Transcription
One of the most popular podcasts in the world, The Diary of a CEO, hosted a conversation between Alex Okconor, an agnostic, Greg Kokul, a Christian apologist, and Dr. K, a Harvard psychiatrist, on whether or not there is purpose in the universe and meaning for our individual lives. Dr. William Lane Craig, arguably the leading defender of the Christian faith today, is here to respond. Dr. Craig, I've selected nine clips from this three and a half hour plus conversation, so obviously much will be left out. I actually invited Alex on to discuss this with me and he declined, although he said he'd be willing to have a conversation with me about something else in the future. A handful of these clips are a little bit longer than normal, about 2 minutes, but it's important for the context that we play that amount. And we tackle some pretty sensitive topics like the suffering of children and the suffering of animals.
>> Dr. Craig, are you ready to rock and roll?
>> I sure am. Let's go.
>> All right, let's do it.
>> For example, a moment ago you said that if there is a creator God who brings us into existence, then you are designed and you are given purpose by God. And I think we need to investigate this a bit further because for example a quite sort of boring and overdone debate at the moment is the extent to which we are engaged in the production of potentially artificially conscious agents with artificial intelligence technologies and there's all this discussion about whether or not these things can be conscious like you know whatever. Let's just suppose for a moment that they were let's suppose that I created an artificially intelligent machine and I gave it a purpose and that purpose was to produce paper clips and because of the development of artificial intelligence technology it became conscious in a recognizable sense. It had an interior sense of self. It sort of had say feelings or emotions about the world. But it is just an AI robot whose entire purpose in life is to make paper clips.
Mhm.
Now, I could say that because that AI was designed by a creator with a purpose that was explicitly given to it that that life is meaningful. But I think it would seem to most people that a life whose meaning consists in creating paper clips is not sufficient. It's not enough to address what people really want. It's not just some kind of purpose. It's not just even some kind of purpose which is given to you by an authoritative creative source. Something which is further than that.
Yeah. But if I can just relate this to the God question, the problem that arises is that you have to answer the question of why God infuses life with the meaning that he gives it.
Mhm. It's either something which he has sort of arbitrarily plucked up and and chosen to create in which case we have this problem of arbitrariness or no or in fact there is some reason why God had to give us a particular kind of meaning that's endemic to the human condition that he had no choice but for that meaning that more important kind of meaning to be given to human life but if he was beholden to that if he had to give us a particular kind of meaning it seems like there's a standard of meaning which exists outside of God so I'm not sure in other words the mechanism by which being created by someone who says this is your purpose would be fulfilling in the way that people want it to be.
Bill, what's your take on this clip?
Anybody who is familiar with the Euthyphro dilemma will recognize that Alex is stating a variation on the Euthyphro dilemma for meaning in life as opposed to moral values. And I think that the solution is exactly the same. Because God is the supreme good, his perfectly good nature qualifies him to determine meaning in the same way that it uh qualifies him to issue moral commands that constitute our moral duties. And so that circumvents the arbitrariness objection and it also circumvents the idea that meaning or value is independent of God. Rather, these are rooted in the very nature of God himself as the supreme good. Uh whom to know is the purpose and the uh fulfillment of human existence to know God forever. And his love is an incommensurable good uh to which nothing else can either even be uh compared. So the AI analogy just completely falls flat when we understand who God is.
Great answer for those not familiar with the Euthyphro dilemma. This goes back to hundreds of years before the time of Christ to the time of like Socrates and Plato and the and the charge was made. Is there some moral standard outside of God then he is kind of subservient to some standard or if God himself is the standard then morality is arbitrary and the answer is to say the standard is God's character and his duties flow from his character and give us obligations. I've never heard this applied to meaning in the way it's applied to morality. This was a first for me but I think you're right. He's confusing. And on on his world view, on Alex's worldview, we are the result of this blind mechanistic purposeless process. And we are beings that can subjectively make things like paper clips that can't even be compared to a self-existent eternal all-knowing, all good creator who himself is the source of meaning and infuses us objectively with meaning. So like you, I think the objection falls flat.
Yeah.
Let's take a look at another clip.
