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Dr. Craig:Â Not 80 years. |
Dr. Atkins: But I canât remember who buried my mother. |
Moderator:Â Maybe there was no reason to memorialize that burial. |
Dr. Craig:Â IÂ think itâs important to understand that the New Testament critics who look at the New Testament are not as you say these biased believers desperate to believe in this. German New Testament criticism, which I have done my doctoral work in, is enormously skeptical and enormously influenced by the same an... |
Dr. Atkins:Â There were 87,000 appearances of Elvis last year, werenât there? Princess Diana is going to be the next person to be seen. |
Dr. Craig:Â Now wait, but are you admitting though, now, that they did have these experiences of appearances, but that they were hallucinations? |
Dr. Atkins:Â I can believe . . . there are two possibilities. One is that they were hallucinations, that they really so missed their leader that they were desperate to see him and they just invented this. The other is that itâs just a straightforward lie. |
Moderator: Do you know of twelve people who are prepared to commit their lives to the apparition of Elvis even to the point of suffering hideous deaths? [38] |
Dr. Atkins:Â I think that I (and I note your impartiality in this debate), I think that if I took twelve simple fishermen wandering around the banks of Lake Galilee, I think that they would look for something that they could devote their lives to. |
Moderator:Â Simple like Paul? He wasnât one of the twelve, but . . . Okay, let me pick on you, Dr. Craig. |
Dr. Atkins:Â That's better. About time too, with a real question. |
Moderator:Â Why, if everything you say is correct, doesnât the implicit logic of what you say totally command the academic community? Why is there so much skepticism if what you say is, to use his words, so âmanifestly correctâ? |
Dr. Craig:Â I never said it was manifestly correct. I think you can argue about any of these points, but I think that on balance the premises are more plausible than their negations. Take the first argument that I gave. Whatever begins to exist has a cause. The universe began to exist, therefore the universe has a caus... |
Moderator:Â This strikes you as extremely clear. Why doesnât it strike other people as extremely clear? |
Dr. Craig:Â Well, as I said, I think some folks have an antipathy toward theism. Like Dr. Atkins.It is so evident that heâs got his mind made up when he said what are the possibilities for explaining these resurrection appearances? The possibilities were lying or hallucinating. There wasnât even a possibility that ... |
Dr. Atkins:Â Well, I think itâs so unlikely that anything like that could happen that you have to look at the simpler explanations first. Go for the simpler explanations. Only if the simpler explanation fails and is explicitly shown to fail go to the more complicated one. |
Dr. Craig:Â I agree, I agree entirely with that. |
Dr. Atkins:Â And the breakdown of the laws of nature by the intrusion of the finger of God is not a simple way of proceeding. |
Dr. Craig:Â Youâre misusing the criterion of simplicity. Thatâs not what simplicity means. It means donât multiply causes beyond necessity. And in this case the hypothesis that these men were lying or were hallucinating is simply implausible given their willingness to die for their beliefs which shows sincerity, ... |
Dr. Atkins:Â People go for a living death by throwing themselves into nunneries and into to monasteries. |
Dr. Craig:Â But they believe that itâs true. |
Dr. Atkins:Â They believe that itâs true but theyâre wasting their lives because of it. |
Dr. Craig:Â But the point is that they really sincerely believe it, theyâre not lying, and that was the point that was being made here before. |
Dr. Atkins:Â So these twelve fishermen also believed it. |
Dr. Craig:Â Okay, so youâre going to admit they werenât lying. |
Dr. Atkins:Â I can accept that if it is true then it is possible that they were not lying. But these were simple-minded people, and they were surrounded by miraculous events said to be going on. Maybe they just wanted to join in for the notoriety of being involved in amazing events. People who were bored. There wasnâ... |
Dr. Craig:Â So they invented the resurrection of Jesus and endangered their lives because they were bored? |
Dr. Atkins:Â A committee invented it 70 or 80 years after the event. |
Dr. Craig:Â Well thatâs impossible because we have information from Paulâs letters that date within five years after the crucifixion of this belief in 1 Corinthians 15:3, so itâs impossible to talk about 70 years later. This belief flourished within a few years. |
Dr. Atkins:Â But you donât deny that the Gospels were tampered with? |
Dr. Craig:Â I do deny that, of course. We have the Gospels. I took Greek so that I could read them in the original text. And the original text is reconstructed to within 99%... |
Dr. Atkins:Â What was the word you used? |
Dr. Craig:Â The original text. |
Dr. Atkins: They were reconstructed? |
Dr. Craig:Â Yes, textual criticism. |
Dr. Atkins:Â Theyâre not reliable. |
