Transcription
I am open to theistic evolution, but I think it's really, really important to understand that the word "evolution" is ambiguous. The word "evolution" is like an accordion uh word or a concertina that can be expanded or contracted to mean different things. When evolutionary biologists say that evolution is a fact, they are not talking about the explanatory mechanisms of of evolution or Darwin's theory. What they mean is simply that all living organisms are genealogically related and descended from a handful of common ancestors deep in the past. That's all that evolution means. But how it came about, this is still a matter of tremendous uncertainty and debate. And when it comes to reconstructing the evolutionary tree of life, there are acrimonious disputes among evolutionary biologists about how this is to be done.
Well, welcome. We are very pleased to have you. Thank you for making time for us.
Oh, I'm very glad to do so.
So, I'm reading a question from Elvis Jalosi. Is the Kalam cosmological argument the most persuasive argument for the existence of God? uh according to your view or is there another you find more compelling and if so how would you explain that argument briefly?
Mhm. I do not, in fact, think that the Kalam cosmological argument is the most persuasive argument. It is my favorite argument, but I find that by far the most persuasive argument is the so-called moral argument. And it goes roughly like this. Premise one, if God does not exist, then objective moral values and duties do not exist. Premise two, but objective moral values and duties do exist from which it follows logically. Three, therefore, God exists. And I think that the reason that this argument is so persuasive is that people generally agree with both of the premises. Uh with respect to the first premise, if God does not exist, then objective moral values uh and duties do not exist. They've been taught moral relativism that uh moral values are simply the product of personal choice or social conditioning. And so that premise seems true to them. At the same time, however, paradoxically, they are also deeply committed to premise two that objective moral values and duties do exist. They affirm the objectivity, for example, of values like openness, um inclusivity, diversity, love, uh fairmindedness, and so forth. So, they actually agree with both of the premises, but they've just never put them together to see what follows. uh and when you do put them together, they imply uh that God exists.
Question from uh Quitim Mishai. He asks, "If nothing comes from nothing, how is it possible that God can create something from nothing?"
When we say that nothing comes from nothing, we mean that something cannot arise from absolute nonbeing. Being only comes from being and therefore if something comes into existence, there has to be at least an efficient cause to use Aristotle's language that brings it into being. Now, whether or not it had a material cause, that is to say, stuff of which it is made, that's a different question. Um, so long as there is an efficient cause of creation, then the doctrine that God has created the universe without a material cause does not contradict the metaphysical principle that out of nothing, nothing comes. There needs to be at least an efficient cause.
Why would we think that Hilbert's hotel, even if it entails absurdities, would entail that the universe cannot be past infinite? Uh the absurdity in the Hilton Hilbert's hotel seems to be caused by moving the guests around. But you can't move move past events around. Past events are fixed. So why would Hilbert's hotel entail that past events cannot cannot?
All right. If I understand the question, um, you say that the absurdities of Hilbert's hotel is due to the fact that you can move the guests about in the hotel and this results in these crazy situations, but that you cannot do that with the events of the past. uh and I would say that all that is required is that we be able to mentally move the events in our imagination and that is sufficient to generate the same sort of paradoxes. We can uh talk about every other event in the past, for example, um and what would happen if we multiplied each of those events by two, doubling them. You can do all of the same operations conceptually. Uh you don't need to actually move these about physically.
Thank you.
More than anything, I'd like to give a little bit of a testimony before I ask a question. Um, Dr. Dr. Craig, I want to thank you because uh I was um, let's see, in 1984, uh a young man just out of college um and um moving into the ministry as a Christian, but having serious doubts about God. And I read your book um and it helped uh me begin to understand um how God can can exist and put faith in him and I've gone on and continued in the ministry and I've been doing ministry here in Albania as well. So, thank you for that. But my question was, as you as you saw, is just um, you know, if you were to do it again and write that book, the um existence of God in the beginning of the universe, would you write it differently today or um would it still stand as is?
Yes. Well, it really was a surprise to see someone ask a question about this book because this was the first book I ever published way back in 1979 and I think hardly anyone's ever heard of it. Uh so I'm thrilled to hear how the Lord used it in your life, Dan. And yes, certainly I would change things if I rewrote the book. For example, uh in the book I identify uh a particular Niche scholar as William Kaufman, when in fact his name was Walter Kaufman. And that's just a huge embarrassment for me to have um remembered that incorrectly. And I would also then certainly update the science. The science that is reflected in the book was the uh science that was current during the late 1970s and there have been enormous advances in astrophysics and cosmology since then. So I would definitely update that material.