But I look at the development of the human species and our particular proclivities. Lewis makes this argument from desire that you mentioned. Why do we have a desire for food? Well, because there is actually food to have. The evolutionary biologist says the reason that we develop hunger is because those who didn't died. And if you don't have some sense of hunger, you're not going to seek out food and you will die. And so it just so happens that those who develop this feeling of hunger will be more likely to survive and therefore hunger is a part of our human condition. Well, such is meaning if you have two isolated communities, one of whom says, "I just don't care. Whatever man, no interest in having children, no interested in building societies, legal systems, constitutions, whatever the case, moral systems, none of they just don't care. Nihilists, they're not even going to have children. That society will die out. Another society which just so happens to perhaps delusion like in an exercise of delusion just develop this inexplicable feeling and of course this evolves over time and starts with essentially the kind of random mutation of ideas that works on the genetic level in evolution they call it mimetics when it's ideas rather than genes the society which just ends up developing this idea that actually I can't quite explain why but I I just have this drive towards building a society and engaging in legal justice and moral systems and kind they're just more likely to survive. So, we end up with this with this sense, this this drive within us that we can't explain and yet we have.
Dr. Craig, what's your reaction?
It seems to me that Alex here doesn't understand C.S. Lewis's argument from desire. Lewis's only point in that argument is that if we have a fundamental desire for something, then it's highly probable that there exists something that satisfies it. And that isn't denied at all by Alex's evolutionary account of uh meaning and value. That on the contrary that would be supported by his view that if we have these desires then something exists that satisfies them. So we have a desire for food there's food. If we have a desire for God or meaning there's God or meaning is the suggestion by Lewis. I would push back on one small area as well is that I'm not sure he really gave an evolutionary explanation for the origin of meaning. And what I mean by this is there's a difference between saying once meaning arrives and we have these beings who desire meaning and look for meaning, we can find some evolutionary advantage that flows from having that meaning. That's different than explaining how it arises in the first place. That's one thing he said. If you just have this group of, you know, beings or humans that just happen to have this desire for meaning, that's a non-explanation. So there's a big difference between saying once something exists, we can find some positive evolutionary advantage for it and explaining why beings that in many ways don't need meaning to survive. We see that in the rest of the natural world, why do we arise meaning? Well, it seems to me it might suggest that meaning is real and it's built into the universe and we are made to seek for it. So, I agree with you. He didn't characterize the argument as well as he could have, but I don't think he also even offered an evolutionary explanation for meaning itself.
Let's take a look at a third clip.
I guess you could say the change of life isn't maybe knockdown, drag-out proof that what he believes now is actually true. Big P, Big T. That like Jesus rose from the dead. It seems to be, pardon me, that like Jesus rose from the dead. It's got no bearing on whether that's true or not.
Well, I'm speaking of a different thing right now. I'm thinking about the experience now with God that he's having. If you if he's having this changed life, this this is evidential. This is this lends credibility to the belief system that he's now adopted because it created this particular significant change in his life. It may not be proof and that word is really an oozy-goosey word how to pin down. But nevertheless, it still seems to be evidential. It is it it speaks to the legitimacy and accuracy and truthfulness of the belief system that produced this changed life. That's what I'm saying.
It's only evidence that belief in that thing makes someone feel more fulfilled. That's the only thing it's evidence of.
Okay. So, this is where we differ.
Just like.
I'm with him on this one.
Okay. Just because uh just because a certain you're saying just because they believe it, this makes them better. It doesn't mean that the belief is actually sound.
Greg, I've got a good way of coming at this then. So.
This is where we differ.
That's right.
If I had five friends and they all picked five different religions and they all felt the same thing that my friend did in Dubai where they all felt better for it. Does is that evidential that all five religions are true?
Dr. Craig, how evidential do you think a changed life is?
I think that Greg Kokal is correct here that a changed life does have evidential value. Um, and that if you have a belief system that has radically altered your life as many of us who have come to believe in Christ have, that counts in favor of that belief system. Now, Alex says it's only evidence that you are more fulfilled. But how does he know that it's only that? Why why can't it be more than that? For example, suppose someone tells you that the low-carb diet will really help you lose weight. And so you decide to experiment and go on a low carb diet and lo and behold, you lose 50 lbs. In that case, that change in your life is definitely evidential in supporting the truth of that. Now, it's not a knockdown argument. Maybe you've got a parasite that caused you to lose 50 pounds. But nevertheless, that dramatic change would be evidence uh in favor of that hypothesis. Now, Stephen says, is it evidential that all five religions of his friends are true? And the answer to that is yes. Of course, it's evidential. Each one provides some evidence that increases the probability of its truth compared to what it would have been in the absence of such experience. According to probability theory, an item of information, call it E, is evidence for a hypothesis just in case that hypothesis is more probable given the evidence. E than it would have been without it. And if you have a changed life, that does make your hypothesis more probable, than it would have been if your life were not changed. I if everything just went on as before. So I certainly do think that the evidence of a change to life does count toward the truth of the belief system.
