The Origin and Fine-Tuning of the Universe | Worldview Apologetics Conference 2017

Dr. Craig was invited to speak at the Worldview Apologetic Conference hosted at Westminster Chapel in Bellevue, WA in April of 2017. Here, utilizing Reasonable Faith's animated short films, he discusses two key arguments for God's existence and engages audience questions after presenting each.

MODERATOR: We are ready for session two. We need to let people in the lobby there know that we're getting ready to start, and we'd like for them to join us. I know that some of them have left their seats and haven't made their way back. It's good to see so many of you here tonight. My name is Doug Geivett. I've been here a few times before. I forget what year this is. Carl? Year 14! So I'm not as old as that sounds, but I am back and privileged to be here with the speakers that we have, one of whom I'll be introducing in just a few minutes. How are we doing? Everybody comfortable? How are we doing in the lobby? Are people making their way in? Can they hear me out there? OK, good. All right then. Let's get started. It's my privilege – and it always is, isn't it? – when you introduce a speaker, it's always your privilege. But tonight it really is my privilege to introduce our speaker this evening. Dr. William Lane Craig is a friend of mine. He's a colleague. He's a professor of philosophy where I teach at Talbot School of Theology at Biola University. And he also teaches at Houston Baptist University (HBU). Bill Craig has published many books, but you wouldn't know it because his table is empty. That means that you can go out and you can order his books, and I would urge you to do that. Let me mention two in particular that I think you will find especially helpful. He didn't ask me to do this, but I know this topic this evening, and I know that these will be useful to you as you want to follow up on tonight's talk. The first one is called Reasonable Faith, and the other one is a more readable (in a certain sense for people who maybe don't read as much) book called On Guard. Is that right, Bill? On Guard. So I would recommend those two books to you for tonight's topic: Reasonable Faith and On Guard. I've known Bill Craig for a long time. I remember when I met him. At the time I didn't know that we would be speaking together at all, and we've managed to do that across this country. We were in Sweden together. We were in Mexico together, and elsewhere. You always say “elsewhere” when you can't think of any other place you've been but you want to impress people anyway. But now here we are together this weekend. I just want you to know when I met him we were at a conference and he had really dark hair, black hair, a nice trimmed beard, very distinguished. Tonight he's got silver hair, no beard, but he is, of course, every bit as distinguished as he was in those days. Let's welcome Dr. William Lane Craig.

DR. CRAIG: Thanks very much, Doug, for that kind introduction. Several years ago my wife Jan and I attended a weekend seminar on financial planning. This turned out to be very unusual and very helpful. What made the seminar so unusual was that the speaker did not seek merely to entertain or even to inform us, but rather he sought to equip us to actually do things so that when we came away from that weekend seminar we were actually able to do things that would advance our retirement investments. I thought to myself at the time wouldn't it be great if we could have an apologetics conference like that where we didn't simply inspire folks or inform folks about things but we actually equip them to present a defense of the Christian worldview so that they would go away trained to provide an answer for the hope that is in them. My goal in the sessions that I have with you this weekend is to actually equip you with some arguments that you can take away and share with unbelievers when challenged as to why you are a Christian.

Right at the very foundations of the Christian worldview is belief in the existence of God. You notice that was the number one item on that list of twelves truths that Josh shared: that God exists. I think it is crucial in an increasingly secular age that Christians be able to defend intelligently their belief in the existence of God. So in the session together this evening I want to share with you two arguments for God's existence based upon the origin and the fine-tuning of the universe. To help us understand these arguments, we have developed some animated videos at Reasonable Faith that present the arguments in an entertaining and easily accessible way. So we'll look at the short animated videos together, and then I'll make some comments to expand on what they say. Then I want to open the floor for questions. Now, I appreciate that people often come to these apologetics conferences with questions that are already in their minds that they want to ask. There will be time later for those sorts of questions. But in this session I want us to restrict the questions to the two arguments that I'm sharing with you to help you to better understand them and be equipped to share them.

