Defenders 3: Doctrine of Man (Part 9): Refuting Materialism / Monism

Summary

Defenders 3: Doctrine of Man (Part 9): Refuting Materialism / Monism

Podcast: Defenders Podcast
Host: Dr. William Lane Craig
Date: March 4, 2020

---

Episode Overview

In this episode, Dr. William Lane Craig continues his exploration of the doctrine of man, focusing specifically on the refutation of materialism (physicalism), the view that human beings are purely material entities. Drawing from biblical texts and theological implications, he argues for a body-soul dualism, dissecting key passages and engaging in thoughtful discussion with class participants. The episode thoughtfully examines the consequences of denying the soul’s existence and delves into the compatibility between materialist anthropology and central Christian beliefs.

---

Biblical Grounds for Dualism

Paul's Doctrine and Intermediate State

• Dr. Craig revisits how the Apostle Paul saw the soul as distinct from the body, capable of existing consciously between death and resurrection.
• Not unique to Paul; this dualistic view is reflected in other New Testament passages.

Jesus' Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus

• [02:00] Craig reads Luke 16:19ff, where both the rich man and Lazarus exist consciously after death, separated in different circumstances until resurrection.
• He cautions that parables aren’t always doctrinally precise but shows that Jesus assumes a continued, conscious existence after bodily death.

“Jesus’ parable would support a dualism of soul and body.” — Dr. Craig [05:05]

1 Peter 3:18–20 and the ‘Spirits in Prison’

• Analyzes Christ’s existence between death and resurrection as “alive in the spirit,” during which He visited “spirits in prison.”
• Discussion of who these “spirits” are: angels (Genesis 6, 2 Peter 2:4, Jude 6–7) vs. deceased contemporaries of Noah.
• Supports these are “disembodied human souls” since in First Enoch, “spirits” usually refer to people in the intermediate state (not angels).

Hebrews 12:22–23

• Cites the “spirits of just men made perfect,” referring to believers in communion with Christ, awaiting the resurrection.

“Here again we have the notion of a disembodied soul in communion with Christ, in a blessed state, waiting until the time of the eschatological resurrection.” — Dr. Craig [12:55]

Summary of Scripture

• The intermediate state evidences dualism: “composite entities made up of a soul and a body that are capable of existing independently of each other.” [13:53]
• “Body–soul dualistic language in the Scriptures is to be taken seriously.”

---

Theological Consequences of Denying the Soul

[14:00]
Dr. Craig outlines four serious consequences for Christian doctrine if one embraces materialism:

1. God as an Unembodied Mind

• “God just is an unembodied soul... If you do not believe that unembodied souls are possible, it’s very difficult to see how you can believe in the existence of God.”

Story: Nancy Murphy, a materialist theologian, admits to making an “exception” for God, which Craig labels ad hoc. [14:38]

2. Free Will Becomes Impossible

• “If we are just physical electrochemical machines, then there isn't any room for free agency... We are not moral agents who can do good or evil or who can be held responsible by God or who can respond freely to God's love. We would just be automata.” [16:14]
• Notes Peter van Inwagen’s struggle as a materialist to explain libertarian free will.

“Perhaps this ought to lead us to question physicalism in favor of a body soul dualism.” — Dr. Craig [18:39]

3. The Problem of Personal Identity and Resurrection

• Raises the “replica problem”: without a persisting soul, resurrection is just God making a duplicate, not truly “you.”
• Analogy: rebuilding a podium isn’t restoring the same podium if continuity is lost; same for persons.

4. The Incarnation

• “If human beings are purely material entities, then how could the second person of the Trinity become a man?”
• Materialism undermines any coherent account of how the Logos (the divine Son) could become human.

“In sum, we not only have good biblical grounds for affirming the reality of the soul and the body as distinct, but also that the denial of the soul’s reality has serious theological consequences.” — Dr. Craig [21:36]

---

Class Discussion: Dualism, Trichotomy, and Free Will

Dichotomy vs. Trichotomy

• [23:17] Keshe: Suggests a “trichotomous” view (body, soul, and spirit) using biblical terminology.
• Cites verses distinguishing soul and spirit, e.g., Hebrews 4:12, Proverbs.