Great. Thank you. Thank you, Dan, for the testimony. Thank you, Dr. Craig. Um, so the next question is by Jurgen Muchai. So he asks, "Is God ontologically necessary for reality or is he merely the best explanatory hypothesis for it?"
I would say that God is definitely ontologically necessary for reality. God is the only self-existent necessary being uh and the source of being for everything else that exists. So God is ontologically necessary for reality.
Question from Bessa. Uh she asks, "Is it more rational to believe in a creator or in chance?"
This is a question I've been often asked by my non-believing friends since becoming a believer. And I think I know best. She's a new believer. So the alternative is chance >> or a creator. So what is more rational to believe? How has to do with the so-called fine-tuning argument for the existence of God? Over the last generation, scientists have been stunned by the discovery of how finely tuned the fundamental constants and quantities of nature must be in order for there to be embodied conscious observers like ourselves. Um and therefore I think that this um fine-tuning of the universe that has been observed is incomprehensibly more probable given the existence of God than it is given atheism. On atheism, you would just have to say that it's by chance that all of these constants and quantities fell into the life-permitting range. And the odds against that are just I mean they are literally incomprehensible. They involve numbers that are so huge that to call them astronomical would be a wild understatement. And so it is vastly more probable that the fine-tuning of the universe is due to uh intelligent design than to chance. There is a transcendent designer or God who has designed the universe to be life-permitting.
A question from LT. I think goes back to the cosmological argument. He says, "I understand how the cosmological argument helps us >> uh to affirm to affirm that there is a a um a being or a divine being or how does it prove that there is just one divine being? Uh or do we need another argument for that?"
I would say that the Kalam cosmological argument gives you a first uncaused, changeless, timeless, immaterial, uh enormously powerful personal creator of the universe. And the principle called Ockham's Razor states that you should not posit additional causes beyond necessity. You are only justified in positing such causes as are required to explain the evidence. And in this case, it is sufficient to posit one such creator of the universe in order to explain the origin of the universe. And therefore, Ockham's Razor would justify us in thinking that there is just one creator rather than a plurality of creators.
Davis Claka uh asked, "Do you think that God exists because we as human beings may make his existence possible due to our belief in him? Since people need to believe in something greater than ourselves, in something divine, because without faith our soul will feel incomplete and we need it. But I do not think that God is the best explanation for the creation of the universe. So it's coming from a skeptical point of view."
Obviously, I don't agree with that. That is the attitude of uh 19th-century philosophers like Feuerbach, who think that God is just a projection of human beings uh to uh infinity, and I don't agree with that. And the reason for that is that I think there are very good arguments for the existence of a transcendent personal creator of the universe, and these would include things like God is the best explanation for why anything at all exists rather than nothing. God is the best explanation for the beginning of the universe at a point in the finite past. God is the best explanation for the applicability of mathematics to physical phenomena. God is the best explanation for the fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent uh embodied agents. God is the best explanation of the objectivity of moral values and duties in the world. And the very uh possibility of God's existence, I would argue, entails that God exists. So that gives you six very powerful reasons that constitute a a very impressive cumulative case for thinking that God is not just a projection of human consciousness but is in fact an objectively existing reality upon whom the universe and we depend.
A question from Clo. uh he says, "How do you connect the Kalam cosmological argument for the beginning of the universe with the historical uh and divine identity of Jesus?"
Good question. The Kalam cosmological argument uh has great interdenominational appeal. It has been propounded by Jews, uh Christians, both Catholic and Protestant, and by Muslims. It gives us a sort of generic monotheism or creator. Now, if we're to move beyond that generic monotheism, we need to ask ourselves, has God revealed himself to us in some special way that we can know him more fully? Or has he remained aloof and distant from the world that he has made? And here I think the person of Jesus of Nazareth comes to center stage. Jesus claimed to be the absolute revelation of the creator God of the universe, and he made personal claims about himself whereby he put himself in the place of God. Claims which were blasphemous to Jewish ears and which resulted ultimately in Jesus' crucifixion for the crime of blasphemy. But the New Testament says that God has raised Jesus from the dead, thereby vindicating those allegedly blasphemous claims and showing that Jesus really was who he claimed to be. So it is the resurrection of Jesus, I think, that is so crucial in disclosing to us the self-revelation of God the creator in Jesus of Nazareth. And in my uh published work, I've laid out in some detail the historical credibility of the resurrection of Jesus. Uh it it is amazing. It is surprising, but this event is really credible when examined on a purely historical basis.