The first argument is based upon the origin of the universe. Have you ever wondered where the universe came from? Typically atheists have said that the universe is just eternal and that's all. But in fact there are profound philosophical and scientific reasons to think that the universe is not infinite in the past but had an absolute beginning a finite time ago. The first video that I want to share with you this evening explores some of the scientific evidence in support of the origin of the universe that points beyond the universe to its ground in a transcendent creator.

VIDEO: Does God exist, or is the material universe all that is or ever was or ever will be? One approach to answering this question is the cosmological argument. It goes like this. Whatever begins to exist has a cause. The universe began to exist.Therefore, the universe has a cause. Is the first premise true? Let's consider. Believing that something can pop into existence without a cause is more of a stretch than believing in magic. At least with magic you've got a hat and a magician. And if something can come into being from nothing, then why don't we see this happening all the time? No; everyday experience and scientific evidence confirm our first premise. If something begins to exist, it must have a cause. But what about our second premise? Did the universe begin, or has it always existed? Atheists have typically said that the universe has been here forever. The universe is just there, and that's all. First, let's consider the second law of thermodynamics. It tells us the universe is slowly running out of usable energy, and that's the point. If the universe had been here forever it would have run out of usable energy by now. The second law points us to a universe that has a definite beginning. This is further confirmed by a series of remarkable scientific discoveries. In 1915 Albert Einstein presented his general theory of relativity. This allowed us for the first time to talk meaningfully about the past history of the universe. Next Alexander Friedmann and Georges Lemaitre, each working with Einstein's equations, predicted that the universe is expanding. Then in 1929, Edwin Hubble measured the red shift and light from distant galaxies. This empirical evidence confirmed not only that the universe is expanding, but that it sprang into being from a single point in the finite past. It was a monumental discovery almost beyond comprehension. However, not everyone is fond of a finite universe, so it wasn't long before alternative models popped into existence. But one by one, these models failed to stand the test of time. More recently three leading cosmologists, Arvind Borde, Alan Guth, and Alexander Vilenkin, proved that any universe which has on average been expanding throughout its history cannot be eternal in the past, but must have an absolute beginning. This even applies to the multiverse, if there is such a thing. This means that scientists can no longer hide behind a past eternal universe. There is no escape. They have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning. Any adequate model must have a beginning just like the standard model. It's quite plausible then that both premises of the argument are true. This means that the conclusion is also true; The universe has a cause. And since the universe can't cause itself, its cause must be beyond the space-time universe. It must be spaceless, timeless, immaterial, uncaused, and unimaginably powerful, much like... God. The cosmological argument shows that in fact it is quite reasonable to believe that God does exist.

DR. CRAIG: Here are the three simple steps of this argument:

1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.

Every one of you is capable of memorizing this argument and sharing it with someone. Let's say it together. Premise 1: Whatever begins to exist has a cause. 2: The universe began to exist. 3: Therefore, the universe has a cause. That's it.

The video explores the scientific evidence for the universe's beginning, but actually there are strong philosophical reasons as well to think that the universe began to exist. Just think about it for a minute. If the universe never began to exist, that means that the number of past events in the history of the universe is infinite. But the idea of the existence of an actually infinite number of things is very problematic philosophically. For example, suppose that you had an infinite number of baseball cards, and then you decided to give away all the odd numbered cards. Well, how many cards would you have left? You'd still have all the even numbered cards, right? So infinity minus infinity is infinity. On the other hand, suppose you decided to give away instead all of the cards greater than 3. How many would you have left? Three! So infinity minus infinity is three. It needs to be understood that in each case you have subtracted equal quantities from equal quantities, but come up with contradictory results. In fact, you can subtract infinity from infinity and get any result from zero to infinity. This shows that infinity is just an idea in your mind, not something that exists in reality. But since past events are real, not just imaginary, it follows that the number of past events must be finite. Therefore the universe began to exist.

