Objections to Belief in God (part 2)

Transcript Objections to Belief in God pt. 2

Kevin Harris: This is the Reasonable Faith podcast. Glad you're here. I'm Kevin Harris in studio with Dr. William Lane Craig. We continue to look at objections to belief in God. Our listeners and readers often send these in to us when they encounter these and need some clarity, and so, Bill, I'd like for you to address a few of these. These are always interesting. Here's a letter than we got. It said,

Dear Dr. Craig, I ran into this objection against the God of the Bible: suppose you ask an omniscient being what number you will write down on a piece of paper. After receiving a reply, you then add one to whatever the being said. So if the omniscient being told you you were going to write seven, then you just write eight. Since the number you write down is not the same as the number given by the omniscient being, this leads to a contradiction. Therefore, omniscience is impossible.

Now, Bill, the writer goes on to say, “My reply was that God could point out what you were doing or what you were going to do, or cause your hand to write the number he says. But I'm really not sure that I have a good reply.”

Dr. Craig: Well, I think his response is very good. This isn't really an argument against God. This could be an argument against, say, some sort of psychic powers, or something of that sort. In fact there's a great deal of literature on this called Newcomb's Paradox where you imagine yourself in a situation where a being is going to predict whether you pick the contents of box 1 or box 2, and if he knows you're going to pick the contents of both boxes then he only puts a thousand dollars in one box and leaves the other one empty, but if he knows you're going to pick just one box then he'll put a million dollars in it, and the idea is should you pick two boxes or one box, knowing that the money has already been placed there by the omniscient being – it's already in there, it's not going to go away whichever you pick – should you pick two knowing in all probability he will have known this and only put a thousand there, or should you pick just one box guaranteeing yourself the million, but knowing that the thousand was in the other box, and that you're going to be given that up at the same time. And there's a huge literature on Newcomb's Paradox, actually, that I've written on as well because it does furnish a kind of analogy of divine omniscience. And I think there's no incompatibility here between free will and omniscience because of what the responder said—there's all sorts of ways in which this could be subverted, such as he suggested. Trickery or you misheard what the being said. You heard him say six, so you write down seven; well, then it will turn out that you actually heard wrong and he really did say seven and you misheard and thought he said six. Because if the being is truly omniscient he cannot be wrong about what number you're going to write down. That's built into the conditions of the argument. So, say the being has predicted that you put down six, and so you go to write down seven, but at the last minute you stumble and make a squirl on the paper and it turns out to be a six, because he knew that's what would happen. So it's not a matter that what the being knows or predicts determines what you write down, it's simply that you can't avoid being known what you're going to do because whatever you do he will have foreknown and predicted it. So you can't falsify his prediction, but that doesn't mean you don't have freedom, nor does it mean that omniscience is impossible. So this is not a problem that is at all unique to religious belief. This is a problem that's widely discussed by philosophers. It also has parallels in time travel because time travel involves these kinds of causal loops where you know what's going to happen in the future and therefore you do something in the past. And these arguments against these things being possible always involve some sort of a logical fallacy in them: that because you won't do something, they infer therefore you can't do something. And that simply doesn't follow.

Kevin Harris: This says,

Dear Dr. Craig, I was in attendance of one of your talks and I had an interesting conversation with one of my philosophy professors the following day about your arguments—he was also in attendance. I don't have a doctorate so I'm probably not stating this right, but my professor said the first thing that was brought up would be that if God truly is a timeless being then how is it possible for him to interact within time.

Let's start with that one.

Dr. Craig: Well, that would depend on your view of time. If you have a so-called B-theory of time, or a static view of time, [1]] all events in space and time – past, present and future – exist, and are spread out like a sort of spatial line. And in that case it's very easy to see how God could be outside the line and could be causing all of the different events on the line. Think of a yard stick, for example, and you exist outside the yard stick and you could be causing things to happen on the one-inch line, the six-inch line, the twelve-inch line, and all “simultaneously”, you would be causing them timelessly without any change on your part. So it would be very easy for you to be timeless and yet causing everything in time. Now, where the real problem arises is if you have a so-called A-theory of time according to which all events are not equally real, but things in the past have elapsed, things in the present exist, and things in the future don't exist yet—they're just purely potential. In that case I don't see how a timeless God could be interacting with the temporal flow of events. It would seem to me that if God is causally related to the temporal flow of events he must be in time. And it's for that reason that I as an A-theorist believe that when God created the universe he entered into time at that moment, so as to sustain causal relationships with the events as they elapse in time. So the professor's argument is correct, but I think he's simply wrong in his assumption that on my view God is timeless. I think that God is timeless without creation, but he's temporal subsequent to the moment of creation.