That's a really helpful way to put it. You might say if A then B. If A Christianity is true, then B, we would expect a changed life. Like your diet example, if you cut out carbs, we'd expect there to be a a loss of weight. Well, we find it in both cases, and it seems to be evidence for the belief system that posits that. So, I I think you're right. Now, somebody could say, well, you could get B not from Christianity, but from something else. And I think that's logically possible. Maybe another religion could get that. Like you said, I think the next followup would be now we consider the rest of the evidence, the other evidence for a particular faith. And what do we mean by a changed life? What is the significance of the changed life? And if Christianity is really true, we should probably expect to see a quantitative and qualitative distinction that sets it apart. But I think I'm with you that it's a part of a larger cumulative case that is not a knockdown argument like Greg said, but is a piece of evidence in its favor.
Yes. And we should not deny, as Steven seemed to, that a Muslim's religious experience counts in favor of Islam or that a Buddhist's experience counts in favor of uh Buddhism. Uh it doesn't matter that these are inconsistent with each other. Each one increases the probability of their worldview hypothesis um in the sense that that hypothesis is more probable given that experiential evidence than it would have been without it in the absence of that evidence.
Well said. Let's take a look at the fourth clip.
I think I'd be happier all things considered if I had an anchoring in a religion. I think that's like a subjectively true that I'd be happier. Um, probably just because it would close a gap of some sort. It would it would anchor me in some way, answer a question. It would answer a question and then with it would give me more of a structure to my decision-making. You know, it would mean that when I have moments of suffering, I'd have a solution to that moment of suffering. So if my parents end up dying someday, which I'm sure they will, I will believe that they are still alive and they are somewhere and they're fine, which will ease my suffering. So I agree with Alex in that regard. The problem I have is in order to adopt that view, I need some kind of I need to believe it. It's true. Like people can't aren't very good at lying to themselves. And also when you talk about my friend in Dubai has had this experience, he now feels better. He could have well felt better, I believe, if he had, you know, believed that Islam was true and become a Muslim.
So, so it's the feeling itself people can get in a lot of ways. I know people that actually would tell you that they they feel better now that they're out of the cult and they're agnostic.
Sure.
And the cult the cult made them feel terrible. Now they're agnostic, they feel better. Does that mean agnosticism is truth?
What do you think?
Well, I agree that just because something makes you feel better doesn't imply that it's true. And that's why you and I so often emphasize the arguments of natural theology for the existence of God and the objective historical evidence of Christianity. Our belief in God and in Christ is based on lots more than just feeling better about things. You know, he's right that religious belief as a whole does lead towards more happiness. There have been some studies like the Harvard Flourishing Project that things like prayer, attending church, religious practice translate as a whole into longer life, greater happiness, greater survival from cancer at times. But for me, I'm not really interested in defending religion per se because some religions we could make the case wouldn't lead towards more happiness arguably. Psychologist Henry Cloud wrote a fascinating book called Why I Believe. And he actually makes the case that it's uniquely Christian principles that lead to flourishing and dealing with principle and dealing with suffering. Things like forgiveness, gratitude, healthy relationships, prayer. And to me, that could suggest that we flourish when we're in relationship with God and tell us something about what it means to be human and what we're made for. Not a piece of I don't know if I'd say it's strictly evidential, but it's a part of a larger case that we have for Christianity that we objectively flourish, not just subjectively. Sometimes Stephen is talking about these feelings that we have and somebody can have subjective feelings leaving religion. The question is somebody objectively flourishing and that's where the data does point towards things like prayer, church attendance, religious practice actually making somebody happier, which I think suggests something about what it means to be human.
Let's take a look at a fifth clip.
One of the reasons why it might seem like we keep talking across purposes is because I think you're you are offering an explanation for why people feel a particular way and I'm trying to see whether those those feelings are shall we say philosophically validated whether they are those those feelings are are sensitive to truth if the way you feel about the world is accurate. So I can I can perfectly understand that it's possible for Sisyphus to be happy. What I'm saying is that I think that the philosophical underpinning that would be required for him to be content in that condition is unsatisfying at least to me. So as a as a what what so what is a what is a philosophical truth? It doesn't have to I mean maybe I shouldn't say philosophical truth but I mean to say I mean to separate it from what you might describe as like a neurological truth which is to say it could be true that your brain believes this or believes that based on this or that condition and I'm saying that totally but what I'm interested in is the thing that it believes is it true or false you know it could be in the same way that you know believing in Christianity can make you happy it can make you sad and you can you can scan someone's brain you can put them in an MRI scanner and scan their brain when they at the moment they convert to Christianity and see that it starts going haywire but nothing is not going to show any beliefs nothing to do with the truth in the neurological activity beliefs aren't but beliefs aren't in the brain.