Consider the second argument based upon the impossibility of forming an actual infinite by successive addition. In order for the past to be infinite the number of past events that have elapsed one after another in order to arrive at today would have to be infinite. But how could an infinite number of events elapse one at a time? That would be like trying to count down all the negative numbers ending at zero, and that seems like an absurd task because before you could count any number you would already have to have counted an infinite number of prior numbers before. And if you could count down all the negative numbers then why did you finish your countdown only today? Why didn't you finish yesterday, or the day before that? At any point in the past you've already had an infinite amount of time to finish your countdown. Therefore, you should already be finished. But then you can never find yourself in the past completing the countdown at any point in the infinite past, which contradicts the hypothesis that you have been counting down from eternity.

These sorts of absurdities suggest, I think, that the idea of an actually infinite past is absurd.

Moreover, in one of the most startling developments of modern science, we now have pretty strong evidence that the universe is not eternal in the past but had an absolute beginning about 14 billion years ago in a cataclysmic event called the Big Bang. As explained in the video, in 2003, Arvind Borde, Alan Guth, and Alexander Vilenkin were able to show that any universe which is on average in a state of cosmic expansion throughout its history cannot be infinite in the past but must have an absolute beginning. And that goes for the multiverse as well. In 2012, Vilenkin showed that models which do not meet this one single condition still fail for other reasons to avoid the beginning of the universe. Vilenkin concluded, “None of these scenarios can actually be past eternal. . . . All the evidence we have says that the universe had a beginning.”^[1]

Since something cannot come into being from nothing, the absolute beginning of the universe implies the existence of a beginningless, uncaused, timeless, spaceless, immaterial, and enormously powerful creator of the universe, which certainly goes to support the hypothesis that God exists.

Let me ask now if there are any questions about this argument that you would like to pose before we move on to the next one.

QUESTION: I've heard a lot of counter arguments regarding the origin of the universe that really I understand are dodges, but they come down to the initial Planck time from what would be a singularity into what we can measure. I know you've got to be familiar with that so I don't want to belabor it. I understand this is a dodge. My question is how can I respond effectively to that dodge?

DR. CRAIG: It's interesting you should bring that up because I actually was going to comment on that, but in the interest of time I left it out. What the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem shows is that classical spacetime described by the general theory of relativity encounters a boundary at some point in the finite past. Now either that boundary was the beginning of the universe or else there was something on the other side of that boundary. If that boundary represents a beginning of the universe then the universe began to exist. If there's something on the other side of that boundary then it will be this early state of the universe that is described by a quantum theory of gravity which we have not yet discovered. In that case, that era represents the beginning of the universe. But it cannot be extended to past infinity. So in either case, whether at the boundary or at the quantum gravity era, the universe began to exist.

QUESTION: One of the key points of your argument is that actual infinities cannot exist. So the point is that actual infinities can't exist. But don’t we postulate God is an actual infinity?

DR. CRAIG: If I understand the question, you're saying don't Christians or theists believe that God is actually infinite? So if an actually infinite number of things cannot exist then how could God exist? It's important to distinguish between a quantitative concept of the infinite and a qualitative concept of the infinite. I am talking about a quantitative infinite; that is to say, a mathematical concept of an actually infinite number of definite and discrete finite particulars. When theologians talk about God's infinity they're not talking about a quantitative concept. God is not composed of an infinite number of definite and discrete finite particulars. They're talking about a qualitative concept. They mean that God is holy, eternal, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, and so forth. All of these superlative attributes go to make up this qualitative concept of infinity that doesn't in any way have to do with a quantitative concept of an actually infinite number of things.

QUESTION: The first one is: what is a maxi-verse? And then the second one, you said “Big Bang” like it was an OK thing. I just wanted to clarify that.

