William Lane Craig: "No Amount of Evidence or Reasoning Could Convince Me I'm Wrong"
Essentially this is what Bill Craig says in his regular Q&A (Question 244). Just think what the strongest objective evidence against the evangelical belief in the bodily resurrection of Jesus would be, if found. It would be the bones of Jesus, that is, DNA evidence. Craig admits that if the bones of Jesus were found it would falsify his faith, but this is an utterly empty admission, pure rhetoric without any substance at all. For Craig claims that even in the face of this strong objective evidence he would still believe Jesus was bodily raised from the dead. Why? Because for him, the subjective "witness of the Holy Spirit is an intrinsic defeater-defeater for anyone who attends to it." He even predicts "we can be confident that no such discovery will ever be made because we have the self-authenticating witness of the Spirit that Jesus is risen." That is, "given the witness of the Spirit, no such evidence could be forthcoming." Who in their right mind would ever predict what evidence can be found based solely on a subjective experience?
So I got to thinking what he would do if we actually have in our possession the holy foreskin as a way to test the bones we found and there was a DNA match. Here's my scenario:
Let's say we discovered an authentic letter from Pilate saying that Jesus was crucified and that he ordered his guards to take the body of Jesus to Rome for safe-keeping to prove the Christ cult was a hoax. Let's say we also discovered an authentic letter signed by several of the twelve disciples recanting their faith as based on a hoax. These two letters were found independently in different places at different times and dated to the first century Palestine in contexts that could not allow any other conclusion than that they were probably authentic. Or, perhaps someone at the Vatican found these letters and smuggled them out for the world to see. Then let's further suppose we found still yet another authentic letter from the Roman guards at the cross who said they took his body back to Rome, per Pilate's order, to prove the Christian claims were false, even telling us where his bones were buried. Then using this letter archaeologists found his bones exactly where it said they would, with another authenticated letter saying, “These are the bones of Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified under Pilate. He is not risen from the dead. The Christian cult is a lie.” Then we did a DNA test on these bones with the holy foreskin and it was a match.
Can you now see how delusional Bill's position is? Sure, we'll never have this kind of evidence, I understand that. But that would miss the point. For Bill Craig has gone on record basically saying no amount of evidence could convince him he's wrong and that's not only delusional but ignorant on a grand scale. Delusions make otherwise intelligent people stupid.
So Pastor Gene Cook Jr. comes along who had a podcast called Unchained Radio. On my Facebook page he said: "Now if Craig had his apologetics right he should have said 'the concept of evidence presupposes the God of the Bible.'"
That statement is probably even MORE delusional! You see, he is a presuppositionalist. So I responded to Gene like this:
What evidence does Craig have for the inner witness of the Spirit? What is it? He has a few contested Bible verses, some contested philosophical arguments, and a subjective feeling that he knows God personally. His claim is that the inner witness is an "intrinsic defeater-defeater" for all other evidence so therefore it follows that even if he cannot adequately defend this inner witness from arguments to the contrary he still has it. No amount of evidence or reasoning could convince him he's wrong. Even if I could show him there is no reason to accept the Bible verses and even if I could show him the philosophical arguments don't work he would still claim he has this inner witness to the truth of what he believes. In the end all he has is subjective experience, which is easily countered by the subjective experiences of other believers around the globe and can therefore be easily discounted. This is why I have argued he not only begs the question, his position is tantamount to empistemological solipsism, a dead ended, closed eyes, with fingers in his ears approach to the evidence.
I have repeatedly challenged Craig to respond to my proposed question about the supposed inner witness of the Holy Spirit, which I first submitted to him on October 19th, 2007, and did so again today. So far he has not written on it yet:
Nothing personal Bill, but this inner witness argument of yours deserves a reserved place in a circus under the big tent! Most professing Christians think it's an oddity, including your own mentor Norman Geisler, so why would you expect anyone else to think differently? Give it up.