Dr. Craig:Â Are you suggesting that the text of the New Testament that we have today does not faithfully represent the Greek text as it was originally written? |
Dr. Atkins: Iâm claiming that the Gospels are not a correct representation of what happened 70 or 80 years before they were written. |
Dr. Craig:Â 70 or 80 years before they were written would be . . . |
Dr. Atkins: When was the first Gospel written? [39] |
Dr. Craig: Generally it would be said around AD70. I think earlier. |
Dr. Atkins:Â Indeed, thatâs what I mean, 70 or 80 years. |
Dr. Craig: Okay, but that would be after the birth of Christ. Jesus died in AD 30. |
Moderator:Â We only have five minutes, which is all the time we can give to the New Testament. Letâs find out about this poison business. I thought that was extremely interesting. |
Dr. Atkins:Â I donât remember writing that. |
Dr. Craig:Â I have it in my briefcase. |
Moderator: Did Dr. Craig misrepresent you, when he said that in your treatment of poison you donât distinguish the administration of poison from simply the event of the end of life? |
Dr. Atkins: I honestly donât remember writing this, but if you say I wrote it⦠|
Dr. Craig:Â Yes, I have it in my briefcase. |
Dr. Atkins: Maybe I was hallucinating at the time when I wrote it. |
Dr. Craig:Â Well, I think the point was that whether a person dies because someoneâs administered poison to him or because the body just forms its own poison because itâs ill and dies, that you said thereâs no moral distinction. But thatâs clearly transgressing the bounds of science. Science could prove that th... |
Dr. Atkins: Thatâs nonsense! |
Dr. Craig: But those are your words! |
Dr. Atkins: Well, so you say, but I think theyâre nonsense now. |
Dr. Craig: Oh well, alright. I do, too. |
Dr. Atkins: If this is what I wrote, then I think itâs nonsense. Theyâre obviously taken out of context. |
Moderator: Have we concluded that one? Well, then letâs [inaudible] . . . and get on the question of whether . . . Defend this proposition Dr. Craig. You said that in order to believe in moral absolutes, you have to believe in God. Why is that true? |
Dr. Craig: Well, we agree on this point, that if there is no God, then there are no objective moral values because moral values are just the sociobiological spinoff of cultural and biological evolution. But my argument is . . . |
Moderator: Well, Kant of course, Immanuel Kant, argued that there is an autonomy of ethics, that a ratio summation can actually parse⦠. . . |
Dr. Craig:Â Yes, though thatâs not an issue that divides us here tonight, I think we should stick to . . . |
Dr. Atkins:No, itâs really the origin of ethics and in my view itâs . . . |
Dr. Craig:Â No, itâs not the origin though, Dr. Atkins, itâs their objectivity thatâs in question. I could admit that this is how our beliefs originate, but then thatâs the genetic fallacy againI. If you say because our beliefs originate in this way that therefore the beliefs are false, thatâs simply a fallac... |
Dr. Atkins:Â But it comes back down to whether you will accept a simpler explanation, or whether you insist upon there being a more complex explanation. Thatâs all it comes down to. |
Dr. Craig:Â Youâre misusing the criterion. |
Moderator: Management says we have to quit, sorry. |
Dr. Atkins:Â It comes down to that at every stage of your argument. |
Moderator:Â So weâve figured out the rational reasons why Romeo fell for Juliet? |
Dr. Atkins:Â Yes, I think you can begin to understand why one person might fall in love with another. |
Moderator:Â Thank you very much. Now weâre going to hear some closing comments before the questions from the floor beginning with Dr. Craig for seven minutes and then Dr. Atkins for seven minutes. |
Dr. Craig:Â In my closing statement I would like to draw together the threads of this debate and summarize the arguments that have been presented. The question facing us tonight was What was the evidence for and against the existence of God? And I think itâs been very evident in tonightâs debate that Dr. Atkins by ... |
Now what about the arguments I gave that God does exist? Well, I think that these arguments still stand. |
First, the argument from the origin of the universe. We saw that Dr. Atkins agrees that whatever begins to exist has a cause. |
Secondly, the universe began to exist, he agrees. He doesnât agree that the universe has a cause, however, because he doesnât think that the universe exists. He thinks there is nothing, and I pointed out why this is fallacious. First of all, it is fallacious because even though you have a balance of positive and ne... |
Secondly, what about the complex order in the universe? I argued, number one, that the fine tuning of the initial conditions is due to either law, chance, or design. Secondly I argued that itâs not due to law or chance. I pointed out that his reasoning to try to show it could be by chance was simply based upon an inc... |
Thirdly I argued that the presence of objective moral values points to God. We agreed that if God does not exist, then objective moral values do not exist. But I argued secondly that itâs evident that there are objective moral values. Remember John Healeyâs statement about torture. Government-sanctioned murder. Wha... |