“I think it enhances the dualistic nature of man by saying the spirit is a separate entity... Even though it's in tandem with our soul.” — Keshe [24:00]

• [25:10] Dr. Craig: Sees dichotomy–trichotomy debate as secondary.
  • Argues “spirit” and “soul” may be synonymous or overlapping in Scripture, and multiplying entities risks making every biblical term (heart, mind) an ontological part.

“For that reason, I’m not persuaded that we should multiply entities in that way. I think it's better to just say there is an immaterial part of human beings that can be variously referred to as soul, spirit, mind, heart, things of that sort.” — Dr. Craig [26:13]

Free Will and Materialism

• [27:56] Question: Why does materialism preclude free will?
• [28:21] Dr. Craig: On materialism, “mental life is the product of various brain states... mental states have no causal effect upon anything. They just float along on these brain states.” Free will requires a fundamentally different (immaterial) cause.

Compatibilism, Moral Responsibility, and Philosophical Nuances

• [29:12] Jonathan: Brings up John Martin Fischer’s semi-compatibilism — suggesting a reasons-responsiveness account of moral responsibility doesn’t require dualism.

• [30:10] Dr. Craig: Pushback — such causal “responsiveness” does not amount to genuine free will if it is all physically determined. Moral “ledger” views don’t provide real accountability.

“It seems to me that what you've described as a sort of moral ledger view just isn't adequate to what we would talk about when we mean moral responsibility.” — Dr. Craig [31:48]

Living With Determinism

• [32:34] Question: Can an atheist be a determinist and still live that way?
• [32:47] Dr. Craig: Suggests even an atheist should be a dualist to preserve agency and moral accountability. Shares a personal anecdote with a determinist philosopher.

“If that's true, what are we even doing philosophy for? Let's just quit and become farmers and, you know, live off the land or something... It's an unlivable view. Of course, if you're determined to do it, you don't have much choice.” — Dr. Craig [34:21]

---

Notable Quotes & Highlights

• On God as an Unembodied Soul:
  “If God can be an unembodied soul, then why can’t there be created souls who are in his image?” — Dr. Craig [15:07]

• On Free Will:
  “Without freedom of the will, we are just machines. We are not moral agents…” — Dr. Craig [16:20]

• On Resurrection:
  “Maybe it's not really you that is raised from the dead. You died and ceased to exist when your body died. But then at the resurrection, God produces a duplicate of you. That is certainly not the biblical doctrine of the Resurrection.” — Dr. Craig [19:48]

• On Incarnation:
  “How the Logos could become flesh… is very difficult to understand, I think, on a materialist anthropology.” — Dr. Craig [21:07]

• On Multiplicity of Entities:
  “If you have nothing better than just linguistic evidence, then you're going to wind up being committed to things like a mind and a heart as well, because we're also commanded to love the Lord with all our heart or with all our mind.” — Dr. Craig [26:44]

---

Key Timestamps

• [00:17] Major biblical passages on dualism
• [05:05] Jesus’ parable and intermediate state explained
• [13:53] Summary of biblical dualism
• [14:00] Four theological consequences if the soul is denied
• [23:17] Trichotomy in Scripture discussion
• [27:56] Materialism vs. free will—class questions
• [29:12] Compatibilist views, Dr. Craig’s critique
• [32:34] Living as a determinist: philosophical anecdote

---

Conclusion

Dr. Craig persuasively contends that both scripture and Christian theology require a dualist anthropology. He argues that materialism/monism is biblically unsound and also undermines foundational doctrines like the existence of God, free will, personal identity, and the incarnation. Class dialogue enriches the discussion, showcasing the nuance and importance of the soul-body debate in Christian thought.

Transcript

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

Welcome to Defenders, the teaching class of Dr. William Lane Craig today the Doctrine of Man, Part 9. For more information and resources from Dr. Craig, go to reasonablefaith.org We've been looking

