William Lane Craig: "Christian belief is not based on the historical evidence." In fact, it's not based on evidence at all.

Let's examine what Craig says:

A vast majority of the human race down through history don't have the training, the time, and the resources to conduct a historical investigation of the evidence for Jesus. If we insist on a historical, evidential foundation for faith, then we consign most of the world’s population to unbelief. To me this is unconscionable. Therefore, if one’s religious beliefs are to be rational, there must be some other basis for them than the evidence. We are therefore not dependent on historical proofs for knowledge of Christianity’s truth. Rather through the immediate, inner witness of God’s Holy Spirit every person can come to know the truth of the Gospel once he hears it. Through an existential encounter with God Himself every generation can be made contemporaneous with the first generation of believers.LINK.

An Orthodox Jew could say:

A vast majority of the human race down through history don't have the training, the time, and the resources to conduct a historical investigation of the evidence for Yahweh. If we insist on a historical, evidential foundation for faith, then we consign most of the world’s population to unbelief. To me this is unconscionable. Therefore, if one’s religious beliefs are to be rational, there must be some other basis for them than the evidence. We are therefore not dependent on historical proofs for knowledge of Judaism's truth. Rather through the immediate, inner witness of Yahweh every person can come to know the truth about Judaism once he hears it. Through an existential encounter with Yahweh Himself every generation can be made contemporaneous with the first generation believers.

Or a Muslim:

A vast majority of the human race down through history don't have the training, the time, and the resources to conduct a historical investigation of the evidence for Allah. If we insist on a historical, evidential foundation for faith, then we consign most of the world’s population to unbelief. To me this is unconscionable. Therefore, if one’s religious beliefs are to be rational, there must be some other basis for them than the evidence. We are therefore not dependent on historical proofs for knowledge of Islam's truth. Rather through the immediate, inner witness of Allah every person can come to know the truth about Islam once he hears it. Through an existential encounter with Allah Himself every generation can be made contemporaneous with the first generation of believers.

Or a Hindu:

A vast majority of the human race down through history don't have the training, the time, and the resources to conduct a historical investigation of the evidence for Brahman. If we insist on a historical, evidential foundation for faith, then we consign most of the world’s population to unbelief. To me this is unconscionable. Therefore, if one’s religious beliefs are to be rational, there must be some other basis for them than the evidence. We are therefore not dependent on historical proofs for knowledge of Hindu's truth. Rather through the immediate, inner witness of Brahman every person can come to know the truth about Hinduism once he hears it. Through an existential encounter with Brahman every generation can be made contemporaneous with the first generation of believers.

Anthropologists estimate that at least 18,000 different gods, goddesses, and various animals or objects have been worshipped by humans since our species first appeared. Today, it is estimated that more than 80 percent of the global population considers themselves religious or spiritual or animistic in some form. There have been several major pantheons of polythiestic gods and goddesses. LINK. So let's do Zeus, keeping in mind that even though he may have no followers today, this says nothing about whether he might still exist (!):

A vast majority of the human race down through history don't have the training, the time, and the resources to conduct a historical investigation of the evidence for Zeus. If we insist on a historical, evidential foundation for faith, then we consign most of the world’s population to unbelief. To me this is unconscionable. Therefore, if one’s religious beliefs are to be rational, there must be some other basis for them than the evidence. We are therefore not dependent on historical proofs for knowledge of Zeus's truth. Rather through the immediate, inner witness of Zeus every person can come to know the truth about Zeus once he hears it. Through an existential encounter with Zeus Himself every generation can be made contemporaneous with the first generation of his believers.

Let's quote more by Craig: "The witness, or testimony, of the Holy Spirit is its own proof; it is unmistakable; it does not need other proofs to back it up; it is self-evident and attests to its own truth. [Craig, Apologetics: An Introduction (Chicago: Moody Press, 1984), pp. 18–22.]

There is something seriously wrong with rejecting evidence like this, be it historical, scientific, or more, especially since this same line of reasoning can be used by other believers in different deities and invisible unevidenced supernatural beings. Does Craig mean to say that he cannot be wrong? Yes! He knows Christianity is true without any basis in historial evidence. With this understanding, he has insulated himself from any and all objections and objective evidence to the contrary. He knows he’s right because he knows he’s right, and that’s the end of the matter.

Craig believes an inner witness trumps all evidence and arguments to the contrary. The witness of the Holy Spirit is "an intrinsic defeater-defeater." He claims he knows Christianity is true irrespective of all the arguments and evidence to the contrary. No argument or evidence is sufficient to count against his faith in that inner witness. Craig is telling us that this inner witness needs no corroboration. It needs no evidence. It needs no argument. So it really doesn’t matter that he also claims the evidence helps to corroborate his inner witness. That’s not the issue. The issue is that he claims the Holy Spirit is its own testimony, it is self-authenticating, and it trumps all contrary arguments and evidence. He has insulated himself from all evidence and all arguments to the contrary, and that’s something no reasonable person should do.

Reasonable people must seek independent objective corroboration of that which they believe. And this evidence should put into check what they think they’ve subjectively experienced, rather than the other way around. But given Craig's claim to the inner witness of the Holy Spirit he refuses to be open to it, so he refuses to be honest and open to the truth. More than that, anyone who accepts what he says is not honestly open to the truth either.