Daniela Flaka, as human beings, we know that what life with suffering is like because we see it, hear about it, and sometimes experience it ourselves. The question is, would life have meaning without suffering?
This is really a great question, Daniela. And um, I think that our lives in the new heavens and the new earth will be freed from suffering. So that our lives in the kingdom of God will be free of suffering. But we will have had the experience of suffering in the past during our earthly lives. And so we will be able to appreciate more deeply our deliverance from suffering that comes about with the new heavens and the new earth. So our lives will not become meaningless because we no longer suffer. But I think that having suffered, we will appreciate all the more our deliverance from the suffering of this finite existence.
A follow-up question uh from Daniela again says, "If memory is lost, is identity lost as well?"
No, it isn't. Uh, I think philosophers are generally agreed that memory is not a necessary condition for identity over time. We can imagine someone suffering from amnesia or some other sort of mental illness where he's lost uh his memories of the past, and yet he's still the same person. He is identical to the person who existed before and had those thoughts. Now, certainly his personality will be very changed, but I take it that Daniela is referring to identity in the physical, in the philosophical sense, that is to say, is he numerically identical to the person who existed before the memory loss? And the answer to that, I think, is clearly yes.
>> Two questions perhaps related to the idea of God's sovereignty and how he controls and plans and and wields the the future and our lives. So, Manola Perles asks, "Has God already written our lives?" And and another question related to it by Dietri says, "Was this meeting planned by God?"
Yes. Um, in response to Manola, I would say that God has written our lives, but not without our cooperation. That is to say, we are co-authors with God of our lives. And so, in response to Dietri, I would say, uh, was this meeting planned by God? Yes, but you didn't have to attend.
Uh, why should the Bible be understood? Not merely as a cultural product, but as truth. What are the principal reasons for thinking it is not a human construct but a book that speaks truthfully about ultimate reality?
In order to answer this question, you would need to read my entire book uh Reasonable Faith, which tries to show why Christianity is true. So we would marshal all of the various arguments for the existence of God to show that there is a personal creator and designer of the universe who is the locus of absolute value and who has revealed himself decisively in Jesus of Nazareth by raising him from the dead. And that gives us good grounds for believing that what Jesus taught is true. And Jesus authorized the New Testament in advance um by giving his divine authority to his apostles. Uh and therefore I think we can regard the Bible as inspired, authoritative uh and a source of truth for doctrine uh about God uh man, salvation and so forth.
Thank you. Uh Selma Makola is here and she's asked three questions. Uh and I'm reading them. Uh, what do recurring human beliefs or ideas for reincarnation reveal about the spiritual nature or longings or intuitions of the human soul?
It seems to me, Selma, that those uh longings or intuitions show that man yearns for immortality. Even in these uh non-Christian religions, you have this openness to transcendence and um an openness beyond the world uh craving some sort of immortality or eternal life, and that comes to expression in beliefs like reincarnation.
She also asks, "If the Holy Spirit can be experienced by many believers at the same time, how should we understand the nature of the spirit? Is his presence shared personally to each person without being divided?"
Yes, I would say that is correct. As an unembodied mind, a pure spirit, the Holy Spirit cannot be divided into pieces or sections. Rather, he is like a mind that can be in communion simultaneously with several other minds.
She also asks, "Could an overemphasis on Satan as an external force sometimes distract from confronting the darkness within ourselves? How should Christians interpret the biblical language about Satan as a personal adversary, an inner symbolic reality, or both?"
Well, I think Selma is correct that overemphasizing Satan as an external force uh could distract us from taking responsibility for our own evil choices. If we always say, "Well, the devil made me do it," then we're off the hook and not responsible. So, I think she's right about that. But I do think nevertheless that Satan is a personal adversary. He is the enemy of our souls and is bent on our destruction. And therefore, I think that we should avoid at all costs any sort of occult practices. We should shun these occult demonic practices where we could come under satanic influence. But I would say that since Satan is a finite being, I doubt that many of us ever come directly into contact with him.