Kevin Harris: Now, would this change God's nature? Because that would be the objection – wouldn't it? – God's nature is unchanging, he's immutable, and so on. Would there be anything to entering into time that would change that nature?

Dr. Craig: I don't think it would change his nature, Kevin. It would mean that God would have certain contingent properties that would change—for example, knowing what time it is. God would know at one moment it is now 3 o'clock, then a minute later he would know it is now 3:01, and then a minute later it is now 3:02. So he would have changing knowledge of what time it is. But that wouldn’t effect his essential attribute of omniscience, which is knowing everything that is true. Indeed his omniscience would guarantee that his knowledge would change as different propositions become true and others become false because of the passage of time. So I don't think it changes God's nature, it would just mean that God would change in certain non-essential ways.

Kevin Harris: This next questions says,

Dear Dr. Craig, you stated that we must have an explanation for the universe, but that we do not need to explain the explanation. Well, is it possible that the universe is self-sustaining and that it is the explanation that we need no explain. If matter is neither created nor destroyed is it possible for it to be eternal from the singularity which held all of spacetime?

Dr. Craig: I think that the reader is conflating a couple of different arguments, Kevin, and coming up here with a mish-mash that isn't properly delineated. The notion of not needing to explain the explanation arises in response to Richard Dawkins' objection to the argument from design. Dawkins says that it's illegitimate to posit an intelligent designer of the universe because in that case we can also raise the question who designer the designer? And my point in response to Dawkins was in order to recognize intelligent design as the best explanation for the complex order in the universe you don't need to have an explanation of the explanation. You can leave that as an open question for future inquiry, whether or not there is a designer of the designer, but you don't need to forestall the inference to a designer because you don't know who designed the designer. And that's an obvious principle in the philosophy of science. If in order to recognize an explanation is the best you have to have an explanation of the explanation that leads to an infinite regress, because then you need an explanation of the explanation of the explanation, and so on to infinity so that nothing could ever be explained, and science would be destroyed. So my point was merely in response to the Dawkins objection to the design argument that you cannot avert the inference to an intelligent designer of the universe on the basis that you can then raise the question who designed the designer? [2] But when we get to the question of the universe being self-sustaining and self-existent, that is the Leibnizian cosmological argument from contingency that says that everything that exists has an explanation of its existence, either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause. And in that case one does not exempt God from an explanation. On the contrary Leibniz thought there is an explanation for God's existence—namely, God exists by a necessity of his own nature. So in this case you mustn’t confuse that with the response to the Dawkins objection – this is a totally different argument – and in this case one is giving an explanation for God's existence. So what his question is here that would be relevant is “Maybe the universe is metaphysically necessary in its existence? Maybe it is a self-existent being.?” And in my books Reasonable Faith as well as in the book On Guard I go into this hypothesis and offer some arguments against it. Just very briefly, since our time is limited here, anything that exists necessarily and is self-existent would have to exist eternally, it would have to never begin to exist. But the best evidence that we have is the universe did begin to exist, and therefore we know it is not metaphysically necessary because it came into being. Now, I believe you said he addressed that – something about the singularity – what did he say about that?

Kevin Harris: Well, it's actually kind of a – I hear this a lot – it's a confusion of the definition of the first law of thermodynamics, that matter is neither being created nor destroyed, he said, so couldn't that lead to the universe being eternal? Now, the way that the law is, the matter and energy that is, that exists now, is neither being created not destroyed. It doesn’t say anything about whether it had a beginning or where it came from, or anything about it being eternal, it's just saying the matter and energy that we have, that we observe now, is neither being . . .

Dr. Craig: Yes, the conservation law only applies within the spacetime universe. And that's why the Big Bang theory, for example, doesn't constitute a violation of the law of conservation of matter and energy, otherwise – again, this wouldn't be a problem for theism, this would be problem for standard Big Bang cosmology, if the Big Bang theory were in contradiction with the laws of conservation of energy and mass. But it's not because that law only applies once the universe exists. But it doesn't do anything to explain where the universe came from or why the universe came into being, nor does it suggest that the universe exists metaphysically necessarily.

Kevin Harris: He also asks, “didn't all of matter, space and time, wasn't it contained, wasn't it held in the singularity?”

