It is hard to do the right thing when that means sacrificing ones own self-interest and to resist temptation to do wrong when desire is strong, and the belief that ultimately it does not matter what you choose or do is apt to sap ones moral strength and so undermine ones moral life. The question is not: Must we believe in God in order to live moral lives? . Note that this argument does not require a big bang. Commentary: Craig follows this paragraph by trying to convince the reader that some mythical or mythological elements seem to be engaged and even believed by NT authors and characters. Craig: Since the Pentateuchal author has an interest in history, he intends for his narrative to be at some level historical, to concern people who actually lived and events that really occurred. ; later, in 1974, he received an M.A. I do mean that Genesis 1-11 has obviously been shaped and structured by Moses, just as the Gospels of the New Testament are shaped history. . Sacrifice for another person is just stupid. Craig: On the basis of such examples, we can see how naive it is to argue that merely because some New Testament author refers to a literary figure, whether found in the Old Testament or outside it, that figure is asserted to be a historical person. What we need to do is trust the biblical text. Naturalists are typically materialists or physicalists, who regard man as a purely animal organism. We confess sola Scriptura, but we so easily waver from it, looking to other sources for support and corroboration and guidance. But unregenerate humanity is not within 10,000 miles of being the standard of what is sound or unsound in Scripture (see 1 Cor. The model posits that the universe suddenly appeared 13.8 billion years ago in a very dense, hot state that expanded and cooled into the universe we see today. As Robert Adams observes, Having to regard it as very likely that the history of the universe will not be good on the whole, no matter what one does, seems apt to induce a cynical sense of futility about the moral life, undermining ones moral resolve and ones interest in moral considerations. [15]By contrast there is nothing so likely to strengthen the moral life as the beliefs that one will be held accountable for ones actions and that ones choices do make a difference in bringing about the good. The fact is that we do apprehend objective values, and we all know it. William is related to Patricia Lee Cosby and Patricia Ann Thompson as well as 3 additional people. For a listing of Dr. Craig's articles, please visit his website. And what moral value does a puppet or its movements have? . Craig follows this assertion by qualifying it through reference to his foregoing genre analysis. What did that genre analysis try to establish? We must not try to read some of history as true, namely the parts that make sense to the human mind, and some of history as mythical, namely the parts that some tell us dont make sense to the human mind. So I think it is evident that theism provides a sound foundation for morality. He and his wife Jan have two grown children. After all, what is so special about human beings? Craig pursued his undergraduate studies at Wheaton College (B.A. The reason is that empirical science probes the way the universe is today. Later, he received his Master of Divinity summa cum laude from the Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois. Dr. Are the values we hold dear and guide our lives by mere social conventions akin to driving on the left versus right side of the road or mere expressions of personal preference akin to having a taste for certain foods or not? If God does not exist, then, as Nietzsche saw, we are ultimately landed in nihilism. This is a shocking passage, frankly. Every time the figure of Adam is deployed by NT authors, they are referring to the historical Adam. One can see the appeal. (New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston, 1966), p. 878. Why God is the only sound foundation for morality. Instead, Genesis 1-11 is history. This format is necessary, as the reader will soon see, because Craig essentially makes two arguments in the piece that oppose one another. And this is the crux of the issue. John Hick, Arguments for the Existence of God (New York: Herder & Herder, 1971), p. 63. Dr. Lisle: Wow! The reasoning of Ruse is at worst a text-book example of the genetic fallacy and at best only proves that our subjective perception of objective moral values has evolved. At age 16, while a junior in high school, he first heard the message of the Christian gospel and yielded his life to Christ. But if man has no immaterial aspect to his being (call it soul or mind or what have you), then he is not qualitatively different from other animal species. After all, the creation account is for Craig metaphorical or figurative. Apart from Genesis history, how will Craig defend the doctrine of original sin, or death being the penalty for sin? Dr. Craig pursued his . Craig is famous for providing attempted proof for the existence of God, using his designed Kalam cosmological argument. Does the concept of a moral obligation . . . William Lane Craig is Research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology and Professor of Philosophy at Houston Baptist University. The beauty of physical stats, their height, weight, eye color has always followed the others. Thus, even educated persons sometimes declare that such things are war, or abortion, or the violation of certain human rights, are morally wrong, and they imagine that they have said something true and significant. The objective worthlessness of human beings on a naturalistic world view is underscored by two implications of that world view: materialism and determinism. There is no reason to be human. His research on divine aseity and Platonism culminated with his book God Over All. Nowhere does doctrine depend upon a purportedly historical account that actually is ahistorical or transhistorical. Uniformitarianism denies the global flood mentioned in Genesis 6-8. But that was not the question. . Far from being arbitrary, these commands flow necessarily from His moral nature. He has published around 30 books, some of his widely read and praised publications include The Kalam Cosmological Argument; Assessing the New Testament Evidence for the Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus, Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom, Theism, Atheism, Big Bang Cosmology and God, Time and Eternity among others. William Lane Craig (1949- ) is a well-known Christian apologist, with earned doctorates in both philosophy and New Testament studies. