Dialogue With Michael Ruse

KEVIN HARRIS: Bill, of all the podcasts you’ve been invited on, this may be one of my favorites. In fact, it may be one of your favorites. You were a guest on Bryan Callen’s podcast with Dr. Michael Ruse.^[1] It was informative, it was entertaining, and quite meaningful. Is that the feeling that you got?

DR. CRAIG: Yeah, it was. I was surprised at how well this dialogue went. I really enjoyed it. It was conversational, friendly, and yet very substantive. I thought it was really one of the best that I’ve done.

KEVIN HARRIS: You have some history with Michael Ruse. Anyone who reads your work has seen his name come up. Fill us in on Michael Ruse.

DR. CRAIG: Years – decades, in fact – ago, one of the very first debates I ever participated in was a debate on a Canadian university campus with Michael Ruse. It went really well. I was very excited about it. But, unfortunately, the recording failed! As a result, it was lost to posterity. So I was really happy for the opportunity to go toe-to-toe with Michael Ruse again and to have a recording of our exchange.

KEVIN HARRIS: The title of the episode is, “Why Believe in God?” But the three of you never got to that topic. You ended up talking about Christianity and the nature of truth and ultimate meaning. Michael Ruse claimed to be an agnostic who nevertheless retains his Quaker upbringing. If one looks up Quakerism, there is a distinction in their theology involving an immediate experience of God or hearing directly from God. Do you think that is what Dr. Ruse referred to as a mystical influence on his philosophy?

DR. CRAIG: Yes. Quite definitely. He's very explicit about that, that his Quaker upbringing has made him favor a theology that is mystical and really a-rational. He has no use for arguments for the existence of God or even for the articulation of doctrinal truths about God. All that matters to him is simply a mystical experience.

KEVIN HARRIS: Let's go to this first clip where Dr. Ruse talks about his atheism as a student and where he is today. Clip number one.

DR. RUSE: By the time I left there and went to university, I was still a believer but, you know, one day I just woke up and said, “I don't think I believe in God.” I really thought that by the time I'm 70 I'll be back onside, like Anthony Flew was. You know, you get to 70 you can't afford to make mistakes. So I thought I'd be back onside. What absolutely amazed me was that I did not feel that at 70. I did not feel that at 80. However, what I have found, and I think it's always been there, but increasingly at this age these sort of moral messages – spiritual messages – that I got from Quakerism as a child have become more and more pressing. They've always been pressing, but they're more and more pressing. Now please understand, the one thing I'm not doing is substituting some kind of humanism for my Christianity. I hate humanists. I don't hate . . . I always say you can't hate Christianity. You just can’t. I sure as hell can hate humanists because I think that's just a cop-out. So, as I say, I'm an agnostic. A final word I'll say is in many respects I'm attracted to what is apophatic theology – one can say what God is not, but one can’t say what God is.

KEVIN HARRIS: He mentions Anthony Flew there. He also hoped that he himself would come back to full theism by the time he was 70. Apparently he did not.

DR. CRAIG: Right. And he said again by the time he reached 80 he hadn't come back. But, you know, I was at least encouraged to hear that he's thinking about it. It would be just wonderful if late in life he were to turn about and give his life to Christ in faith.

KEVIN HARRIS: Here's the next clip in which he talks about the resurrection. Let's go to that clip.

DR. RUSE: I don't think my doubting a physical resurrection actually comes from science at all. I think once again it's very much part of my Quakerism. For me, I'm fully prepared to accept on that Sunday at some point the disciples were sitting around feeling absolutely dreadful and downcast and then suddenly they said, “Our Savior lives!” and it all changed. I don't give a damn whether that was a physical resurrection – I doubt it was – or whether it was psychological or what. What's relevant is the meaning, and as far as I'm concerned that's about . . . the resurrection, whether or not I want to read into it what Bill Craig wants to read into, is another matter. But I have no problems with the resurrection. I have problems with the idea that miracles must involve change of law. But it’s not even a question whether or not the laws are broken. It's just the irrelevance of the question of whether or not the laws are broken.