at the Apostle Paul's doctrine of the body and soul, particularly with respect to the intermediate state of the soul between bodily death and bodily resurrection. We saw that in Paul's letters. We have evidence that Paul thought of the soul as a freestanding ontological constituent of human beings that can survive the death of the body and be with Christ until the time of the eschatological resurrection. But this is not a doctrine that is peculiar to the Apostle Paul. In addition to Paul's letters, let's look at a couple of other New Testament passages that suggest that we are in fact dealing with an ontological dualism of body and soul. For example, in the teachings of Jesus himself found In Luke chapter 16, verses 19 and following Luke 16, verses 19 and following, we have Jesus Parable of the Rich man and Lazarus Jesus said, and I quote, there was a rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen, and who feasted sumptuously every day, and at his gate the lay a poor man named Lazarus, full of sores, who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man's table. Moreover, the dogs came and licked his sores. The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham's bosom. The rich man also died and was buried, and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus in his bosom. And he called out, father Abraham, have mercy upon me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame. But Abraham said, son, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things and Lazarus in like manner evil things. But now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish. And besides all this between us and you, a great chasm has been fixed in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us. Now, it's always risky, I grant, to try to draw doctrine out of a parable, because a parable is meant to teach a central point, and you can't press the circumstantial details of the parable for doctrinal precision. Nevertheless, it does seem clear here that Jesus is assuming the traditional Jewish view of the intermediate state, that when a person dies, that person doesn't simply cease to exist. Rather, after bodily death, the souls of the evil and the souls of the righteous are separated from one another and there is a continued conscious existence in that intermediate state. So Jesus parable would support a dualism of soul and body. Next 1 Peter chapter 3, verses 18 to 21st Peter 3 18:20 Peter says, For Christ also died for sins once for all the righteous, for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in in the spirit, in which he went and preached to the spirits in prison, who formerly did not obey when God's patience waited in the days of Noah during the building of the ark. Now here Peter is talking about that state between Christ's death on the cross and his resurrection on Sunday morning. And he says that even though Christ was dead in the flesh, nevertheless he was alive in the spirit, and in this state he went and preached to the spirits in prison. Now who are these spirits in prison? Well, on the basis of texts like 2 Peter 2, 4 and Jude 6 and 7, 2 Peter 2, 4 and Jude six and seven, one might plausibly take them to be the so called sons of God of Genesis, chapter 6, verses 1 to 4, who took as wives the daughters of men and sired the Nephilim. Let me read 2 Peter 2, 4 and Jude 6:7 for this second Peter 2, 4 for if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to the nether gloom to be kept until the judgment, etc. Etc. And then in Jude we have verses 6 and 7 refer to the same thing, and the angels that did not keep their own position, but left their proper dwelling, have been kept by him in in eternal chains in the nether gloom, until the judgment of the great day. Now In Jude and Second Peter we find the sons of God of Genesis 6, verses 1 to 4 equated with angels, along with additional information concerning the angel's fate, which is not inferable from Genesis 6. Specifically, they're being bound by God with chains in the underworld. And so it might be plausibly thought that these spirits in prison that 1st Peter 3 refers to just are these angelic spirits bound in chains in eternal darkness? But are the spirits in prison in fact angels, or are they just as plausibly the wicked human contemporaries of Noah, now deceased? I think the modifying clause in First Peter 3, who formerly did not obey when God's patience waited in the days of Noah during the building of the ark, is a much more apt description for Noah's contemporaries than for the angels of Genesis 6, verses 1 to 4 who are not said to have disobeyed God, tried God's patience, or sinned during the building of the ark, as Noah's contemporaries are implied to have done in the Jewish pseudepigraphal book that we looked at last time, First Enoch. The expression spirits is variously used to refer to human beings, to the Nephilim, and also to angels. So you can find references of the word spirits to human beings, the Nephilim, and to angels in First Enoch. And as we saw last time in First Enoch, deceased persons now disembodied and awaiting the eschatological resurrection and judgment are frequently referred to as spirits. The spirits of the righteous, end quote are separated from quote the spirits of men who were not righteous but sinners, end quote as each awaits their respective fate. Indeed, in the context of the intermediate state, the reference of the word spirits is virtually always to human beings in First Enoch, not to angels. So if we take the spirits in prison to be the wicked deceased of Noah's day who did not heed his preaching, then this means that Christ visited not the fallen angels of Genesis 6:1:4, but rather the disembodied spirits who of people who once lived and were then disembodied. Not only are they alive during this intermediate state, but Christ Himself exists in this intermediate state between the death and resurrection. So once again, the assumption, I think, is that this is a real state. This state of the disembodied dead prior to the resurrection is not simply a metaphor, but an actual state in which Christ Himself once existed and in which he went and visited these so called spirits in prison. Finally, look at Hebrews chapter 12, verses 22 to 23 Hebrews chapter 12, verses 22to 23. The author says, but you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to a judge who is God of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect. Here he is talking about the saints who have gone to be with Christ and are awaiting the final return of Christ, the resurrection and the judgment day. And it refers to these glorified saints as the spirits of just men made perfect, end quote. So here again we have the notion of a disembodied soul in communion with Christ, in a blessed state, waiting until the time of the eschatological resurrection. So in summary, it seems to me that we have ample biblical grounds in the teaching about the intermediate state of the soul for believing that the soul, body, dualistic language in the Scriptures is to be taken seriously, and that we are in fact, composite entities made up of a soul and a body that are capable of existing independently of. Of each other and therefore are ontologically distinct from each other. In addition to that, I want to point out that the denial of the reality of the soul is not only unbiblical, but I think that it has theological consequences that are extremely serious and indeed undermine all of Christian theology. So let me mention now four such consequences. Number one, notice that God is an unembodied mind. God just is an unembodied soul, in the same way that we will become disembodied souls when we die. So if you do not believe that unembodied souls are possible, it's very difficult to see how you can believe in the existence of God, because that's exactly what God is. You'll recall I shared that the first time I met Nancy Murphy, who is a professor of theology at Fuller Theological Seminary, at a conference at the University of Notre Dame. She said to me, I'm a materialist.

