Dr. William Lane Craig is an evidentialist with a difference; while he believes that we can use philosophical argumentation to “show” the truth of Christianity, he does not see reason as the primary route to “knowing” Christianity to be true. He affirms that Christian theists, such as myself, are justified in believeing the “great truths of the Gospel” based entirely on what he calls “the inner witness of the Holy Spirit”.
What this “inner witness” IS exactly, I still have not been able to completely decipher: is it some kind of religious experience, whereby the Christian has a strong emotional feeling, or rational intuition of Christianity’s truth? If this is the case, then I have experienced this “inner witness” after many prayer meanings during my BB’s Camp in the year 2007.
But it is neither the nature or even truth of this “holy spirit epistemology” I intend to briefly comment on. Rather I would just like to point out that it is not nearly as comforting as Bill Craig seems to think. For example, in a popular youtube video circulating starring Bill, he claims this “inner witness” offers peace to a doubting Christian, because it grounds the certainty of his faith in something wholey apart from complicated philosophical arguments. But this simply isn’t true, because the “holy spirit epistemology” itself is a philosophical thesis that must be somehow rationally defended. If this were not so, then why does Craig devote nearly a whole chaper in “Reasonable Faith” and an entire “Reasonable Faith” podcast to doing just this?
It seems to me that Craig’s epistemology is based on Alvin Plantinga’s “reformed epistemology” that treats belief in “the great truths of the Gospel” as properly basic- this is a thesis that has come under attack and has required a vast amount of philosophical argumentation to establish and defend.
My point is that this “inner witness” idea of Bill’s is not comforting in the slightest as it DOESN’T offer us a safe house of certainty in the midst of fiery philosophical mind-storms- rather it only opens up yet MORE doors for serious philsophical dispute and argumentation.
Anyone want to defend Craig here?
Craig’s “Holy Spirit Epistemology” is Not Comforting
Kalam Can Prove Omnipotence
I personally take the incredibly fashionable and obviously rational (if you’re a Christian William Lane Craig fanboi), or the increbibly unfashionable and obviously irrational (if you’re an angry atheist blogger) position that the Kalam Cosmological Argument is a sound argument. I also happen to believe that the “conceptual analysis” of the so-called “Cause No. 1″ that defenders of kalam (or mutakalim as they are dubbed in the section of the KCA in The Blackwell Companion To Natural Theology) engage in after arguing for the syllogism reveals the cause to be at least a deistic god: personal, powerful, immaterial, timeless and uncaused.
However, it is a fair criticism often levelled at kalam that it does not necessarily prove the god of classical theism, never mind a god of any particular religion. We are never able to identify Cause No. 1 as exemplying the “three omnis” for example (omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence).
However, in pondering possible solutions to an objection I myself thought of to the KCA, I think that I may be able to move Cause No. 1 one step closer to exemplifying one omni- namely “omnipotence”. Bear in mind, these are incredibly preliminary thoughts, and so I am just throwing this out there for kicks (this is the main purpose of my blog) but hopefully I’m onto something here.
For the sake of this entry, I’ll have to ask my readers to concede kalam for the moment, as my intent is not to argue for its truth per se, but only increase its value as an argument for the existence of God. Therefore, you will have to concede for the sake of argument that I have given more than enough evidence for you to accept the premises:
(1) Whatever begins to exist has a cause
(2) The universe began to exist.
A potential objection I dreamt up to kalam today involved premise 1 (hereafter known as “the causal principle”) and the idea of a being utilising creatio ex nihilo.
Here is the dilema- we know the causal principle to be true based on pure scientific induction. We always observe it to be the case, and we never observe the opposite occuring. It is a physical law of the universe that something cannot pop into being out of nothing uncaused. Since the universe itself had a beginning, it must have a cause.
However, since the universe had a beginning, then material itself had a beginning, which means Cause No. 1 had no pre-existent material to work with when it caused the universe to come into being. Therefore, Cause No. 1 must have caused the universe to come into being via creatio ex nihilo.
The problem is, if we apply the same criteria we use to affirm the causal principle to the idea of creatio ex nihilo, namely the scientific induction I previously mentioned, the two are on equal footing possibility wise. We have never observed anyone creating something from nothing- in fact the opposite seems to be the case. People must use pre-existent material to cause something to come into being.
The mutakalim therefore seems to have a problem on his hands, since it appears inconsistent to affirm the causal principle yet also affirm that Cause No. 1 utilised creatio ex nihilo to cause our universe to come into being.
Here is my solution.
Firstly, the idea of creatio ex nihilo is obviously logically possible in the broad sense- it is not an incoherent notion.
Secondly, the negation of the causal principle is also broadly logically possible- however, it is physically impossible, and on naturalism only that which is physically possible is actually possible.
