Continuing on my blogging of Lee Strobel's The Case For Christ:
Objection Two: Since Miracles Contradict Science, They Cannot Be True; William Lane Craig, PhD.
CS Lewis quotes: 0
Mentions of former atheists: 3 ('a fellow [Craig] recently met', 'a former skeptic myself', 'Harvard-educated Patrick Glynn [...] abandon[ed] atheism and [became] a Christian')
How do I know Bill Craig is like me? 'Bill Craig is not an ivory tower pontificator' (Just like Kreeft)
How forceful is Strobel in presenting the questions? Very. 'He listened to my first question, which admittedly came with an edge of challenge [...] I pressed him [...] this wasn't enough for me [...] I wanted to get more personal [...] deep in your soul, do you know for a fact that Christianity is true?'
Craig is a heavyweight among apologists, and it seems that Strobel may recognise this; the drama-queen language is toned down a touch, and while there are flaws in most, perhaps all, the points raised, they are largely less tooth-grindingly obvious than in the previous section. Let us hope that this is something that will continue through the book. In the meantime, and leaving aside as much as possible what I know of Craig from elsewhere (though that will not be totally possible), how does he fare under Strobel's treatment?
Craig's central argument here is that belief in a creator makes it rational to believe in mircales. However, this is a dangerous argument for him to persue, since the reverse is also true: if belief in God leads us to expect miracles to occur and we find they do not, that should make us strongly question whether God does, in fact, exist. So let us see how Craig does with his defence of miracles.
My opinion is that science (and all rational-empirical thought) is in conflict with faith for two reasons. Firstly, the underlying philosophies are different: science is tied to the assumption of naturalism (at least as far as its method goes), and if we drop that assumption science ceases to work properly. Faith, in the sense that Craig means it, positively denies naturalism. These two practical approaches seem completely opposed to me.
Secondly, science is based on simple observation, and simple observation tells us to expect miracles to happen virtually never or actually never. So if we encounter a claim of a miracle, we should be very sceptical and require some very good evidence before we accept it as true - extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, something that Craig rejects very early on in the interview.
So let's see how Craig approaches the subject. Firstly, he says that miracles do not contradict science, they simply lie outside it. This is a pretty dubious claim - miraculous cures, for instance, should be firmly within the real of medical testing, yet seem not to happen. But he justifies this claim (oddly) by saying that science and theism can be combined - and citing Intelligent Design as a good example! ID is not science, not by any reasonable definition, and not in the opinion of the bulk of scientists, court verdicts, and even many non-literalist priests. For Craig to claim that there is no conflict between science and faith and then cite pseudo-science as his best example kills his argument stone dead to start with.
Craig offers us a definition of a miracle, which is a good place to start (so it's strange he had to make his bizarre ID-related claim first). Indeed his defenition is entirely sensible: 'A miracle is an event which is not producible by the natural causes that are operative at the time and place that the event occurs.' But almost immediately he declares that he is (in Strobel's words): 'disagreeing with the great skeptic David Hume, who defined miracles as being violations of the laws of nature.' If there is some subtle difference between those definitions, it is lost on me. Is 'not producible by natural causes' distinct in some way from 'violating the laws of nature'? If so, Craig does not explain and Strobel does not ask. Or perhaps Craig simply can't bring himself to admit that Hume is right about anything.
From this tangential brush with the rarified heights of common sense, the conversation goes downhill again. Craig's first and best example of miracles that are not (in his words) 'superstitious', 'an excuse for ignorance' or 'simplistic thinking' is - again - ID. He specifically claims that Michael Behe's work is 'based on solid scientific analysis'. The problem, of course, is that it is no such thing. ID is pseudo-science, and that has been apparent to all neutral observers since the modern ID movement began. The fact that Craig is speaking before Behe was forced to admit under oath that ID is no more scientific than astrology is a thin defence for Craig. And I am not sure what Craig hopes to gain by this strange insistence that ID is credible - it can only undermine the case he is trying to make.
Now Craig moves on to addressing probably the most famous general argument against miracles, that of David Hume. Hume, of course, argues that since the observational evidence that the laws of nature cannot be violated is so overwhelming, it will always be more likely that an observer is mistaken than that they have seen a genuine miracle, and thus we can never have reasonable grounds for belief in miracles. Rather than address this directly, Craig initially chooses to persue a similar but different issue; since he believes that God exists, he thinks that belief in miracles is rational. Therefore, he contends, it is not irrational for him to believe accounts of miracles. So a lot will rest on how convincing a case Craig can make for the existence of God.