Although I defend Bill Craig against the charges that he is insincere, evil, irrational, and lying for Jesus, he is delusional on a grand scale. No wonder he doesn't want to debate me. ;-)
So I got to thinking what he would do if we actually have in our possession the holy foreskin as a way to test the bones we found and there was a DNA match. Here's my scenario:
Let's say we discovered an authentic letter from Pilate saying that Jesus was crucified and that he ordered his guards to take the body of Jesus to Rome for safe-keeping to prove the Christ cult was a hoax. Let's say we also discovered an authentic letter signed by several of the twelve disciples recanting their faith as based on a hoax. These two letters were found independently in different places at different times and dated to the first century Palestine in contexts that could not allow any other conclusion than that they were probably authentic. Or, perhaps someone at the Vatican found these letters and smuggled them out for the world to see. Then let's further suppose we found still yet another authentic letter from the Roman guards at the cross who said they took his body back to Rome, per Pilate's order, to prove the Christian claims were false, even telling us where his bones were buried. Then using this letter archaeologists found his bones exactly where it said they would, with another authenticated letter saying, “These are the bones of Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified under Pilate. He is not risen from the dead. The Christian cult is a lie.” Then we did a DNA test on these bones with the holy foreskin and it was a match.
Can you now see how delusional Bill's position is? Sure, we'll never have this kind of evidence, I understand that. But that would miss the point. For Bill Craig has gone on record basically saying no amount of evidence could convince him he's wrong and that's not only delusional but ignorant on a grand scale. Delusions make otherwise intelligent people stupid.
So Pastor Gene Cook Jr. comes along who had a podcast called Unchained Radio. On my Facebook page he said: "Now if Craig had his apologetics right he should have said 'the concept of evidence presupposes the God of the Bible.'"
That statement is probably even MORE delusional! You see, he is a presuppositionalist. So I responded to Gene like this:
Biblical scholars themselves admit that the God of the Bible is a warlike tribal God who's throne was in the sky. How does that kind of God square with yours? Nonetheless, you have to show that your different conception of God has more evidence to it. To argue your God is the foundation for evidence and then say the evidence supports your conception of God without actually looking at the evidence to see if it does in fact support your conception of God is delusional on a grand scale.When I say that defending Christianity makes otherwise intelligent people look dumb this is exactly what I'm talking about. No wonder many skeptics have decided it's no use to argue with Christians as deluded as this, and gone to ridiculing them and their faith. Given such idiocy, it's a temptation that's hard to resist.
What evidence does Craig have for the inner witness of the Spirit? What is it? He has a few contested Bible verses, some contested philosophical arguments, and a subjective feeling that he knows God personally. His claim is that the inner witness is an "intrinsic defeater-defeater" for all other evidence so therefore it follows that even if he cannot adequately defend this inner witness from arguments to the contrary he still has it. No amount of evidence or reasoning could convince him he's wrong. Even if I could show him there is no reason to accept the Bible verses and even if I could show him the philosophical arguments don't work he would still claim he has this inner witness to the truth of what he believes. In the end all he has is subjective experience, which is easily countered by the subjective experiences of other believers around the globe and can therefore be easily discounted. This is why I have argued he not only begs the question, his position is tantamount to empistemological solipsism, a dead ended, closed eyes, with fingers in his ears approach to the evidence.
I have repeatedly challenged Craig to respond to my proposed question about the supposed inner witness of the Holy Spirit, which I first submitted to him on October 19th, 2007, and did so again today. So far he has not written on it yet:
My question is this one: Would you please specify the propositional content of the inner witness of the Holy Spirit? Plantinga calls the content "the great things of the gospel", and includes the idea that "God exists", "God has forgiven and accepted me", or "God is the author of the Bible." You claim this content assures Christians that they are children of God. But such a notion echoes the poet whom Paul quoted who said, "we are his offspring." (Acts 17:28) You are surely arguing that the inner witness of the third person of the trinity contains more propositional content than that. Shouldn't this witness be more specific about what is meant to be a "child" of the kind of "God" one believes in, how one becomes a child of this God, where one can learn additional information about this God, what he must think of the authority of that source of information, and how he can best interpret it? For instance, to say "God exists" does not say anything about the attributes of this God, and might even be consistent with panentheism. To say "God is the author of the Bible" doesn't say what a believer should think about the specific nature of the Bible, or how to best interpret it.Until he responds adequately I will continue to call him an epistemological solipsist.
Nothing personal Bill, but this inner witness argument of yours deserves a reserved place in a circus under the big tent! Most professing Christians think it's an oddity, including your own mentor Norman Geisler, so why would you expect anyone else to think differently? Give it up.
Although I defend Bill Craig against the charges that he is insincere, evil, irrational, and lying for Jesus, he is delusional on a grand scale. No wonder he doesn't want to debate me. ;-)
0 comments:
Post a Comment