To see this for what it really is, consider the following scenario Mark Smith (of www.jcnot4me.com) presented to Craig for comment:

"Dr. Craig, for the sake of argument let’s pretend that a time machine gets built. You and I hop in it, and travel back to the day before Easter, 33 AD. We park it outside the tomb of Jesus. We wait. Easter morning rolls around, and nothing happens. We continue to wait. After several weeks of waiting, still nothing happens. There is no resurrection— Jesus is quietly rotting away in the tomb.” Smith asked Craig, given this scenario, if he would then give up Christianity, having seen with his own two eyes that Jesus did not rise from the dead. Smith wrote: “His answer was shocking, and quite unexpected. He told me, face to face, that he would STILL believe in Jesus, he would STILL believe in the resurrection, and he would STILL remain a Christian. When asked, in light of his being a personal eyewitness to the fact that there WAS no resurrection, he replied that due to the witness of the ‘holy spirit’ within him, he would assume a trick of some sort had been played on him while watching Jesus’ tomb. This self-induced blindness astounded me. [From page 191 of Why I Became An Atheist]

If anyone doubts what Craig said in response, Mark challenges him to ask Craig the same question. So at my prompting, Dr. Zachary Moore did just that. He asked Craig this same question after an invited talk at the First Baptist Church of Colleyville, while Craig was visiting the Dallas/Forth Worth area to record a series of podcasts in August 2007 for reasonablefaith.org. Craig probably realized his initial respnse was just too unreasonable, even for him, so he clarified it [From pages 192-193 of Why I Became An Atheist]:

“If the question is whether I would be a Christian if Jesus didn’t arise from the dead, then the answer to that is obviously ‘no.’ But if the question is what would count as evidence, then it would always be open for me to say this isn’t the right tomb [where Jesus was buried].” Moore then asked him if he could think of any evidence that would counter his faith. Craig answered by saying, “If I were presented with the real tomb of Jesus and his corpse was still there, then I wouldn’t have an inner witness of the Holy Spirit.” He said the inner witness of the Holy Spirit “trumps all other evidence,” so “for other evidence to overpower it, I would not have had it [in the first place].” He said, “It’s really an awkward sort of question.” Of course it’s an awkward question, and here’s why: Craig cannot give up the notion that he has an inner witness of the Holy Sprit no matter what evidence he is presented with. He must continue to claim that if he were presented with incontrovertible evidence to the contrary then he never would’ve had the self-authenticating witness of the Holy Spirit in the first place since this witness “trumps” all evidence to the contrary, and that indeed is awkward, if not epistemologically incoherent.

Since Craig claims he is certain he has this inner witness, it’s clear that no evidence today could ever trump that witness, and that’s the point. I, however, see no reason why the evidence cannot trump his belief in the so-called witness of the Holy Spirit, since it’s always possible he could be wrong about it. So the question remains: If he were presented with incontrovertible evidence that Christianity is a delusion, then even though he also claims to have an inner witness of the Holy Spirit, would he have to reject that inner witness as a delusion? Any fair-minded person would have to give up the notion of this witness in the face of incontrovertible evidence. Why doesn’t he just say so? If Jesus did not rise up from the tomb, Craig is deluded into thinking he has an inner witness of the Holy Spirit. It’s that simple. There is no way the witness of the Holy Spirit can be more reliable than his own two eyes, especially if he were to go back in time and see for himself that Jesus didn’t bodily rise up from the grave.

But it’s this view that allows Craig to write: “A believer who is too uninformed or ill-equipped to refute anti-Christian arguments is rational in believing on the grounds of the witness of the Spirit in his heart even in the face of such unrefuted objections. Even such a person confronted with what are for him unanswerable objections to Christian theism is, because of the work of the Holy Spirit, within his epistemic rights—nay, under epistemic obligation—to believe in God.” [Craig, “Classical Apologetics,” in Five Views on Apologetics, ed. Steven B. Cowan (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2000), p. 35.

That’s what he says. According to Craig, God will not abandon us to the evidence of history or the “accidents of geography.” So there must be some basis for people to believe other than the evidence. How does he come to this conclusion that there must be some basis other than the evidence to believe? He’s assuming that which he needs to prove. He’s assuming his Christian God to explain away a problem—the problem of people who do not have adequate evidence to believe—and that his God would surely not ask them to believe if they couldn’t have access to the evidence.

Even though Muslims and Mormons claim to have the witness of God in their hearts, Craig denies that other conflicting faiths have this exact same self authenticating witness of the Holy Spirit, or that their claims are even relevant to the witness he has in his heart.

According to philosopher Michael Martin, “To accept Craig’s thesis one must believe an outrageous and outlandish hypothesis: namely, that billions of people now and in the past were not telling the truth when they claimed that they never had such an experience.” [Michael Martin, “Craig’s Holy Spirit Epistemology” (1998), http://www.infidels .org/library/modern/michael_martin/holy_spirit.html] In other words, the evidence of billions of sincere nonbelievers is evidence that there is no inner Holy Spirit witness of the truth of Christianity. Dr. Craig is explaining away the evidence. Time and again the Christian apologist must concoct scenarios apart from what the independent evidence suggests.

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John W. Loftus is a philosopher and counter-apologist credited with 12 critically acclaimed books, including The Case against Miracles, God and Horrendous Suffering, and Varieties of Jesus Mythicism. Please support DC by sharing our posts, or by subscribing, donating, or buying our books at Amazon. Thank you so much!