Posts by William Lane Craig

William Lane Craig

William Lane Craig is a visiting scholar in philosophy at Talbot School of Theology. He lives in Atlanta, Ga., with his wife Jan and their two teenage children Charity and John. At age 16, while a junior in high school, he first heard the message of the Christian gospel and yielded his life to Christ. He has authored or edited over thirty books, including The Kalam Cosmological Argument; Assessing the New Testament Evidence for the Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus; Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom; Theism, Atheism and Big Bang Cosmology; and God, Time and Eternity, as well as over a hundred articles in professional journals of philosophy and theology. In 2016, Craig was named by The Best Schools as one of the fifty most influential living philosophers.

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The Good Book Blog
Do Muslims and Christians Worship the Same God?
William Lane Craig — February 19, 2016
Dr. Craig, Thank you for your diligent work for the kingdom of God. I hope you understand and appreciate how your work has impacted the faith of countless people across the world. My question has to do with the concept of God in Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. I am sure that you are aware of the current controversy over the "same God" comments of the professor at Wheaton College. As you can imagine this has caused a firestorm of debate between theologians, pastors and preachers. I understand from your work that you would say that while Muslims and Christians might worship the same God historically (the God of Abraham and Moses), their concept of God is fundamentally different (please correct me if I misunderstood your view). This refutes the "same God" idea because at the very core we worship a very different God even if the religions share a common background ...
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Necessary but Dependent Beings?
William Lane Craig — February 12, 2016
Dear Dr Craig, In your work on abstract objects, you have mentioned that there could exist necessary beings which exist "ab alio", that is, dependent for their existence on other necessary beings. My question is this: Let's suppose for the argument's sake that such ab alio necessary beings exist, is their existence an exception (or somehow relevant) to the premise of the teleological argument according to which everything which exists exist in virtue of a necessity of its own nature or in virtue of an external cause? ...
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Dawkins on the Non-Random Nature of Evolution
William Lane Craig — February 05, 2016
Dear Dr Craig, I have noticed of late that Richard Dawkins often states that Neo-Darwinism is non-random. Dawkins recently repeated this line in an interview on a Scandinavian talk show Skavlan when asked, "What is the most common misconception about Evolution?" His response was, "That it is a theory of random chance. It obviously can't be theory of random chance. If it was a theory of random chance it couldn't possibly explain why all animals and plants are so beautifully ... well designed." He goes on to say that, "[W]hat Darwin did was to discover the only known alternative to random chance which is natural selection". A few years ago he made similar comments on an Australian television show Q&A where he said, "There's random genetic variation and non-random survival and non-random reproduction". He goes on to say that, "that is quintessentially non-random" ...
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Does God Love Evil-Doers?
William Lane Craig — January 29, 2016
I am 15 years old. But I have been drawn to philosophy and logic for their huge ability of proving immaterial things. For example, 1+1=2, this is a completely logical answer and what is nice about it, there are no other possibilities. Of course that doesn’t apply for all logical conclusions but it follows. I understood the kalam cosmological argument, the evolution theory, the big bang, and a lot of other logical and scientific arguments and theories. That is because I never wanted to believe in anything which I can’t prove for myself 100%. I even reached a moment where I thought everything is possible, surely nothing can be proved 100%. However, at that time, mathematics came and explained a lot to me. As I mentioned before 1+1=2, that is an example of an absolute answer. In other words, proven 100%. From here I started wondering about many other scenarios in real life. From all of these information I thought about from the environment around me I reached a system of thought which I always follow ...
The Good Book Blog
Language and Objective Truth
William Lane Craig — January 22, 2016
Hi Dr. Craig, I'd like to thank you and your team for all the work you do. It's amazing to see how God has gifted individuals to articulated and present His truth in academically rigorous environments. In the past few years, especially since getting into grad school, I've come to appreciate your work and your approach more. I've been debating on when, or how, to ask you the question on my mind. Most likely due to my own discomfort with the subject. In the past year I've had the pleasure of catching up with a friend of mine who has tragically turned his back on the faith. On multiple occasions we conversed about his philosophical misgivings about Christianity and any other faith claiming absolute morals. He expressed his distrust in absolutes derived from the ever-evolving medium of language. He now considers himself a moral relativist who has principles and takes moral stances. Maybe something akin to Harris. This leads me to a version of a question raised in conversation: How can absolute truth be communicated through the medium of language? ...
