Questions on Skepticism, Consequentialism, and Causality

KEVIN HARRIS: Dr. Craig, we are trying to catch up on some of the questions that we have been meaning to get to in the Q&A. I always want to remind people to go to the Q&A section at ReasonableFaith.org. Not only will you probably find your question there or some version of it, but you will find it interesting as well as you go through those questions. Here are some that we have received, Bill, for you to respond to.

Dear Dr Craig, If you know something then do you know that you know that thing? And if you know that you know that thing, do you know that you know that you know? And so on. The question could be reiterated. For finite human beings it seems that the answer pretty early on in that series of questions is “no.” That would just be a psychological limitation of ours. But what about God? Is the answer “yes” ad infinitum in that potentially infinite series of questions that could be generated? Ray, United States.

DR. CRAIG: I want to commend Ray for noticing this epistemological problem. He is quite right in rejecting this thesis that in order to know something you must know that you know it. Sometimes this is called the KK thesis – for “know that you know.” He's quite right in saying that the KK thesis would generate a vicious infinite regress. What is so significant is that the assumption of this KK thesis lies at the heart of skepticism. When the skeptic says you don't really know that the external world exists or you don't know that moral values are real and objective, the way in which he defends his skepticism is by saying, “How do you know that you know that?” and presents a skeptical argument that you don't know that you know that. As Ray points out, that is not a requirement of knowledge. I can know that the external world exists even if I don't know that I know that the external world exists. Rejecting this KK thesis, as Ray does, skepticism lives on the assumption of this KK thesis. And if it is false, as it clearly is because of the infinite regress it generates, that really cuts the nerve of skepticism. As far as God is concerned, because God is omniscient he knows every truth. So if it is true that P (where P is some proposition), it is also true that it is true that P, and it is true that it is true that it is true that P. So in God's case by knowing all truths he would know that he knows that he knows that he knows that he knows ad infinitum. In God's case this sort of knowledge would obtain.

KEVIN HARRIS: Here's a second question.

Hello, Dr Craig. I really appreciate your groundbreaking work here, especially as a fellow Christian. I would like to ask you about an assertion I heard the late atheist Christopher Hitchens made on the resurrection. He asked if it is more likely that the laws of nature paused themselves at Jesus’ resurrection or that a simple misapprehension was made? He states that if we were to witness someone we knew perish and then see them walking on the street alive and well the next day, we'd be much more reasonable to assume the latter conclusion. He also states that Lazarus was resurrected from the dead and nobody even wrote home. This hasn't done much in terms of my faith, but I was wondering if you had a rebuttal to this assertion? Thank you very much. Liam, United States

DR. CRAIG: Sure. This is just David Hume's old objection to the identification of a miracle – that it will always be more probable that the witnesses were deceived or deceivers than that a miracle actually took place. Apart from other problems with Hume's argument, I think one of the major shortcomings of it is the absence of a significant religio-historical context for the case where you knew someone died and then you saw him walking around the next day. That would appear as a bald anomaly, just a scientific freak that would not be plausibly attributed to a miraculous action of God. But the case of the resurrection of Jesus is radically different in that it occurs within the religio-historical context of Jesus’ own unparalleled life and teachings. His claims to be the absolute revelation of God and then his rising from the dead in confirmation of those claims. Given this religio-historical context, I think that the theological implication that Jesus’ resurrection is to be attributed to a miraculous action of God rather than a misapprehension of the witnesses is entirely justified.

KEVIN HARRIS: Next question,

In your book Hard Questions, Real Answers in the chapter on abortion [I've got the book right there] why not include that the DNA of the fetus is not the same as the DNA of the mother? This cancels the pro-choice argument about the woman doing as she wishes with her body. Did you have a reason for omitting this point? Daniel.

DR. CRAIG: No. No reason. I just argued that the fetus is clearly an independent organism in its own right growing within the uterus of the mother and connected to her as a life support system. You can appeal to DNA if you want to, but you don't need to. I think biologically and medically it's indisputable that the developing fetus is not a part or appendage of the woman's body.

