Tuesday, April 8, 2025

Two short clips that refute William Lane Craig for all time

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/PDSNfzJBZKE

Here Craig defends God's command of the mass killing of Canaanites, including Canaanite children.

There are many obvious reasons why a good God would never command the horrific commandments of the Old Testament. Here a few slightly less obvious points: 

Christians are scared of consequentialism because it makes the problem of evil, and the problem of hell, impossible. (It's impossible on deontology and virtue ethics too, and consequentialism is very obviously true anyway, but whatever.)

Yet on virtue ethics God should be extremely disturbed by the fact that his followers have the character such that they would be willing and able to kill children.

On deontology, God is treating the Canaanites (and other enemy tribes) as means to ends (God's glory, God's justice, letting his chosen people know that God favors them) rather than ends unto themselves.

(Now that I think about it, the Old Testament is so obviously tribal historical "victor-fiction", aka revisionism, that it's a miracle Christians believe it's real. The God of humanity would have prophets among all peoples, not just one. Or even better, just have your own kingdom to start.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3-afEhw7c0

This is about the "Low Bar Bill" controversy. Here Craig backpedals on what he said about Christianity being worth believing in even if there were only one in a million chance of it being true. In context, this is Craig's conversion story, and he's 16 years old. So I would think that Craig would say something to the effect of: That's what I believed then, but now I believe that it would not be reasonable, or even psychologically possible, to believe in a worldview if you believe there really were only a one in a million chance for that worldview to be true. And then he would go on to say that Christianity is very likely true. Maybe Craig would say this if questioned on it.

But bizarrely, he doesn't give this clarification, and in fact says something even more confusing. He says: "And so for me I was saying that, really if there was any sort of reasonable chance of believing in Christianity, it was worth it, in view of the promise that it holds out and the tremendous benefit of knowing God and finding eternal life." (I take it he means reasonable chance of Christianity being true. "Reasonable chance of believing" doesn't make sense.)

Does Craig think that a one in a million chance is a reasonable chance? What odds would Craig give rival worldviews, like atheistic naturalism? Surely, a number of worldviews must add up to 100% for Craig, right? (At least, worldviews that roughly correspond to worldviews defended by various authors on earth.) Unless Craig thinks there is a yet-to-be-discovered worldview that will dwarf all current worldviews in probability, then this is right, and obviously as a Christian surely he would put Christianity at 100% or at least very high. 

Elsewhere I've seen him refuse to give such a percentage. I believe this happens in his debate against Kevin Scharp. Looking it up... Well, the transcript doesn't show that exactly (https://www.reasonablefaith.org/media/debates/is-there-evidence-for-god), but Craig seems to think that you need at least 51% confidence to believe in something:

"If you think it’s more probable than not, if you think this is more probably true than false, I would guess I would say that is enough for belief." (Now, Craig has just recently released his Volume 1 of his Systematic Theology in which he discusses belief and faith. So he may have updated views. I'll see if I can get my hands on a copy and return to this topic.)

So for Craig, a one in a million chance would not be anywhere near sufficient confidence for belief. And yet for Craig, belief is required for saving faith. (See: https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/question-answer/can-an-agnostic-be-a-christian)

There are a number of confusing items here, so let's take them one at a time.

First, Craig says that you can be an agnostic and a Christian. Yet, in the same post, he says that saving faith implies belief. That's a contradiction.

Second, most Christians would not consider you to be a Christian if you were agnostic. If your answer to Jesus' resurrection and/or God's existence is "maybe" or "I don't know," it's really hard to consider you to be "baptized in the Holy Spirit" or "regenerated" or "a new creation in Christ," or a "Child of God," or any spiritual term describing a saved Christian.

Third, arguably faith requires more than mere belief, but something closer to certainty.

Fourth, Craig says Kierkegaard and Karl Barth both were agnostic and yet "personally knew God." That doesn't make any sense.

Fifth, Craig says you can believe something and have your belief be rational even if the belief is not justified by argument. I think that's right, because we rely on foundational beliefs in order to even be capable of making an argument. These pre-argument beliefs cannot be supported by argument without circular reasoning, and I reject circular reasoning. Craig mentions phenomenal conservatism, which is a form of foundationalism which says it's rational to believe something if it seems true to you, provided there are no defeaters. There are defeaters for Christian belief, many of them, so it's weird for Craig to offer phenomenal conservatism as a way to justify Christian belief apart from arguments. Plantinga's properly basic belief also requires an absence of defeaters, which Christianity doesn't have. I don't like "warranted true belief" as a model of knowledge anyway, preferring explanationism or infallibilism.

Sixth, if Craig thinks Christian belief is properly basic apart from arguments, then why would he call Kierkegaard and Barth agnostics? If they personally knew God then they had belief that was properly basic and thus rational despite not having arguments.

Seventh, if Christian belief can be justified apart from arguments, then why care about the probabilities of Christian belief at all? Why not say, "Yes, there is only a one in a million chance that Christianity is true. Doesn't matter. I don't need arguments. Evidentialism is false." Or say: "Christian belief cannot be one in a million because I have a properly basic belief that it's true and there are no defeaters." Or if a belief's being only one in a million counts as a defeater, then on Craig's own view it would not be rational to believe in Christianity even if it's probability was too low.

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