Yeah, we we're going to get to that in this.
I kind of I kind of agree with that.
Dr. Craig, what do you think about this one?
Um, just a second, Sean. Let me let me get back here with you.
I'm on Alex's side here. I think that we are interested in what is true and not just what makes you feel better. And so I do want to ask, are one's feelings philosophically validated? And for the Christian theist that means, are there good arguments for the existence of God? Is there good evidence for his self-revelation in Jesus of Nazareth? And those are the objective questions that I think are really important and that these fellows never really seem to engage with because they're just talking about subjective feelings rather than what the objective evidence is. So we absolutely are interested in whether feelings are philosophically validated as Alex puts it.
Yeah. Alex has done this on a number of occasions. I've seen him hold Dawkins feet to the fire like with the empty tomb pressing him saying if there was a video camera like Jordan Peterson as well, would this would you objectively been able to record it? So so many times he pushes rightly so for the importance of truth. My question, I would have loved to see him talk about this. I mean, Alex is clearly interested in believing what is true. Like good for him. But my question is, do we have a duty to seek truth? Ought we seek truth and follow it and are we being irrational in some sense if we don't and we violated some kind of duty. Now, he doesn't say that explicitly, but sure seems to imply in his life that we ought to follow true things. I don't know how on naturalism you ground that duty and obligation in the first place, especially since he's an emotivist and talks about moral duties being expressions of feelings.
Absolutely, Sean. Trying to ground epistemic duties on a naturalistic worldview seems to me to be a hopeless task. Uh and so while we can uh resonate with his desire to have philosophical validation of one's feelings to show that one's worldview is true. Um Alex is going to be hardpressed to show that we have any obligation to seek truth or to think rationally on his worldview. Great point. Let's take a look at the sixth clip.
The thing that we are most fundamentally confronted with, I think, on an existential level is suffering.
Mhm.
And there's our own suffering and then there's the suffering of others and the seemingly meaningless suffering of a child who's undergoing cancer and does not survive it. And I'm told that in the face of such existential tragedy, turn to religion to give us a a sort of sense of fulfillment and a sense of explanation. But when asked about the mechanism of how, I'm told it's because at some undisclosed number of years ago, somebody commit a sin against God and that's why your child has now died of cancer. There are millions of people who listen to this show. There will be people listening to this whose children have died of cancer. I wonder if that brings them any kind of consolation. Similarly, the idea that, you know, maybe it's some disgruntled angels who didn't want to come down to earth for too long and so if anything, you're actually doing them a favor by killing them of cancer. I don't know if that's bringing the kind of looking.
Bill, this is one of the toughest questions that people can ask. How from the Christian worldview do we make sense of children suffering?
Yeah, I want to say that I disagree with Alex uh fundamentally that the most meaningful thing is suffering. I don't think that's true. Uh Sean, um I think that far more fundamental to meaning is that the world as we experience it is suffused with value, both good and evil. And there is far far more good in the world than there is evil. Otherwise, everyone would commit suicide. But people generally think that life is worth living. And when things are going bad, they generally look to the future and hope that things will improve. So I do not think that suffering as poignant and anguishing as it is is the most fundamental thing about reality. It is rather that we live in a world that is just suffused with value both good and evil alike. And that raises the question that you brought up a moment ago. What is the ground or the foundation of these objective moral values that we apprehend in our moral experience of the world? Now, Alex seems to think that the Christian view is that all natural suffering in the world like cancer and other diseases is due to the sin of Adam and Eve. And I don't believe that. That may be a young earth creationist position, but I I certainly don't hold to that myself. So, I think he's just attacking a straw man there.
You know, this question is tough and in some ways to give an answer to it can feel insensitive to people who've suffered so much. But I think a few things can be said on top of what what you mentioned to get the ball rolling, which is number one, every worldview has to make sense of why kids suffer, where do they come from, why do they have value, why do they suffer, and how do we console people? So it's not can I explain exactly why this happens, but which worldview offers the most hope and promise. That's where I lean into Christianity. I totally agree with you that it's not just because of the fall that happened, you know, however many years ago that a kid dies from cancer. There can be a whole bunch of other contributing factors, even if the fall opened up the door for pain and the curse and other pain, you know, and suffering in the world, of course. And the other thing I'd say is the fall is not meant to offer consolation. I've never heard of a Christian talking to somebody and said, "Don't you know Adam and Eve suffered?" Like I heard that I'm thinking like, "Nobody does that."
No.