KEVIN HARRIS: Next question,

This site was pointed out to me by a mutual friend whom I asked a basic question about the Christian God. The question goes thus: Does the omniscient Christian God know who will go to hell at the point of creation as he is said to know man even before forming him? If he is omniscient as claimed by his adherents, he surely knows the destination of each being created before creation. Can we thus conclude then that some beings are created purposely to populate the Christian God's hell? If on the other hand the Christian God does not know where the created being is destined, how can the claim of omniscience be justified? K.E., United Kingdom

DR. CRAIG: God, as an omniscient being, must know every and all truths. So if there are truths about future contingents (like who will place his faith in Christ and be saved and who will not) then clearly God knows these from eternity. I think that there are true future contingent propositions and that therefore they are known by God prior to creation. But it would be fallacious to conclude from that that therefore these persons are created purposefully by God to populate hell. Quite the contrary, I think God creates every human being with the purpose of bringing that person into a saving relationship with himself. It is God's absolute will that hell be completely empty of human persons. The only reason that people go there is by willingly rejecting and repudiating God's every effort to save them. So even though God knows that some people will reject him and consign themselves to hell, that is neither his will nor his purpose in creating them.

KEVIN HARRIS: Next question,

Hi, Dr Craig. I am struggling with doubt of my own faith. There seems to be a fundamental philosophical problem underpinning working out the correct faith or religion. I will try to lay it out below. First, multiple different faiths/religions hold to people who are confident that their faith/religion is true and that the evidence points to that conclusion. Second, not everyone is correct in their confidence. Third, therefore most people who are confident in their faith/religion are wrong. Fourth, therefore the probability that I have chosen the correct faith/religion is low. I hope this makes sense. How can I know my belief is true if I know people with equal confidence of differing faiths are equally confident and think their evidence is superior? Aren't I being arrogant to say my confidence trumps their confidence? Joshua

DR. CRAIG: Oh. Joshua shouldn't say that his confidence trumps their confidence. They can be just as confident as he is. But confidence is no indication of truth. People can be very, very confident of all sorts of absurd beliefs. So the question is: Whose beliefs are best supported by the evidence? What Joshua needs to do is to say: Are Christian truth claims better supported by the evidence than, say, Mormon claims or Hindu claims or Islamic claims and so forth? I think they are. Therefore, I think that Christianity is true and it is not correct to say that it is probable that you have chosen the wrong faith or religion. The probability will be based upon which one is supported best by the evidence, not simply by people's subjective confidence. So don't go by the subjective confidence that people have. Look at the evidence that they have, and assess that as to which one best supports the truth claims in question.

KEVIN HARRIS: Here's another question from the United States. This question pertains specifically to matters of natural suffering rather than suffering from matters of human free will. He writes,

When asked about how God can exist simultaneously with evil in the world, you add the premise “God has morally sufficient reasons to allow evil” to justify your position. While I accept that logically this clears things up, it seems to present a new problem: the principle behind the reasoning for this premise is the infamous “the ends justify the means” argument. Applied to the God example, it seems that you would say that natural suffering is allowable because it will lead to something morally good in the end. God sees this when we cannot so he allows it. I've been told to reject the principle of the ends justifying the means in matters of morality due to the negative consequences of adopting this reasoning. Yet it seems this principle is required to justify your argument. How can we argue that God has morally sufficient reasons to allow natural suffering while not falling into the trap of using “the ends justify the means” moral principle? Jake, United States

DR. CRAIG: The issue Jake is raising here is called consequentialism in ethics where you weigh the goodness or the badness of an action on the basis of the consequences that ensue from it. He's quite right in rejecting consequentialism. The claim is not that because something like, say, a terrible disease might lead to good consequences therefore the disease is actually a good thing. That's not the point. Rather, the point is that allowing a bad thing to happen can sometimes be justified by considering the consequences. Even someone who holds to a non-consequentialist view of ethics will say that in decision-making we must consider the consequences of our actions in weighing what is the right or the wrong thing to do. For example, take the dentist drilling on your teeth and inflicting pain on you. The dentist inflicts this awful pain on you, but he does so in order to save your teeth from tooth decay and to promote your dental hygiene. He is exemplifying the principle “love your neighbor as yourself.” He is fulfilling this moral principle, but he also looks to the consequences of his action to see which principle to adopt in a case like this. I think that everyone looks to the consequences in determining which actions they ought to perform, but that doesn't mean you're committed to some kind of consequentialism in ethics. Even the so-called deontologists who operate according to moral principles will pick the principle that in some cases will have better consequences.

