Questions on the Unevangelized, Atheism, and God's Favorite Color

KEVIN HARRIS: Bill, we have questions from people from different parts of the world and various countries today that have come in to ReasonableFaith.org. Let’s look at a few of these. This first question says,

Dr. Craig, A man lived his entire life in a remote jungle with his tribe, disconnected with the rest of the world. As he surveyed the world he recognized patterns, coherence, harmony, paradox, and beauty. His wrestling ultimately led him to believe that this world belongs to a Creator. The man feared the Creator, for the Creator was an infinite being powerful enough to create the endless skies and countless stars. The all-knowing Creator likely knew the secret matters of the man's heart. The man came to the conclusion that if there is anyone he must be on good terms with, it would be the Creator. Years went by and the man faced the damning reality that he simply cannot be blameless in sight of his Creator. The best action the man could take was asking the Creator for forgiveness. According to Christian doctrine, what can you say about this man's eternal destiny?

This is from Anwu in the United States.

DR. CRAIG: I would answer Anwu's question by saying that, although there is a diversity of Christian views about this subject, my own personal view is that this man would be saved by his faith in the Creator through the blood of Christ applied to him without his having a conscious knowledge of Christ. He would be like persons in the Old Testament who had never heard of Christ but who were responsive to the light of revelation that God had given them. They were beneficiaries of Christ's atoning death without having a conscious knowledge of Christ. So this man would not be saved by his good works; on the contrary, he would be saved by recognizing there was nothing he could do to save himself and simply flinging himself upon the mercy of the Creator and asking for forgiveness. It seems to me that in Romans chapter 1 and 2 Paul says that this is precisely the sort of person whom God will save on the Judgment Day.

KEVIN HARRIS: Question number two says,

Dear Dr. Craig, I have a question about how or if multiplied probabilities are to be applied to the premises of an argument. For example, for the kalam cosmological argument, let's say that I find the first premise to be fairly convincing. We might even say I find it 60% subjectively convincing. The same for the second premise. In finding both premises 60% convincing, am I logically required to find the conclusion 60% true? It seems to me that if the first premise has a 60% chance of being true and the second premise has a 60% chance of being true then it would follow that for both premises to be true would only be about 36% due to multiplied probabilities, and I would be logically required to reject the conclusion. This would be sad because it would mean that (1) for the kalam we would need for each premise to be at least 70% true, and (2) for arguments in general, the more premises an argument has, the less likely it would be true in general. I'm sure this is not the way arguments work, but I can't see where I've gone wrong, and this seems to undercut the power of all these wonderful arguments we have for God's existence. Charles in the United States

DR. CRAIG: Charles is quite right when he says “I'm sure this is not the way arguments work.” This would undermine virtually all deductive reasoning. In a deductive argument, the probability of the conclusion is not equal to the probability of the conjunction of the premises. Rather, the probability of the conjunction of the premises sets a lower bound (or lower limit) on the probability of the conclusion. So the conclusion could be much, much more probable than the probability of the conjunction of these premises but it could not be lower than the probability of the conjunction of the premises. So Charles doesn't need to be concerned that this is going to undercut the power of these various arguments for God's existence because all you are computing is the lower bound (or lower limit) for the probability of the conclusion. I would add, secondly, though that in the case of the arguments that I defend, I think that the probability of the conjunction of the premises is higher than 50%. Take the kalam cosmological argument. I think that the probability of the first premise (that whatever begins to exist has a cause) is virtually 100%. With all due respect to skeptics, it seems to me that it is virtually certain that things don't come into being from nothing, and that anything that begins to exist therefore has a cause. So if the second premise then has a probability of, say, 60% or 70% then the lower bound on the conclusion is going to be equal to the probability of that second premise. The lower bound on the probability of the conclusion will be 60% or 70%. So the argument is guaranteed to make the conclusion more probable than not. I think when you look at the arguments that I offer for God's existence, they will follow that pattern – that the premises when you conjoin them together I think generally have a probability that is considerably higher than 50%.