DR. CRAIG: The first question was: What is the multiverse (not maxi-verse)? The multiverse, which we'll encounter again in a moment, is a hypothesis that some scientists have floated that our universe is not the only universe there is. That there are these unseen parallel universes that are not in our spacetime. They're separated from us. We can have no access to them. The concept is appealed to usually to explain the fine-tuning of the initial conditions of our universe. So that's what the multiverse is. I'll say something more about that in a moment. Now, what was the second part of the question? [questioner is off-mic repeating his question]. No! Oh, goodness sake. No, no. The Big Bang theory simply says that the universe is expanding and had a beginning a finite time ago. The best estimates are around 14 billion years old. This supports the Christian doctrine of creation out of nothing – that God in the beginning created the heavens and the earth. The only people who would have trouble with this would be certain Young Earth creationists who think that the universe was created just a few thousand years ago. We would disagree upon whether or not the biblically faithful interpretation of Genesis requires you to believe that the world was only created a few thousand years ago. I don't think so.

Let me go on now to the second argument that I wanted to discuss with you. This is the fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life.

In recent years, scientists have been stunned by the discovery that the existence of intelligent life depends upon a delicate balance of initial conditions which are simply given in the Big Bang itself. Scientists once believed that whatever the initial conditions of the universe were, eventually intelligent life forms like ours might evolve somewhere in the cosmos. But instead they have discovered that our existence is balanced on a razor’s edge of incomprehensible fineness. The existence of intelligent life anywhere in the universe depends upon a conspiracy of initial conditions which must be fine-tuned to a degree which is literally incomprehensible and incalculable. The following video explains how this remarkable fine-tuning points to an intelligent designer of the cosmos.

VIDEO: From galaxies and stars down to atoms and subatomic particles, the very structure of our universe is determined by these numbers. These are the fundamental constants and quantities of the universe. Scientists have come to the shocking realization that each of these numbers has been carefully dialed to an astonishingly precise value, a value that falls within an exceedingly narrow life-permitting range. If any one of these numbers were altered by even a hairsbreadth, no physical, interactive life of any kind could exist anywhere. There'd be no stars, no life, no planets, no chemistry. Consider gravity, for example. The force of gravity is determined by the gravitational constant. If this constant varied by just 1 in 10 to the 60th parts, none of us would exist.To understand how exceedingly narrow this life-permitting range is, imagine a dial divided into 10 to the 60th increments. To get a handle on how many tiny points on the dial this is, compare it to the number of cells in your body, or the number of seconds that have ticked by since time began. If the gravitational constant had been out of tune by just one of these infinitesimally small increments, the universe would either have expanded and thinned out so rapidly that no stars could form and life couldn't exist, or it would have collapsed back on itself with the same result: no stars, no planets, and no life. Or consider the expansion rate of the universe. This is driven by the cosmological constant. A change in its value by a mere one part in 10 to the 120th parts would cause the universe to expand too rapidly or too slowly. In either case the universe would again be life-prohibiting. Or, another example of fine-tuning: if the mass and energy of the early universe were not evenly distributed to an incomprehensible precision of one part in 10 to the 10 to the 123rd, the universe would be hostile to life of any kind. The fact is, our universe permits physical, interactive life only because these and many other numbers have been independently and exquisitely balanced on a razor's edge. Wherever physicists look, they see examples of fine-tuning. The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life. If anyone claims not to be surprised by the special features that the universe has, he's hiding his head in the sand. These special features are surprising and unlikely. What is the best explanation for this astounding phenomenon? There are three live options. The fine-tuning of the universe is due to either physical necessity, chance, or design. Which of these options is the most plausible? According to this alternative [physical necessity], the universe must be life-permitting. The precise values of these constants and quantities could not be otherwise. But is this plausible? Is a life-prohibiting universe impossible? Far from it. It's not only possible; it's far more likely than a life-permitting universe. The constants and quantities are not determined by the laws of nature. There's no reason or evidence to suggest that fine-tuning is necessary. How about chance? Did we just get really, really, really, really lucky? No; the probabilities involved are so ridiculously remote as to put the fine-tuning well beyond the reach of chance, so in an effort to keep this option alive, some have gone beyond empirical science and opted for a more speculative approach known as the multiverse. They imagine a universe generator that cranks out such a vast number of universes that, odds are, life-permitting universes will eventually pop out. However, there's no scientific evidence for the existence of this multiverse. It cannot be detected, observed, measured, or proved, and the universe generator itself would require an enormous amount of fine-tuning. Furthermore, small patches of order are far more probable than big ones, so the most probable observable universe would be a small one, inhabited by a single, simple observer. But what we actually observe is the very thing that we should least expect: a vast, spectacularly complex, highly-ordered universe inhabited by billions of other observers. So even if the multiverse existed, which is a moot point, it wouldn't do anything to explain the fine-tuning. Given the implausibility of physical necessity or chance, the best explanation for why the universe is fine-tuned for life may very well be it was designed that way. A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super intellect monkeyed with physics and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question. There is for me powerful evidence that there is something going on behind it all... it seems as though somebody has fine-tuned nature's numbers to make the universe. The impression of design is overwhelming. 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 reveal knowledge.