KEVIN HARRIS: Next question,

Hi, Dr. Craig. I have a doubt regarding the Kalam cosmological argument. When you say that the cause of the universe is an uncaused first cause, does it imply that the being in question has necessary existence? It seems that there are two possibilities. The cause of the universe is either contingent or independent – exists by a necessity of its own nature. But in the number 690 question of the week, you said that the Kalam does not necessarily imply that the first cause is a metaphysically necessary being. In that case the cause could be contingent, but that contradicts the very notion of an uncaused being. How can a being be uncaused and yet not metaphysically necessary? That seems to suggest that the existence of the cause of the universe could be a brute contingent. Simon, Argentina

DR. CRAIG: I think what Simon is failing to distinguish here is between being logically contingent and being causally contingent. Clearly the uncaused Creator of the universe concluded in the Kalam cosmological argument is not causally contingent. But it doesn't prove that the Creator is broadly logically necessary. It leaves that question open. So when he says “How can a being be uncaused and yet not metaphysically necessary?”, the answer is by not existing in every possible world. A being can be uncaused in every world in which it exists, but maybe it doesn't exist in every possible world and therefore is not metaphysically necessary. The Kalam cosmological argument would demonstrate at most that in any world in which there is a temporal regress of events there will be an uncaused first cause. But suppose you imagine a possible world in which there are no temporal events? Well, then the argument wouldn't apply, and it wouldn't demonstrate a metaphysically necessary being in such a world. I obviously believe that God is a metaphysically necessary being, but I'm simply saying the Kalam cosmological argument doesn't prove that any more than it proves that God is a morally perfect being or that God is an omniscient being. A good theistic argument doesn't need to prove all of the theistic attributes in order to be a good argument for God's existence.

KEVIN HARRIS: Next question,

Dear Dr. Craig, In your book Time and Eternity you talk about God's knowledge being conceptual and not perceptual. In addition to God's knowledge not being perceptual, he also doesn't have eyes. Given these two facts about God, does he know what I look like? Tell, United States

DR. CRAIG: Certainly he knows what Tell looks like insofar as propositional knowledge is concerned. He knows the size of his nose, he knows the color of his eyes, he knows whether he has hair or not. He knows all of the facts about Tell’s appearance. So in that sense, yes, he knows what he looks like. The question I think that Tell is really asking is: Does God have a sort of sensible image of Tell's appearance? Does God have a sort of visual image of the way he looks? There I would say that while that's not required by omniscience, it's not excluded either. And if God wanted to form a mental image of Tell I don't see why he couldn't have such a thing. It wouldn't be a perceptual image because God doesn't have perceptions, but he can form a mental image in his mind just as I can imagine things in my mind like a pink elephant, say.

KEVIN HARRIS: One final question today.

Dear Dr. Craig, I saw an astounding refutation of Molinism on YouTube. While the comment section is quite mean towards the fellow, I think his argument is really good which is that God first has to logically conceive of people before he can create them. So Molinism cannot assume knowledge of counterfactuals prior to creation. I’m curious how the Molinist responds to what he calls the mind of God objection. I can't seem to find anything good online. Jenna, United States

DR. CRAIG: I'm baffled that Jenna would see anything to this argument at all. Of course God has to logically conceive of people before he can create them. The Molinist holds that by God's natural knowledge he knows every possible person he could create and every possible world that he could put together and what people could possibly do in all of those worlds. This is all part and parcel of his natural knowledge. Then by his middle knowledge he knows what those persons would do in various circumstances in which God might place them, and then decides which persons to create and which circumstances to put them in. So there is just nothing here of any substance by way of an objection to Molinism.^[1]