Having made that claim, and apparently labouring under the misapprehension that Hume is basing his case on a naturalistic assumption, Craig now moves on to a slightly... novel attack on Hume:
'There is no contradiction between believing that men generally stay in their graves and that Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead. In fact, Christians believe both of these. The opposite of the statement that Jesus rose from the dead is not that all other men remained in their graves; it's that Jesus of Nazareth remained in his grave.
'In order to argue against the evidence for the Resurrection, you have to present evidence against the Resurrection itself, not evidence that everybody else has always remained in their grave. So I think [Hume's] argument is simply fallacious.'
Got that? In order to argue against something, you must present evidence against that specific example. It is 'simply fallacious' to make a general case and extrapolate it to a specific example.
Now this is really very surprising to hear from a professional, qualified philosopher. There is a name for the line of reasoning that Craig is arguing against: 'inductive reasoning'. Although it is notoriously difficult (even impossible) to justify from first principles, it underpins all human learning, and specifically it is central to the scientific method. By Craig's argument, when I throw a ball in the air, I cannot know whether gravity will act on it. Sure, gravity has acted on all other balls thrown in the air, but Craig's whole point is that 'in order to argue [X], you have to present evidence for [X] itself, not evidence that every other case has been similar', so I cannot extrapolate my experience with other balls to the specific ball in question.
The last person I know of who seriously argued along the lines Craig proposes was a philosopher - I cannot now find a reference to back this up, but the point would stand even if the story were mythical - who refused to accept that inductive reasoning gave any reason to think that the sun would rise the next morning since, and bet a colleague a farthing that it would not. Of course, he lost - but seeing no reason to extrapolate the general case of losing the bet in the past to the specific case of repeating the bet the next day, he continued to make the same bet (and lose it) every day until he died.
This is the exalted philosophical company with which Craig chooses to align himself with this particular argument. I would think that Craig is one of those philsophers who is so caught up in their pet theories that they lose touch a little with the real world, if only I didn't have Strobel's reassurances about Craig not being an 'ivory tower' dweller to reassure me. In fact, it is so surprising that any serious philosopher would be unaware of what induction is or the practical problems in denying it that I find it very difficult to believe that even Craig takes this line of argument seriously.
Applying induction to the case in hand: we know from observation that dead people don't come back to life (or at the very least, that it is fantastically rare that they do so), and this is true whether you believe in God or not; it is a simple observation of the world around us and not based on any philosophical predisposition. Whilst this may not absolutely prove that Jesus is not the exception who did rise from the dead, it certainly means that this claim is extraordinary, and it does require extraordinary proof.
Incidentally, I have an argument based on parsimony to support inductive reasoning, which I may give at some stage; for now, let me simply point out that this stance underlines the contradiction between reason and belief in miracles, it does not remove it. Whatever the truth of it, science is based on inductive reasoning. If Craig disputes it to support miracles, science and miracles are in conflict.
Given the importance of this point, I will spend a little time covering of Craig's counter-example also. He says that any given lottery result is highly improbable, yet we accept it without question because the unlikelihood of TV reports being wrong outweighs the unlikelihood of the result itself. The basic premise is true, but Craig skips another important factor: all lottery results are equally probable. If we are more likely to dispute a result of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 than a result of 4, 2, 9, 7, 8, 3, that is to do with our perceptions not the actual probability. If someone tells me they have seen a unicorn, it is entirely reasonable for me to ask for more evidence than if they say they have seen a horse; and this is based on experience (I have seen plenty of horses but few unicorns), not a philosophical bias. In contrast, we know from simple observation that the chances of someone coming back from the dead are very low (whether or not you believe in God). Craig's response is that the unlikelihood of Jesus' Resurrection is counterbalanced by the unlikelihood of the lines of evidence in its favour being misleading - the empty tomb, post-Resurrection appearances, etc. We will cover this later; for now, let us simply note that this essentially says that the New Testament is so reliable that we should simply accept it when it says a miracle has occurred even though our own experience tells us miracles occur vanishingly rarely or never at all. You may or may not believe this, but it is certainly no basis for a serious philosophical argument.
I would also like to raise a flag here. Craig is very plainly - and at quite some length - saying that the existence of God makes miracles rationally plausible: 'If God really exists then in what sense is it improbable that he would raise Jesus from the dead?' This is clearly bunk - you need large tracts of highly implausible Christian theology to explain the Resurrection of Jesus - but I want to come back to this point later.
