Questions from an Atheist and a Muslim
September 16, 2013 Time: 17:50
Summary
A preview of podcasts on Dr Craig's exciting Australian tour, a question from an atheist on God's 'needing' to create, a Muslim considering Christ, and whether a Christian can properly hold to an eternal universe
Transcript Questions from an Atheist and a Muslim
Kevin Harris: Welcome to the Reasonable Faith podcast with Dr. William Lane Craig. I’m Kevin Harris, and as you can imagine we’ve had many questions about Dr. Craig’s recent Australian speaking tour and his dialogues with Dr. Lawrence Krauss, all of which got very interesting, and there’s a lot to talk about. And we’ll do that beginning next week so stay close. But today we want to finish a series on questions Dr. Craig has received and we’ll look at a few here. They include questions from an atheist on why God would create anything if God has no needs, and therefore a need to create. Also from a Muslim who is considering becoming a follower of Christ, but he has some questions first. And from someone who wonders if a Christian can properly hold that the universe is eternal. So, Bill, let’s look at this first question. It says, “Dr. Craig I would like to preface my question by saying that, while an atheist, I am a huge admirer of yours. I’ve seen many of your debates and I’ve just started to read your works. I just finished Time and Eternity and I’m beginning The Kalam Cosmological Argument. I simply love your concise and rational arguments.”
Dr. Craig: You know, it’s so gratifying, Kevin, to get a letter like this from an atheist reader who exhibits this kind of openness to argument and evidence. It’s so different, for example, from a previous question that we read where the atheist says these arguments are incapable, it’s impossible, for them to convince me because they are based upon assumptions and conceptions that I, as an atheist, simply do not accept. Just completely closed-minded. Whereas a fellow like this, I think, exhibits an openness to argument that is really commendable.
Kevin Harris: He says, “My question will begin as follows: why would God create the universe or anything at all? Any action, as far as I can reason, can only be out of need or desire. Need infers some sort of shortcoming that requires remedy, and desire is the subjective fulfillment of some sort of need. Because God is the greatest imaginable being he must be devoid of any of these anthropomorphic shortcomings. My mind is by no means immanent but all I can reason is that God’s omnibenevolence would somehow superseded the lack of want or desire to create the gift of life. But I cannot reason past that because God would have to have a need to fulfill that intrinsic void and because the greatest imaginable being would not have needs; that would seem illogical.”
Dr. Craig: I certainly would agree with him that I think that God cannot create out of some need or lack in his being. He’s entirely self-sufficient; he doesn’t need creation to fulfill some need in his own person. But I do not think that we should define the word “desire” in such a way that it involves the fulfillment of some sort of a need. It seems to me that a person can have a desire for something good without having some sort of a need involved. And I would say, in the case of God’s creation, God creates because he desires to confer an inestimable benefit upon created persons; namely, the privilege of knowing God himself who is infinite goodness and love, the greatest good, the paradigm of goodness. So God does not create finite persons out of a need in himself; he creates finite persons so that they might have the privilege and the joy of knowing infinite goodness. So creation, like salvation I think, is wholly of grace. It is the grace of God extended to created persons that they would have the privilege of knowing God.
Kevin Harris: And that certainly wouldn’t entail a lack or a void.
Dr. Craig: Exactly, not at all. It’s a free decision of God to confer a benefit of just inestimable worth upon these created persons, a benefit that he is free to confer or not to confer; it’s up to him to do this. Now some people I’ve heard, Kevin, have objected to this solution by saying it’s logically incoherent because you cannot confer a benefit on someone who doesn’t exist, and since these created beings don’t exist yet God’s motivation cannot be to confer a benefit on them.[1] But I think that that objection is fallacious. The claim isn’t that there are beings upon whom God wants to confer a benefit; that would be incorrect. But it rather is that God has the desire to confer a benefit on beings that he will create. And there’s nothing about that that’s incoherent. Indeed, we do it all the time. Think of people, Kevin, for example, who plant a forest that will never come to maturity in their own lifetime but they do it for the benefit of future generations of human beings who do not exist. They’re clearly planting this forest for the benefit of persons that do not at the time exist. Or grandparents who establish a mutual fund for the college expenses of their grandchildren that their young children have not yet sired. Perhaps their children have just married and have no children yet but as a wedding present the parents establish this fund, this investment fund, for the benefit of their grandchildren so that when they are born they will have sufficient money to go to college. I think it is perfectly sensible to say that one can do an action with a view toward conferring a benefit on someone who does not yet exist, but will exist. And, similarly, I think we can say that God creates the world for the reason that he wants to confer this inestimable benefit upon persons that he will create, namely the benefit of knowing God himself. So it’s not out of a need that he has that he creates; it is for the benefit of others.