[Jonathan]

And.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

And I was stunned. And I said to her, well, what about God? And she replied, oh, well, I make an exception in God's case. Well, I'm glad that she did make such an exception, but I think that seems a rather ad hoc move on her part, don't you? If God can be an unembodied soul, then why can't there be created souls who are in his image? Number two. Free will seems to be impossible without the reality of the soul. Free will seems to be impossible without the reality of the soul. If we are just physical electrochemical machines, then there isn't any room for free agency to enter in. Everything we do is going to be determined by our physical makeup and the inputs of our five senses. What the American philosopher W.V.O. quine called the irritation of your surfaces by the various influences impinging on your nerve endings. These will determine everything that you think and do. And without freedom of the will, we are just machines. We are not moral agents who can do good or evil or who can be held responsible by God or who can respond freely to God's love. We would just be automata. So free will, I think, is essential to a Christian view of man. And yet that is undermined if we are just purely physical entities. Peter van Inwagen, who is another Christian philosopher who is a materialist, recognizes that he has no understanding of how on his materialism, we can have libertarian freedom. But van Inwagen simply says, I know that we do have libertarian freedom. And so I simply affirm it, even though I don't know how to reconcile it with my materialism. Well, again, I'm glad that he affirms the freedom of the will and hence moral responsibility. But if you can't make sense of free free will on a materialist anthropology, then perhaps this ought to lead us to question physicalism or materialism in favor of a body soul dualism. Number three, the resurrection of the body threatens to reduce to God's creating a replica of you rather than actually raising you from the dead. If you just are your body and you cease to exist when your body dies and your body is destroyed, say vaporized in an atomic explosion, then when God raises the dead on the Judgment Day, why is that you rather than just a duplicate of you? What makes that you rather than a replica of you, with all of your memories and other things restored? To illustrate, typically materialists would say that what makes this podium the same podium that was here last Sunday is its material continuity. There is material continuity between the podium last week and the podium today. But suppose that we were to create, out of nothing, an exactly similar podium, a duplicate of it, not in the future, but right now, here on the platform next to it. Just being in a perfectly similar state wouldn't make them the same podium, would it? So say that the podium were destroyed and God in the future were to make a podium that looks exactly like it. It's in exactly the same state. Why would it be this podium rather than a duplicate of this podium? Similarly, maybe it's not really you that is raised from the dead. You died and ceased to exist when your body died. But then at the resurrection, God produces a duplicate of you. That is certainly not the biblical doctrine of the Resurrection, that God is going to make clones of all of us on the Judgment Day. So on the materialistic view, one has really got some explaining to do as to why God's production of the similar person on the resurrection day is really you rather than just a duplicate of you. By contrast, on dualism, the soul persists through the death of the body and the intermediate state, and thus ensures personal identity with the person who died and the person who then is raised on the judgment day. Finally, number four, the Incarnation becomes very difficult, if not impossible on this view, if human beings are purely material entities, and then how could the second person of the Trinity become a man? The doctrine of the Incarnation, as we have seen in our section on Christology, is not the doctrine that the second person of the Trinity, the Logos, turned himself into a human being. It is not like the ancient mythological stories of Zeus transforming himself into a bull or. Or a swan. Now, I proposed a model of the Incarnation that presupposes that man has an immaterial constituent of his nature which the Logos can stand in for. And so man has this immaterial part. But how the Logos could become flesh or have a human nature is very difficult to understand, I think, on a materialist anthropology. So, in sum, it seems to me that we not only have good biblical grounds for affirming the reality of the soul and the body as distinct, but also that the denial of the soul's reality has some very serious theological consequences which should make anyone reluctant to embrace such a monistic, materialistic anthropology. Any discussion of those points?