A question from Darina Pay. Uh she asks, "Why does God need us?"
He doesn't, uh Dorina. He loves us, but he doesn't need us. God is entirely self-sufficient. It's a a miracle of his grace that he should love us.
Uh my friend Victor Poani has submitted a couple questions. Um he asks specifically, "In what ways was the creature man made in the likeness of the creator?"
Well, Genesis uh does not define for us exactly what the image of God is, but we know that it serves to distinguish man from every other uh member of the animal kingdom. Only human beings are created in the image of God. And therefore, I'm inclined to think that the image of God means that man is a person, just as God is personal. Um, and thereby man is set apart from all of the rest of animal creation. Man is a self-conscious, free, rational, moral agent. And in those respects, he resembles God.
He also asks, "Why and by whom was the tree of the forbidden fruit planted, the eating of which became the origin of sin?"
Well, in the story, it's God who plants the trees in the garden of Eden. Uh, and so God is the one who has done this.
So now I think it's a question regarding Jesus' divinity, I guess, regarding the ignorance of Jesus, same by by Victor Poani. What is your view of Augustine's explanation known as the theory of accommodation?
He asks >> Now, if I understand you correctly, Victor, you're asking about how God accommodates himself to human limitations. Now, certainly God does do that when you think about it. Even in speaking to us in human languages like Hebrew and Greek, God is accommodating himself to us. But I don't think that the theory of accommodation gives a realistic um and therefore a credible picture of the incarnation. I think that too many people think of Jesus as Superman disguised as Clark Kent, and that's what the accommodation theory seems to imply. um Jesus is just sort of play acting uh like Superman is Clark Kent, and I don't think that is a genuine incarnation. So in my model of the incarnation, I distinguish between Jesus' conscious life and his subconscious life. And I think that these can be differentiated in a theologically significant way. In his conscious life, Jesus was like an ordinary human being of his time and and era. So Jesus wouldn't have known the answer to questions about auto mechanics or quantum mechanics, had you asked him. Um, he wouldn't have been conscious of those things. But I would say in his subconscious, as the second person of the Trinity, he does have such knowledge. He is omniscient, but that knowledge is subconscious to him, at least during his state of humiliation prior to his resurrection and ascension.
Thank you. Henry Peshkatari is here. Would you like to ask the question? Do you want me to ask the question?
Okay. So, how does Henry asks, "How does uh human free will relate to God's sovereignty in the matter of salvation?"
Well, in my opinion, God gives sufficient grace for salvation to all persons who are created, and we are then free to accept or reject God's saving grace. And it may well be the case that God has so providentially ordered the world that the optimal number of people will freely come to know him and to find salvation.
Question from Vesumani. Uh she asks, "How is the human relationship with God formed, understood, and developed?"
Mhm. I would say that this relationship is formed through regeneration by the Holy Spirit. When we place our faith in Christ, the Holy Spirit comes into us and renews uh our spirit so that we have a relationship once again with God whereby Paul says we cry Abba Father to God through the witness of the Holy Spirit with our spirit. And then we develop and grow in that relationship through the Holy Spirit's ongoing sanctifying work during the rest of our lives, conforming us to the image and character of Jesus Christ.
Elton Lea uh he's asking, "Which theory do you find more convincing, old earth creationism or young earth creationism? If old earth creationism, how then do you reconcile animal death before Adam with the biblical teaching that death is the result of Adam's sin?"
I hold uh firmly to old earth creationism. Um, and with respect to Alton's question, I would say that it's very striking when you read Genesis uh 1:3 about the fall of man, that physical death is not the result of Adam and Eve's sin. God told them, "The day you eat of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, you will die." But when they eat the fruit, they don't drop over dead immediately. On the contrary, they they keep on living. In fact, Adam and Eve, I would say, were mortal in the garden. They were like any other biological organism uh that was mortal. And that's why they needed the tree of life. If Adam and Eve were already immortal in the Garden of Eden, there would be no need for the tree of life. So I do not think that physical death is the result uh of the fall. I would say that Adam and Eve were already mortal uh when they were created in the garden. Rather, the result of sin is spiritual death. The moment they sin, you notice how they experience alienation from God. And now they are no longer in fellowship with him. Instead, they're ashamed and hiding from God and at odds with each other. So I think that what the Bible is teaching is that the result of sin is spiritual death, not physical death. And that this spiritual death is overcome, as I said just a moment ago, through regeneration by the Holy Spirit, who makes us spiritually alive again.