BRYAN CALLEN: Right. Dr. Craig, why isn't it possible for you to accept that maybe Christ was speaking in metaphor and the resurrection is a metaphor? And why can't you be a good Christian to believe that Jesus didn't have to physically resurrect but rather there was a metaphorical resurrection? There was a spiritual resurrection. There was a resurrection within our hearts which we have all the time. Right? So why is it that we can't just speak in metaphor when we talk about Christ's resurrection? Why does it have to be the physical resurrection?

DR. CRAIG: I think fundamentally it's because that's not the way the historical sources present it.

KEVIN HARRIS: You went on to elaborate your point about what the historical sources tell us. I think that that's something that they both needed to hear.

DR. CRAIG: Yeah. It's funny with Michael Ruse how his views are not shaped by his philosophical thinking or scientific thinking. It's his Quakerism that still seems to pervade his religious thinking. So he prefers to think about the resurrection as a metaphor even though that's not the way the historical sources present it. They present it as an event of history that left public tangible evidences in its wake such as the empty tomb of Jesus. N. T. Wright, the British New Testament scholar, has been especially emphatic that the Christian movement came into being suddenly in the middle of the first century and any historical hypothesis needs to present a causally sufficient account for the origin of this movement. I think that it's utterly implausible to say that after Jesus’ crucifixion these Jewish men were just sitting around and, as Michael Ruse said, they suddenly said, “Oh, he lives!” and went out to believe in a purely metaphorical resurrection. That is not an accurate account of the early Christian movement.

KEVIN HARRIS: Here's the next clip where he talks more about metaphor and meaning in Scripture. Let's go to that one.

DR. RUSE: The Bible speaks allegorically. It doesn't mean to say it's false in any sense. It doesn't mean to say . . . but it does mean that this is a story but the real part of the story is the meaning. I would go back straight away to the resurrection. I mean, these people had not done Philosophy 101 so I don't expect the disciples or any others to be able to make the kind of distinction that I'm making. I mean, I'm not pushing myself up. I mean, I'm repeating arguments of others, but I would say this kind of argument – they wouldn't be able to grasp it properly. So I find nothing odd at all in the story of Jesus rising from the dead and that sort of thing, but I take it that's the same sort of level as God creating the sun on the first day but not day and night until the third or fourth day. It doesn't mean the Bible is false either in Genesis or in the four Gospels.

KEVIN HARRIS: There is metaphor in Scripture. People often ask us to distinguish metaphor from literal when reading the Bible.

DR. CRAIG: Yeah. And here, again, we just see the incredible naivete of this sophisticated philosopher. He doesn't seem to understand literary genre or literary interpretation. While the stories in Genesis, I think, do have at least a quasi-mythical character, that is not an accurate genre analysis of the Gospels which are closest to ancient biography which definitely have a historical interest. So it would be completely unrealistic to try to treat the narratives of the life of Jesus including the resurrection as myths. In fact, in an article written by James D. G. Dunn on mythology in the New Testament he said an article like this isn't even relevant anymore to New Testament scholarship because even though perhaps back in the 19th century or early 20th century this was a relevant category that was discussed he says we have now seen the eclipse of mythology in New Testament historical Jesus research. Scholars have come to realize that these are biographical, historical accounts that you cannot equate with myth.

KEVIN HARRIS: Let's go to the next clip where Bryan asked about the search for truth. Next clip.

BRYAN CALLEN: Is the idea of looking for truth – and I'm saying objective truth – worth it? Worth the effort?

DR. RUSE: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. But obviously we differ over what is objective truth. I mean, I'm getting the feeling that we're in a Kuhnian situation here, that we've got two paradigms and they're incommensurable. It doesn't mean that Bill Craig is stupid. It doesn't mean that. It means that he's seeing from one perspective – the rabbit, you know? – and I'm seeing the other perspective – the duck. I have a feeling . . . I want to talk about objective truth just as much as Bill does, but if I were a Christian I would be absolutely committed to the idea of objective truths; that, yes, Christ did rise. But what did that mean? It meant that the disciples felt in their hearts and in their minds that their Savior had not left them. He was there. He was supporting them, and he was obviously telling them, “You can't just sit on your bums now, folks. This story is only just beginning. You've got to go out and do something about this.”

