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 ...
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 ...
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? ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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?
Dear Dr. Craig, You were the first Christian apologist I came across when I was researching a credible answer from Christianity to Atheist and Islam in 2002. Since then I have been following you through different medium on the internet. May God bless you for bringing the Christian truth with precision and clarity and with so much needed nuances. I was re-watching your debate with Dr. Richard Carrier on the Resurrection of Jesus. I can't remember anyone really dismantling his case as you did. So I wondered how do you do to prepare for a debate? Most speakers are good at their opening speech but fair less well during the rebuttals, failure you seem immune to. Do you also prepare the rebuttals before your debates? If yes, how on earth do you do that since you can't possibly know what the opponent would say? ...
... I've been reading "Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview" for the past few months and have repeatedly been fascinated by what I am reading. One of my favorite areas of philosophy is ontology, and I was particularly interested in abstract objects. I had heard you explain abstract objects briefly and often in your debates and lectures as one of the only two options for a first cause of the universe. As you've said, abstract objects do not stand in causal relations. In thinking about this, however, something has come to mind. If abstract objects do not stand in causal relations, what is their relationship with God? Both God and abstract objects are metaphysically necessary beings, meaning that they exist in every possible world. This seems to me to conflict with a theological view that God is the creator of everything. If God didn't exist, nothing would. Though it seems to me that if God didn't exist, abstract objects still would. Thus, it seems that mathematical entities, for instance, would and do exist independently of whether or not God exists ...
Hello, The last few weeks I have been working my way through On Guard (and was, needless to say, thrilled by it, just as I was by Reasonable Faith). I just had a long conversation with a fellow student of our local university. He knows that I am a Christian, and since the topic shifted toward values and ethics, I began asking him questions about his beliefs on the existence of subjective and objective values - based on the premises that 1. If God does not exist, then objective values do not exist. 2. Objective Values exist. 3. Therefore, God exists. It was a very tough conversation (albeit a cordial one), and I am very glad that my friend is still interested in picking up the conversation where we left off (it is now past 3am in Germany) - he seemed surprisingly hooked by the debate, took his time to think his answers through, and was the one to suggest continuing it sometime soon. (I am praying for him to find Christ) ...
Dr. WIlliam Lane Craig, On October 21, 2013, you responded to a question by a lifelong Christian who said they were having trouble believing because of reading material from people like Richard Dawkins, and from discussions they had with their atheist friends (http://www.reasonablefaith.org/garbage-in-garbage-out). You chided this person (and other Christians like them) very strongly for the "cavalier way" that they "expose themselves to material which is potentially destructive to them." ... ... Personally, I don't understand what the value is of asking questions is, if you consider anyone who doesn't agree with the answers you already have to be "the wrong people." But that's not my main point. I'm more concerned about that first sentence, which sounds more like something you might hear from an imam of ISIS than a prominent Christian philosopher, who believes so strongly that Christianity is a reasonable faith. If Christianity truly is consistent with reality itself, then shouldn't it hold up to scrutiny? ...
On April 25, 1967, the church lost a great Christian philosopher and apologist named Edward John Carnell. He was almost 48 years old. Today marks the 48th anniversary of his death. He was a graduate of Wheaton College and of Westminster Theological Seminary. He later earned doctoral degrees in theology and philosophy, at Harvard Divinity School and Boston University, respectively ...
Dear Dr. Craig I am Samuel, I am 20 years old, and I am currently studying for a science degree in Biology and Chemistry at the university of Malta. An argument which was brought up by my Atheist friend, which is currently studying physics and Chemistry, regarding the origins of the universe. My friend argued that because there was no time prior to the big bang, therefore there was no causal relation involved, because causes require time in order to occur. My response was that this thus implies a cause which transcends time, and I brought up an analogy to help explain it. I said that when a writer writes a story, the cause of the story goes beyond the reality of story timeline. But that does not mean that the story timeline lacks a cause because the cause didn't happen within the parameters of the story's reality. Anyway, my friend was not convinced, so I wanted to see how you would respond to such an argument. Does the universe have a cause, even when time didn't even exist prior the big bang? ...
Arnold Lunn was born to a Methodist minister, but he was himself agnostic and a critic of Christianity—until he was 45 years old, when he converted to the faith. Lunn died on June 2, 1974. Lunn was a professional skier and full-time enthusiast. He founded the Alpine Ski Club and the Kandahar Ski Club. He brought slalom skiing to the racing world, and he’s the namesake for a double black diamond ski trail at Taos Ski Valley. Lunn credited his agnosticism to the wholly unconvincing cause of Anglicanism. He looked in vain for persuasive arguments for the existence of God and the truth of Christianity. Later he would say that “an odd hour or two at the end of a boy’s school life might not be unprofitably spend in armouring him against the half-baked dupes of ill informed secularists” (The Third Day, xvii). He wrote in criticism of the faith and debated Christianity’s prominent defenders ...
Hello Dr. Craig, With the recent Supreme court decision regarding same sex marriage I reread some of your Q/A response regarding homosexuality. In a question regarding the connection between interracial marriage and same sex marriage you said "Once we start down that route, anything goes: a man and two women, a man and a child, two men and a goat, etc. I see no reason at all to start down that road." with regards to same sex marriage. My question is does this statement constitute a slippery slope fallacy? My concern is that non believers would easily dismiss it ...
Born in 1861, W. H. Griffith Thomas died on June 2, 1924. His greatest and most sophisticated work is his book The Principles of Theology, a commentary on the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Anglican Church. But one short and reader-friendly book that should interest students of Christian apologetics is How We Got Our Bible ...
Søren Kierkegaard was born May 5, 1813, in Copenhagen, Denmark. He’s been called a Christian existentialist, a fideist, a satirist, and “the melancholy Dane.” He was concerned about the disconnect between Christian profession and the lived reality of true Christianity. He called his contemporaries to a deeper personal encounter with God. And he wrote with penetrating insight about the failure of the purely aesthetic life—what we today might call secularism—which seeks pleasure without discerning its natural and ultimate end, namely, despair. Kierkegaard’s contribution is considerable, even for the evidentialist. In fact, his sermonic style may be of value to the apologist who insists on the value of evidence. E. J. Carnell, mid-twentieth century, did the most to bring Kierkegaard’s insight into an overall “combinationalist” approach to apologetics. Carnell wrote: “There can be no question that Søren Kierkegaard gave a profoundly convincing defense of the third locus of truth.
I have spent the last eight years attending a oneness church, however, after listening to your defenders class, as well as Dr. David Pawson's teachings on the trinity, I have been convinced that oneness theology is heresy. Most of my questions regarding Trinitarians have been answered and the theology is beginning to make a lot of sense as I listen to yours and Pawson's teachings. The one issue I have a hard time understanding is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit being co-equal as you teach in your defenders class. If that is that case, what do Trinitarians do with 1 Corinthians 15:20-28? Is Jesus subordinate to the Father or co-equal? ...
Here are some words of exhortation that have special application to the events and conditions of our present tumultuous age: ... But whence, in this eventful day, can we draw the principles of caution, prudence and wisdom, if not from the Gospel of Jesus Christ? And can we with diligence seek these principles, and with confidence exercise them, unless we have firm faith in the truth of our Holy Religion?
Biola University