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions. Today, Craig and most modern philosophers formulate the Kalam Cosmological argument like this. . As the Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky rightly said: If there is no immortality, then all things are permitted.[7]. In his book Morality after Auschwitz, Peter Haas asks how an entire society could have willingly participated in a state-sponsored program of mass torture and genocide for over a decade without any serious opposition. I pray the first is the case, and that Craig reverses course from here. We seem to battle perpetually with the temptation to read Scripture like other books. . . Like the Gospels, it is shaped history, written from different angles and with different points to make. [6]. Craig pursued his undergraduate studies at Wheaton College [1] The kalm (cosmological) argument is an argument from causality. Common sense dictates that we should resist, if we can, the socio-biological pressures to such self-destructive activity and choose instead to act in our best self-interest. Craig is famous for his remarkable debating skills, which present the most complex phenomena in the most comprehensive and logical manner. Title: Bio Page Author: 1019375 They have also lived in Las Vegas, NV and Needles, CA. William Lane Craig is Research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology in La Mirada, California. If you doubt this claim, please feel free to consult the history of interpretation with regard to liberal Protestant exegesis. This is what the Bible does: it gives us real events, true events, and it unfolds their theological and spiritual significance. Or are we in some way held accountable for our moral decisions and actions? He lives in Atlanta, Ga., with his wife Jan and their two teenage children Charity and John. The idea of political or legal obligation is clear enough . Thus, the moral choices we make in this life are infused with an eternal significance. Objective moral values do not exist. Read full bio Most Popular On Guard: Defending Your Faith with Reason and Precision 1,863 Kindle Edition $799$18.99 Customers Also Bought Items By Norman L. Geisler Paul Copan This is a truly explosive argument by Craig that threatens to destabilize Christian doctrine in general, not just the historical Adam, the creation account, the fall, and the imputation of Adams sin to all humanity. Our critic this week is Dr. William Lane Craig, a philosophy professor and Christian apologist. At the age of sixteen as a junior in high school, he first heard the message of the Christian gospel and yielded his life to Christ. If this is in fact true, his foundation will not hold, and thus his affirmation cannot sustain itself. . The purpose of the big bang is to explain the origin of the universe naturalistically without invoking God. They have also lived in Needles, CA and Lake Havasu City, AZ. If God does not exist, then it is difficult to see any reason to think that human beings are special or that their morality is objectively true. (I met him just once, in San Diego, and he was genial.) . That is, they actually occurred. We might act in precisely the same ways that we do in fact act, but in the absence of God, such actions would no longer count as good (or evil), since if God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist. It read: Sexual Assault: No One Has the Right to Abuse a Child, Woman, or Man. Most of us recognize that that statement is evidently true. Its pretty hard to deny that a straightforward reading of Genesis produces such a conclusion. The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user. The debate went well, and Craig began accepting other debate offers. true and mythological (or figurative). We cannot dismiss or alter the sections we do not like without it affecting all the other sections. But this stand is not based on scientific evidence. - The 5 Points of Calvinism Explained. These vital Gospel doctrines have their origin in the literal history of Genesis. 1. In Part 1 of this series we discussed William Lane Craig's surprising conclusion to his Creation and Evolution Defenders Class- that he views the Young Earth Creation interpretation of Genesis 1-11 as one of the top two most plausible interpretive options (though he rejects it in favor of what he calls the mytho-historical interpretation). Once more we see that the Reformation is in no sense over, and sola Scriptura is once again hanging in the balance from many different challengers. Dr. Craig: But YEC as a hermeneutical hypothesis is quite another matter. Craig was born on August 23, 1949, in Peoria, Illinois, to Mallory and Doris Craig. At the age of sixteen as a junior in high school, he first heard the message of the Christian gospel and yielded his life to Christ. such reference is truly without foundation. For some years now, Craig has been increasingly importunate in his efforts to cajole, harass or defame me into a debate with him. This format is necessary, as the reader will soon see, because Craig essentially makes two arguments in the piece that oppose one another. For him to regard human morality as objective is to fall into the trap of specie-ism. 3. Considered from the socio-biological point of view, such altruistic behavior is merely the result of evolutionary conditioning which helps to perpetuate the species. But in the absence of God, it is precisely such a vantage point that we lack. Early Life Craig was born on August 23, 1949, in Peoria, Illinois, to Mallory and Doris Craig. Whatever the extrabiblical sources say (and they say a great many things), the Bible is, As so often has occurred in the past, we evangelicals are always in danger of losing our confidence in Scripture. Evil and wrong will be punished; righteousness will be vindicated. Frankly, the natural man finds the