Nothingness, Origins, and Handling Objections

Transcript Nothingness, Origins, and Handling Objections

Kevin Harris: We're going to respond to some questions today on Reasonable Faith with Dr. William Lane Craig. I'm Kevin Harris. A question from Oklahoma:

Dear Dr. Craig, I am an evangelical Christian who has in the last few years become increasingly dissatisfied with the lack of intellectual rigor concerning much of the mainstream pulpit theology and mainstream Christology. Your works have been very instrumental in satisfying me along this line and have inspired me to be more critical and studious in the development of my Christian doctrine, for which I owe you a debt of gratitude. My question to you concerns the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. I've heard you say that this nothing is a literal nothing as opposed to a metaphorical usage, such as it is commonly applied to the quantum vacuum. Now, I'm sure you're aware of biblical sayings such as “and he upholds all things by the word of his power,” and “the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things.” Given these and other related verses is it plausible that the nothing could be some aspect of God himself? In fact, could God's power actually be in some sense what we refer to as energy? That would seem to jibe well in light of the equivalence of matter and energy and quantum or string theory with the doctrine that God's power is expressed according to his word. At least it does in my mind, and I've been unable to discern what philosophical considerations are needed to arbitrate this case. Please help me to properly understand the relationship between God's power and the nothing out of which the universe was created.

Dr. Craig: I think this person is still misunderstanding nothing as being a sort of thing – a sort of substance – out of which the universe is formed. And so he thinks, “well, maybe this nothing is part of God; it's energy or something.” No, no. When we talk about nothing we just mean not anything. So to say the universe was created out of nothing doesn't mean there's this stuff called nothingness out of which the universe was made. To say the universe was created out of nothing means, simply, the universe was not created out of anything. It's a purely negative statement. Energy is part of the material universe. It originated in the Big Bang. All matter and energy came into existence at that point, so that energy is itself a created stuff that God has created. It's not a part of God, and to suggest that this is part of God would be to blur the distinction between creation and creator. It would be to lapse into some kind of pantheism, which sees the world as an extension of the being of God, and that would be unorthodox. So we need to keep in mind that the doctrine of creation from nothing simply means that God created the universe but he didn't create it out of anything.

Kevin Harris: What about comparing God's power to energy?

Dr. Craig: Well, not in any physical sense. Only in a kind of metaphorical sense—God has the ability to do things, he's powerful, but not in the sense that Einsteins' equations describe where energy equals the mass times the speed of light squared—that's not what we're talking about.

Kevin Harris:

Dr. Craig: Well, certainly one does have to justify the premises of one's argument. But what I do is give a reason for thinking that if naturalism is true that there doesn't seem to be anything special about human beings that would make them the locus of objective moral value or that we would have objective moral duties. And then I think it's up to the naturalist to provide his alternative. And there are so many of these naturalist theories that one can't be expected to survey them all in defending an argument. Rather you will show their inadequacies whenever the opponent brings them up and says, “Here is a way that we can have objective moral values and duties on a naturalistic view,” and then I have been very forthcoming in criticizing those alternatives, including some of the ones that he's mentioned. Those are alternatives that I've regularly discussed in my written work. So a naturalist is welcome to propose his theory, and then we'll examine it and see whether or not it does secure a basis for objective moral values and duties. [1] I mean, when you look at Sam Harris' view it really is a kind of utilitarian theory. He says that we should act in such a way so as to maximize the flourishing of sentient life, and it is a kind of utilitarian view. What's going to maximize happiness for human persons and other sentient life? So my debate with Sam Harris offered some criticisms of that view.

