Here is the video from my debate with William Lane Craig at the 2014 Greer-Heard Forum. Enough talking from me, now folks can enjoy for themselves. First is the main debate and Q&A:
"God & Cosmology" - 2014 Greer-Heard Forum
It took a while for the Saturday talks by Maudlin, Collins, Rosenberg, and Sinclair to appear on line, but I’ve posted them here.
Vaal and JP – sorry, dumb layperson question. How can something wait or hesitate outside of time? Doesn’t the way we define and use those words imply a time setting? Is there a simple answer to that or do I need to read a book to understand?
JP Arnold,
You are still begging the question (and taking a trip through Special Pleading to get there).
When theists are appealing to the concept of a Personal Agent making a free willed decision, clearly they are drawing this concept from our experience, in particular, from the examples of ourselves and other humans engaging in such actions.
They are saying in a nutshell: You know how we can make decisions and then take an action based on that decision? Yeah? Well, that can ALSO happen in a situation in which there is no matter or energy and no time or space!
What????? That seems just one massive non-sequitur and it automatically demands the response “how the hell is THAT plausible? What is that should make me think such a thing could actually occur, in reality?”
This is like the leap from “You know how people can play monopoly on their kitchen table? Well, I claim this “playing monopoly” can also occur in the middle of the sun!”
There’s just a teeny bit of explaining left to do there before anyone should take that vast leap seriously at all.
If the theist thinks he can just lift the concept of “decision making leading to action”
from the physical human phenomenon (we seem as physical and part of the causal universe as any other empirical objects) and say it can happen without cause, in a realm of non-material/energy and no time and space, he can hardly complain when anyone else does the same thing. I notice there are vast numbers of entities that change state all the time, so I say “ok, so then a non-sentient entity, a particle, can do it outside time and space as well. It can, in a timeless realm, shift state, cause the universe and enter time with the universe.”
He can’t complain “it couldn’t plausibly do that” by pointing to the fact I’ve taken a physical entity out of it’s normal empirical context of causation because that’s exactly what he is doing when he looks at human action and simply asserting the same process can occur outside time and space. What EVIDENCE is there for that?
You keep trying to claim equivalence between Blark Power and Personal Cause Power by claiming the only power to cause a universe must be Personal Free Willed Agency. And on that basis, a Blark could only cause a universe if it had Personal Free Willed Agency. This begs the question since I keep asking for reason or evidence showing why we should think Personal Agency has such power in the first place! I could just as well say “The only way something could be eternal and yet produce a temporal effect is if it had the NON-SENTIENT property of Blarkness. Hence if theists say something caused the universe, it would have equivalent properties and be non-sentient.” Theists would instantly recognize this as mere assertion, question-begging, and not at all established by evidence. Yet they help themselves to just this type of assertion when saying we ought to accept their claim about the non-material, non-temporal, non-spatial powers of Personal Causation (or “free willed agents”).
Of course, people like W.L. Craig have actually gone on to claim he draws this inference from the examples of human minds having just these properties. Which just doesn’t fly given all the evidence against it.
But, if the point is not clear by now, I don’t think any more on my part is going to do more.
Vaal
Vaal,
I want to first thank you for that thoughtful, interesting, and, especially, *respectful* response. I must say I’m thoroughly impressed by your reasoning, and you raise many substantive points. What’s more, I strongly commend the way in which you articulate your position — your objections and arguments are quite easy to discern despite the length of your responses. I appreciate the level of civility that was exhibited by your last response and I hope to do the same with this one. I apologize for the prolonged time until my response.
Rather than follow my inclination to give a point-by-point response, I’ve opted for another approach instead. That is, I’ll summarize what I discern to be your three central objections and then respond accordingly.
From what I was able to gather from that last response, your three central objections seem to be as follows:
1. What good reasons are there to think that there could exist immaterial persons (divine or otherwise) endowed with libertarian freedom of the will whose exercise of causal powers might bring about effects in the spatiotemporal world?