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Scriptural Inerrancy and the Apologetic Task
William Lane Craig — January 15, 2016
Dr Craig I always enjoy hearing you speak, and I especially love the cross-examination and Q&A parts of your debates. It was a pleasure to meet you in person at the conference in Atlanta. ... I have noticed that many skilled apologists (yourself included) do NOT argue for the inspiration of scripture in debates, but rather their historical accuracy. My question is - do we really need to argue over inspiration or inerrancy? Wouldn't we be better served to make the argument that the scriptures are reliable? In doing so, we silence those (like Bart Ehrman or Shabir Ally) who quibble over minor discrepancies between accounts (most of which are easy to explain anyway) ...
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Does the Vastness of the Universe Support Naturalism?
William Lane Craig — January 08, 2016
I am a Christian theist and working towards a doctorate in philosophy. I have a question that I think is relevant for both laymen and academics, and I would really appreciate your thoughts. I often find myself "gestalt-shifting" between naturalistic and supernaturalistic (especially theistic) worldviews. When I consider certain things, the theism to which I assent seems eminently reasonable, but when I consider other things naturalism (or at least non-theism) also seems plausible, and it is understandable to me why so many philosophers and scientists are naturalists (or at least non-theists) ...
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Why is God to be Praised?
William Lane Craig — January 01, 2016
Hi Dr. Craig, I just finished watching your rematch with Austin Dacey at CSU ... One point he made seemed to me to be a good one and I was wondering how you might have responded to it if you had the time ...
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Should Parents Let their Children Believe in Santa Claus?
William Lane Craig — December 25, 2015
Dear Dr Craig, As the Christmas season is upon us, I'd be interested to hear your wisdom regarding Christian families celebrating the Santa Claus tradition. To be more precise, do you think it's consistent with Christian values to pretend that Santa is real? As a parent of two young children this is particularly relevant to me at the moment. On one hand we recognise that as a Christian family, we always want Jesus to be at the centre of the Christmas celebration. We also highly value telling our children the truth in all things. But I also can see a place for fantasy and make believe and see the fun and joy that this can bring to a family ...
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Does the B-theory of Time Exclude Human Freedom?
William Lane Craig — December 18, 2015
Dear Dr. Craig, Thank you for your relentless study and work to communicate truth to the world. You have impacted my faith more than any other Christ follower in the world today. With that said, however, I am having a hard time with one of your recent statements. In your recent Q&A blog you made a comment that I reluctantly disagree with ...
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Consequentialism and the Problem of Evil
William Lane Craig — December 11, 2015
Dear William Craig ... how do you know then whether you're making the right ethical decision? It seems to be a bit problematic to know whether you committed a sin since your sin (such as a murder for example) could be the greatest good for the humankind ...
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Are We Justified in Believing in Objective Moral Values and Duties?
William Lane Craig — December 04, 2015
Hello Dr. Craig, ... I wanted to ask about the moral argument's second premise. I've been trying to hash this out in my mind and I feel like I might be missing something. I read your QOW on the grounding of the second premise of the moral argument and I understand that we are not appealing to God as the foundation for moral values in that premise. Rather, we are appealing to moral experience. Now, the atheist might give a defeater for our experience because he says that evolution ingrained us with this "herd morality". But, of course this is the genetic fallacy. So, he might then say that our moral values have no justification even if they are true because evolution aims at survival and not truth. Here I get a little fuzzy ...
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Questions from a Muslim about the Trinity
William Lane Craig — November 27, 2015
Greetings Dr. Craig, I'm a Yemeni Muslim, born and raised in Saudi Arabia, currently studying for a short term in Canada. I came across your work, and highly appreciate your contributions to modernizing and polishing, the scholarship from great men like Imam Al Ghazali and Thomas Aquinas. As a fairly conservative Muslim (perhaps because of my biases?), I find your arguments specifically for the Christian faith to be overall weaker than those generally for monotheism ...