DR. CRAIG: The examples of fine-tuning that are mentioned in this video are all up-to-date, accurate, and well-established. It's important to keep in mind that the term “fine-tuning” does not mean “designed.” The expression is a neutral term which just means that the range of life-permitting values is exquisitely narrow so that if the value of one of these constants or quantities were altered by less than a hairsbreadth, the delicate balance would be destroyed and life could not exist. The universe would be life-prohibiting. Fine-tuning in this neutral sense of the term is a well-established fact of physics.

The question we face is: What is the best explanation of this fine-tuning? In the contemporary literature on fine-tuning, there are basically three possible explanations: physical necessity, chance, or design. As the video explains, it cannot be due to physical necessity because these constants and quantities are independent of the laws of nature. So the only alternative to design would be the chance hypothesis. And this requires the existence of the multiverse in order to make chance tractable.

There are multiple problems with the multiverse hypothesis, but let me highlight one of the most important. If our universe were just a random member of a multiverse then we ought to be observing a very different universe than what we do. Roger Penrose of Oxford University has pressed this point very forcefully. He points out that the odds of our universe’s initial low entropy condition existing by chance are on the order of 1 chance out of 10 to the power of 10 to the power of 123. He points out that the odds of our solar system coming together just by the random collision of particles is around 1 chance out of 10 to the power of 10 to the power of 60. That number, Penrose says, is “utter chicken feed” compared to a number like 10 to the 10 to the 123.^[2] What that means is that if we are just a random member of a multiverse then it is far more probable that we should be observing an orderly patch no larger than our solar system because a universe like that is so incomprehensible more probable than a finely tuned universe like ours. In fact, as the video explains, the most probable observable universe would consist of a single brain which fluctuates into existence out of the vacuum with an illusory perception of an external world. So if you accept the multiverse hypothesis, you're obligated to believe that you are all that exists and that your body, this room, the Earth, everything you perceive is just an illusion of your brain. No sane person believes such a thing. On atheism, therefore, it is highly improbable that there exists a randomly ordered multiverse.

Ironically, the best hope for the partisans of the multiverse hypothesis is the existence of God – that God created the multiverse and ordered it so that it is not randomly ordered. God could give preference to observable worlds which are cosmically fine-tuned. So to be rationally acceptable, the multiverse actually needs God.

With the failure of the multiverse hypothesis, the alternative of chance collapses. Neither physical necessity nor chance provides a good explanation of the fine-tuning of the universe. Therefore, the best alternative is that the fine-tuning is due to design. Thus, the fine-tuning gives us an intelligent designer of the cosmos.

Any questions about the fine-tuning argument? And, again, I think you can agree – you can memorize those three steps of the argument very easily and share them with an unbeliever.

QUESTION: If the universe is fine-tuned, might that also mean that God is fine-tuned in some sense because he's perfect in every respect and therefore if he were different in any respect by any measure then he would be imperfect? Therefore, he has to be fine-tuned as well?