From Arald Rioli again, a question: "Jesus Christ has two full natures, he says, 100% human and 100% divine. Wouldn't that mean that Jesus Christ has two minds in the totality of his being? But does it imply that he would have two minds in the totality of his being?"
Some people have been willing to affirm confirm that Jesus has two minds. And there are Christian philosophers who attempt to defend the view that God uh that Jesus had both a kind of divine consciousness and then also a human consciousness. But as I explained earlier in our interview, I think a better model is to differentiate between the conscious and the subconscious of Jesus, rather than to say that there are two minds, there are different levels of the one mind. All of us know that we know things in our subconscious that we are not consciously aware of. Um, very often we have the experience of having forgotten something, we say, "Oh, it's it's right on the tip of my tongue, it it will come to me," but we just can't bring it to mind, and then later on it does occur to us. So there is a lot more in our subconscious minds than we are consciously aware of. And so I think that by differentiating the conscious and subconscious of Jesus in a theologically sensitive way, we can say that Jesus had an ordinary human consciousness. Um, we don't need to imagine that the baby Jesus lying in the manger was contemplating the infinite decimal calculus. No, he had a genuine consciousness of a human baby that grew and developed over time. Um, but in his subconscious, as the second person of the Trinity, he is fully um knowledgeable of all truth and therefore omniscient. And so by making this theologically sensitive division, I think we can make sense of uh Jesus' human consciousness and his divine subconsciousness without uh postulating uh a person with two minds.
Thank you. So Andia asks, "I understand your view of Genesis 1-11 as mytho-history rather than strictly literal. Yet Jesus speaks of Adam and Eve in the beginning, and Paul says sin entered the world through one man, Adam."
Yes. If Genesis is not literal, does this undermine the biblical account of the fall?
All right. There are a couple of questions there. On my view, Adam and Eve are historical, and I give some of the same arguments that she mentioned. I think that the genealogies that structure the primeval history of Genesis 1-11 meld into figures that the author certainly regarded as historical, like Abraham and the patriarchs of Israel. Moreover, Paul in Romans chapter 5 certainly regards Adam as a historical person through whom sin came into the world. And as she mentioned, I think it's uh very plausible that Jesus himself believed that Adam and Eve were historical persons, the first human beings. So as a Christian, I think we are committed to the historicity of Adam and Eve and of their fall into sin. But my claim is that these events are described in the figurative and metaphorical language of myth. And therefore the narrative should not be interpreted with a kind of wooden literalism that refuses to acknowledge the presence of metaphor and figurative language that is so characteristic of myth.
Adelaani uh asks, "If evil was not created, how did it arise in Lucifer's desires?"
Mhm. So did something become present without having been created first? I think it's important to understand that evil is not a thing. It is not a positive reality. Rather, evil is a privation. It is the absence of a thing. To give an illustration in physics, uh cold has no positive reality. There is no such thing as cold. Rather, cold is a privation of heat. It is the absence of heat. Now, the fact that cold is a privation of something and not a positive reality doesn't mean that it's unreal. Just go outside on a winter morning and you'll see how real that privation is. Similarly, evil is not a positive reality. It's a privation of good. And so, evil arises through a privation of right order in the creaturely will. The will of creatures should be oriented toward God as the supreme good, the so-called sum bonum, the highest good. But instead, humans freely divert their wills to lesser goods and thereby bring about a disorder in the creaturely will. And that privation of right order is uh evil. That is the origin of evil. So it originates through free will. And it only needs to be added that free will is itself a great good. This is what enables us to be moral agents and to be in the image of God and resemble him. But the misuse of freedom uh results in a privation of good, and that is the origin of evil.
