3 Reasons God Exists | EPS Apologetics Conference - 2019

In December of 2019, Dr. Craig was a featured keynote at the EPS Apologetics Conference hosted at Maranatha Chapel in San Diego, California. Here he speaks on "3 Reasons God Exists."

DR. CRAIG: In our increasingly secular society it's vitally important for Christians to be able to defend their belief in God. As a professional philosopher, I think that there are many good arguments for God's existence. Tonight I want to teach you three of those arguments.

In order to make these arguments easy to understand, I'm going to be showing some animated videos that we've developed at Reasonable Faith and which are available free of charge on our website, ReasonableFaith.org. My goal for this evening is that by the time you walk out of this auditorium you will have in hand three arguments for God's existence that you can share with unbelievers. So, are you ready?

Number one: God makes sense of the origin of the universe. Have you ever asked yourself where the universe came from? Typically, atheists have said that the universe is just eternal and that's all. But is that plausible? Our first video explains how the scientific evidence for the beginning of the universe points beyond the universe to its ground in a personal 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, once more, are the three simple premises of this argument. I invite you to say these aloud with me.

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

One of the most startling developments of modern science is that 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 known as 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 eternal in the past but must have an absolute beginning. And that goes for multiverse scenarios, too. In 2012, Vilenkin showed that models which do not meet this one 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] In the fall of 2015 Vilenkin strengthened that conclusion. He wrote:

We have no viable models of an eternal universe. The BGV [Borde-Guth-Vilenkin] theorem gives reason to believe that such models simply cannot be constructed.^[2]

The Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem proves that classical space-time under a single very general condition cannot be extended to past infinity but must reach a boundary at some time in the finite past. Now, either there was something on the other side of that boundary or not. If not, then that boundary just is the beginning of the universe. If there was something on the other side then it will be a region described by the yet-to-be discovered theory of quantum gravity. In that case, Vilenkin says, it will be the beginning of the universe. Either way the universe began to exist. Since something cannot come into being out of nothing, the absolute beginning of the universe implies the existence of a beginningless, uncaused, timeless, spaceless, changeless, immaterial, enormously powerful, personal creator of the universe.

Number two: God makes sense of the fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life. In recent decades, scientists have been stunned by the discovery that the existence of intelligent life depends upon a delicate and complex balance of initial conditions simply given in the Big Bang itself. Scientists once believed that whatever the initial conditions of the universe might have been, eventually intelligent life might evolve somewhere. But we now know that our existence is balanced on a razor’s edge. The existence of intelligent life anywhere in the cosmos depends upon a conspiracy of initial conditions which must be fine-tuned to a degree that is simply incomprehensible and incalculable. The following video explains how this remarkable fine-tuning points to an intelligent designer of the universe.

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 one in ten 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 in the video are all accurate, up-to-date, and well established. The question we face then is: What is the best explanation of the cosmic fine-tuning? There are three live options in the contemporary literature on fine-tuning: physical necessity, chance, or design. So our argument can be simply formulated in three steps:

1. The fine-tuning of the universe is due to either physical necessity, chance, or design.
2. It is not due to physical necessity or chance.
3. Therefore, it is due to design.

As the video explains, the only serious alternative to design is the multiverse chance hypothesis. But there are multiple problems with this hypothesis; let me just mention one of the most important. As Roger Penrose of Oxford University has explained, if our universe were just a random member of a world ensemble then we ought to be observing a much different universe than we do. What we ought to observe is just an orderly patch no larger than our solar system since a universe like that is sufficient for our existence and yet unfathomably more probable than a finely tuned universe like ours. In fact, the most probable observable universe is one which consists of a single brain which fluctuates into existence out of the quantum vacuum with illusory perceptions of an external world. So if you accept the multiverse explanation of the fine-tuning, you're obligated to believe that you are all that exists and that this auditorium, your friends, your own body, everything you perceive around you is an illusion of your own brain. No sane person believes such a thing. Therefore, on atheism, it is highly improbable that there exists a randomly ordered multiverse.

Thus, neither physical necessity nor chance provides a good explanation of the fine-tuning of the universe. It follows logically that the best explanation is design.

Number three: God makes sense of objective moral values and duties in the world. The following video makes this argument very clear.