KEVIN HARRIS: Would you recommend to that questioner that maybe he read a little bit on Bayes’ theorem – the probability calculus?

DR. CRAIG: I don't think so because what Bayes’ theorem deals with is inductive arguments, and the questioner is asking about deductive arguments. So that was why I addressed it as I did. In a deductive argument you cannot compute the probability of the conclusion by conjoining the premises together and figuring the probability of the conjunction of the premises. In a deductive argument, all that gives you is this lower bound on the probability of the conclusion.

KEVIN HARRIS: Next question,

Dear Dr. Craig, I have listened to your debate on the existence of God with Christopher Hitchens several times and find you both to be intelligent, articulate, and sincere in your beliefs. By “God” I assume you mean the God of the Judeo-Christian religions. I don't believe that the existence or non-existence of God can be proven. The best we can do is accept the issue on faith in human reason and based on all the available evidence. I would pose the same question to Christopher, but unfortunately he's passed away. Do you agree or disagree? And, by the way, atheists don't believe that there is no God; simply that there is insufficient evidence to claim that God exists. Christopher in the United States

DR. CRAIG: Well, to begin with the last point first, atheists do assert that there is no God. Atheism is the proposition that God does not exist. The claim that there is insufficient evidence to show that God exists is agnosticism – you don't know whether God exists or not. So Christopher is conflating agnosticism with atheism. Now, when he says that the existence or non-existence of God cannot be proven, I think he's using the word “proof” there in a very stringent sense – something like a mathematical demonstration. And I would agree with him on that. But when he says that we can accept the issue based upon human reason and based on all the available evidence, well then I think that the existence of God can be shown to be considerably more probable than not and that therefore we do have a proof in that sense of the existence of God. Not a proof such as you would have in mathematics, but a proof such as you might have in, say, a court of law or in historical studies. In that case, I think that the arguments that I gave for the existence of God in that debate do make the existence of God more probable than not. And it was striking to me that Christopher Hitchens had no arguments at all in support of the proposition that God does not exist.

KEVIN HARRIS: Next question.

Dear Dr. Craig, Hello, and thank you so much for your work. My young daughter has a question that really stumped me. Here goes. Is it possible that God prefers certain colors or numbers or shapes or even animals or plants like humans do? Or is he so pure and righteous that things of this nature are somewhat all the same since they cannot compare to the ability to have relationship or carry out goodness like a human can? Thanks so much. Ronnie in the United States

DR. CRAIG: I do not know how to answer Ronnie's question. It would seem odd to think that God has a favorite color or favorite number. Maybe the number seven? I don't know. I think this is just purely conjectural. It's epistemically possible that God might have favorite things that he has created, but I think we have no way of answering that.

KEVIN HARRIS: There's a lot of blue and green on this planet, but I can't say that about the rest of the universe.

DR. CRAIG: Well, my wife has favorite numbers. Jan thinks the number eight is great, but to me they kind of are all the same.

KEVIN HARRIS: This next question says,

Greetings, Mr. Craig. In fact, my question is about the direct creation of Adam.

Oh, by the way. This question is from Iraq.

Question is that we believe in divine intervention sometimes through miracles without it contradicting our belief in the discipline of natural laws. So what prevents us from taking the Bible about the creation of Adam literally without understanding it in an approximate metaphorical or interpretive way? Mustafa in Iraq

DR. CRAIG: I agree with Mustafa that it would be hermeneutically a mistake to interpret the opening chapters of Genesis figuratively or metaphorically because you don't believe in the possibility of miracles. That would be to presuppose naturalism. But as a theist I certainly do believe that God can and does perform miracles. So that would be an interpretive fallacy. Rather, the reason for thinking that the narrative in Genesis is not to be taken literally is that the narrative belongs to a literary genre (or a literary type) that is not intended to be read in a literalistic way. The Bible comprises a great many different kinds of literature and not all of them are to be interpreted literally. For example, the Psalms are poetry, and no one thinks that they are to be interpreted literally when they describe God as riding on the clouds or having wings or smoke coming out of his nostrils. Similarly, the book of Revelation in the New Testament is apocalyptic literature, and it uses symbols like beasts and dragons and monsters to portray political figures and alliances and nation-states. So it would be a hermeneutical mistake to read these kinds of literature in this literalistic way. And I am persuaded that when you do a literary analysis of the opening chapters of Genesis, a very good case can be made that this belongs to a type of literature which is to be interpreted figuratively and not in a literalistic manner. I lay this case out in considerable detail in my recent book In Quest of the Historical Adam.