2. Even if there were good reasons to believe that such persons as described in (1) exist, how could such a person timelessly “freely decide” to perform an action in an eternal, immaterial setting?
3. Even if there were good reasons to believe that such persons as described in (1) and (2) exist, in what way would it be justified to ascribe their free exercise of causal power as an explanation for some physical phenomena?
With respect to (1), what this amounts to is an affirmation of some version of strong physicalism:
SP: everything that exists is fundamentally matter, most likely, elementary “particles” (whether taken as points of potentiality, centers of mass/energy, units of spatially extended stuff/waves, or reduced to [or eliminated in favor of] fields), organized in various ways according to the laws of nature. No nonphysical entities exist, including emergent ones. The only sorts of causes in the universe are mechanical/efficient (that by means of which an effect is produced) and material (the stuff out of which something is made). There are no purposes, goals, final causes, irreducible teleology. And there are no free agents with the active power to be the *real* originating causes of their own actions without being determined to act by the laws of nature and external environmental factors.
This is, in the minds of an overwhelming majority, quite a radical view to defend. On this view, living organisms—including human persons—are relational structures of parts held together by various forces, not unified, uncomposed substantial selves. There are at least four features — consciousness, free will, rationality, and a unified self — of human persons that disconfirm this hypothesis. They are recalcitrant facts for naturalism and not what would be predicted if it were true. Let’s take a closer look at each of them.
1) Consciousness: It is hard to see how finite consciousness could result from the rearrangement of brute matter; it is, however, easier to see how a conscious Being could produce finite consciousness. This assumes a commonsense understanding of conscious states such as sensations, thoughts, beliefs, desires and volitions. So understood, mental states are in no sense physical since they possess four features not owned by physical states:
(i) There is a raw qualitative feel or a “what it is like” to have a mental state such as a pain.
(ii) Many mental states have intentionality—ofness or aboutness—directed toward an object (e.g., a thought *about* the Lorentzian transformation equations).
(iii) Mental states are inner, private and immediate to the subject having them.
(iv) Mental states fail to have crucial features (e.g., spatial extension, location) that characterize physical states and, in general, cannot be described using physical language.
Given that conscious states are immaterial and not physical, there can be no natural scientific explanation for the existence of conscious states. It will not do to claim that consciousness simply emerged from matter when it reached a certain level of complexity. “Emergence” is not an explanation of the phenomena to be explained. It’s merely a label.
2) Free will: It is *widely* acknowledged that the commonsense, spontaneously formed understanding of human free will is what’s called “libertarian freedom”:
LF: one acts freely only if one’s action was not determined—directly or indirectly—by forces outside his control, and one must be free to act or refrain from acting; one’s choice is “spontaneous,” it originates with and only with the actor.
Our experience of libertarian free will is compelling; so compelling, in fact, that people cannot act as though that experience is an illusion, even if it somehow is one. Think about it: when a physicalist calling to order a pizza is faced with a choice between hand-tossed and thin crust, he cannot bring himself to reply, “Look, I’m a determinist. I’ll just have to wait till it gets here and see what order happens.” According to a major understanding of Christianity, God has libertarian freedom and created his image-bearers to possess this freedom. By contrast, most philosophers are agreed that libertarian freedom and a theory of agency it entails are incompatible with the generally accepted depiction of physicalism presented above.
3) Rationality: According to Christianity, God—the fundamental being—is rational and created his image-bearers with the mental equipment to exhibit rationality and be apt for truth gathering in their various environments. But rationality is an odd entity in a scientific naturalist world. There are at least two reasons why human persons can’t be rational agents in a naturalistic worldview but are predicted to be precisely such in a theistic worldview: (1) the necessity of the enduring, rational self and (2) the need for room for teleological (i.e., goal-directed) factors to play a role in thought processes. There must be not only a unified self at each time in a deliberative sequence but also an identical self that endures through the rational act. Rational deliberation and intellectual responsibility seem to presuppose an enduring ‘I’. But on the naturalist view, ‘I’ am a collection of parts such that if I gain and lose parts, ‘I’ am literally a different aggregate from one moment to the next. Thus, there is no such enduring ‘I’ that could serve as the unifier of rational thought on a naturalist view. Furthermore, there is also the following argument:
(1) If naturalism is true, there is no irreducible teleology.