KEVIN HARRIS: Let me just emphasize what you were saying earlier. Dr. Ruse earlier said how dreadful the disciples must have felt. So he's acknowledging the historical narrative, but he goes on to say that once they had this psychological impression of Jesus’ non-physical resurrection that they could go forth and do something about it, as he says. For the life of me, I can't imagine that they would get together after the brutal execution of Jesus by the very people Messiah was to overthrow and say, “Let's have a good attitude about this whole thing, and go get ourselves tortured and executed too.”

DR. CRAIG: Yeah. That's a completely unrealistic and inadequate account of the origin of the Jesus movement in mid-first century Palestine. This is Ruse's Quakerism and biblical naivete that's coming to expression here, not an informed and serious account of the historical narratives.

KEVIN HARRIS: Let me just mention as well – he was talking about the rabbit and the duck. Some people are familiar with that famous photo where it's just a difference in perspective looking at the same thing.^[2]

DR. CRAIG: Yes. I think that probably went by a lot of people in the audience. I completely disagree with him about this, and was really surprised to hear him as a sophisticated philosopher of science endorse Thomas Kuhn’s contention in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions that science proceeds on the basis of incommensurable paradigms; that is to say, they cannot be evaluated objectively, and scientific change comes about simply because the Old Guard dies off and the new Turks come to assume the professorships. Kuhn’s hypothesis about theory-change has been almost universally rejected by contemporary philosophers of science. It certainly provides no credible model for religious beliefs about Christianity and the historical Jesus.

KEVIN HARRIS: Cosmology, consciousness, and meaning comes up in this next clip. Let's check it out.

DR. RUSE: My position, very Quakerly, almost mysticism appeals to me. . . . Why is there something rather than nothing? I don't think that's a stupid question like Wittgenstein and others thought. I think it's a perfectly meaningful question. It's just – I have no answer to it. I just have no answer to it. As J. B. S. Haldane said, not only is the world queerer than we think it is, it's queerer than we could think it is. For me, something like body-mind is – that’s a miracle! Why the hell can molecules think? And don't give me all this stuff about Dan Dennett and materialism or others. Dick Humphrey and emergentism. That don't work. I mean, we've got a real mystery there like quantum entanglement. So I find this a very mysterious world that we live in. I don't think, however, that that guarantees that there's going to be a hereafter. I would think it likely as not we're going to have what Socrates called – what was it? – an eternity of dreamless sleep or something along those lines. If you were to ask me to put my money on it. But I just don't know. So for me, what makes my life meaningful in a way is – it's a mystery. So now the question becomes: What do I, Michael Ruse, do in this? Do I go with saying simply, like Camus said, it's all absurd? Or do I say I'm going to make some meaning out of my life here and now?

KEVIN HARRIS:  Dr. Ruse seems to have a cheerier outlook than Camus or Bertrand Russell. Bill?

DR. CRAIG: I'm just amazed that here we have this sophisticated philosopher of science whose views about reality are just shaped by his personal feelings and opinions. Did you notice in that clip there was not a single argument given for the conclusion he believes in. He just attributes it to his Quaker upbringing as a child. These are opinions that really are like the uninformed opinions of a layperson. It just baffles me that he has no rational basis for what he believes, but is just what appeals to him.

KEVIN HARRIS: In this next clip, Dr. Ruse brings up John Hick as well as the problem of the unevangelized. Next clip.

DR. RUSE: Well, let me just swing round on that and bring up two things. One that troubled John Hick a great deal who, incidentally, became a Quaker at the end of his life and went to the same school that I went to.

DR. CRAIG: And was my doctoral mentor!

DR. RUSE: He didn’t have the bloody awful headmaster I had. Anyhow, how do you deal then with a Buddhist who grows up totally ignorant of Judaism, of Jesus, of any of these things, but nevertheless, as we look at their life objectively, we want to say, yes, that truly was a good person? They cared about others. They utterly cared about their family. They tried to tell the truth. They tried to help others. All of these sorts of things. But they did it in total ignorance of Jesus or any of these things. Now, that's one problem I have. Of course the other one is the problem of evil – how on earth do you [explain] your God with Heinrich Himmler?