You know, a a Christian response is more like in Romans 12 when it talks about be happy with those who are happy, be sad with those who are sad. We are to be present with people and love people and mourn with people and then when they're ready for it, start to talk about what Christianity uniquely offers to the pain and suffering people have been through.
Yeah, that that's such a great point, Sean. We don't look to the past as the source of our consolation or hope. We look to the future. And Paul says, "I consider that the sufferings of this age are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed to us." The prospect of eternal life and the knowledge of God, of an incommensurable good for eternity, is a hope that enables us to bear the suffering that God calls upon us to bear during this life with courage and with faith.
Bill, you know, I teach full-time in the apologetics program here at Talbot and I teach the class on why does God allow suffering? And we use a book by Clay Jones, you know, Why Does God Allow Evil? And there's an amazing chapter in there where he kind of does a thought experiment that what would happen if God just never allowed children to suffer. And it actually has a whole bunch of consequences we would not have thought about because what people want us to do is say, "We want the world exactly as it is, but just don't let kids suffer." And it doesn't work that way. I'm not going to walk through the details right now, but anybody who says I want further, I could not highly recommend anything more than Clay's book to start wrestling with that.
All right, let's take let's take a look at the seventh clip.
I would ask you to consider what you find more likely if we assume that we are essentially existing here as accidental organisms just competing in a struggle for survival with no endowed meaning or supervision. What might we expect to find? And I would ask what you would expect to find if we were created with purpose by a loving God who wants us all to come into communion with him but for some reason thinks it's necessary that we exist in this veil of tears in this material world first. What would you expect to find? I don't think. And then look at what you do find. Look at what you do find in the natural world. Even if you just take into consideration nonhuman animal suffering, just an unfathomable amount of negative experience, right? There's seemingly no reason. Not to mention the fact that children are getting cancer, as you say, and as you've already alluded to, there are evils that humans commit, like the Holocaust, but there are evils which they don't, like earthquakes and tsunamis and the like. Well, I don't think we would expect to see any of this if we assume that hypothesis. But if we assume that we are just accidentally existing organisms in a in a struggle for survival, not only do we explain this, but we also come to expect it. So I think it provides a much better explanation. That is not to say justification. The idea we were talking about evolution, you said that the problem that you have with the Darwinian worldview is that it seems to say that it seems to favor survival of the fittest. And yet there are things which evolution seems to point to that we would morally condemn. Well, of course, because evolution by natural selection is an explanation for how things got the way they were. It's in no way a justification for behaviors. It it doesn't even function that way. No scientific theory of why things happen are any kind of justification any more than Newton's laws of gravity are a justification, a moral justification for the motion of the planets. That's of course it's not the case. It's just an explanation. But I just really want to drive home this point.
Mhm.
That it has to do more. If you want religious traditions to do what you claim that they do, which is provide existential comfort for people who are suffering, you have to do more in the face of children dying of cancer than some reference to mythical human beings who existed or in a way that is completely unintelligible.
What's your response, Dr. Craig?
Here, Alex asks us to consider what we would expect to find if atheism were true compared to what we would find if theism were true. Now, this is simply a version of the philosopher Paul Draper's objection to the existence of God from evil. Draper argues that the distribution of pain and pleasure in the world is vastly more probable on atheism than it is on theism and therefore the pain and uh suffering in the world provide evidence uh against theism. The fallacy of Draper's argument, which Alex uh also commits, is that if atheism were true, what we would expect with overwhelming incomprehensible probability is a life-prohibiting universe in which there is no life. There is no chemistry. There isn't even matter much less places where life might evolve. So there would be no animal suffering because there would be no life. So the argument is fundamentally flawed. In fact, the existence of animal suffering is actually evidence for theism because the absence of theism, animal life wouldn't even exist. And this leads then into a whole array of theistic arguments. What would we expect to find if God did not exist compared to if God did exist? Well, we would not expect to find a universe in which abstract mathematics applies to physical reality with an uncanny accuracy and precision. We wouldn't expect to find that objective moral values and duties exist, but only the illusion thereof. But if values and duties do objectively exist, they're vastly more probable on theism. And did you notice that Alex admitted in that clip that there are evils that humans commit? That some of the things that we do are morally evil and you can't have it both ways. If if you're going to be an atheist, then uh where you get these objective moral values and duties becomes uh very problematic. So I think that this argument really recoils on the atheist. I think that the universe that we observe is vastly more probable given the hypothesis of theism than given the hypothesis of naturalism.