(2) Rational deliberation exhibits irreducible teleology.
(3) Therefore, naturalism is false.
Finally, consider the fact that, from a naturalistic point of view, our beliefs would be dependent on neurophysiology, and (no doubt) a belief would just be a neurological structure of some complex kind. Now the neurophysiology on which our beliefs depend will doubtless be *adaptive*. But here’s the million dollar question: Why think for a moment that the beliefs dependent on or caused by that neurophysiology will be mostly true? Why think our cognitive faculties are reliable? From a theistic point of view, we’d expect that our cognitive faculties would be (for the most part, and given certain qualifications and caveats) reliable. God has created us in his image, and an important part of our image bearing is our resembling him in being able to form true beliefs and achieve knowledge. But from a naturalistic point of view the thought that our cognitive faculties are reliable (i.e., produce a preponderance of true beliefs) would be at best a naive hope. The naturalist can be reasonably sure that the neurophysiology underlying belief formation is adaptive, but nothing follows about the truth of the beliefs depending on that neurophysiology. In fact he’d have to hold that it is unlikely, given unguided evolution, that our cognitive faculties are reliable. It’s as likely, given unguided evolution, that we live in a sort of dream world as that we actually know something about ourselves and our world. If this is so, the naturalist has a defeater for the natural assumption that his cognitive faculties are reliable. And if he has a defeater for that belief, he also has a defeater for *any* belief that is a product of his cognitive faculties. But of course that would be all of his beliefs — including naturalism itself! So the naturalist has a defeater for naturalism; naturalism, therefore, is self-defeating and cannot be rationally believed.
4. Unified selves. Naturalism cannot countenance a substantial, enduring mental self (i.e., a mind or immaterial soul). If one starts with separable physical parts, and simply rearranges them according to natural laws into new relational structures constituted by external relations, then in the category of “individual,” one’s ontology will have atomic simples.
There are two basic reasons why a substantial, simple soul is not an option for a naturalist. First, the naturalist is committed to the closure of the physical. All physical events that have causes have entirely physical causes; when tracing the causal antecedents of a physical event, one need not—and, indeed, cannot—leave the physical realm. This is, it seems to me, the only reason why one would defend so radical a view as to deny libertarian free will — immaterial, personal agency does not mesh with a naturalistic worldview and it must therefore a priori be denied.
Up to this point I’ve focused only on the task of showing how a naturalistic presupposition does not seem to be compatible with several observed features of reality. Moreover, I’ve also briefly mentioned why these features are compatible — indeed, *expected* — on a theistic worldview. Namely, the metaphysical features of theism are fundamental in existence—God, the basic Being, is a unified, conscious, immaterial self with rationality, free will—and it is hardly surprising that they appear elsewhere in the created order, especially in association with beings that are alleged to have been created to be like God. Thus, theism predicts that these four features are irreducible, ineliminable aspects of human persons, and the fact that they seem to be such provides confirmation of theism. However, you asked to see the evidence confirming the substance dualistic contention that a human person is not identical to his brain. I suppose I should cite the multitudes of examples of near-death experiences — those where people have reported verifiable data from a distance away from themselves. Moreover, several of these reports even occur during the absence of heartbeat or *brain waves* [For many cases see Gary R. Habermas and J. P. Moreland, Beyond Death: Exploring the Evidence for Immortality (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 1998; Eugene, Ore.: Wipf & Stock, 2003), chaps. 7–9.].