[Bruce]

Okay, Cody, so I haven't read everything by Van Denwagon, obviously, but my understanding of why he thinks free will is a mystery, I haven't really seen him comment on the materialist aspect of his view. He thinks it's more of a mystery because he doesn't understand. He says he doesn't understand agent causation or how free will devolve into randomness. I mean, he even said in an interview that even if you posit God like you then have, you're still faced with the mystery of free will. So I take from reading all that that even if he did believe in a soul, he would still say free will is a mystery.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

Yes, yes, I think you're right about that. And that would hinge on not regarding this immaterial substance as an agent, a free moral agent that can make decisions for reasons rather than just random acts of chance. So I think that's a good point, Bruce.

[Keshe]

Little spillover from last week, but it's related to this. I'm glad you pointed out all these good trichotomous verses, but, you know, I went through my exhaustive concordance. Not being a detailed person is kind of a just glancing through. But there's many references to soul and spirit being separate. I think they work in tandem. But I think it enhances the dualistic nature of man by saying the spirit is a separate entity. Much the same argument you used against the materialist that says God is spirit. We're made in the image of God. It makes sense that we also have a distinct spirit, even though it's. It's in tandem with our soul. Because like Proverbs says, well, you know, you've got Hebrews 4, 4, that says this the word divides asunder, even the soul and the spirit. And if you link the spirit with the breath, in the Old Testament, there's many, many verses that relate to this. But if you take the idea that, like in Proverbs, it says that God's man's spirit is God's lamp, this doesn't relate anything to activities of the soul, cognition, volition, emotion on our part, it has a presence and a significance apart from soulish activities. So I can only find one verse that mentions God having a Soul. That's Isaiah 1:14. So I would say along those lines, we have a stronger argument for the dualistic outline that you, you that you made here. If we take a trichotomous point of view, rather than just a straight dualist

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

point of view, obviously the burden of the lesson is to refute the monistic, materialistic view of human beings that is popular today. I see the distinction between dichotomy and trichotomy as very much a secondary issue that is less fundamental. And I'll say something about it more later on. But notice that one of the things that I tried to emphasize was that the appeal of the argument I've given is not just to the fact that the Scriptures use body soul language, because even though it uses body soul language, that could be figurative speech or relational speech, and not really ontological, but it's when you come to the intermediate state that it seems to become clear that we are dealing here with real, real ontological differences. And that's not what I find with regard to spirit. I think that although the Scripture often speaks about, well, as we saw the spirits of just men made perfect or the spirits in prison, that there isn't any attempt to differentiate between spirit and soul in those kinds of cases. That just seems to be the disembodied person that might variously be referred to as spirit or soul, or even the spirits of the souls. And so the trichotomous defender, I think, is going to need to give us some reason to take this language in a weighty ontological way, rather than as relational or figurative or some such way. And if he, if he has nothing better than just the linguistic evidence, then you're going to wind up being committed things like a mind and a heart as well, because we're also commanded to love the Lord with all our heart or with all our mind. And so you begin to proliferate entities in the human person or human nature. And so for that reason, I'm not persuaded that we should multiply entities in that way. I think it's better to just say there is an immaterial part of human beings that can be variously referred to as soul, spirit, mind, heart, things of that sort. I think that we'll say something more about that, but that would be my response at this point. Yes, Keshe.

So I might be misunderstanding the materialist point of view, but they would believe that everything that exists has some interaction of matter, Right. And that there's not something that exists other than material things made of atoms. But they would believe that our mind would be. Our thoughts would be the result of some sort of interaction of matter, right?

Yes.

So why would being a materialist preclude the idea of free will?