Fourth, as to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, Dr. Atkins simply said that we shouldnât believe the messenger; we should always disbelieve the messenger rather than believe the miracle. It seems to me that this is simply an incorrect and fallacious argument. The hypothesis that God raised Jesus from the de... |
Finally number five, the immediate experience of God. Dr. Atkins says, Well this is just a self-delusion. Well, I invite him to prove this. Will he appeal to Freudian psychology? This is clearly jaded and out of date. What will he do to prove that it is delusory? Until he can give me some reason to think God doesnât ... |
In fact, I myself wasnât raised in a church-going home or in a Christian family. [42]Â But as a teenager I began to ask the big questions in life, about the meaning of my existence, the purpose of life. And in the search for answers I began to read the New Testament. And as I did I was captivated by the person of Jes... |
Rebuttal - Dr. Atkins |
Dr. Atkins:Â Well, Iâm used to hearing travesties of the arguments that Iâve presented and that was I think a pretty fair travesty of what I actually said. Let me take the points in order, and I will accept Dr. Craigâs order just for the sake of convenience. |
The origin of the universe. I do not believe that one can extend the concept of causality to an era prior to the existence of time. It is simply primitively naive to talk about causality outside the domain of time. So, I will not accept that the universe had to be caused. Itâs entirely different mode of coming into o... |
I think the question of complex order; it was also a travesty of my argument about probabilities. If something can happen then it may happen. If something can happen only with very remote possibility then it is possible that if the universe is replicated. And Iâm not talking about parallel universes, this is quite a ... |
I donât believe - words have been put into my mouth - that I am destroying the value of meaning of life. I deny that absolutely. I think that if one divests oneself of all the baggage that one has been brought up with and sees the world with the utter clarity that science provides and knowing that one has a brain, th... |
My central point then - my central point - is that it is up to believers to prove, and to prove explicitly, that my bony view of the world (bony in the sense that itâs very simple, starkly simple) is an inadequate theory of all there is. [43] |
Before you can move on to the stage where you say, âAh, it must be God who did it! Ah, it must be God who caused it! Ah, it must be God who gives us morals! Ah it must be God who got Jesus out of the tomb!â, what you have to do is to prove beyond any doubt that the simple view, that all this can happen through the ... |
I think we ought to give praise not to the Lord, thank goodness, but praise to ourselves that over the centuries, and particularly the last 300 years as weâve brought scientific observation, mathematical rigor to bear on our analysis of events in the world, that we have got within an inch or two of understanding the ... |
I am proud to be alive at this part of the 20th century where I am on the brink of understanding everything, and I commend you to use your brains because your brains are the most wonderful instruments in the universe. And through your brains you will see that you can do without God. Thank you. |
Dr. Atkins: |
Moderated Dialogue - Q&A |
Moderator:Â Ladies and gentlemen, weâre now going to have questions from the floor. So letâs have a question for Dr. Craig. Who would like to ask Dr. Craig . . . yes sir? |
Question:Â You mentioned in your opening speech about the importance of miracles in Jesusâ ministry, and apparently you did so to demonstrate his need to give an evidentiary proof of his divinity beyond the laws of nature, otherwise why would he perform miracles? If our entire salvation is dependent upon accepting Je... |
Dr. Craig: Well I would agree with the French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal when he said that God has given evidence sufficient for those with an open mind and an open heart, but itâs sufficiently vague so as not to compel those whose hearts are closed. [44] Certainly God could write in sky-writing a... |
And I would add this other point too. Although I havenât talked about this very much tonight, I think that the primary way in which we know God exists is not through these evidences, but it is through this immediate experience of God himself, the fifth point that I talked about. For those who are genuinely seeking Go... |
Moderator:Â Do you want to comment on that, Dr. Atkins? |
Dr. Atkins:Â Yes, but thatâs exactly my point, that people are desperate to see the truth of miracles. They stand back and they do not apply the normal laws of logic and evidence. They simply want to believe and therefore they will believe anything. |
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