Kevin Harris: This next question says, “Hello, Dr. Craig. I would first like to acknowledge your intellectual and humble manner in defending Christianity. I am a Muslim and I have a few questions for you about Islam that you might answer. I would tremendously appreciate it if you could answer back. I’m on the brink of considering Christianity but I want answers. Number one, is it true Muhammad took the Gospel of Jesus from the Bible and twisted or perverted it for his own benefits?”
Dr. Craig: Well, let’s begin with each of these questions one at a time. I’m very glad that our listener is considering the Christian faith for himself. I studied Islam as my side area of expertise when I did my theological doctorate in Germany, and have a great deal of interest in Christian-Muslim dialogue in these questions. And I don’t think that it’s true that Muhammad took the Gospel of Jesus from the Bible and twisted or perverted it for his own benefits. It seems to be that Muhammad had no firsthand acquaintance with the New Testament at all. Instead, it seems that what he heard was simply oral traditions and probably got to know certain Christians living in the Arabian Peninsula, perhaps monks, and talked to them. But when you read the Qur’an the portrait (or the caricature, rather) that it gives of Christianity is so distorted that I think it’s highly unlikely that Muhammad ever actually had a New Testament or had a Bible. So he didn’t take these teachings from the Bible and then deliberately twist or pervert them for his own benefits. I think he was probably misinformed and misunderstood the Christian traditions he was receiving. For example, it was affirmed by Christians at that time that Mary is the mother of God. Now what they meant by that was that Mary gave birth to Jesus of Nazareth, who was God. But Muhammad took this to mean that Mary is a member of the Trinity, that God the Father and Mary copulated to sire the third member of the Trinity – Jesus. And that is just a gross distortion of Christian teaching. And so in the Qur’an you have this misunderstanding of the doctrine of the Trinity that probably isn’t the result of maliciousness but just misinformation and misunderstanding.
Kevin Harris: It sounds like our Muslim friend here has encountered some people who are throwing some things at him, like that number one there, so I’m glad we’re addressing this, Bill. Number two, he says, “Does Islam have an experiential reality like modern day miracles or visions from Muhammad? If so, what is the best explanation for that?”
Dr. Craig: Well, I think certainly in certain segments of Islam there is an experiential reality. For example, Sufism is a mystical branch of Islam that has great emphasis upon subjective mystical experiences of the divine. And I think what one would want to say there is that not all non-Christian religious experiences are invalid or counterfeit.[2] For example, insofar as the Muslim has a sense of the holiness of God or the transcendence of God, or that God is the creator of all things and we are dependent upon him moment by moment for our existence, we can affirm the authenticity of that sort of religious experience. But where we would disagree, I think, would be in saying, for example, that there are genuine authentic visions from Muhammad that have been given. I think in cases like this we would regard these are spurious and either hallucinatory or in some other way delusory. There are a wide range of religious experiences in the world, and there’s no reason to think that all of them are veridical or authentic.
Kevin Harris: His third and final question says, “If I became a Christian and asked God sincerely to reveal Jesus to me in a supernatural form, will it happen?’