Additionally, I refer you to [http://www.amazon.com/gp/search?index=books&linkCode=qs&keywords=9780830837182] and [www.veritasforum.com/talks/] for the discussion between the late eminent scholar Antony Flew and NT historian Gary Habermas, in which Flew mentions how compelling some NDEs are as evidence against physicalism. Habermas cites a letter which he received from Flew that stated the following:
“I find the materials about near death experiences so challenging. . . . this evidence equally certainly weakens if it does not completely refute my argument against doctrines of a future life.” [Letter from Antony Flew to Gary Habermas, September 6, 2000.]
There is also the following exchange:
HABERMAS: Elsewhere, you again very kindly noted my influence on your thinking here, regarding these data being decent evidence for human consciousness independent of “electrical activity in the brain.” [Flew, “God and the Big Bang,” p. 2. Habermas’s influence on Flew’s statement here is noted in Flew’s letter of November 9, 2000.] If some near-death experiences are evidenced, independently confirmed experiences during a near-death state, even in persons whose heart or brain may not be functioning, isn’t that quite impressive evidence? Are near-death experiences, then, the best evidence for an afterlife?
FLEW: Oh, yes, certainly. They are basically the only evidence.
Thus, I invite you to look into these citations. If the most prominent atheist scholar of the 20th Century found them persuasive enough to change his decades-old belief that human consciousness cannot exist absent the brain, then they certainly warrant investigating.
In addition to what’s already been said above, it seems to me that there also exists a knock-down philosophical argument against the nature of human persons being physically dependent. The eighteenth-century philosopher and theologian Joseph Butler once remarked that everything is itself and not something else. This simple truth has profound implications. Namely, it points to a truth about the nature of identity known as Leibniz’s law of the indiscernibility of identicals: If you’ve got two truly identical things, then there is only one thing you are talking about—not two—and any truth that applies to “one” applies to the “other” (x=y → ∀P(Px ↔ Py)). This suggests a test for identity: If you could find one thing true of x that is not true of y, or vice versa, then x cannot be identical to y. Further, if you could find one thing that could possibly be true of x and not y (or vice versa), even if it isn’t actually true, then x cannot be identical to y. If physicalism is true, then everything true of the brain (and/or its properties/states) is true of the mind (and/or its properties/states) and vice versa. But if there is just one thing true, or even possibly true of consciousness and the self that is not of the brain/body and its physical states, or vice versa, then dualism is established. And here is one such thing:
1. Any physical body is essentially a divisible or composed entity (i.e., any physical body has spatial extension or separable parts).
2. Human persons are essentially indivisible, uncomposed entities that cannot exist in degrees (i.e., even if I were to lose half of my brain, similar to some neurosurgical patients and those with Dandy Walker syndrome, nevertheless I do not become *half a person*).
3. Therefore, human persons are not physical bodies.
That is to say,
∀x(P(x) → Q(x))
¬Q(c)
————————-
Therefore, ¬P(c)
where U = all things, P(x): x is a physical body, Q(x): x is essentially a divisible, composed entity, and c = human persons.
Keep in mind that the relation of identity is different from any other relation, for example, the relation of causation or constant connection. With regard to the relation of causation, it may be that brain events cause or are correlated with mental events or vice versa. But just because A causes B (or vice versa), or just because A and B are constantly correlated with each other, that does not mean that A is identical to B. Correlation is not the same thing as identity. Physicalism needs identity to make its case.
To sum up my respons to your first central objection: it seems to me that we have not only good philosophical reasons for believing that persons are not identical to their bodies, but also solid evidence in the form of NDE reports. Moreover, given the fact that the overwhelming majority of the world would not only affirm the view I’ve defended — that persons are essentially immaterial souls/spirits endowed with libertarian freedom of the will — , but also agree that these are properly basic beliefs, then it seems to me, therefore, the burden of proof is on you to show otherwise. ***I claim no originality here in reference to arguments regarding the mind/body problem; I’ve drawn heavily from the work of J. P. Moreland and others***
With respect to your second central objection, as I said, on a relational view of time, time is a relation among objects or experiences of a successive character. Thus, ‘prior’ to Creation there were no material objects; hence, no relations among material objects of a successive character (i.e., time). But what about a temporal succession of mental states experienced by God? Wouldn’t that necessitate the presence of time? Again, a personal God need not experience a temporal succession of mental states. He could apprehend the whole content of the temporal series in a single eternal intuition; God would know the content of all knowledge — past, present, and future — in a simultaneous and eternal intuition. And as far as His “choosing” goes, as an omniscient Being God’s choices are not events, since He neither deliberates temporally nor does His will move from a state of indecision to decision. He simply has free determinations of the will to execute certain actions (just like the rest of us) and any deliberation can only be said to be explanatorily, not temporally, prior to His decrees. Therefore, the fact that the creator is personal does not necessitate the presence of time prior to creation.