Kevin Harris:

Dr. Craig: Well, certainly if indeterminacy is real, as on this particular interpretation, then, as Alfred Freddoso, who is the translator of Louis Molina's work into English, has pointed out there will be what Freddoso calls counterfactuals of quantum indeterminacy that are known to God, as well as counterfactuals of creaturely freedom. I would resist the idea of trying to reduce counterfactuals of creaturely freedom to counterfactuals of quantum indeterminacy, as this reader suggests, because on the Copenhagen interpretation these are purely random events and we don't want to say that that's what free will is, is just the random firing of certain neurons. So I don't think that would be a helpful analysis of how God has knowledge of counterfactuals of creaturely freedom, to say he knows them because he knows counterfactuals of quantum indeterminacy. That would make free will just random and that's not what libertarian freedom is. So I want to say that a God endowed with middle knowledge will have knowledge of both counterfactuals of creaturely freedom and counterfactuals of quantum indeterminacy, if quantum indeterminacy is ontic, that is to say, real and not merely epistemic, that is to say in your mind.

Kevin Harris:

Dr. Craig: That's my inclination. I haven't worked on this, Kevin. In fact, I don't know any Christian philosopher that has really explored this area in great depth. It's one that needs to be done. But I would see it as analogous. I would see the logical rules of inference as describing the way a supremely rational mind, namely God, reasons. And this finds biblical precedent in the Gospel of John where Christ is referred to as The Logos who in the beginning was with God and was God. In Greek philosophy the Logos is the reason as well as the spoken word, and I think would suggest that God himself is the ultimate foundation for logic as well as for moral values.

Kevin Harris: From Anaheim, California:

Dr. Craig: Right. The theist will obviously deny the first premise, that it is possible that there is a world in which he exists alone and God does not exist. That just is to say that a maximally great being is impossible. So that is in a sense begging the question, it is just asserting the impossibility of the existence of a maximally great being, to suggest that there is a possible world where you alone exist. So the theist would simply deny that, I don't see any good reason to think that that is possible.

Kevin Harris: Another question along the same lines from the UK:

Dr. Craig: It's simply defined that way. This premise isn't controversial. Maximal greatness is defined to include necessary existence or existence in every possible world, having maximal excellence in every possible world. So that's simply built into the definition of maximal greatness. And the question, then, is: is it possible that a maximally great being exists?

Kevin Harris: Dr. Craig, I think this question kind of synopsizes many thing we've talked about, and will help clarify and review: “Dr. Craig, if the infinite does not exist then how long will Heaven and Hell be?”

Dr. Craig: Oh, here we need to distinguish between the actual infinite and the potential infinite. For something to be actually infinite all of the elements of it must exist. It is complete. There is no process that one is going through. By contrast a potential infinite is always finite. But it's simply growing toward infinity as a limit. Infinity here is not a number, it's a limit concept that something endlessly approaches but never arrives at. So Heaven and Hell are potentially infinite in the sense that they'll go on forever. But there will always be a finite number of years that someone has been in either of those two places, and that number will continue to increase as time passes, but they'll never be there for an infinite amount of time.

Kevin Harris: So the reader needs to understand the difference in what a potential infinite entails.

Dr. Craig: That's right. The distinction between potential and actual is so fundamental. It is so crucial here to understanding many of these issues particularly when you get into the issues related to time because if time is dynamic and temporal becoming is real then while the past is actual the future is unreal, and the progress of a series of events will be potentially infinite in the later-than direction but you never have an actually infinite number of these events. It just grows toward infinity as a limit.

Kevin Harris:

Dr. Craig: I don't use it simply because I'm not a biochemist, Kevin, and haven't specialized in that area. I'm interested in that area and I have read books on the origin of life, I try to have a layman's interest in these issues, but I'm not prepared to go out and debate on these subjects.

Kevin Harris: You seem to bypass all of that by just going to the initial constants.

Dr. Craig: Well, that's a good point. Evolutionary theory has become so emotionally loaded in our culture that I think it's better to strategically simply do an end-run around that whole controverted question and go back to the origins of the universe, and show that the initial conditions of the universe require fine-tuning for our existence that cry out for a designer. And if that's the case, then any additional improbability of life that arises from the origin of life, the origin of consciousness, the rise of biological complexity, that only strengthens the argument for a cosmic designer.