Dr. Craig: I don’t think that we can answer that question, Kevin. It might happen, but then again it might not. This is God’s prerogative as to whom he will give a special revelation. Certainly many, many Muslims who have become Christians in our day and age have experienced remarkable dreams or visions of Jesus in which he appeared to them and told them who he is. But I think it would be presumptuous to say that if you ask for this that you will receive it. Indeed, I think there is a danger here of a kind of idolatry of placing the supernatural experience and the desire for it above God himself. It is God whom we are to seek not a spiritual experience of God, and if God wills to give us that spiritual experience, well and good, we can be grateful for it and thankful, but I do not think that we can presume to say that if we ask for such an experience that God will definitely give that to us.
Kevin Harris: Bill, I have personally talked to two former Muslims who had some amazing encounters with Jesus.
Dr. Craig: Yes, I have too.
Kevin Harris: I have no reason to doubt them, but it’s still anecdotal. But looking behind his question here I’m wondering what he’s seeking here; you’ve given him good advice . . .
Dr. Craig: Well, I suggest that he has heard these stories, too, from Muslim background believers . . .
Kevin Harris: So he’s like, “Why not me?”
Dr. Craig: Yes, why not me? I would like to have such an experience. Who wouldn’t? But I’m just very cautious about making promises to our friend here that we can’t guarantee.
Kevin Harris: What would you tell him, then, in his seeking?
Dr. Craig: I would say to seek God sincerely and to read the Gospels. To read the Gospels of the New Testament and ask God to speak to him as he reads them to tell him whether or not this is the truth about God.
Kevin Harris: One more question, this says, “Dr. Craig, is there any reason a devout Christian cannot believe that the universe has always existed? The universe exists in time, unlike God, and thus can never be considered eternal. The universe is or was not created in a temporal continuum that already existed; rather, God created time with the universe and could easily configure both so that the universe (as seen by humans) has no origin. I favor this perspective because so many educated Christians treat God’s act of creation as a physical action and identify it with the Big Bang. This seems like materialism and pantheism to me.”
Dr. Craig: This question seems internally incoherent, Kevin. Is there any reason, he asks, a devout Christian cannot believe that the universe has always existed? Now I take it he’s saying there, can a devout Christian believe the universe is eternal? And my answer to that would be: no. A Bible believing Christian has to believe in creation out of nothing, that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, that is to say, the universe. And then he goes on to suggest that himself. He says, the universe can never be considered eternal; the universe wasn’t created in time, rather God created time together with the universe; that’s classical Christian theology. So we seem to agree there that the biblical Christian cannot believe that the universe is eternal but should believe that God has created the universe. But then he says, so many educated Christians seem to treat God’s act of creation as a physical action and identify it with the Big Bang, this implies materialism and pantheism-- how so?[[3] Maybe he doesn’t understand the Big Bang. According to the Big Bang theory(at least the standard model), all matter and energy and space and time themselves came into being at the initial cosmological singularity, and there is nothing before that. That is the beginning of time and the universe. So that is perfectly in accord with standard Christian theology. Far from being materialism and pantheism, this subverts materialism and pantheism because it shows that matter is not eternal, it is not self-explanatory, it came into being and therefore requires a transcendent cause. It subverts pantheism because it shows that the world is not divine, the world is a created object and requires a transcendent creator who is distinct from the universe. So the evidence for the standard model is powerful reason to reject materialism and pantheism in favor of the biblical view that the universe was created by a transcendent creator.
Kevin Harris: Bill, if I’m discerning something in his question here, this is something that really bothers me. It’s this whole idea that God is deceptive, that he creates things with an appearance, like for example, an appearance of age, or as he’s saying here, rather, God created time with the universe and could easily configure both so that the universe as seen by humans has no origin. That wouldn’t serve as knowledge, that would be unfalsifiable deception. And yet Psalm 19 says that the heavens declare the glory of God, and they give knowledge, and they speak truth. So we can look at the observable universe and ascertain God’s glory.
Dr. Craig: Yes. So what you’re saying is that, while it would certainly lie within God’s power to create a universe that appeared to have existed from eternity when in fact it came into being, say, five minutes ago or thirteen billion years ago, that that would be incompatible with the goodness of God because it would be deceptive. It would make God a liar, in effect.
Kevin Harris: Psalm 19 says, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard; their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.[4]