KEVIN HARRIS: Next question says,

Dr. Craig, you answered a question about a Mormon who claims to have an authenticity witness for the Holy Spirit about Mormonism. I ran across this page because I've been struggling with a conversation I had with a Mormon recently who confidently declared that the Holy Spirit which he received upon faith in Christ's death on the cross, repentance, and salvation had also given him the same sensation, confidence, discernment, and attestation to the veracity of Mormonism as the correct path. Your response on the page above was that he could say anything he wants, but only we have the actual real Holy Spirit. You also mentioned Muslims having the same experience and even the same physical sensation in their chest. So what's the real concern? That we're all just creating this in our own heads. There are literally billions of people who are not only devout to religions that we call false but are even willing to die for them. I naively assume that none of them could have possibly experienced what I experienced because Christ is the way and the Holy Spirit is the only true connection we have to the Creator and they could not possibly have experienced the same thing. In fact, I think I've shielded myself from that intentionally, and it was thrown in my face after a conversation with this Mormon guy. So I'm definitely interested in hearing your response to my variation of this question. Bob in the United States

DR. CRAIG: I'm persuaded that the New Testament teaches, and that Christian experience bears out, that as Christians we are indwelt with the Holy Spirit of God, and that the Holy Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God and that therefore the great truths of the Gospel are true. Now, I can't see that false claims to a witness of the Holy Spirit does anything logically to undermine the veridicality or authenticity of a genuine experience of the Holy Spirit. Think if you had, say, several bottles all filled with a clear liquid, and all of them had the label on it “H2O”. But suppose that, in fact, only one of the bottles really had water in it. All of the other bottles were filled with poison. Now, does the falsity of the labels on the bottles of poison do anything logically to undermine the veracity of the label on the bottle of water? I just can't see that it does. I don't think it does anything to undermine the veracity of that label. So similarly the fact that Mormons and Muslims would falsely claim to have a witness of the Holy Spirit just doesn't do anything logically to undermine the veridicality of my experience of the Holy Spirit. So Bob shouldn't allow pretenders to the witness of the Holy Spirit to rob him of his joy and assurance of knowing Christ and experiencing the witness of the Holy Spirit just because they falsely claim to have such an experience. And I would not say that their experience is empirically indistinguishable from ours. Just ask Mormons or Muslims who have converted to Christianity and experience now the genuine witness of the Holy Spirit: Is now their religious experience any different than it was in Islam or Mormonism? And I think they will definitely tell you, “Yes, yes it is different now!” So just because people claim to have a religious experience doesn't mean that that experience is veridical or that it's indistinguishable from the authentic witness of the Holy Spirit. Finally, what one can do when confronted with a person who claims to also have a witness of the Holy Spirit to some non-Christian religion is to offer defeaters of that person's belief system. For example, I think we know that Mormonism is false. It is one of the most bizarre cults ever to spring from American soil. It is a crass materialistic form of polytheism which thinks that God lives on the planet Kolob somewhere in outer space. And Islam, I think, has very defective views of the goodness of God as well as patently false views of the historical Jesus. It denies that Jesus died by crucifixion. So we can offer defeaters of Islam and Mormonism which proves that their alleged witness of the Holy Spirit is non-veridical or counterfeit. By contrast, I would welcome the proponents of Islam or Mormonism to present defeaters of Christianity if they have any. And I would argue that those defeaters fail; that, in fact, there are no defeaters of Christianity that would lead me to indicate that my experience of the Holy Spirit is delusory.

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.^[1]