VIDEO: Can you be good without God? Let's find out. [An atheist saves a cat stuck in a tree.] Absolutely astounding! There you have it; undeniable proof that you can be good without believing in God. But wait; the question isn't can you be good without believing in God. The question is, can you be good without God? See, here's the problem. If there is no God, what basis remains for objective good or bad, right or wrong? If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist, and here's why. Without some objective reference point, we have no way of saying that something is really up or down. God's nature provides an objective reference point for moral values. It's the standard against which all actions and decisions are measured. But if there's no God, there's no objective reference point. All we are left with is one person's viewpoint, which is no more valid than anyone else's viewpoint. This kind of morality is subjective, not objective. It's like a preference for strawberry ice cream; the preference is in the subject, not the object, so it doesn't apply to other people. In the same way, subjective morality applies only to the subject. It's not valid or binding for anyone else. So in a world without God, there can be no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. God has expressed his moral nature to us as commands. These provide the basis for moral duties. For example, God's essential attribute of love is expressed in his command to love your neighbor as yourself. This command provides a foundation upon which we can affirm the objective goodness of generosity, self-sacrifice, and equality, and we can condemn as objectively evil greed, abuse, and discrimination. This raises a problem. Is something good just because God wills it, or does God will something because it is good? The answer is: neither one. Rather, God wills something because he is good. God is the standard of moral values, just as a live musical performance is the standard for a high-fidelity recording. The more a recording sounds like the original, the better it is. Likewise, the more closely a moral action conforms to God's nature, the better it is. But if atheism is true there is no ultimate standard, so there can be no moral obligations or duties. Who or what lays such duties upon us? No one. Remember, for the atheist, humans are just accidents of nature, highly evolved animals. But animals have no moral obligations to one another. When a cat kills a mouse, it hasn't done anything morally wrong; the cat's just being a cat. If God doesn't exist, we should view human behavior in the same way. No action should be considered morally right or wrong. But the problem is good and bad, right and wrong, do exist. Just as our sense experience convinces us that the physical world is objectively real, our moral experience convinces us that moral values are objectively real. Every time you say, “Hey! That's not fair! That's wrong! That's an injustice!” you affirm your belief in the existence of objective morals. We're well aware that child-abuse, racial discrimination, and terrorism are wrong, for everybody, always. Is this just a personal preference or opinion? No. The man who says that it is morally acceptable to rape little children is just as mistaken as the man who says two plus two equals five. What all this amounts to then is a moral argument for the existence of God. If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist. But objective moral values and duties do exist. Therefore, God exists. Atheism fails to provide a foundation for the moral reality every one of us experiences every day. In fact, the existence of objective morality points us directly to the existence of God.

DR. CRAIG: Rehearse this argument with me:

1. If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.
2. Objective moral values and duties do exist.
3. Therefore, God exists.

Perhaps the most important thing to keep in mind about the moral argument is not to confuse moral ontology with moral epistemology. What do I mean by that? Moral ontology has to do with the objective reality of moral values and duties. Moral epistemology has to do with how we come to know moral values and duties. The moral argument has nothing to say about moral epistemology. It makes no claim whatsoever about how we come to know objective moral values and duties. The argument is wholly about moral ontology – the grounding of objective moral values and duties in reality. So epistemological objections, which you constantly hear, about how we come by our moral beliefs – whether through evolution or social conditioning or parental instruction –  are simply irrelevant to the argument.

From the two premises, it logically follows that God exists. The moral argument complements the cosmological and design arguments by telling us about the moral nature of the creator and designer of the universe. It gives us a personal, necessarily existent being who is not only perfectly good but whose very nature is the standard of goodness and whose commands constitute our moral duties.

There are very many other arguments for God’s existence, and on our website we have other animated videos explaining some of these.

I'd like to close this evening with a few practical suggestions about using these arguments in everyday conversations with an unbeliever. Non-believers are not used to running into Christians who can actually give reasons for the hope that is in them. So if the unbeliever says to you, “There's no evidence that God exists,” you should look at him with wide eyes and an open mouth and say, “Is that what you think? I can think of at least three good arguments for God’s existence!” And at that point he's got to say, “Yeah? Like what?” And then, boom, you're off and running. God is the best explanation of the origin of the universe. God is the best explanation of the fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life. God is the best explanation of objective moral values and duties in the world.