Kevin Harris:

Dr. Craig: I think that what this person has to realize is that when you do natural theology the other side is going to fight back in any argument for the existence of God. You're going to have to defend those premises against criticisms. And there will never come a point of closure. That's just the way it is. And so you have to keep responding to the critics, keep pressing them, and so forth. The second premise rests, I think, on sound philosophical grounds that I've defended, but have to continually defend against criticisms. And I think the scientific evidence for that second premise is also very good, but it's going to need to be defended against different cosmological models that result from speculation. And what he needs to understand in that respect is that there is no model of the universe which is physically tenable and mathematically consistent which has been able to restore an eternal past. Certainly there have been models that can push back the origin of the universe earlier than the Big Bang but they cannot be extrapolated to the infinite past. So there is no model that has commended itself to the scientific community that involves an infinite past. Now, I don't think that's a result that the theist should just ignore. That is a result that is strongly confirmative of the second premise of the kalam cosmological argument. And Jim Sinclair and I in The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology discuss loop-quantum gravity models and insofar as new models will be proposed we'll continue to look at those as well. But the discussion will be endless, that's right. But that's just the nature of doing natural theology.

Kevin Harris: Yeah, it is. And he says, “it's like fighting a many-headed hydra, you cut about ten off and then ten more grow back.”

Dr. Craig: Yeah, welcome to the battle.

Kevin Harris: Welcome to the battle.

Dr. Craig: Same is true of the moral argument, the teleological argument, any argument. It is the nature of philosophical inquiry.

Kevin Harris: I love the two-pronged approach to defending this second premise: scientific, empirical evidence and the philosophical evidence. He concludes by saying: “I wonder if it would be a better strategy to put the logical and philosophical arguments against an actual infinity to the front and center and put the cosmology theory to the background.”

Dr. Craig: Well, I do—right? I lead with those philosophical arguments and I present the scientific evidence as confirmation of these philosophical arguments. But he needs to understand that the philosophical arguments are also disputed by its critics. They're not going to roll over and play dead. But I think, Kevin, this is instructive because I've noticed this in recent discussions. It seems like the philosophical arguments are largely ignored in the current discussion, and I think this is a reflection of the scientism that characterizes the epistemology of many of these unbelievers. They are committed to this reductionistic, scientistic epistemology where you don't believe anything unless it can be scientifically proven, and it's the claim that scientific evidence supports the second premise that so riles them and provokes a response, whereas they feel at liberty to just ignore the philosophical arguments because of their scientism. So I find that interesting, and I want to call them out on this scientism, arguing that that is an inadequate theory of rationality and knowledge, that it's overly-restrictive, and ultimately self-refuting, and that therefore we should not by scientistic in our epistemology. We need to consider the metaphysical arguments as seriously as the scientific arguments.

If he feels more comfortable dealing with philosophical issues than scientific ones, he could focus on the philosophy. But somebody needs to tackle these scientific issues. I think this scientific issue is important, Kevin, because look what these unbelievers are being driven to do. [4]They are being driven by metaphysical and theological motivations to deny a religiously neutral statement—the universe began to exist. Think of that. They are resisting the evidence for a religiously, theologically neutral statement about the universe and its past. And it's clear that the reason they're resisting this is because of the theism that it's taken to imply. And I think that's very instructive, that these people are running from science because of their fear of theism. There is no evidence that the universe is eternal in the past. Even if the evidence for the beginning of the universe isn't conclusive, I'm not aware of any evidence, Kevin, that the universe is eternal in the past. What evidence there is is all on one side of the scale. And so I would encourage Matt not to be cowed by this, but to assert the scientific evidence for premise two.

Kevin Harris: Yeah, especially since he seems to have a good grasp of it.

Dr. Craig: He does.

Kevin Harris: Just because there are going to be all these objections doesn’t mean that he needs to give up the fight.Dr. Craig: I couldn't agree more. [5]