea that a series of events in time can only produce a potentially infinite collection of events. He also appeals to physical theories such as the Big Bang model and the second law of thermodynamics.

Craig further argues that the cause of the universe must be a person. He gives three reasons for this:

• A personal agent with free will is the best explanation for the origin of a temporal effect with a beginning from an eternally existing cause.
• The only candidates for a timeless, spaceless, immaterial being are abstract objects or unembodied minds, but abstract objects are causally effete.
• A first physical state of the universe cannot be explained in terms of initial conditions and natural laws, but only in terms of a personal agent and its volitions.

Resurrection of Jesus

Craig has written two volumes arguing for the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus: *The Historical Argument for the Resurrection of Jesus* (1985) and *Assessing the New Testament Evidence for the Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus* (2002). He structures his arguments under three headings:

• The tomb of Jesus was found empty by a group of his female followers on the Sunday after his crucifixion.
• Various individuals and groups experienced appearances of Jesus alive after his death.
• The earliest disciples came to believe that God had raised Jesus from the dead despite strong predispositions to the contrary.

Craig argues that the best explanation of these three events is a literal resurrection. He applies an evaluative framework to examine various theoretical explanations, rejecting alternatives such as the hallucination hypothesis, the conspiracy hypothesis, and the apparent death hypothesis.

A-Theory of Time

Craig defends a presentist version of the A-theory of time, which holds that the present exists, but the past and future do not. He criticises McTaggart's argument that the A-theory is incoherent and defends the theory from empirical challenges arising from the standard interpretation of Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity. He advocates a neo-Lorentzian interpretation of SR, which he claims is consistent with the A-theory and with absolute simultaneity.

Divine Aseity and God's Relationship to Time

Craig argues that God existed in a timeless state before creation but has existed in a temporal state since creation, due to his knowledge of tensed facts and his interactions with events. He gives two arguments for this view:

• Given his tensed view of time, God cannot be timeless once he has created a temporal universe, as he is related to time through his interactions and the events he causes.
• As a feature of his omniscience, God must know the truth related to tensed facts about the world.

Platonism and Abstract Objects

Craig rejects the view that God creates abstract objects or that they exist independently of God. Instead, he defends a nominalistic perspective, arguing that abstract objects are not ontologically real. He criticises the Quine-Putnam indispensability argument and the neo-Quinean criterion of ontological commitment. He favours a neutral interpretation of the quantifiers of first-order logic and a deflationary theory of reference based on the intentionality of agents.

Craig's arguments for the Kalam cosmological argument

William Lane Craig's arguments for the Kalam cosmological argument are as follows:

The First Premise

Everything that begins to exist has a cause of its beginning.

Craig offers three reasons to support this premise:

• Rational intuition: The first premise is self-evidently true, based on the metaphysical intuition that "something cannot come into being from nothing" (Latin: ex nihilo nihil fit), which originates from Parmenidean philosophy.
• Reductio ad absurdum: If false, it would be inexplicable why just anything and everything does not randomly come into existence without a cause.
• Inductive reasoning from both common experience and scientific evidence, which constantly verifies and never falsifies its truth.

The Second Premise

The universe began to exist.

Craig defends this premise using both scientific and philosophical arguments for the finitude of the past, covering the topics of cosmology, physics, and a philosophical examination of actual infinities.

Cosmology and Physics

• Scientific confirmation against a past-infinite universe in the form of the second law of thermodynamics.
• Scientific evidence that the universe began to exist a finite time ago at the Big Bang.
• The Borde–Guth–Vilenkin theorem, a cosmological theorem that deduces that any universe that has, on average, been expanding throughout its history cannot have been expanding indefinitely in the past but must have a past boundary at which inflation began.

Philosophical Arguments

• The Hilbert's Hotel thought experiment, as evidence of the metaphysical impossibility of actual infinites existing in reality.
• Bertrand Russell's tale of Tristram Shandy, as evidence of the impossibility of forming an actual infinite by successive addition.
• A beginningless series of past events would represent an actual infinite existing in reality, which is metaphysically impossible.
• Past events are a series formed by successive addition, which therefore cannot be extended to an infinite past.

The universe has a cause.

Craig argues that the cause of the universe necessarily embodies specific properties:

• Uncaused, otherwise an infinite regress of causes would arise.
• Timeless (therefore changeless), spaceless, immaterial and enormously powerful, in creating spacetime and its contents ex nihilo.
• Personal, possessing non-deterministic agency, in creating the universe from a timeless state (without prior determining conditions).
• Singular, per Occam's razor, in the absence of good reasons to believe in the existence of more than one uncaused cause.

Based on this, Craig concludes:

> "an uncaused, personal Creator of the universe exists, who sans the universe is beginningless, changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless and enormously powerful."