I have found that just being able to list the arguments is often enough to satisfy the unbeliever. Just being able to list the arguments puts you way beyond most Christians that the unbeliever has ever met.

Now, if the unbeliever asks you to go further and to explain more, then share with him the premises of the arguments. As we've seen tonight, these arguments are very simply formulated and can be easily memorized. Having the premises memorized will help you to keep your conversation with an unbeliever on track. If the unbeliever starts to stray off track then just say politely at that point, “If you think my conclusion is false then you must think that at least one of my premises is false. So what I want you to tell me is which premise do you reject as false, and why?” Focus on the premises. Now, if the unbeliever wants to go still deeper then go with him. These arguments are all explained further in my book, On Guard. It will show you how to explain each argument, defend the premises, and then answer the typical objections against them. Of course, our hope is that you'll go to ReasonableFaith.org with your non-believing friend and look at the video on your mobile device with him in order to have a conversation about these arguments.

The arguments presented here this evening constitute a powerful, cumulative case for the existence of God. Together they yield a metaphysically necessary, uncaused, transcendent, immaterial, personal creator and designer of the universe who is the paradigm and source of absolute moral goodness.

We have a little time for questions. I see there are microphones set up here at the head of the two aisles. If you have a question, please come forward. I would like you to restrict your questions to the three arguments presented this evening. I know people come to these conferences with all sorts of questions in mind that they want to be answered, but in view of the time limitations I want to limit the questions this evening to these three arguments. So, please, someone break the ice and come and ask a question.

QUESTION: I'm a high school teacher from Los Angeles. I actually teach a philosophy class with my students, and when I bring up the moral argument I find that actually some of my students do agree with me that objective moral values and duties do exist, but they really believe in more of like a utilitarian argument for objective moral values and duties and reject more of any deontological kind of framework. I was wondering what is the most powerful objection to utilitarianism?

DR. CRAIG: Utilitarianism doesn't reject the existence of objective moral values. It simply says that the good is whatever contributes to the flourishing of the greatest number of people. That is a philosophy that affirms the objectivity of moral values. The question then is: Why? Why is contributing to the greatest flourishing of human beings objectively good? That's not obvious especially on a naturalistic basis since human beings are just relatively evolved primates. Sam Harris thinks whatever contributes to the flourishing of sentient life is the good, and that would include rats and other forms of non-human life. So the problem that the utilitarian and the naturalist face is an arbitrariness problem. There just isn't any foundation in his worldview for affirming the objectivity of those moral values that he does want to affirm.

QUESTION: I was just a little confused on your second premise of the moral argument. If you're separating ontology from epistemology then what is the warrant for, or the evidence for, objective moral values?

DR. CRAIG: What is the warrant for the second premise? It is found in moral experience. Just as we believe in the reality of the external world on the basis of our experience, so we can believe in the objectivity of the moral realm on the basis of our moral experience. In the absence of some defeater of that experience, you are perfectly rational to believe that there really is an external world around us, and you're perfectly rational, in the absence of some defeater, to believe that there is a realm of objective moral values and duties. The premise is rooted in our moral experience and the absence of any defeater of that experience.

QUESTION: Thank you, Dr. Craig. It's an honor to be here. Say you give them the three arguments, and you give them some sort of idea of what the arguments in favor of Christianity are, but say you want to push them a little bit on their atheism and try to get them to give evidence on their part to prove their position. When they say that atheism doesn't make any positive claims as to the non-existence of God and they take some sort of an agnostic position trying to evade the semantics on the term, how would you go about answering that?

DR. CRAIG: I think it's very important to see that atheism is just as much a knowledge claim as is theism. Theism is the view that there is a God. Atheism is the view there is no God. Both of these make a positive assertion to knowledge, and therefore if you're to believe either one you need to have some sort of justification. Atheism is not a default position. If there is a default position it would just be agnosticism – I don't know whether there is a God or there is not a God. So the atheist does also have a burden of proof to bear. He needs to give good arguments for thinking that God does not exist. But tonight I focused on supporting our share of the burden of giving positive reasons to think that God does exist.