That's enough actual thought for a while, and now we have half a page of content-free anti-free-thought invective while we brace ourselves for the next real mental stimulation and to mark the break between two main sections of Craig's argument. Since my readers may well also appreciate such a break, I will extend them the same courtest Strobel and Craig do, by giving a quick precis:
'I recently met a fellow who became a Christian out of the so-called 'free thought' movement [...] his free-thought colleagues bitterly railed against him [...] "Why are they so hostile?" [...] some 'free thought' folks aren't as free thinking as they would have people believe [...] many skeptics act in a close-minded way.'
Got that? Right, back to content-bearing arguments.
Previously, on The Case For Faith: Craig is currently denying inductive reasoning, and claiming that belief in miracles is justified by belief in God. He therefore needs to make a case that God exists in order to support his belief in miracles. But there will be a little preamble before he gets to his main points.
'Apart from some proof of atheism, there's no warrant for excluding supernatural explanations.' Yes there is. For a start, what's this with 'proof'? Surely all we need is evidence 'beyond reasonable doubt' before it becomes reasonable to exclude the supernatural? Furthermore, naturalistic explanations work. They have explanatory and predictive powers; supernatural explanations have neither. Naturalism allows us to build computers that work, planes that fly and spacecraft that hit their designated orbits (usually). Supernaturalism does what? Dousing for water? Faith healing? The greatest 'warrant' you could possibly want for excluding supernatural mechanisms is mankind's progress since the Enlightenment, compared to the stagnation before it. To coin a phrase: science works, bitches.
The next major chunk of Craig's argument is specific reasons to think that the miracles of Jesus are credible, and that they are more credible than those of other religious leaders. Craig's major line of defence here is that miracles should be judged on whether they are in a 'religio-historical context.'
This, frankly, is more blatant balderdash that I find it hard to believe that even Craig believes. Is he saying that all claims of the supernatural should be investigated this way? (Remember that his definition of 'miracle' makes no distinction between divine causation and any other form of supernatural event.) We should investigate poltergeists, UFOs, milk-drinking statues and levitation by first and foremost looking to see what religious context they appear in? It rather seems that Craig has chosen his criteria here because they will give the answer he wants, not because they are particularly good criteria. But even if we accept them, there are examples that would meet them that Craig cannot accept, such as the Emperor Vespasian's healing of the blind and crippled, within the context of Vespasian's claims of divinity and Roman Emperor-worship.
There is more reliance on the NT to 'prove' that Jesus' miracles are genuine, and thus to lend support to the NT version of the Resurrection, which is somewhat circular to my mind, to say the least. This is combined with wild claims such as 'the historicity of [Jesus' miracles] is not in doubt.' There are major and minor inaccuracies, such as describing Rudolf Bultmann (who accepts the literal truth of at least some of Jesus' miracles) as 'recognized as one of the most skeptical New Testament critics of this century'. Perhaps this interview did indeed take place in the late 20th Century, but the book was published in the 21st; Bultmann was a 20th-Century theologian (and much of his work dating back to the first quarter of that century at that). He may have been one of the most skeptical theologians of the 1920s; by the late 1990s there are many historians who have argued much more skeptical viewpoints (up to and including that Jesus did not exist at all).
It is crucual to Craig's line of argument that the NT documents are from eye-witnesses. Since this is not really defensible, he instead has to insist that they contain information that came from eye-witnesses. The counter-argument, of course, is that they were built up over time, particularly where the miracles are concerned, around a kernel of true (but non-miraculous) information, such as the moral teachings of Jesus. Craig deals with this by looking at a single, weak example, concerning the precise wording used to describe how many people were present at a healing. He simply glosses over the fact that the main miracle in question - the Resurrection - is absent altogether (the Didache and Thomas, if these documents are as early as some suggest; bear in mind that Craig consistently implies very early dating for source materials) or is treated as purely spiritual (Paul) in the earliest sources, then becomes physical but unreported (short Mark), before reaching the 'well-attested' status he needs in the Gospels. The claim that Jesus the miracle-worker is found in all the sources is likewise false; the Didache and Thomas pointedly do not mention a single miracle of Jesus between them, and I believe I am correct in saying that Paul does not either, aside from the Resurrection itself. A similar case could be made for other aspects of the NT, such as portrayal of Jesus as divine or human.
Then we get an oft-repeated but demonstrably empty claim: 'There was nowhere near enough time for legend to have developed and wiped out a solid core of historical truth.' I'm not quite sure how this minimum length of time is supposed to have been calculated but even taking Craig's claim of a 5-year period before the first claims of Jesus' divinity were recorded (which is a very debatable timescale for which he offers no supporting evidence), we can think of numerous modern examples that utterly falsify this claim. How long between the death of Elvis and rumours he was alive? Or rather implausible rumours about the Roswell crash? JFK assassination conspiracy theories? Osama bin Laden's death? Princess Diana's death? This unsupported claim, though central to Craig's argument, is very weak.