That last point you make is really important in this larger debate because there was a later section. I believe it came after where Greg was pressing Alex to explain his objection on evil and suffering because it assumes a moral norm. And Alex says, "I was very careful not to assume a moral norm and just talk about suffering." Later reflecting upon this, Greg was like, "Yeah, but there's other times in this video where you were calling things evil and you were making moral judgments," which betrays his emotivist view that on Alex's own view, he's really just expressing his emotions about this, not making objective moral condemnations, but have a hard time believing that's exactly what he really believes. So I think he's undermined himself a little bit in this. I actually approached this very similar to you, which probably shows how much you've shaped me. Like if we just start with suffering and evil and God, then it might tilt the scales away from God maybe. But if we step back and include everything that exists, why we have universe at all, why it's fine-tuned, life from non-life. And in this discussion, Alex is like, I have no idea how this could happen. The emergence of consciousness, he also calls that a mystery. Why we trust our reasoning faculties, the evidence for Jesus, near-death experiences, that really tilts the scales differently in the opposite direction than I think he thinks it does. When we consider all things on a probabilistic scale.
Very well said.
We got two more, my friend. Let's keep going. And this is to me the question is the question of suffering. And you've explained your your your views about the the fall. And I wanted to let you put them in full before I ask a few questions. But the first question that jumps out at me is the question of prehuman suffering. We're not the first species to inhabit this planet. Before we existed, billions of years. I don't know if you believe that the earth is 4 and a half billion years old, but but billions of years, hundreds of millions of years at least of animal suffering.
Yeah.
Like and that is experienced. They they like if and and you could say that it somehow is less like relevant or doesn't matter as much, but if if you saw me right now step on a dog's tail and watch it squeal, you'd tell me to stop because you know that absent just the effect that that has on our human situation, that's bad for the dog. That kind of stuff was going on for hundreds of million years before humans were around. That means before the fall.
Bill, this is the third question on suffering. It's so important in this dialogue and overall that I really wanted to play three to see if there's anything else you wanted to weigh in here on this one.
Yes. I think that the problem of animal suffering is particularly uh acute for those of us who love animals. Uh it it's anguishing to see the suffering that animals endure. And so I want to make two points uh about this uh Sean. The first point is I would like to speak to the value and even the necessity of animal predation. Any viable ecosystem in which human beings can live is going to have to operate according to natural laws and will have to involve animal predation. Uh otherwise the insects would eventually consume all the vegetation and everything would starve to death. So animal predation is an essential part of a viable ecosystem. This was really interestingly illustrated uh recently by the decision of the Canadian government to reintroduce wolves into the wild in Canada. And the reason they did this was because in the absence of these predators, the caribou herds were flourishing and overgrazing because there was nothing to kill off the sick and the aged. And as a result, the caribou were dying. They were starving to death. By introducing the wolves back into the ecosystem, this managed the size of the caribou herd so that they are now flourishing once again. So, ironically, it's such a tremendous irony, animal predation is actually good for the prey like the caribou herds. So it is a vital part of a viable ecosystem in which we human beings can uh flourish. Now the the other reason it's valuable and I think even necessary is that this wider natural ecosystem provides the setting for God's providential plan for humanity on this planet. The purpose of human life is to draw people freely into the kingdom of God, to come to know God and his love uh freely forever. And I think that it is not at all improbable, not in the slightest, that only in a world that was suffused with natural and moral uh evil and suffering that the optimal number of persons would freely come to know God uh and embrace his salvation and come to experience his love. So I as anguishing as animal predation is I I do not think in the end that it provides good evidence against an all powerful and all loving creator. Now the second thing that I wanted to say about animal predation is that we can ameliorate the degree of animal suffering by understanding what animals experience. There are different levels or thresholds of pain uh phenomena in nature. At the lowest level, there is simply aversive behavior to noxious stimuli. For example, if you poke an amoeba with a needle, it will recoil. Not because it feels pain, but is just programmed to instinctually react in that way to avert noxious stimuli. And the vast vast majority of life on this planet is on this lowest level. It is only when you get to higher animals, say like the vertebrates, that you begin to have phenomenal pain awareness. Dogs and cats and horses and cows and so forth clearly experience pain. So they have a a genuine uh experience of pain in their uh awareness but they do not have as yet the third level which is a self awareness of pain. Animals do not have a first person perspective whereby they can say I am in pain or I feel pain. That is unique so far as we know to human beings and that makes human suffering uniquely terrible because we not only feel pain but we are aware of the fact that we are in pain. Whereas animals may be in pain but they are not self-aware that they are themselves in pain. Uh and so God I think in a sense has shielded the animal world from the worst sorts of pain and suffering which is unique to human beings. Uh now that raises a whole host of questions about the purpose of human suffering then and and why God would permit that. But the subject here that Alex has raised is the question of animal suffering. And I think that we can put it in uh proper perspective by understanding that even though the higher animals uh feel pain, they do not have that third level self-awareness of being themselves in pain.