KEVIN HARRIS: What was the crux of your response?

DR. CRAIG: As I recall, what I said was that God judges people on the basis of the light that they have and someone who's never heard the Gospel of Christ will not be judged on the basis of his response to Christ. That would be manifestly unfair. Rather, he would be judged on the basis of his response to God's general revelation in nature and conscience. Now, I want to emphatically say that doesn't mean that he could be saved apart from the atoning death of Christ. It would just mean that he could be a beneficiary of Christ’s atoning death without having a conscious knowledge of Christ. He would be like people in the Old Testament (like Abraham and Noah) who had no knowledge of Jesus Christ and yet were beneficiaries of Christ's atoning death because they responded appropriately in faith to the light and the revelation that God had given them.

KEVIN HARRIS: Process theology comes up in this next clip, and a few other theological terms. Let's go to the next one in this conversation.

DR. RUSE: At a certain level I find myself almost sympathetic to process theology at this point. God is struggling along with the rest of us at some sort of level. I'm not saying I believe this, but I do find aspects of it very attractive. The thought that when Anne Frank is dying in Bergen-Belson, God is there suffering with her.

DR. CRAIG: Oh, yes! I would affirm that as well. I don't believe in the impassable deity of Thomas Aquinas.

BRYAN CALLEN: I’m sorry. What is the impassable deity?

DR. RUSE: Aren’t you cherry-picking the Christian beliefs you want?

DR. CRAIG: No, no. I take the New Testament, I take the revelation in Scripture, as my norm for Christian doctrine. And the things that it clearly affirms, I will affirm. But the things that it leaves open is a matter for philosophical and theological debate.

KEVIN HARRIS: Process theology? You might want to talk a little bit about that. And Bryan wanted to know what the impassable deity of Aquinas was.

DR. CRAIG: For Aquinas, God cannot suffer. He is completely unmoved by things in the world. I don't see that doctrine taught in the New Testament. It's so strange to me to hear Michael Ruse saying that you're just cherry-picking the things you want to believe because it seems to me that's his method. He finds something attractive and so he chooses to believe that without any sort of argument or rational basis. Whereas for me as a Christian, as I say, Scripture is the rule of faith. It is the teaching of Scripture that determines the content of faith, and if Scripture leaves a question open then that is open to debate and discussion. I think with respect to, say, a doctrine like divine timelessness, that would be an example of something that Scripture leaves open to debate.

KEVIN HARRIS: The multiverse and meaning comes up in this next clip. We have a couple of more clips. Let's go to this one.

DR. RUSE: Well, of course, if you have multiverses I don't see any issue about multiverses being created or however it is coming into being on a temporal basis. We know that our universe has a temporal basis, doesn't it? What is it – 18 billion years ago or whatever. This is part of the problem, I think, where we are divided. For you there is a meaning to it all with a capital M. This is all important for you, and this is how you put your perspective. Whereas I really am an existentialist. I don't have that comfort, if you like. I think that if you want to say life is meaningless at some sort of level; however, I don't think (as I was saying) I don't think that means there's no meaning or anything like that. I just feel that we've got to recast the way we think. Even if you're right, for me I would rather go my way than, as it were, say it's really important to get onside before it's too late. This is my problem. I just don't have that – what is it? – Sensus divinitatis that Plantinga is alway going on about. As I say, I'm not an atheist. If anything, apophatic theology suits me. I can say that God is not Michelangelo's God holding out his hand to Adam and a lot of other things. I mean, obviously I don’t think God is just like a human writ large. Because if he is then I don't know how the hell you could explain Hitler.

KEVIN HARRIS: Even if you're right he still prefers his way.

