4S 43: Doubt

WLC is not merely wrong. He is all the way to the cult extreme of wrong. Check it out for yourself. Below is an unedited copy of my notes for the show:

dr. Craig could you please introduce yourself yes I'm William Lane Craig I'm a research professor at Talbot School of Theology and I'm a Christian philosopher and theologian it's the experience of many many Christian students who attend University that they find their faith troubled and they begin to have doubts

1. Why do so many Christian Students start having doubts after attending University?

sure what advice would you give to someone who is experiencing serious doubts well there's a number of things I think that I would say about that first of all I think that I would tell them that they need to understand the proper relationship between faith and reason

2. Note that "reason" is not just a word for thought processes in this context. It is also a euphemism for evidence. So what Craig is setting up is the difference between the epistemological value of faith and evidence. That is important throughout the interview.

and my view here is that the way in which I know Christianity is true is first and foremost on the basis of the witness of the Holy Spirit

3. The most important way of knowing that Christianity is true is the witness of the Holy Spirit. Can someone please tell me what that is? Are the details of the witness of the Holy Spirit spelled out in the Bible? Or are Christians just making it up as they go?

in my heart

4. The heart is a way of referring to our emotional core in poetry. What do Christians mean by it? Are they saying that the witness of the Holy Spirit comes down to their emotions? If not, what does Craig mean when he says that the witness of the spirit is located in his heart?

and that this gives me a self authenticating means of knowing that Christianity is true wholly apart from the evidence

5. What does it mean to be self-authenticating? If something is self-authenticating, how can it be subject to examination, even by the person experiencing it? Would something that is self-authenticating be forever out of bounds for reexamination? How could a self-authenticating thing ever be wrong?

and therefore if in some historically contingent circumstances the evidence that I have available to me should turn against Christianity I don't think that that controverts the witness of the Holy Spirit

6. (Double atomic facepalm) Holy goddamn fucking shit! Are you kidding me? Craig just broke my brain and killed me with his fucking stupidity! I'm going to need a minute...

in such a situation I should result we regard that as simply a result of the contingent circumstances that I'm in and that if I were to pursue this with due diligence and with time I would discover that in fact the evidence if I could get the correct picture would support exactly what the witness of the Holy Spirit tells me so I think that's very important to get the relationship between faith and reason right otherwise what that means is that our faith is dependent upon the shifting sands of evidence and argument which change from person to person place to place and generation to generation

7. I am now dead. The rest of this is my zombie self just trying to soldier on. What Craig has said is that the HS is right even if all of the evidence pointed against it. One should have blind faith that if you could see the real truth, the evidence would validate the HS. But don't worry about it if you can't. Also, evidence can change, thus requiring you to reexamine your faith. But the spirit never changes. So you should never have to reevaluate anything you learned from the spirit. That is why it is better than reason and evidence.

whereas the Holy Spirit and his testimony gives every generation and every person immediate access to a knowledge of God and the truth of Christianity that's independent of the shifting sands of time and place in person and historical contingency

8. Where was I when they were passing out this unshakable assurance of the HS? Where were you? Did you get it? Why doesn't everyone?

the second thing I I think I would say follows from that what this means is that doubt is never simply an intellectual problem

9. Who says doubt is a problem at all? If a problem, for whom? Doubt is literally intellectual uncertainty about a proposition. If it isn't merely an intellectual issue you are talking about, then you are not talking about what everyone else thinks of as doubt.

there is always a spiritual dimension to doubt as well

10. What is a spiritual dimension?

there is an enemy of your souls Satan who is who hates you intensely and who is bent on your destruction and who will do everything in his power to see that your faith is destroyed

11. How did Craig come by this information? Was it by a literal reading of the bible? I thought we skeptics were wrong when we do that. Did he learn it from the unquestionable HS? How can I know what he knows about this enemy of the soul?

and therefore when we have these intellectual doubts and problems we should never look at them as something that is spiritually neutral or divorced them from the spiritual conflict that we're involved in

12. Is this good advice to give to people of other faiths regarding their doubts? Does Craig advise the Muslim to treat their doubts as an attack from the enemy of their soul? Or does he encourage them as a step in the right direction?

rather we need to take these doubts to God in prayer to admit them honestly to talk to our Christian friends about them to not stuff them or hide them we need to deal with them openly and honestly and talk to people about them and and seek God's help in dealing with them

13. Doubts should never be treated like warning signs that your information could be faulty. Rather, they are pesky attacks from the devil that must be eradicated. Got it.

I think frankly no human being in this lifetime will ever have all of his questions answered there's always going to be a question bag on the Shelf of unanswered questions that we haven't had time to deal with in this lifetime so that the key to victory in the Christian life is not having all your questions answered the key to victory is how is learning how to live with unanswered questions that's the real key how do you allow unanswered questions not to become destructive doubts

14. Does this advice apply to atheists? If a Christian asks us a question about, say, the formation of the universe, is Craig saying we shouldn't worry about the unanswered questions? Does any of Craig's advice scale to anyone other than a doubting Christian?

and I think part of the secret of that will be by cultivating your spiritual life engaging in spiritual disciplines like prayer meaningful worship Christian music sharing your faith with other people being involved in Christian service so that you will foster the witness of the Holy Spirit in your life be filled with the Holy Spirit so that when you come into the circumstances of doubt and the shifting sands of evidence and so forth you aren't thrown into shipwreck because of that

15. Immerse yourself in the cult even deeper. Great advice, except for all the church leaders for whom it doesn't work. Also, did anyone else notice the continued digs at evidence. At least he is no longer using a euphemism. He just straight up refers to the shifting sands of evidence. I guess that is opposed to the rock solid certainty of the witness of the HS in his heart.

finally I would encourage you whenever you get the opportunity to take one of those questions out of the question bag and pursue it into the ground until you come to intellectual satisfaction with it and I can say for my own personal experience that this is one of the most spiritually exhilarating and healthy things that you can do in your Christian life is to take some issue that has been a nagging doubt and make it the subject of a research project do a paper in your philosophy class on it or something like that and pursue it into the ground until you are intellectually satisfied with it and it will free you from that ever being a source of doubt again into your life and that is a wonderful experience

16. Hang on! I thought we were to demote intellectual reason and satisfaction and evidence to a place that is subordinate to faith. So what is the point of pursuing intellectual satisfaction? Notice that once these doubts are pounded to sand, you never have to face them again. That is Craig literally telling his cult to deal with the doubts and never again examine that issue. You dealt with it once. Now let it go forever.

I've done that with a number of questions that I have had and it leaves you with the conviction that Christianity does indeed stand intellectually head and shoulders above every ism or philosophy that it might compete with but of course as I say will never empty the question bag completely and so while this is a healthy exercise the more fundamental task that we need to do is to how to learn to live with unanswered questions without allowing them to become destructive doubts dr. Craig thank you for your time you're welcome

Conclusion

The repetition of the advice to learn to live with questions and not let them derail your faith is very important to this whole discourse. When Christians say things that sound like they are affirming the doubts of fellow Christians, what they mean is that you can have doubts as long as you don't actually take them seriously and follow them to their honest conclusion.

The latest pronouncements from Craig. Add another way to deal with doubts: Pascal those doubts away.

See you in the comments...

David Johnson