He makes a relatively decent stab at pointing out that Muslim accounts of Mohammed's miracles were not written down until long after Mohammed's death (though note the double standard with the 'core of historical truth dating back to 5 years after the Resurrection' being so reliable but the oral tradition of the Hadiths being clearly bogus), though he does have to skip over the 'splitting of the Moon', a miracle mentioned in the Quran that would appear to violate Craig's claim that there are no miracles in the Quran (other interpretations are available, your Quran may vary). He is markedly less successful with Mormonism, which clearly did catch on while there were witnesses alive to discredit Joseph Smith. His attempt to shift the subject onto an archaeological disproof of Mormonism starts out as an irrelevant dodge, then becomes a spectacular own goal when he refers just lines later to the Exodus as a historical fact. Should have stuck with the NT, which is at least based in a real time and place, unlike the Exodus - of course, without the OT, his claim that there are periods of 'great moments in salvation history' is looking a little threadbare of examples - it essentially means only the time of Jesus, which would seem to undermine rather than support his contention that miracles really happen.
We have another break while Craig explains why God has not healed him personally (by keeping him physically weak, he has forced him to become an academic - so presumably all those sportsmen who think God has granted them physical gifts should be a little cautious that God might also have given them some academic challenges to help them along the way? Hmm, Craig might actually be onto something there...) before we head into the 'home straight'.
Now comes another clear example of (at best) a 'leading question' and at worst some post-interview editing by Strobel. Craig is well-known for his five arguments for God's existence. When he mentions Plantinga's 'dozen arguments', Strobel innocently asks, 'How about zeroing in on five main arguments?'. Gosh, what a pleasing coincidence that Strobel should ask for just the number of examples that Craig invariably gives.
Never mind. Remember what is riding on this. Having rejected inductive reasoning and instead placed his reliance on the Bible, and having distinguished between Biblical and non-Biblical miracles on entirely spurious grounds, Craig has relied upon the existence of God being reasonable in order to make belief in miracles reasonable. So here are Craig's five reasons for belief in God.
1) Nothing can come out of nothing, and the Kalam version of the Cosmological argument. I have covered this elsewhere, but very briefly, quantum theory disproves the first premise (that nothing can come from nothing) and the cosmological argument in general does nothing to show that the cause of the universe was God. Craig reiterates his frequently-made claim that 'atheists' (that homogenous bunch) claim that the universe is eternal and uncaused, and therefore cannot object to the idea of an eternal and uncaused God. Of course, the reverse also applies, that theists cannot object to an eternal and uncaused universe, but Craig does not seem to notice this. Nor does he seem to notice that the same logic would tie the beliefs of modern Christians (that equally homogenous bunch) to those of past Christians - so lightning must be God's divine vengeance, for instance.
2) Fine Tuning. This is the only time that I have seen Craig directly attack the 'Many Worlds' hypothesis. His response is that this is merely a theory, since we cannot observe these other worlds. But that is not the point; the fact that this is possible undermines Fine Tuning as an argument for God, since it's no longer true to say God is the only possible explanation for FT. You might as well say that Fine Tuning is itself evidence for the existence of Many Worlds. Nor does he mention the possibility of indirect evidence for Many Worlds, which is in fact the current situation. His example of being dealt four aces consistently in poker fails - even if there are multiple universes, the chances of us being in one where this happens are just as remote as it happening by chance in a single universe. It's possible, it's just not plausible. This does not apply to Fine Tuning - if there are multiple universes, life must by definition exist only in those where it is possible for life to exist, no matter how rare they are. We are looking at a biased sample of universes with respect to life - we can only see life-bearing universes, no matter how rare they are. No such bias exists with respect to dealing out cards. This is the anthropic principle, and once again I simply cannot believe that Craig is unaware of it, and again is entirely non-controversial. Opinion pollsters use a variety of it, fer Chrissakes, bcause otherwise they get the wrong results in election forecasts. This is, in fact, the one point in this chapter that I simply cannot, no matter how I look at it, believe that Craig is being entirely honest with his audience. And once I accept that here, the integrity of a number of his other (previously mentioned) statements becomes equally dubious.
