William Lane Craig's encouragement to lower the epistemological bar *drastically*
Back in July of 2022 on his "Reasonable Faith" podcast, scholar and celebrity apologist William Lane Craig was offered this challenge:
"Hello, Dr. Craig, I've enjoyed your ministry and it has helped strengthen my faith over the years but I have recently been having troubling thoughts in my mind. My trouble is that one of the things about Christianity is that it requires a lot of work to follow. In order to follow Christ you have to orient your entire life around him. Christianity is not just a set of propositions that one holds, but it's a faith-practice, a way of life. With that in mind, wouldn't the smart thing to do is require very high epistemic standards before one decides they will dedicate their life to Christ? If you're going to live for Christ then wouldn't it be smart to actually meet Jesus Christ in person or even talk to his mother Mary or an angel? I know you often mention the witness of the Holy Spirit as a way that one can have direct access to God but I have done meditative prayer and deep meditation for years upon years and nothing has come up in terms of God speaking to me directly where I know it wasn't just my own imagination. Many of my fellow Christians have had similar concerns on this also. This is perhaps my biggest struggle and I cannot seem to get it out of my head as it is causing me to abandon the Christian life because I cannot have high epistemic confidence that Christianity is true." --Kyle, United States.
Here is WLC's response:
"When I first heard the message of the Gospel as a non-Christian high school student, that my sins could be forgiven by God, that God loved me, he loved Bill Craig, and that I could come to know him and experience eternal life with God, I thought to myself (and I'm not kidding) I thought if there is just one chance in a million that this is true it's worth believing. So my attitude toward this is just the opposite of Kyle's. Far from raising the bar or the epistemic standard that Christianity must meet to be believed, I lower it. I think that this is a message which is so wonderful, so fantastic, that if there's any evidence that it's true then it's worth believing in, especially when you compare it to the alternatives like naturalism or atheism or other forms of life. If Kyle really knows what it's like to experience the love of God and to have this hope in eternal life and forgiveness of sins then it seems to me that he will gravitate toward that alternative. It will be so attractive and that it would take really, really decisive disproofs to make him give up his Christian faith and abandon it. Now, when I talk about the witness of the Holy Spirit I don't mean God speaking to me directly in the way Kyle describes. God doesn't speak to me directly either in that sort of way as an inner voice. But I just mean a kind of fundamental assurance that one's faith is true. People often talk about this as the assurance of salvation, and I think that is the privilege of every born-again Christian. I hope that Kyle is more than just a nominal Christian, that he's really come to experience the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit and that he's in-dwelt and filled with the Holy Spirit because I think then that removes the huge epistemic bar that he thinks you need to get over in order to become a Christian."
Seems as if WLC forgot himself in a moment of wistful nostalgia, and said the quiet part out loud. All you need is a "burning in the bosom." So... so much for the rest of his work as an apologist? What do you think?
"Hello, Dr. Craig, I've enjoyed your ministry and it has helped strengthen my faith over the years but I have recently been having troubling thoughts in my mind. My trouble is that one of the things about Christianity is that it requires a lot of work to follow. In order to follow Christ you have to orient your entire life around him. Christianity is not just a set of propositions that one holds, but it's a faith-practice, a way of life. With that in mind, wouldn't the smart thing to do is require very high epistemic standards before one decides they will dedicate their life to Christ? If you're going to live for Christ then wouldn't it be smart to actually meet Jesus Christ in person or even talk to his mother Mary or an angel? I know you often mention the witness of the Holy Spirit as a way that one can have direct access to God but I have done meditative prayer and deep meditation for years upon years and nothing has come up in terms of God speaking to me directly where I know it wasn't just my own imagination. Many of my fellow Christians have had similar concerns on this also. This is perhaps my biggest struggle and I cannot seem to get it out of my head as it is causing me to abandon the Christian life because I cannot have high epistemic confidence that Christianity is true." --Kyle, United States.
Here is WLC's response:
"When I first heard the message of the Gospel as a non-Christian high school student, that my sins could be forgiven by God, that God loved me, he loved Bill Craig, and that I could come to know him and experience eternal life with God, I thought to myself (and I'm not kidding) I thought if there is just one chance in a million that this is true it's worth believing. So my attitude toward this is just the opposite of Kyle's. Far from raising the bar or the epistemic standard that Christianity must meet to be believed, I lower it. I think that this is a message which is so wonderful, so fantastic, that if there's any evidence that it's true then it's worth believing in, especially when you compare it to the alternatives like naturalism or atheism or other forms of life. If Kyle really knows what it's like to experience the love of God and to have this hope in eternal life and forgiveness of sins then it seems to me that he will gravitate toward that alternative. It will be so attractive and that it would take really, really decisive disproofs to make him give up his Christian faith and abandon it. Now, when I talk about the witness of the Holy Spirit I don't mean God speaking to me directly in the way Kyle describes. God doesn't speak to me directly either in that sort of way as an inner voice. But I just mean a kind of fundamental assurance that one's faith is true. People often talk about this as the assurance of salvation, and I think that is the privilege of every born-again Christian. I hope that Kyle is more than just a nominal Christian, that he's really come to experience the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit and that he's in-dwelt and filled with the Holy Spirit because I think then that removes the huge epistemic bar that he thinks you need to get over in order to become a Christian."
Seems as if WLC forgot himself in a moment of wistful nostalgia, and said the quiet part out loud. All you need is a "burning in the bosom." So... so much for the rest of his work as an apologist? What do you think?
Comments
That much, eh?
This is just plain hogwash as it smuggles in a bunch of theological concepts, such as sin, without questioning any of that. So it’s pretty in keeping with my general experience of Craig’s work.
Aye. Utterly third rate. Down there with Michael Shermer and the rest of the ID mob.
That's with regard to his pathetic Kalam Cosmological Argument, whereas above he is more honest and just appeals to feelings.
Well, that’s precisely the point. For as hard and for as long as he’s pounded the table for his smorgasbord of arguments (his debate with Hitchens comes to mind), it all boils down to his HS-aged Pascal’s wager & a warm fuzzy feeling inside.
I beg Michael Shermer's pardon!
I meant ultra-conservative Christian Reconstructionist pseudoscientist Stephen C. Meyer.
Shermer is the author of my next dunny book. How We Believe.
No shit, Sherlock. Kyle said exactly that himself. But he hasn't had that experience. You can't give it to him, and God hasn't seen fit to.
No he hasn't you dickwad. He says explictly that he hasn't had any such experience. And you're going to say he's a "nominal Christian" because of that? Is that what you're implying? You judgmental twat.
Of course it does! That's the whole point of Kyle's letter. He hasn't had these experiences, therefore he has the high epistemic bar. Gods, what a smooth-brained, mouth-breathing moron.
la vie en rouge, Purgatory host
One of my pet peeves is when Christians think non-Christians are worried about "their sins."
(*) or would it be a metaepistemological position?
As well as Christians worrying about non-Christians' "sins." Live your own life & leave people alone.