Those are both great responses. And interestingly enough, I heard Greg Kok do a podcast at Stand to Reason reflecting back on this and he said, he goes, "You know, I can't prove this, but I do wonder, and there's maybe some evidence with animals that when they're being eaten, it's almost like they go into a certain trance and some of their pain mechanisms may shut down." And, you know, I don't know if we can prove that, but that wouldn't surprise me at all if God had that kind of mechanism built in to care for animals.
Yeah.
On top of that, we do have a duty to care for animals. I had Peter Singer on my show a couple maybe two months ago and we were kind of finding common ground. I said, you know, Peter, the Bible is filled with caring for animals, giving them a Sabbath, not overworking them. In fact, I forget the exact proverb, but somebody's character is tied to how they treat animals. And so the Christian worldview can give us a moral obligation to care for the world and try to minimize the suffering of animals because they have value.
Yes, absolutely.
One more clip.
Because the greatest mystery that we are confronted with every single day if you just take a moment to remember it is that we are conscious is that we are experiencing things from a first person perspective. That I have thoughts which are inaccessible to you and you have thoughts which are inaccessible to me. It's extremely strange. So there's a view that I'm quite attracted to uh in the philosophy of mind called panpsychism which literally means sort of like the view that consciousness is everywhere or in everything. It's not it doesn't mean that everything is conscious. It doesn't mean this pen is conscious. What it means is that the stuff that the universe is made out of so the fundamental matter of the universe has at least mental properties or might be mental properties because when you say for example you know we're in a world of like molecules in motion right.
I understand that sentiment but if you ask a scientist what is stuff actually made out of ultimately speaking they will not be able to tell you.
Dr. Craig, what do you make of this take for consciousness?
You know, I think it was G.K. Chesterton who said that the problem with atheism is not that people will not believe in God, but the problem is that people will then believe in anything. And I think that panpsychism really illustrates this here. Alex can't bring himself to believe in a transcendent creator and designer of the universe who is the source of moral values and yet he believes that his pen has mental properties. I wonder what they are. Uh I think panpsychism is a great example of the desperate links to which the naturalist is forced once he gives up theism. It's far more rational to believe that there is a transcendent mind who has created the universe and has created human beings in his image as finite embodied minds who can then relate to God in personal I-thou relationships. Uh and panpsychism is not a plausible way of escape. There are some things that surprised me in this dialogue. To hear Alex Okconor really any atheist lean towards panpsychism is one I didn't see coming. Although it's growing according to J.P. Moreland and Brandon Rick in their book, it's growing in kind of the world of the philosophy of mind. I think it moves away from this uh kind of atheist perspective we saw with the new atheists that was just so reductionist and even like Daniel Dennett like denying consciousness.
I think there's something inside of us that's like you just can't reduce everything down to matter. We need mind. And so here's Alex bringing in mind and it's almost like there's now a kind of dualism that's here but he's not willing to go all the way.
Right?
One of the problems for panpsychism is what's called the combination problem. If there's kind of these mental states what gives them a combined holistic center that can make sense of these mental states and panpsychism doesn't have a response to that. But what's fascinating is the way that Alex talked betrayed panpsychism because he kept saying, "I have these thoughts. I have these beliefs," which is a center of consciousness. Because thoughts and mental states aren't free-floating, they're minds that have them. It can't be brains. Earlier in the dialogue, Greg was exactly right when he pushed back. He's like, you don't find true or false states in brains. They're totally physical. It's minds that have these things. So, I say to Alex, I'd say, you're on the right track recognizing that there's immaterial mental states, but take it a step further and say you've got to have some mind to contain them. But if you do that, you're now into dualism.
Yeah, that's a very nice positive spin. I think Sean that you've put on this uh to to say yes, you're on the right track. You're moving in the right direction away from reductive materialism and physicalism to some sort of dualistic view. And we've seen this evolution in the thought of Philip Goff who is a very prominent panpsychist and is now moving more in the direction of theism and away from panpsychism. He's he's evolving through it and that is something to be applauded and encouraged.
I'm so glad you brought that up. I had forgotten about that point and he actually endorsed Rickabah and Morland's book on the, you know, the substance, I forget the exact title, but it's their new book.
The Substance of Consciousness.
Thank you. The Substance of Consciousness. So let's hope Alex and others who are open to panpsychism might continue going down that road and see where it leads. Bill, when I first sent you these clips, you responded like where's all the debate about science and the origin of the universe? And I said, "This is really a conversation about meaning and about purpose." And so I thought it might be helpful if we wrapped up if you could just maybe give a word of advice. There's a lot of people searching today. There seems to be renewed interest in spiritual things. Would you share your own just search for meaning? Why you became a Christian and maybe some encouragement for any seekers who've stayed with us until the end?