Craig's arguments for the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus

William Lane Craig is a Christian apologist and analytic philosopher who has written extensively on the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus. Here are some of his arguments:

The Empty Tomb

Craig argues that Jesus' tomb was found empty by a group of his female followers on the Sunday after his crucifixion. He claims that this fact is supported by multiple, independent, early sources, including the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, as well as the letters of the apostle Paul. He also points out that Joseph of Arimathea, who buried Jesus, was a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin that condemned Jesus, making it unlikely that he was a Christian invention.

The Post-Mortem Appearances

Craig claims that various individuals and groups experienced appearances of Jesus alive after his death. He supports this claim by pointing to Paul's list of eyewitnesses to Jesus' resurrection appearances in 1 Corinthians 15.5-8. He also notes that the appearance narratives in the Gospels provide multiple, independent attestations of these appearances.

The Origin of the Disciples' Belief

Craig argues that the disciples suddenly and sincerely came to believe that Jesus was risen from the dead, despite having every predisposition to the contrary. He claims that their belief in Jesus' resurrection cannot be explained by Jewish or Christian influences, and that the best explanation is that Jesus truly did rise from the dead.

Craig concludes that these three facts—the empty tomb, the post-mortem appearances, and the origin of the disciples' belief—point to the resurrection of Jesus as the most plausible explanation. He acknowledges that there are other explanations, such as conspiracy theories and hallucination hypotheses, but argues that these fail to provide a plausible account of the evidence.

Craig's defence of a presentist version of the A-theory of time

William Lane Craig is a proponent of a presentist version of the A-theory of time. According to this theory, the present exists, but the past and future do not. Craig holds that there are tensed facts, such as "it is now lunchtime", which cannot be reduced to or identified with tenseless facts of the form "it is lunchtime at noon on February 10, 2020".

Craig raises several defences of this theory, two of which are particularly notable. Firstly, he criticises J. M. E. McTaggart's argument that the A-theory is incoherent, suggesting that it begs the question by covertly presupposing the B-theory. Secondly, he defends the A-theory from empirical challenges arising from the standard interpretation of Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity (SR). He advocates a neo-Lorentzian interpretation of SR, which is empirically equivalent to the standard interpretation, and which is consistent with the A-theory and with absolute simultaneity. Craig criticises the standard interpretation of SR on the grounds that it is based on a discredited positivist epistemology. Moreover, he claims that the assumption of positivism invalidates the appeal to SR made by opponents of the A-theory.

Craig's arguments for God's existence

William Lane Craig is an American analytic philosopher, Christian apologist, author, and Wesleyan theologian. He is a strong advocate for the existence of God and has written extensively on the subject. Here are some of Craig's arguments for God's existence:

• Kalam Cosmological Argument: Craig has updated and defended this argument, which originated in medieval Islamic philosophy. It states that everything that begins to exist has a cause, and the universe began to exist; therefore, the universe has a cause. Craig offers scientific and philosophical arguments for the second premise, including the Big Bang model and the second law of thermodynamics. He further argues that the cause of the universe must be a person with free will.
• Historical Plausibility of the Resurrection of Jesus: Craig has written two volumes arguing for the resurrection of Jesus, providing historical, philosophical, and exegetical evidence. He structures his arguments under three headings: the empty tomb, appearances of Jesus after his death, and the belief of the earliest disciples that God raised Jesus.
• A-Theory of Time: Craig defends a presentist version of this theory, which states that the present exists, but the past and future do not. He criticizes J. M. E. McTaggart's argument that the A-theory is incoherent and defends it from empirical challenges arising from the standard interpretation of Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity.
• Divine Aseity: Craig has published on the challenge posed by Platonism to divine aseity or self-existence. He rejects the view that God creates abstract objects or that they exist independently of God. Instead, he defends a nominalistic perspective, arguing that abstract objects are not ontologically real.
• Five Arguments for God's Existence: In an essay titled "Five Arguments for God," Craig refutes Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion" by presenting five traditional arguments for God's existence: the cosmological argument from contingency, the Kalam cosmological argument, the moral argument, the teleological argument from fine-tuning, and the ontological argument.
• Fine-Tuning of the Universe: Craig argues that the initial conditions of the Big Bang were fine-tuned for the existence of intelligent life with incredible precision. He dismisses physical necessity and chance as plausible explanations and concludes that the fine-tuning is evidence for a cosmic Designer.
• Objective Moral Values and Duties: Craig argues that we apprehend moral values and duties that are objectively binding and true. On a naturalistic view, however, moral values are just subjective by-products of biological evolution, lacking objective validity. Craig grounds objective moral values and duties in God.
• Ontological Argument: Craig presents a version of this argument, which states that if it is possible that a maximally great being (God) exists, then such a being exists in every logically possible world, including the actual world. He claims that most philosophers would agree that if God's existence is even possible, then He must exist.
• Personal Experience: This is not an argument per se but a claim that God can be known and experienced personally, apart from philosophical arguments. Craig calls these "properly basic beliefs," analogous to the belief in the reality of the past or the existence of the external world.

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