Craig also claims that the Many Worlds theory was created only to discredit the Fine Tuning argument: 'the very fact that skeptics have to come up with such an outlandish theory is because the fine-tuning of the universe points powerfully toward an Intelligent Designer - and some people will hypothesise anything to avoid reaching that conclusion.' This is simply untrue, and slanderous to boot. In light of the above, I am not even certain whether Craig may know it is untrue - if he knows enough about (say) M-Theory to comment on it intelligently, he must at least know that it falls naturally out of the mathematics of string theory, and the fact that it discredits one of his favourite arguments (two actually; it also bears on first cause and the KCA) is neither here nor there. In a recent debate, Craig argued that we have to accept the most current scientific evidence and theories; yet he cannot do that here without immediately writing off two fifths of his case. So he resorts to throwing dirt and hoping some sticks.
3) Moral values. Again, I have covered this at length elsewhere. In addition, he here explicitely equates biologically-based morality with moral relativism, which is simply untrue. I note also his position on genocide, which he does not consider objectively wrong. This rather undermines his initial assumptions that there are objective moral values that all humans have access to via God, since most people would tend to believe that genocide is morally wrong.
4) The Resurrection. Now a very strange thing happens. Do you remember how I flagged up earlier that Craig was arguing that the existence of God makes belief in the Resurrection more plausible? Well, it turns out that he also argues exactly the reverse, that the Resurrection makes the existence of God more plausible: 'Miracles can be part of the cumulative case for God.' This is only true if you'll accept a circular argument or discard Craig's whole case in favour of the Resurrection as historical truth.
Anyway, he lists four events (Jesus' burial in a tomb of known location; the discovery of the empty tomb by the women; Jesus' post-Resurrection appearances; and the continuing belief of the disciples after Jesus' death) that he claims are 'widely accepted by New Testament historians'. (Notice, incidentally, that being 'widely accepted' by experts is such a good case where it supports Craig's views, but so irrelevant when it does not, such as the positions of cosmologists or philosophers on some of his more controversial claims.) I promised we would return to this. The first three of these rely heavily on the accuracy of the New Testament, and as I have already pointed out, we have decent evidence to at least suspect that the Bible is not a neutral and strictly factual historical account. Despite Craig's insistence to the contrary, these are extraordinary claims and we should therefore be looking for extraordinary evidence, and indeed many NT historians consider them very questionable. Instead, we have some highly biased ('prejudiced', in Craig's terms), anonymous accounts with no referenced sources. This would be nowhere near enough to support such claims if they were not related to Christian belief, therefore there is nowhere near enough evidence to support them just because they are about Christianity. To argue otherwise would be just a variation of 'this is true because I believe it is true'. Which, strangely, brings me to:
5) Personal Experience. Like the first two claims, this can be dismissed out of hand. Craig does not accept the 'personal experience' of Muslims, his own 'personal experience' of a fixed, motionless Earth, or any of a multitude of other similar arguments. So this is not so much an argument from 'personal experience of the divine' as an argument from William Craig's own personal opinions.
In defence, Craig gets into some very technical philosophy very quickly, presumably in an attempt to dazzle his audience into thinking he must be too smart to be wrong. He claims that belief in God is 'properly basic'. (Although he doesn't mention it, this is essentially Plantinga's 'Reformed Epistemology') The trouble is that belief in God isn't nearly as 'basic' as other 'properly basic' beliefs (which he does not stoop to describe), and is therefore special pleading. Properly basic beliefs are usually restricted to descriptions of one's own mental state: 'I believe I am looking at something red'; 'I believe I am in pain'. These are accepted as basic because there is really no other option without denying that we can perceive the outside world, or without rendering concepts like 'pain' meaningless. It would be quite proper to say 'I believe I feel God's presence', and that would indeed be convincing reason to accept that you do feel as though you are in God's presence; but it would not be good reason to think you actually are in God's presence, any more than feeling that Justin Bieber is a musical genius or that Megan Fox is madly in love with me are good evidence that those things are true outside of my own head.
Alarmingly, Craig seems to regard this as his best 'argument': 'when we've met God, so to speak, face-to-face, all of the arguments and evidence for his existence - though still perfectly valid - take a secondary role.'
The clincher for me comes right at the end. Craig states outright that: 'immediate experience of God is available to anyone who seeks it' (with a Biblical quote to support it, no less). Well, I can absolutely guarantee to Craig that this is false. I have made the most genuine effort I can to 'open myself' to God in response to exactly this point from another Christian, and simply felt no response. Now, of course I cannot prove this, and no doubt Strobel's response (and perhaps Craig's too) would be some sort of personal attack on my sincerity, or perhaps to rapidly backtrack and start adding extra hurdles to what is required. Nevertheless, I for one know for a fact that Craig's beliefs are wrong.
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