DR. CRAIG: Yes. As I said, it just baffles me that this philosopher simply chooses to believe the views that he finds most attractive. He's candid about that. He admits it. When he speaks of apophatic theology, some of our listeners might not be familiar with that term. That means the sort of way of negation. You can say what God is not, but there is no positive content of what God is. And because of his Quakerism, Michael Ruse finds this apophatic theology very attractive. Does he have any reasons to think that it's true? No. But, as he says, this is what he's inclined toward.

KEVIN HARRIS: Here's the final clip. And Bryan asks again about meaning. Let's go to this clip.

BRYAN CALLEN: But, Dr. Ruse, you are looking for meaning. The whole point of this conversation and your life and asking these questions and studying the leaders of thought in all these fields, I believe it points to the fact that you are in one way or another at least trying to get closer to something like the truth or get closer to being more right than you were wrong. So what is that direction? If we were to extrapolate that direction that you seem to have dedicated your life to. Isn't that where you're looking for meaning? Aren't you in the direction of truth when you're trying to do that? Because you are agnostic, but you are pretty religious in some ways, it sounds like. It is hard to get out of this trap. I don't think that you are a man who says it's all meaningless. I don't believe that. You wouldn't be having this conversation if it was.

DR. RUSE: I take the challenge of the metaphysical meaningless of the whole thing to be a challenge as to don't give up. Don't just sit on your bottom and like the chap in the A. A. Milne story – you know, he sat on his bottom until he was saved. No. I think what we try to do is make meaning of our life as it is. I would say serving others. Also inquiring about the world. Epistemology and ethics. I think you can make for a very meaningful life. Dear God, this last hour, anybody who says that this has just been meaningless or something like that – well, you know, they’d flunk. I’m not their pastor. Maybe you would because you are a Christian and nicer than I am. But as far as I'm concerned what we’ve been doing is something which is tremendously meaningful. It's not meaningful with a capital M.

DR. CRAIG: I think it is! I’ll say it with a capital M.

KEVIN HARRIS: Well, you found the conversation quite meaningful.

DR. CRAIG: Meaningful in an objective sense and not just a subjective sense. I think Michael Ruse – my heart just breaks for him. I think he is so deeply conflicted. On the one hand he admits there is no ultimate meaning to life. Life is meaningless ultimately. But we can manufacture our own subjective illusory meanings in life for ourselves. And then in the next breath he condemns Heinrich Himmler for the atrocities that he commits. Michael Ruse says serving others can be your subjective meaning in life. But what about the Heinrich Himmler who says that the meaning in life is to purify the Aryan race by killing off all of the Jewish contaminants. On Ruse's view there is no way to say that one man's meaning is legitimate and the other person's is not. You are lost in a chaos of relativism and ultimate meaninglessness. I do not understand why he finds that view attractive much less why he would find that view to be true.

KEVIN HARRIS: As we wrap up today, another reason I found this to be a tremendous dialogue, not just because of the content, but some of my family members were listening to me edit these clips from Michael Ruse and Bryan Callen. They said, “Man, we're glad we have Dr. Craig who can actually go on with an atheist show host and an agnostic philosopher and do a good job with them. Answer their questions and give them some stuff to think about.” So kudos to you, Bill, for that. Apparently you scheduled one more dialogue after this, and so people can find it on YouTube.

DR. CRAIG: Yes, that's right. Bryan Callen at the end of the podcast said, “Let's schedule a round two in which we will discuss ‘Why believe in God?’”, and so I did that this past week. So there's actually two parts to this interview with Michael Ruse. But I want to say that Bryan Callen himself is not an atheist. He, I think, believes in God. He makes that clear. He's not yet a Christian, but he is really asking the deep questions about the meaning of life and the truth of Christianity. I think we can hope and pray for both of these men in their respective spiritual journeys.

KEVIN HARRIS: By the way, if you have not downloaded the Reasonable Faith app, be sure you do that. Go to ReasonableFaith.org. You can download it and have instant access to all the resources from Reasonable Faith right there on your device. While you are at ReasonableFaith.org, please consider giving a financial gift to the work of Reasonable Faith to help us continue to produce great content like this that reaches the world. Thanks so much. We’ll see you next time on Reasonable Faith with Dr. William Lane Craig.^[3]