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Omnipotence and the Ability to Do Evil
William Lane Craig — November 20, 2015
Dear Dr. Craig, ... my question is regarding an argument against the existence of God that you have certainly heard before, however I have not seen the argument articulated in a way that I find satisfactory. The argument is essentially about the problem of whether or not God can commit evil acts (or whether or not it even is a problem). If God is all-powerful, and the ability to do that which is objectively morally wrong is contained within the concept of an all-powerful being, then there must be some possible worlds in which God does in fact commit evil acts. However, this seems to undermine God's perfect moral goodness, since a being who only does that which is morally good in every possible world is conceivable, and thus for there to be some possible worlds in which God commits evil acts would imply that God is not the greatest conceivable being ...
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Was Christ a Contingent Being?
William Lane Craig — November 13, 2015
Dear Dr. Craig, Thank you for all your work in Christian Philosophy and Apologetics as it has influenced my walk with Christ tremendously. You're the reason I have decided to study Philosophy at my college (Miami University of Ohio to be exact!). My question for you concerns your proposed model of the Incarnation. The model you propose agrees with the principle "That which is not assumed is not saved." So, The Logos assumes a human nature and all that that entails. But, I'm a bit puzzled because it seems to me that an essential part of being human is also to be contingent. It is literally apart of the very essence of a human to be contingent. If this is true then it seems that Christ must also assume a contingency in order to redeem us since that too is apart of "That which is not assumed is not saved." But, this obviously seems incompatible with the nature of God which is to be necessary. So, how exactly does the Logos assume contingency? ...
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Moral Responsibility and Emotional Rejection of God
William Lane Craig — November 06, 2015
Hello dr. Craig! I would like to thank you for your work,you really helped me a lot! I write you in time of great doubt and spiritual struggle. For years, my faith is going up and down and it is really exhausting. I do find your arguments very persuasive but this is where I hit the wall- the problem of evil ...
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What about the Sincere Seeker?
William Lane Craig — October 30, 2015
Hello Sir, I have read a big deal of your work and I am really inspired by you and your work. But there is this one question that greatly troubles me; I always had it in mind since I was very young but having solved a lot of questions, I am concerned about this simple question that I am not able to solve or find a satisfactory answer from a scholar. I need your views on why God will send people to hell on the basis of their Religious beliefs. A person who sincerely researches on Religion and Theology trying to find if a God exists and if so, what Religion and fails to identify the right Religion, why is he to be punished? A person arrogantly denying the right Religion while knowing the truth might deserve to be punished somehow but what about the one trying his best but failing ...
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The Passage of Time
William Lane Craig — October 23, 2015
Hello Dr. Craig First of all I apologize for my English, I'm French and it may be that you are obliged to decode some of my sentences. Thank you for the work you do, I'm studying neuropsychology and I especially like your site resources. Furthermore, when you come to France? You must know that here, many university students are becoming interested in apologetics and your work are not for nothing. I am writing because I am interested much in free will and I currently work on the implications of the B-or-A theory of time. I agree with you that joining the A theory is a prerequisite for free will ...
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Must a Darwinian Be a Non-Christian?
William Lane Craig — October 16, 2015
Dear Dr. William Lane Craig, I would like to first off thank you for all the work and encouragement you brought to me when I was a Christian. It's only been about two days since I openly claimed to be agnostic and I guess it's weak and fresh enough to be torn away, but Dr. Craig, something destroyed my faith. As a former Christian who loved science, I made it my goal to show that Christians were not scientifically illiterate, so I began reading books by Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan, then I ventured into evolutionary biology. I knew about Richard Dawkins and how anti-theist his views were, but I assumed that as long as he was writing biology it wouldn't do any harm. In a very slow and progressive way, I began to simply accept Darwin's Theory of Evolution and Human Evolution. But then I realized a HUGE problem with Human Evolution and Christian theism ...
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Reservations about the Ontological Argument
William Lane Craig — October 09, 2015
Dear Dr Craig, I have a reservation regarding the Ontological argument as you defend it. You identify the first premise, it is possible that a maximally great being exists, as the controversial one. You defend it as being more plausibly true than false with two sub-arguments. The first of these is that the notion of a maximally great being seems to be coherent, and that this implies such a being is possible. The second is an appeal to the other theistic arguments; that their plausibility shows that it is at least possible for a metaphysically necessary being to exist. We can argue against the first sub-argument, that the notion of a maximally great being seems to be coherent and is thus possible, in the following way. This sub-argument requires that conceivability, or conceptual coherence, implies metaphysical possibility. But we have a good reason for thinking that this is false ...