resurrection of Christ fantastic. The 120 years in Genesis 6:3 was the time from this intermarriage till God would wipe out most of mankind in the Flood. Richard Taylor, an eminent ethicist, writes, The modern age, more or less repudiating the idea of a divine lawgiver, has nevertheless tried to retain the ideas of moral right and wrong, not noticing that, in casting God aside, they have also abolished the conditions of meaningfulness for moral right and wrong as well. Michael Ruse, Darwinism Defended (London: Addison-Wesley, 1982), p. 275. [9], Somebody might say that it is in our best self-interest to adopt a moral life-style. Truth, said differently, depends upon historyreal history that is true. The Bible gives us an entire world-and-life view. We thus come to radically different perspectives on morality depending upon whether or not God exists. Do these passages affirm, either explicitly or implicitly, that the universe was created in the recent past (say, 10,000-20,000 years ago)? Why should he regard the future existence of a million million other ants as more important to him than his own continued existence? : University of Notre dame Press, 1979), p. 127. He argues instead for a strange synthesis: mytho-history. Yet then he doubles back on himself and seems, for a couple sentences at least, to affirm a historical Adam. Richard Wurmbrand reports, The cruelty of atheism is hard to believe when man has no faith in the reward of good or the punishment of evil. He writes, We have not been able to show that reason requires the moral point of view, or that all really rational persons should not be individual egoists or classical amoralists. (It might surprise Craig to learn that the vast majority of such estimates of the age of the earth or cosmos are far less than the billions of years required in the secular timeline that he adopts.) Genesis specifically affirms that it is history and not a made-up tale when it states, This is the history of the heavens and the earth when they were created (Genesis 2:4, NKJV). Where do we find the first promise that God would send a Savior? A correct and full understanding of the Gospel requires a correct understanding of creation and the fall of man. If God does not exist, then it is plausible to think that there are no objective moral values, that we have no moral duties, and that there is no moral accountability for how we live and act. William Lane Craig. God is. He and his wife Jan have two grown children. Strangely, as referenced above, this has all been tried by professing Christians before. It didnt work then, and it will not work now. He received a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Birmingham and a Ph.D. in Theology from the University of Munich. William Lane Craig. This is one of the most important questions a person can consider. The philosopher of religion John Hick invites us to imagine an ant suddenly endowed with the insights of socio-biology and the freedom to make personal decisions. We are not dealing, after all, with miraculous fruit, as if God would on the occasion of eating supernaturally bestow upon the eater immortality or knowledge of good and evil against his divine will. . I recognize that some in the evangelical guild today believe that they can hold to such a synthetic theology, a merged hermeneutic. The location of his birth is Peoria, Illinois, USA. Much of Scripture is to be understood in straightforwardly literal terms, some passages are clearly symbolic, and all historical accounts are to be understood truthfully. . If God does not exist, then what is the foundation for moral values? By that, he means that there really was a man named Adam but that the details in Genesis 2-3 about the origin of Adam and Eve and the nature of their fall in sin are symbolic myths. He is teaching truth, that is, at the same time that he stands on actual chronological occurrence recorded in his Bible. because such an awareness is of biological worth. . Interview by Melissa Cain. In chapter 2 of In Quest of the Historical Adam, I examine the folklorist's concept of "myth" and derive ten family resemblances exhibited by paradigmatic myths. The same one referenced in the NT is the one depicted in real historical terms in the OT. Dr.William Lane Craig is a renowned American Christian apologist, theologian and philosopher. Morality is a biological adaptation no less than are hands and feet and teeth . As a result of socio-biological pressures, there has evolved among homo sapiens a sort of herd morality which functions well in the perpetuation of our species in the struggle for survival. Craigs fame is accredited for his development of the Kalam Cosmological argument, which proposes that there is a cause for everything and that Jesus is the light. Those who affirm Genesis 1-11 as historical or literal would not follow the wooden form of interpretation that Craig has set up as a fall guy for his mytho-historical hermeneutic. Though I have in no way assumed that Craig is a liberal Protestant to this point, it is important to note that he is choosing the interpretive trail blazed by those who gave up the historic Christian faith not long ago. Michael Ruse, Evolutionary Theory and Christian Ethics, in The Darwinian Paradigm (London: Routledge, 1989), pp. Your belief in the existence of God has enormous implications on your views of life, humanity, morality, and destiny. In what follows, Im going to quote Craig and follow his words with some brief theological interaction. 1974; M.A. But there does not seem to be anything about homo sapiens that makes this morality objectively true. Is the Bible a myth a cleverly devised tale rather than recorded history? William Lane Craig is a visiting scholar in philosophy at Talbot School of Theology in La Mirada, Calif. After all, marriage has its foundation in the literal history of Genesis (Genesis 2:20-24) as Jesus affirmed in Matthew 19:4-6. The literary Adam is a character in a story, specifically the stories of Genesis 23. As stated, you cannot have history be both true and mythological (or figurative). C. Garnett (New York: Signet Classics, 1957), bk. The universe has a beginning and therefore requires a cause.
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