In sum: on a relational view of time God would exist changelessly and timelessly ‘prior’ to the first event, creation, which marks the beginning of time. That first event is concomitant with God’s exercising His causal power to produce the spatiotemporal world. Such an exercise of causal power plausibly brings God into time. Therefore, it is most certainly coherent to hold that God could “freely decide” in an eternal, immaterial setting. The same, however, cannot be said for Blark or any other material entity.
Finally, in response to central objection number three, it would appear that there are two things to be said in response to this objection. First, it simply fails to understand the logic of personal explanation. A personal explanation can be epistemically successful without making any reference to a mechanism or other means by which the hypothesized agent brought about the state of affairs in the explanandum. I can explain the existence and precise nature of a certain arrangement of objects in my living room by saying that my wife brought it about to change the way in which the living room was decorated. That explanation is informative (I can tell the theme that she’s chosen, that we can seat eight people if we have guests over, that my wife did this and not my daughters, and that natural processes are inadequate). The adequacy of such a personal explanation is quite independent of whether or not I know exactly *how* my wife did it. There are many sciences that involve formulating criteria for inferring intelligent agent causes to explain certain phenomena and for refraining from inferring such causes. And in these sciences, such an inference is usually both epistemically justified and explanatorily significant completely independently of knowledge as to *how* the agent brought about the phenomena. In forensic science, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), psychology, sociology, and archeology, a scientist can know that an intelligent agent is the best explanation of a sequence involving the first 100 prime numbers in a row or that such and such is an intelligently designed artifact used in a culture’s religious sacrifices without having so much as a clue as to how the sequence or artifact was made.
Furthermore, sometimes one hypothesis will consider a phenomenon basic and not in need of a solution, empirical or otherwise. It may, therefore, disallow questions about how or why that phenomenon occurs and, thus, can hardly be faulted for not being fruitful in suggesting lines of empirical research for mechanisms whose existence is not postulated by the theory. By way of application, theistic dualism could take God’s creation of consciousness and its precise causal correlation with the brain to be a basic action for which there is no further “how” question to be asked. And the theistic dualist can also claim that, given the nature of personal explanation, the epistemic value of citing a mechanism in answer to a “how” question is not as important as other epistemic values. Thus, failure to answer such a question is not a significant issue in light of its own inner logic. But the same cannot be said for naturalism, and given the way physical explanation works, the importance of answering “how” questions by citing a mechanism is, indeed, quite high. Thus, naturalism’s failure to answer this question is serious. The same, however, cannot be said for the personal explanation proposed by theistic dualism.
It often happens in science that a range of apparently unrelated data can be unified if a theoretical entity is postulated as that which is causally responsible for that range. The postulation of electrons unified a wide range of phenomena by depicting them as effects of the electron’s causal powers. Moreover, it is by no means a prerequisite that one must know *how* exactly the mechanism of these theoretical entities functions in order for them to be accepted as a fruitful theory; there are many “fruitful” explanations in science which are themselves *far* from having a complete description. For instance, there’s dark matter, dark energy, cosmic inflation, strings, branes, extra dimensions, quarks, gluons, nuclear force (i.e., nucleon-nucleon interaction), quantum mechanics itself, black holes, and multiverse scenarios, to name but a few purported fruitful entities that we don’t fully understand. It is, therefore, inconsistent to condemn personal explanations due to their lack of a proposed mechanism and at the same time support scientific hypotheses such as those above.
