Dr. William Lane Craig, Christian apologist
Dr. William Lane Craig is an American analytic philosopher, Christian apologist, prolific author and theologian who upholds the belief that God is completely omniscient while mankind is allowed free will. Dr. Craig is Professor of Philosophy at Houston Baptist University and Research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology. He has participated in numerous debates against many of the most well-known atheist philosophers and scientists including Dan Barker, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and Sean Carroll.
What follows is a dialog which I transcribed from a radio interview conducted in 2009 where the host asked the erudite Dr. Craig what evidence would it take to disprove the existence of the Christian god; proof that would be acceptable to him as a devout Christian apologist. This is Craig’s response:
(The “Dan” that Craig refers to in the statement to follow is Dan Barker, a deconverted Evangelical minister-turned-activist-atheist, author, debater, and co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation. Dr. Craig’s verbal emphasis is denoted in bold. )
“I don’t think you can make that claim justifiably but I think that if you could show, for example, that I think Dan would hold, that there is a logical contradiction in the biblical concept of God, that would be proof that god does not exist. For example, if you could show that God had contradictory attributes so that he was like a round triangle or a married bachelor, then God could not exist because a logical contradiction cannot be true. So if somebody could show that the concept of God is logically incoherent, uh, then I think that would be a successful disproof of God…but I don’t think anybody has shown such a thing.“
Well, using only the Bible itself, Dan Barker accepted this challenge and has since proven, beyond a reasonable doubt, numerous logical contradictions in the attributes of God in his books and articles and in numerous lectures and debates. How such a learned biblical authority and devout Christian as Dr. Craig was able to make this statement knowing how quickly this challenge would be accepted and so easily proven has me gobsmacked!
Here is just one of many examples Dan Barker offers:
Proposition: God is NEVER sorry for his actions.
More than once, the Bible says God is never sorry, therefore there is no need for him to repent.
Numbers 23:19 says, “God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent.”
Ezekiel 24:14 God speaks these words, “I the Lord have spoken it: it shall come to pass, and I will do it; I will not go back, neither will I spare, neither will I repent.”
Contradiction: God IS sorry for his actions.
Exodus 32:14 contradicts the above scriptures saying, “And the Lord repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people.”
Notice that in the verse quoted above, God admits that he does evil.
Genesis 6:6,7 says, “And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth . . . And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth…for it repenteth me that I have made him.”
This scripture in Genesis is yet another logical contradiction–the question of God’s omniscience. In his book, The Only Wise God: The Compatibility of Divine Foreknowledge & Human Freedom (2000), Dr. Craig expends 157 pages attempting to prove the universal Christian belief that God is omniscient, meaning God is all-knowing, that he knows what will happen in the future. After all, he is God. This means God knew from the beginning that his creation would one day turn away from him, and that, except for a 600-year old drunk and eight members of his family, he as God would destroy every living creature on earth including every man, woman, child and fetus. How could God be sorry for creating something he knew all along would be such a disappointment that he would commit mass murder on such a scale that would embarrass Adolf Hitler? This, in and of itself, is a logical contradiction.
Continuing, more proof can be found in Jonah 3:10 which says, “…and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not.”
Once again God admits he is evil, and that he does, in fact, change his mind.
Conclusion: the God of the Bible is a logical contradiction, therefore, like a round triangle or a married bachelor, that God cannot exist.