QUESTION: I was once talking to a philosophy student, and he suggested that God is not required for objective moral laws to exist. He pointed this out when I was arguing with him. I basically said that since God created us, we are morally obligated to obey him and therefore he's able to impose moral duties on us. But then he said that the fact that we are obligated to obey someone who creates us suggests a moral law that exists outside of God . . . . The principle that we are obligated to obey God since he created us. The idea is that if that moral law can exist outside of God then who's to say the other moral laws don't exist outside of God?

DR. CRAIG: OK. You have asked a very profound question. I would refer you to the debate that I had with Professor Erik Wielenberg recently. It's on YouTube about the foundation of objective moral values and duties. I would say two things in response to this. First of all, it may well be the case that any moral view will have its explanatory stopping point – its ultimate – beyond which you cannot go. There will be simply an explanatory ultimate. And what I would say is that God is a less arbitrary and more plausible explanatory stopping point than anything else the atheist can suggest, such as the flourishing of sentient life or the flourishing of human beings. On atheism, those stopping points are arbitrary and, I think, premature. Whereas when you get to God, you've reached a metaphysical ultimate beyond which you cannot go, and so it is a more plausible explanatory stopping point. The second thing, though, I think I would say is this: suppose you say that the reason we should obey God's commands is because he has commanded us to. In other words, God's commands are self-inclusive. If God has said, “Obey all that I command you,” then that is itself something that he has commanded us. So it would be comprised in itself. It seems to me that this is a perfectly legitimate justification for saying why we should obey God – because he has commanded us to, and our moral duties are constituted by his commands. So I think it's a kind of self-inclusive or self-justifying stopping point.

QUESTION: Dr. Craig, first of all, thank you for being here. I think I speak for so many people here when I say it's a privilege to see you as something more than just pixels on a screen. My question is: When we say that these arguments show that God is a personal being, what would be the response to somebody like, just for example, a Hindu or a theosophist who would say, “Oh, well, the Absolute need not be a rational being. It could just be some kind of lifeforce that just naturally does this.”

DR. CRAIG: Actually, all three of the arguments that I gave tonight lead to a personal deity and are therefore incompatible with all forms of pantheism which think of the Absolute in impersonal terms. The first argument leads to a personal creator of the universe because it leads to a being which is spaceless, timeless, immaterial, and eternal, and there are only two candidates that could be described in those terms – either an abstract object (like a number) or else an unembodied mind or consciousness. And here's the rub: an abstract object doesn't stand in causal relations. The number 7, for example, has no effect on anything. So it follows that the cause of the universe is not just some impersonal first cause. It is a person, an unembodied mind, who brought the universe into being. The second argument from fine-tuning obviously leads to a personal creator because it leads to an intelligent designer. And the third argument – the moral argument – leads to a personal being because human persons have intrinsic moral value and this is grounded in God as a personal being, and he issues then moral commands to us which requires personhood and volition. So, remarkably, all three of these arguments lead to a metaphysical ultimate which is personal.

QUESTION: I love that last answer. That's awesome. So let me see if I can set this up right. Objective morality and making the case for God using it. Objective morality would seem to imply some type of constant application. The application of it wouldn't change over time. It’s objective. It’s absolute. It’s moral. It's God.

DR. CRAIG: Yes. I prefer the word “objective” to “absolute.”

FOLLOWUP: OK. We're trying to make the case for God using objective morality. Morality is often experienced through its application, and typically its social application. I typically hear the argument that if God is moral – if morals are objective – and if we experience them through the social experience and so forth then what can you use from a philosophical point of view to respond to what people would say is a changing moral application? So, for example, at one point in time God told people to hamstring animals and to kill everybody. We hear the argument that's genocide; today that's immoral. We could talk about multiple wives. I have a theological argument for it, but what's the philosophical response to that?

DR. CRAIG: If I might interrupt in interest of time. This illustrates the failure to distinguish between moral ontology and moral epistemology. The argument makes no claim whatsoever that it's easy or obvious to discern our objective moral duties, or that human beings are infallible in their moral apprehensions. On the contrary, we know there's a huge gray area where it's not clear what our moral values are or what the moral duty is for us to do. But there are these clear-cut examples of moral evils and moral goods that are sufficient to require an objective ground for morality, and that's perfectly consistent with moral development over time, with moral error, with correction, with clearer discernment of moral values and duties. All of those are epistemological concerns that are just irrelevant to the argument.