If we agree with my second contention, then it cannot be true that the universe popped into existence out of nothing. We must still afirm the existence of a Cause. Now, if it is possible that this Cause can actualise broadly logically possible things that are nevertheless physically impossible, we can solve this problem. I’ll lay this out more simply below:
We have three propositions:
1. The universe popped into being out of nothing
2. Cause No. 1 caused the universe to come into being, but it is bound only by what is physicaly possible
3. Cause No. 1 caused the universe to come into being, but is not bound by what is physically possible.
Since (1) and (2) are impossible, given what we know thus far, (3) must be true. This means Cause No. 1 can actualise things that are broadly logically possible, yet also physically possible.
Since the only barrier to actualising logically possible states of affairs (beyond ones own nature) is physical limitation, and since Cause No. 1 must obviously have no physical limitation, it follows that Cause No. 1 can actualise all logically possible states of affairs that arn’t rendered impossible by its own nature.
This is actually exactly what modern theologians mean by “omnipotence”.
Therefore, we may conclude that Cause No. 1 is omnipotent.
And there you have it. Feel free to tear me a new one on this. 
Mandatory Irrelevant First Post
I have another blog which can be found here:
xmasfish.wordpress.com
But it was too personal and in-jokey for what I would like to do on the blogosphere. Which is why I’ve started this one based on my incredibly weird TheologyWeb user name. At the time, I was doing some stupid story for my GCSE English Literature coursework about a foetus in space who solved mysterious with his pet Spermy-Doo (a giant talking sperm), a story which was entitled “Space Foetus”. I had only intended to lurk at the forum to check out some of the gym debates J.P. Holding from had had with various skeptics (*1). Soon I began posting and it turns out everyone over there needs to have a blog associated in some way with Christianity. So heres my official one: Thoughts of the Foetus.
Here I may as well just post my theological views and comment on them briefly. For a guide I’ll just be using my Tweb personal profile (*2)
Faith: Christian- testimony time- basically, I’ve been a Christian for most of my life. I was (and still am, I’m only 17) brought up in a Christian home with Christian parents, although our faith is something that is very rarely discussed. I remember it being brought up once and my parents said they did not want to force us to believe any religion and they want us to make up our own minds. I appreciate that. Nevertheless, they made us go to chuch, the youth groups and the Boys Brigade (partly for social reasons) and it is through these organisations (as well as the Scripture Union in our school which I went to out of my own choice- many of my friends in primary school were and still are Christians) that I began to become afraid of a place called “Hell”. I pretty much converted after these fears, something which is highly criticised today, by Christians and atheists. Nevertheless, I began to understand that I needed a savoir and comprehended Christianity a lot more as I became older. However, a couple of years ago, I started getting some intense doubt. I can vivadly remember singing praise at a church youth weekend, and being terrified that I was swallowing something totally unfounded in reality. Long story short, I eventually discovered apologetic sites such as Christian Answers (*3) and Answers In Genesis (*4). While I now disagree with AiG and even resent their theological stances sometimes, I am eternally grateful for them for opening up the door for me to apologetics. They are possibly the most accessible and interactive apologetics ministry out there for the masses. I think that we need the more scholarly ministries to start heading in that direction- some are now, and it was these sites that I later discovered and dispelled doubt- sites like Tekton (*5) and Reasonable Faith (*6). I am now more secure in my faith and a lot more knowledgable about it, thanks to TWeb and these various sites. I must admit that I do doubt every so often, but I have the Holy Spirit for conviction and reason to fall back on in my spiritually darker times.
Well, that was an overlong testimony.
Ecclesiology/Denomination: Presbyterian- not sure I agree with everything they say, but I go to a Presbyterian Church and I greatly respect their history.
Eschatology: Orthodox Preterist (Partial Preterist)- was a futurist for a while after reading the Left behind series that I discovered in my church library, but Tekton and Dee Dee’s sites quickly remedied that . For the record, I see hyperpreterism (i.e. full-preterism, “consistant”-preterism, pantelism, covenatn eschatology, transmillenialism etc.) as a dangerous heresy.
Ontology: Trinitarian- As an orthodox Christian, I pretty much have to be one, don’t I?
Protology: Theistic Evolutionist- I prefer the term “evolutionary creationist”- I’m actually more of an agnostic on this issue: I used to be quite a hardline young earth creationist, but recently I’ve begun to question their approach to Genesis in the theological realm. In short, I don’t think Genesis has to be interpreted as an historical, literal, scientific account. I think that laymen are rational to accept the scientific consensus on a topic, and the consensus is pretty much that Darwinian Evolution is true, so I accept it while acknoweldging that I can not see for sure. I am sympathetic to Intelligent Design Movement philosphically, but agnostic scientifically.
Soteriology: Molinist- only because J.P. Holding and William Lane Craig are I hold to this tentativly, but it makes the most sense to me right now.
Various: Just War Theorist- It seems to be pretty obvious that war can be justified in some extreem cases e.g. World War Two. Doesn’t make me a war-mongering nut- believe me, I prefer peace overwhelmingly.
Anyways, thats about it for now. Expect more from me, once my A-Levels are over!
(*1) These debates can be found here: http://www.tektonics.org/twebarchives.html
(*2) http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/member.php?u=14958
(*3) http://christiananswers.net/
(*4) http://www.answersingenesis.org/
(*5) http://www.tektonics.org/
(*6) http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/PageServer