DR. CRAIG: I don't see any reason to think that the designer would require a designer himself. He's not composed of parts. He's not a physical being. He's not part of the universe. He doesn't exhibit a conspiration of constants and quantities. If there is such a cosmic designer, he is an unembodied mind of supreme intelligence which has designed the laws of nature and given it the constants and quantities requisite for life. There's no reason to think that he himself would need to have a designer.

QUESTION: I have a couple of questions. The first question is a lot of people are trying to disprove the existence of the supernatural God. However, they are in the process of proposing a supernatural non-God, namely the machine that creates multiverses. How would you answer that?

DR. CRAIG: I would agree that the multiverse is a metaphysical hypothesis. As a philosopher, I have no trouble with that so long as we recognize that it is metaphysical. The God hypothesis is a metaphysical hypothesis. So the question is: Which is the better explanation? The supernatural multiverse or supernatural intelligent designer? The argument that Penrose presses I think gives very, very powerful reasons for thinking that the multiverse is not a good explanation of the fine-tuning. Because if we were just a random member of a multiverse then we ought to be observing a much smaller patch of order. We ought to be these brains that are all that exists.

QUESTION: A quick question about the physical necessity. What makes us think that these variables can vary independently? I know we haven't observed a law yet that forces them to move together, but is there any evidence that they can actually move independently?

DR. CRAIG: The multiplicity and variety of the constants and quantities that need to be finely tuned I think give good reason for thinking that they can be independently varied without having a kind of coordination between them. There just doesn't seem to be any physical connection between many of these constants and quantities. And even if they did vary together, that would actually only support fine-tuning more, I think. If, for example, the proton-neutron mass ratio and the subatomic weak force had to move in tandem with each other, that would suggest even more that these were the result of design. So I don't think that that's a very important reservation. The multiplicity and variety of the constants and quantities that have to be finely tuned I think give very good grounds for thinking this isn't going to go away with the advance of physics.

QUESTION: A counter-argument for the chance hypothesis that I've heard was what are the chances that your mom and dad ever met and bore you? What are the chances out of the billions and billions of people that you were born in this place, particular time, etc. How can you explain that?

DR. CRAIG: I think that the analogy is flawed. It is similar to an analogy where people will say take a lottery where all the tickets are sold. Any individual person winning the lottery is incredibly improbable, but somebody has to win. It would be unjustified for the winner of the lottery to say, “Look at the odds against my winning! The lottery must have been rigged.” That would be fallacious. This kind of illustration is actually helpful because it will enable us to see where the objector has gone wrong and to provide a more accurate analogy for the fine-tuning argument. The fallacy is that, unlike the lottery illustration, we're not trying to explain why this universe exists. Rather, we're trying to explain why any life-permitting universe exists. So the correct analogy would be a lottery in which a trillion trillion trillion white ping-pong balls were mixed together with one black ping-pong ball. And in order to survive, you have to draw the black ping-pong ball by random process from the lottery. Now, if you had a lottery like that, which ever ball rolls down the chute is enormously improbable. Right? That's what the first analogy taught us. Any ball is enormously improbable. But whichever ball rolls down the chute, it is incomprehensibly more probable that it will be white rather than black. And that's the correct analogy for fine-tuning. We're not trying to explain why this universe was selected. We're trying to explain why, against all odds, a life-permitting universe exists rather than a life-prohibiting universe. Why a black ball rolled down the chute rather than a white one. Good question.

QUESTION: This is a very sound argument. Very intelligent, and follows the logic very well. But there's obviously a lot of people in academia, a lot of people that are also very intelligent, other than them saying “I completely just reject it because I just don't believe it,” there has to be other reasons why they believe something else. In an effort to know your enemy, what are other people saying?

DR. CRAIG: What the debate has come down to today is the multiverse hypothesis versus an intelligent designer. That is where the debate lies today. Physical necessity is more or less out. Simple chance is out. It is these two metaphysical hypotheses that the fellow mentioned: a multiverse versus an intelligent designer of the cosmos. That's where the debate is today. As I say, the multiverse hypothesis faces this powerful objection from Penrose than I've articulated.