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Christian Pessimism?
William Lane Craig — October 02, 2015
Dear Dr. Craig Hi I'm an Australian who converted to Christianity about a year ago after reading Richard Dawkins’s book 'The God Delusion'. Ever since I read the book I became interested in Christianity and so after 3-4 months of research I came to the conclusion that Christianity is the most probable worldview, hence this is why I'm a Christian. Over the last year I have continued to search for answers to my greatest questions by reading the works of people like you, Ravi Zacharias, Alvin Plantinga, John Lennox, Hugh Ross, Timothy Keller and many others. In all my many hours of research I have yet to find a direct answer to the question I'm about the pose ...
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Disobeying the Supreme Court
William Lane Craig — September 25, 2015
Hello Dr. Craig. I must say that I began my travels as an agnostic, and after watching a multitude of your debates, reading your book Reasonable Faith, and reviewing your website, I confess to be impressed by the breadth and depth of your research. I have come to accept Christianity. In fact, much of the apologetics I use now to help others understand what I had trouble understanding I learned from you! So thank you for that. Now, as of recent, with the legalization of gay marriage across the United States, someone pointed out to me that the Bible says that to resist the authorities would be directly against God's wishes. To support this, he showed me Romans 13 verses 1-7. The verses seem to suggest that authority is placed by God, and we are to obey them because disobeying would be akin to disobeying God ...
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Nominalism and Natural Law
William Lane Craig — September 18, 2015
Hi Dr Craig. I've heard you say, on the topic of marriage, that you are an "essentialist" on the nature of marriage- that is, marriage has a certain intrinsic nature which is not merely a social construct. As a natural law theorist who thinks the moral law is grounded in what it is to be human, this gratified me immensely. On the other hand, you are also well-known for your nominalism on the topic of abstract objects, which I take to be the denial that there are real universals in any sense (either Aristotelian or Platonic). My question is how these positions can be made consistent. As far as I know, to an essence just is a universal, so to affirm that marriage has an essence seems in direct contradiction with the idea that there are no such things as universals. Since I don't think you would permit so obvious a contradiction, either my account of essence or my understanding of your nominalism must be at fault. I would be much gratified if you could elaborate, as I think it would help me better understand your position on abstract objects ...
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Is God’s Life Absurd?
William Lane Craig — September 11, 2015
Dear Doctor Craig, I have recently thought myself into a theological dilemma, which, to be perfectly honest, I find somewhat frightening. I look forward to your analysis: I do not want to say or even think that God's existence might be purposeless, but I'm having a hard time not coming to that conclusion. Consider: purposes do not lie within themselves. Purposes depend upon an external factor, or judgment. Does the purpose of a tree lie within that tree's mere existence? No. The purpose of the tree becomes known only after observing the tree with various other things, i.e. the bird nesting in its branches, the shade its leaves provide on a hot summer day. Therefore, it follows that for one to assert a /purpose/ for God implies that there remains something outside of God, thus making God God ...
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Questions Sparked by Defenders Class
William Lane Craig — September 04, 2015
Weekly Q & A with Dr. William Lane Craig: ... I have found your descriptions of omni-temporalism and middle-knowledge have challenged some of my assumptions, but instead of finding this irritating or threatening I am grateful to have had my horizons extended, and I am very interested to know more. I suspect I shall have to track down a copy of your book "Time and Eternity" for a detailed explanation, but I wondered if you could find the time to provide a short answer? ... But I am finding the idea of omni-temporalism much harder to get my head around. If God didn't create time then who did? Also aren't temporal beings in a sense controlled by time? As you point out, God would still has his perfect knowledge of the past, but does omni-temporalism lead to a belief that God is under the control of time? ... are these valid thoughts to ponder as I weigh a-temporalism and a tense-less B-theory against omni-temporalism, or have I misunderstood the debate?