Thank you. Now I want you to answer a question from a special friend. Uh he's a Muslim. He comes from Struga. uh he made a couple hours' drive to come for this event >> just to he he seems to know you from your videos and your engagements uh and his name is Fati. So he asks, "Did the Old Testament prophets know that God's nature is triune? If so, is there any passage where the prophets explicitly explain this nature in a way that reflects the trinitarian doctrine as we understand it today, that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are three distinct persons, the hypostases, who are one in essence, while the Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit is not the Father?" And I think it continues, "If the prophets did not know this nature and it remained a mystery, would that not appear to conflict with Amos 3:7, which says that God reveals his secrets to his servants, the prophets?"
So the question is, did the Old Testament prophets have some understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity? Is that right?
Yes. Yeah. I think so. Um, I know I have um Messianic Jewish friends who are very anxious to try to read the doctrine of the Trinity back into the Old Testament in an effort to evangelize their fellow Jews. And I think that's just a mistake. What forced the followers of Jesus to revise the traditional Jewish concept of God was the person of Jesus. As I just explained, uh he put himself in the place of God himself and he was crucified as a blasphemer. But God's raising him from the dead shows that Jesus was who he really claimed to be. And that required that one begin to think about the one God not as three different gods but rather as having multiple persons in the one divine being. And so the doctrine of the Trinity, I think, is a consequence of the person and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. Uh it is he who is pivotal here. Um, and I don't think that in any way contradicts the passage that was quoted, that God reveals secret things to the prophets, because the content of the expression "secret things" was not the doctrine of the Trinity. I feel absolutely confident that the author of that passage wasn't thinking that um God revealed all of these sorts of secret things to the prophets. Um, there are lots of things that the prophets didn't know about. Um, and so I I don't I think that's really illegitimate proof-texting. The real question is, I think, who is Jesus of Nazareth? What do you do with Jesus? And here I think that the Muslim concept of Jesus as being uh merely human is inadequate and uh does not do justice to the truth of his crucifixion and resurrection.
A question back to the view of uh historical Adam, from AD. How would you address these two objections on your historical Adam thesis? Objection number one, objection from genetics: modern humans do not derive from a pair of people but instead a big group. Objection from theologians. Objection number two is >>
The first objection one at a time.
Sure.
Okay. Um, for many, many years, it was confidently asserted that the population uh diversity uh on earth today could not possibly have derived from a single human pair at any time in the past. That the human population on this planet never got below around 10,000 breeding individuals, and that therefore genetically, population genetics had decisively ruled out uh the existence of a founding human pair. And as I explain in my book, um, Quest for the Historical Adam, that consensus has been utterly overthrown. It now turns out that the evidence of population genetics is perfectly consistent with the reality of a founding pair, so long as they existed prior to 500,000 years ago. If they existed prior to 500,000 years ago, their existence would be genetically undetectable. And so it is not at all ruled out that the human population derived from such a founding pair. In fact, since publishing my book, there have been new studies released by Chinese geneticists, which are very credible science, which shows that for a window about a 100,000 years, between around 900,000 years ago and 800,000 years ago, the human population went down to a bottleneck of fewer than 1300 breeding individuals. And that's an average over a window of about a 100,000 years ago, fewer than 1300 breeding members in that population. So clearly, the evidence of population genetics is entirely compatible with the existence of Adam and Eve uh as members of the species Homo heidelbergensis, as I argue in the book.
Objection from theologian was, if if we are to interpret uh interpret Genesis as myth or history, that's what what's to stop one from interpreting the gospel or other Bible books as such?
How can correctly line to answer the way in which you identify a piece of literature as mythical is that it exhibits various family resemblances of myths. And so in the book, I identify something like 10 of these family resemblances and show that Genesis 1-11 exhibits about eight out of these 10 family resemblances, uh which demonstrates that they are uh in some measure quasi-mythical. By contrast, the Gospels don't exhibit these family resemblances of myths. Quite the contrary, as a result of the work of uh the New Testament scholar Richard Burridge, he has shown that the Gospels exhibit the family resemblances of ancient biographies, such as the lives of famous Greeks and Romans by Plutarch. Uh and therefore the Gospels are not mythical. No New Testament scholar today thinks that the Gospels are myths. Rather, the Gospels most closely resemble the genre of ancient biography, and as such, they have a definite historical interest in the life of the hero. And so there is no danger uh from this sort of slippery slope argument that identifying uh Genesis 1-11 as mytho-history would lead you to identify the Gospels as mytho-history, any more than identifying the Psalms as poetry would lead you to identify the Gospels as poetry. Uh these are different kinds of literature, and literary critics are able to analyze the uh family resemblances among these types of literature so as to classify them accurately.