To sum up objection three: the adequacy of a personal explanation does not consist in offering a mechanism, but rather, in correctly citing the relevant person, his intentions, the basic power exercised, and in some cases, offering a description of the relevant action plan. Thus, if we have some model of God and His intentions for creating a world suitable for human persons (from revelation or otherwise), we can make reference to God, His intentions for creating a world with persons with mental states regularly correlated with their environment, and the adequacy of His power to bring about the basic results. This is no less fruitful than many of the other theoretical entities that I mentioned; especially if it’s the Truth.
Thank you Jack. Very we’ll written.
Naturally I would contest just about everything you’ve argued there. I’m currently on vacation and stuck writing on an execrable iPad, so when I reply further I’ll have to
to be succinct and keep the point I’m making narrow and manageable.
Vaal
Thanks, Vaal.
Of course you would contest everything I’ve argued in the last post — we both know that you’re way too committed a naturalist to just roll over and die and admit the obvious 🙂 No, seriously man, take all the time you need to respond, especially on vacation. I’ve enjoyed our discussion thus far and I’ll be looking forward to continuing it when I see a response. Take it easy.
Sean Carroll –
Great debate and as usual I have learned much from listening to Sean. Also Sean has put out a great series of lectures on the Dark Side of the Universe – I highly recommend them.
For some reason nobody seems to be aware of this Theological Refute of the Kalam.
The Kalam is used by some Theologians and Apologetics to ‘prove’ the Bible story of Genesis 1:1,2 is true.
I.E. The Universe was created ex-nihilo, (out of nothing) and by God.
But the Bible has most likely been misunderstood and mistranslated .
World renowned Bible Scholar Friedman translates and explains Genesis 1:1-2 as follows:
1 In the beginning of god’s creating the skies and the earth
2 When the earth had been shapeless and formless, and darkness was on the face oft he deep…
He says: The Bible’s Hebrew means the earth had already existed in a shapeless condition prior to creation. Based on current understanding of Biblical Hebrew tenses the “Creation of matter in the Bible is not out of nothing (creatio ex nihilo) as many have claimed”.
The above is more fully documented at alter cocker jewish atheist blog post.
http://altercockerjewishatheist.blogspot.com/2014/02/kalam-cosmological-proof-of-god.html
Sean i feel like the more i learn the less i know.
thought that we now saw time as “spacetime”, a 4 dimensional block where everything is relative. now i here that time is actually more a quantum wave. may i ask 1. is the Minkowski space time modal accepted as the consensus by experts? r there those who see it as bunk? do many still hold to time theory A? and did the universe come into existence or always exist when we veiw time as a quantum wave?
thank you
Very good debate….thought both presenters done well. Mr. Carroll and Mr. Craig were both civil and yet still tried to address each others points. I am a theist so “naturally” I would lean towards Mr. Craig but I really enjoyed the civility and attitude of Mr Carroll. It was a total 180 from watching Mr. Krauss rant on and on.
When confronted with issues of fact and science, hard core religion will almost always resort to issues of the miracle of finite minds vs. infinite ones (consciousness) and philosophy (old and dated as most scripture). You can see this happening too by the length of the responses, because philosophy takes pride in on and on forever about almost nothing that is substantive.
Our minds are finite, yes. So finite, in fact, that philosophy at our level is almost a waste of time. It’s like debating a mouse trap about the morality of killing a mouse.
Our machines are not yet “conscious” or sentient. They were fashioned by us to work on numbers without needing to know what a number is, or where the idea came from.
By the same token, ideas about length and time tax minds like Newton or Einstein’s precisely because they deal with the most fundamental ideas our minds can process, and not even our greatest scientists have a clue as to what length or time is, I can assure you. The flight to eleven dimensions when we don’t even fully understand the first one is a real triumph of human imagination.