In my experience, Sean, the absence of meaning on a non-Christian worldview was absolutely oppressive. As a non-Christian teenager, I felt deeply the despair and the blackness of a life that was doomed to end in death. The idea that someday I would die and cease to exist just seemed incomprehensible to me. It was it was a terror that I didn't even want to think about. And as a result, my life felt meaningless. I I remember as a non-Christian looking at a dog and saying, "Why did I have to be a human being and deal with these questions of meaning and value in life? I I didn't ask to be born." Uh and so I felt very deeply this the absurdity of life. And it was only later in college when I began to read the French existentialist philosophers like Jean Paul.
And Albert Cam >> that I saw, I was experiencing the absurdity of life that the French atheistic existentialists wrote about so eloquently. And what happened to me was my junior year in high school. I sat behind a girl in my German class who was a radiant Christian >> and she she shared her faith with me, uh, and said that Jesus wanted to live in my heart. And I said to her, "Why would he want to do a thing like that?" And she said, "Because he loves you, Bill." And that just overwhelmed me to think that the God of the universe could love me. Bill Craig, that worm down there on that speck of dust called planet Earth. I just couldn't take it in.
Well, I went home that night and I found a New Testament that had been given to me by the Gideonss when they visited our uh elementary school in the fifth grade. And for the first time, I began to read it. And I was absolutely captivated by the person of Jesus of Nazareth. There was a wisdom about this man's teaching that I had never encountered before. And especially there was an authenticity about his life that was undeniable. And to make a long story short, after about six months of the most intense soul-searching I've ever been through, I just came to the end of my rope and cried out to God and felt this tremendous infusion of joy as uh the spirit of God came into my life. And if you were to ask me what was the major difference that becoming a Christian made for me? Was it the peace that Christ brought? Was it the love of God? Uh, was it the joy? Well, all of those things were important, but for me, Sean, the most fundamental, the most important thing of all was that it brought meaning >> to my existence. Now I could wake up every day and know that the things that I did that day really mattered, that they really were infused with an eternal significance and importance. And so that um, that infusion of meaning into my life was uh just of of supreme importance. And so if there are any listeners today who are searching for meaning, I'd encourage them to do what I did. Pick up a New Testament, begin to read it, and ask yourself the question, could this really be true? Could there really be a God who loves me and sent his son into the world to die for me that I might know him forever? A and I believe that if uh they will do that, it could change their lives in the same way that it changed mine.
>> Oh, that's so good because the heart of this conversation was actually five hours edited down to three and a half hours for the final one is about the question of meaning. And so many people got focused on the subjective component which motivates us and drives us. But that's secondary to the objective question. Yes. >> Is there a God? Does this God love us? And the radical thing you're saying is we can actually know that with confidence. Of course, we can look at the evidence. You've written books on this. You have debates on this. I'd encourage people to check that out. But I'm with you. One of the most popular blogs I ever wrote, it's really simple, was something effective. What are the best five books to give a non-Christian? And I mentioned Case for Christ, More than Carpenter, Mere Christianity. Number one was the New Testament and the Gospel of John. >> Yeah. >> So, I would encourage anybody watching this, these books are some of the most influential books in the history of the world. And Jesus is arguably the most influential person who's ever lived. What if you just find an hour, hour and a half, read this and ask yourself, who's this person Jesus? Could it be true? That's a step both Dr. Dr. Craig and I would encourage you to consider taking and after you do that, make sure you hit subscribe to Dr. Craig's podcast, follow his YouTube channel. I actually listen to a handful of podcasts weekly. One is uh Greg Kokal, who is in this discussion. He's a mentor to me and I listen to all your episodes, Dr. Craig. I think it's great and I hope viewers here and listeners will subscribe to Reasonable Faith. And make sure you hit subscribe here. We've got some other conversations coming up and we would love to have you come study either the MA philosophy or MA apologetics at Talbot School of Theology on campus or by distance. This kind of conversation and analysis is exactly what we do in the program and we love to have you come join us and as our founder Craig Hazy used to say become a nuisance for the Lord in the right way. Uh, any last suggestions for people watching this? Uh, do you is this kind of video helpful? You want me to do more reaction videos? Let me know. Give me some ideas. I want this channel to be a service to you. Dr. Craig, always enjoy it. Thanks for your time and your thoughts. We'll do it again. >> My pleasure, Sean.