Will? Just because that. It seems to me what you just said explains why. Because the. Your mental life is the product of various brain states, firings of various neurons that would the brain applicable in terms of prior physical brain states. And so the mental states, as we'll see next time, have no causal effect upon anything. They just sort of float along on the, on these brain states which are fully explicable on a physical basis. So it seems to preclude any freedom of the will on. On our part.

Okay, thanks.

Uh huh.

[Jonathan]

Jonathan, So I was thinking about. This is working. Okay. I was thinking about your thoughts on Van Inwagen's view. And I was coming, I was starting to think that maybe with respect to free will, it's worth noting that the phrase free will is kind of like the word evolution. It can be expanded and contracted upon. So I was thinking of John Martin Fisher's view of free. Free will. So he thinks he's what's called a semi compatibilist where he thinks, you know, maybe free will and determinism are compatible, but maybe moral responsibility and determinism, maybe, maybe they're not. I might have that backwards. But. But on his view all you need to do is be responsive and receptive to reasons in a way. And I don't think that there's anything about materialism that would include that sort of reason responsiveness or reason receptiveness that Fisher includes. And then moreover, it seems that.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

Could I just jump in there? So on this view, if someone gives you reasons for doing something and you're persuaded by that, that would count as a free decision on your part. Even if physical causes are what produced your assent to those arguments that were offered you, it would be entirely determined and caused by purely physical states.

[Jonathan]

I'm going to give a tentative yes, but he gives these very nuanced criteria for what counts reasons Responsive reasons, receptiveness, fairness, and, like, possible world semantics and stuff like that. But then the second thing that I wanted to note was that, well, maybe you could get around this by adopting a certain view of moral responsibility. Like, we think there are a few ways to think about moral responsibility. For example, there's an accountability view which says, well, you're morally responsible if it's fitting that you give an account for that action or omission. And then there are ledger views that say, for example, a person is morally responsible. It thinks of free moral responsibility on the analogy of a moral ledger. So if you do something bad or something good, it's to say, well, this person got a good grade, a good mark, and then this person got a bad mark. I'm thinking maybe if you adopt a sort of ledger view of moral responsibility with saying, well, this person received a good mark, this person received a bad mark, you can sort of circumvent these accountability views, that it's fitting that I give an account for something or that I'm the appropriate subject of moral praise or blame.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

Of course, one can always redefine terms and especially weaken them so as to make them compatible with determinism and no free will. But then the question will be the adequacy of those new concepts. And it seems to me that what you've described as a sort of moral ledger view just isn't adequate to what we would talk about when we mean moral responsibility. And I'm thinking here, particularly liability to punishment or worthiness of moral praise. That's got to be more, I think, than just a kind of ledger, as you explained it.

[Jonathan]

Okay.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

All right. Thank you.

All right, time for one more.

[Jonathan]

Perhaps so, theoretically, if you were a

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

convinced atheist, and would you be a

[Jonathan]

firm, hard determinist, and if so, how could you live that way?

[Keshe]

Yeah,

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

now you're asking me, right? I think that the plausibility of body, soul, dualism is so strong, even apart from biblical teaching, that it would be better for the atheist to be a dualist, even though he's an atheist, and just say that there is this mysterious mental substance that is connected somehow with my body that is free and therefore morally accountable. But just deny that it's the result of some sort of transcendent mind that has created us. But I think to embrace determinism and deny moral accountability would just be, well, as you say, an impossible way to live. I remember talking to one philosopher at a conference in Slovenia, and he said to me over the dinner table, well, he says, I've kind of come to the conclusion that I think that determinism is true. And I looked at him with horror and I said, that's awful. And he kind of looked surprised at me that why would I react in this way? And I said, you know, if that's true, I said, what are we even doing philosophy for? Let's just quit and become farmers and, you know, live off the land or something. But I just don't see any reason to engage in anything. It's an unlike, livable view. Of course, if you're determined to do it, you don't have much choice. But I guess my advice to the atheist would be be a dualist, even though you're an atheist. All right, let's go ahead and close now. Oh, Father, we're thankful that we're not confronted with choices like that, and thank you that you have created us in your image and likeness, that we might know you and might enjoy eternal life with you. Help us to live out the truth of this faith this week through Christ our Lord. Amen.

The copyright for the preceding material is held by Dr. William Lane Craig. For more go to reasonablefaith.org.