With regard to the first argument based on the origin of the universe, Alan Guth (who developed the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem along with Vilenkin) tries to avoid the implications of the beginning of the universe by adopting a model of the universe in which as you go back in time the arrow of time flips over and time starts running in the opposite direction so that you have a kind of mirror universe going in the opposite direction from our universe. Now, as Vilenkin points out, this is highly unphysical. I think it's metaphysically absurd, but it's highly unphysical. And in any case, even if it were true, it doesn't avoid the beginning of the universe. Because that time reversed mirror universe in no sense lies in our past. Rather, time is going in the other direction. It represents a second universe that shares the same beginning as ours, and they go in different directions. So even this attempt to avoid the implications of the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem by Alan Guth implies the very beginning of the universe that he wants to avoid.

QUESTION: Regarding chance again, what would you say to the argument that they acknowledge the improbability of the universe coming to existence but because we are here (we're obviously here) in spite of the astronomical odds, it must have happened by chance, because we're here.

DR. CRAIG: That's simply fallacious. The question is what is the most probable explanation of how we got here. When you look at the odds that this fine-tuning would have occurred by chance alone, they are simply incomprehensible. They're too much to be faced. The multiverse hypothesis is the best testimony to that fact. Otherwise sober scientists would not be rushing to embrace so metaphysical a hypothesis as the multiverse if they thought simple appeal to brute chance was enough. But the odds against it are just too daunting to bear unless you have this multiverse where all of the possibilities are realized and therefore fine-tuned universes have to appear somewhere in the ensemble. So the multiverse itself bears witness to the untenability of that sort of response.

QUESTION: I learned about some of these arguments from watching your Defenders class. I was reading through the first three chapters of Romans. I'm asking a question about the warrant of presenting argumentation in such a way as where the unbeliever is honest in his denial of the existence of God. The first three chapters of Romans seems to say that God has revealed himself to everyone and we have intrinsic knowledge and that a question about God's existence is disingenuous. Someone from a presuppositional camp or a Reformed camp may use your arguments that you're doing but would do so as kind of like an reductio ad absurdum; saying even on your view this is what it reduces down to. But my question is about the warrant. Why present evidence in such a way as if the unbeliever is honest and his objections to the existence of God . . .

DR. CRAIG: Paul does teach in Romans 1 two things. First, from the creation alone, wholly apart from biblical revelation, all persons can know that there is an intelligent creator of the universe who has brought it into being. I see these arguments as simply an advance on what Paul said. It is showing how even modern sophisticated physicists see the truth of what Romans 1 says. But Paul also says that people suppress the truth in unrighteousness because they don't want to believe in God. They want to worship and serve their own gods. I think that this gets into the question of the purpose of apologetics. The arguments aren't intended to convert people. That is the responsibility of the Holy Spirit alone. Only the Holy Spirit can soften hearts and convict people and bring someone to a saving knowledge of God. But the Holy Spirit can use arguments and evidence as we present them as well as preaching. So when we give arguments and evidence for God's existence, we're not working against or apart from the Holy Spirit. Rather, we're trusting the Holy Spirit to use the arguments as we lovingly present them to convict people and draw them to himself. If they don't do so then at least what we have done is we have removed any just excuse that that person might have before God for not believing in God. We have raised the intellectual price tag that he has to pay for his unbelief. I think we raise it to such an extent that he now no longer has any excuse for his unbelief, but needs to recognize and come to grips with the fact that it is simply his willful resistance to God that justifies his unbelief and not, as he would like to claim, some sort of intellectual objection or reservation about belief in God.

Well, I look forward to talking with you more during this conference. These short videos are available on ReasonableFaith.org. I'd encourage you to download them on your mobile device and be prepared to share them at a drop of a hat with an unbeliever who asks you a reason for the hope that is within you.