Dr. Craig: That is correct. According to the standard model the entire universe shrinks down as you go back in time until it's compressed into this state of infinite density. But the point is that that's the point at which time begins, that's the point at which the universe begins to exist. It cannot be extended further back and therefore you do have an absolute beginning of the universe before which there was literally nothing, that is to say there was not anything prior to it. So that would show that the universe is not metaphysically necessary in its existence. It began to exist and is not eternal in the past.

Kevin Harris: Final question, here, Dr. Craig: this says,

Dear Dr. Craig, congratulations for your excellent work. My question is about abstract objects. You have argued that realism of abstract objects would be a serious problem to theism. However Thomistic philosopher Edward Fesser, author of the book The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism, has written regarding your opinion on numbers the following (I'll quote his exact words from his blog): 'I don't know why Craig finds this so challenging. The traditional scholastic view is that numbers, like universals, exist as ideas in the divine mind. This view which is a variation on Aristotelian or moderate realism is sometimes called scholastic realism.'”

So why not just hold to scholastic realism, Bill?

Dr. Craig: Well, that is the view, in fact, that I'm inclined toward, but that wasn't the view I was criticizing. What I was talking about is traditional platonism or platonic realism, which thinks of abstract objects as mind-independent realities that exist independently of God and with which God finds himself confronted. [3] God finds himself confronted with an infinity of numbers, for example, and infinity of propositions and properties. And the medieval philosophers recognized the unacceptability of this kind of platonic realism from a Christian point of view because it means that God is ultimately not the source of all reality outside himself, that God is just one among many beings, indeed an infinitesimal part of reality, most of which is uncreated by him. The creation of the physical world is an infinitesimal triviality on this view. And so these medieval philosophers internalized the platonic realm of ideas into the mind of God and made it into the divine ideas. And that I think is an acceptable theological alternative to Platonism. I don't see anything wrong with calling that conceptualism, and I'm surprised that he would think so. That's just a semantic difference in any case. I don't think that it is incorrect to refer to this as conceptualism. And he tends to blend that view with this view of a kind of Aristotelian realism whereby these abstract entities exist in things. Now, again, whether or not that view is acceptable is going to probably depend on what do you do, then, with universals and propositions and numbers that aren’t instantiated in reality, that nothing exemplifies, for example, a certain shade of blue that doesn't characterize anything that exists but nevertheless we can imagine that shade of blue? And I think that probably he would say it exists in the mind of God as an idea that God has, even if there isn't any blue thing in reality that actually exemplifies that property or instantiates it. So that is, I think, theologically acceptable, and I would call it conceptualism and see that as one alternative to the kind of Platonic realism that I was rejecting and which I think he would also reject as theologically unacceptable.

Kevin Harris: Because it would be a problem for theism in that you would have uncreated things being co-equal with God?

Dr. Craig: Well, they wouldn't be co-equal with God because God would obviously have other properties that they would lack, that would make him greater, but (…)

Kevin Harris: I think I should have said co-eternal.

Dr. Craig: Yes, now that's right. They would be co-eternal and they would exist ase, that is to say through themselves or in themselves just as much as God does. They wouldn't be in any way dependent upon God for their existence. It would be as though God just found himself surrounded with this infinity of infinity of infinity of uncreated beings that are just there and that is a kind of metaphysical pluralism that I think is deeply anti-Christian and that certainly the church fathers would have found entirely unacceptable. They thought of God as the only uncreated being and the source of all reality outside himself.

Kevin Harris: So the bottom line is, as we're working all this out, somehow for the Christian or for the theist, that these things are somehow founded in God, rooted in God.

Dr. Craig: Either that or that they don't exist at all. One alternative would be nominalism, to say that these things are just useful fictions, but that the really don't exist at all. And the fictionalist or the nominalist would be very happy to say, sure, God can have ideas about these things. But nevertheless there aren't any such things as abstract objects. On the other hand what he called scholastic realism would say, yes, they do exist, but they are ideas in the mind of God. I think either of these alternatives is theologically acceptable. What's unacceptable is the kind of realism that I described that sees them independent of God.

Kevin Harris: Well, thank you so much for joining us for Reasonable Faith, and we have some great podcasts ahead and planned for you. So come back often to ReasonableFaith.org. And if you want to be a part of us be sure that you look for the many opportunities in your own area to start a Reasonable Faith chapter, and you can also partner with us financially by donating to Reasonable Faith as we continue to expand all over the world. Thank you so much for partnering with us. And just go to ReasonableFaith.org for our resources and for other ways to become a part of us – that's ReasonableFaith.org – and we'll see you next time on Reasonable Faith. [4]