Okay. Thank you. Uh now the time that I ask you to commit to us is over. So we have five more questions left. So I want you to make a a free will decision if you want to answer those five questions.
How about we go to half past the hour?
Seven more minutes.
Great. Thank you so much. I appreciate that. Uh so a question from uh Elton Le concerning the intelligent design argument of the universe. So if there is such order in the physical world, why is there so much chaos in the moral world?
Because of human free will and perversity. Uh it is, as I said earlier, human freedom, not to mention uh Satan, that introduces moral chaos into the world. And this is then expanded by our being born and raised in an incredibly fallen and corrupt uh culture all around us. So that is hardly surprising that in the human realm there would be such moral uh chaos and perversity.
Noah Anderson, going back to a question regarding Adam and Eve potentially evolving from early hominids, how would we reconcile with Genesis 2:18-25 which tells us that Eve was shaped from Adam's rib?
It would say that that is part of the figurative or metaphorical language of Genesis. I do not think that we should imagine that God literally anesthetized Adam and then did surgery on him to extract a bone out of his body, and then that somehow this bone was shaped into a human being. It seems to me patently obvious that this is a figurative account um and it would not be plausible to construe it literally.
And uh By Valta also asks, also asks, "Where does Dr. Craig support a theistic evolution? Maybe he means biblically or what does it mean?"
I'm open to theistic evolution. But I think it's really, really important to understand that the word "evolution" is ambiguous. The word "evolution" is like an accordion uh word or a concertina that can be expanded or contracted to mean different things. When evolutionary biologists say that evolution is a fact, they are not talking about the explanatory mechanisms of evolution or Darwin's theory. What they mean is simply that all living organisms are genealogically related and descended from a handful of common ancestors deep in the past. That's all that evolution means. But how it came about, this is still a matter of tremendous uncertainty and debate. And when it comes to reconstructing the evolutionary tree of life, there are acrimonious disputes among evolutionary biologists about how this is to be done. So um, I think it's entirely consistent with the evidence to say that God has supervised the evolutionary process and perhaps even miraculously guided it. I I am very, very skeptical that the current mechanisms postulated by evolutionary biology are sufficient to explain the evolution of biological complexity that we observe in such a relatively short time. um and therefore I I am skeptical about the explanatory mechanisms behind the uh evolution and development of life.
Thank you. Last two questions. Lorent Kadu asks, "Is there theological evidence suggesting that the rebellion in heaven occurred before or after the creation of man? Base the answer also on the prophecies of Isaiah and Ezekiel."
I think there's no way to know. There's really no way to date something like that. It's speculation.
And the last question comes from Condor Czecha. "How do you experience your relationship with the living Christ today? Would not an encounter with the living Christ be the primary motive for believing in God?"
Well, I I think that that's right. The primary duty of a human being is to know God and to worship and obey him. And therefore, it's important that as Christians, we engage in certain spiritual disciplines like corporate worship uh with a body of believers uh on a regular basis, times of prayer, times of Bible reading and uh meditation, Christian service to others, being involved in evangelism, uh sharing the gospel and helping to bring people to Christ. Uh in all of these ways, I think we can nurture our spiritual growth and our relationship uh with God. And especially we need to be submissive to the Holy Spirit. You remember I said earlier that through the Holy Spirit we are born again to new life, and then as the Holy Spirit sanctifies us over time, we are transformed more and more into Christ's image. And so every day that we get up before our feet hit the floor, we need to say, "Lord, fill me with your Holy Spirit. Help me to follow you today. Guide me by your Spirit." And if there is unconfessed sin in our lives, we need to confess it and ask God's forgiveness and be cleansed of that sin so that we do not get off the path of following God's perfect will for our lives. So we definitely need to be very uh intentional about nurturing that relationship with God.
That's an excellent ending, Dr. Craig. Thank you for making time for us and giving us uh these extra minutes. We are so thankful that through the technology we're able to to have this conversation and and have these answers from you.
It's marvelous, isn't it? And I wish uh the brothers and sisters there in Albania all of the fullness of God's blessing. Thank you for allowing me to chat with you today.
Have a great day. Thank you so much. Hey, hey, hey.