Defenders: Excursus on Natural Theology (Part 7): The Argument from Contingency Part 3

Summary

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Defenders Podcast

Excursus on Natural Theology (Part 7): The Argument from Contingency Part 3

Host: Dr. William Lane Craig
Date: May 25, 2022

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Overview

This episode continues Dr. William Lane Craig’s deep dive into the Argument from Contingency—a core argument in natural theology for God’s existence. Dr. Craig explores possible atheist responses, the metaphysical necessity of the universe, and why most philosophers reject viewing the universe as a necessary being. The episode features engaging student questions, clarifies key terms (like "personal being"), and connects the contingency argument with the Kalam cosmological argument, building a cumulative case for God’s existence.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Clarifying the Core Premises of the Contingency Argument

[00:19–01:42]

• Dr. Craig revisits the main premises:
  • Premise 1: Everything that exists has an explanation of its existence either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause.
  • Premise 2: If the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is God—or more modestly, a "metaphysically necessary, transcendent personal being."
• He argues for reformulation to avoid semantic distractions (“God” vs. “transcendent personal being”).

Quote:

"You could reformulate that as if the universe has an explanation of its existence, then that explanation is a transcendent personal being."
— Dr. Craig [01:06]

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2. Philosophical Response: Could the Universe Be Necessary?

[01:42–04:34]

• Dr. Craig describes a radical atheist route: claim the universe “exists necessarily,” acting as a “God substitute.”
• He notes, however, no prominent atheists defend this; most (e.g., Adolf Grünbaum) claim the universe “just exists inexplicably.”

Quote:

"The universe just exists inexplicably. It is contingent, but it just has no explanation for why it exists."
— Reporting Adolf Grünbaum’s response [03:32]

• Materials comprising the universe (stars, planets, quarks, etc.) clearly seem contingent; none display necessary existence.

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3. Is Matter (or Quantum Fields) Necessary?

[04:38–08:46]

• Addresses the proposal that matter—the fundamental stuff—is necessary.
• Subatomic physics shows matter is made of quarks and electrons; their existence seems arbitrary (there could’ve been more, fewer, or different ones).
• You cannot say "matter is necessary" if its building blocks are contingent.

Analogy:

• Shoes made of different materials aren’t the same shoes. Likewise, a universe made of different quarks isn’t the same universe—even if their structure is identical.

Quote:

"A universe which is made up of different quarks would not be the same universe... it would be a different universe because it’s made up of a different collection of quarks."
— Dr. Craig [08:20]

• Attempts to equate the persistence of personal identity through bodily change (molecules recycled in one’s body) with universe identity fail; the metaphysical situation is not analogous.

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4. Engagement: Historical and Pantheistic Perspectives

[10:47–12:43]

• A student references Spinoza, who argued for a necessarily existing universe (“Deus sive natura”—God or Nature).
• Dr. Craig agrees Spinoza is an exception but says contemporary atheists almost never take this route, possibly finding this view “utterly implausible.”

Quote:

"It would just seem utterly implausible to say each and every quark in the universe exists by a metaphysical necessity of its own nature. That just to me is utterly implausible."
— Dr. Craig [12:34]

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5. Defending the Need for a Personal Cause

[12:45–16:22]

• A student (Amy) presses on why the cause must be “personal.”
• Dr. Craig argues that only two types of things could be metaphysically necessary and immaterial: abstract objects (like numbers) or unembodied minds.
  • Abstract objects are causally inert, so the cause must be a personal mind.
• Further, only a personal agent (with free will) can explain a contingent effect (the universe) from a necessary cause.

Quotes:

"Abstract objects don't stand in causal relations... So the cause of the universe cannot be an abstract object."
— Dr. Craig [14:12]

"Getting back to a personal agent and appealing to agent causation will enable you to explain how you get a contingent effect like the universe from a necessarily existing cause."
— Dr. Craig [16:02]

• These points become two independent arguments for the necessity of a personal first cause.

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6. Addressing Physicalism: Quantum Fields and Necessity

[17:18–18:38]

• Student Taewon asks whether energy or quantum fields might be necessary.
• Dr. Craig counters: even quantum fields appear contingent, not metaphysically necessary, and energy/matter are convertible but not timeless or immaterial.

Quote:

“No, no, no. That’s clearly something that exists in space and in time… Energy and matter would be convertible quantities.”
— Dr. Craig [18:38]

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7. The Non-Eternity of the Universe and Further Arguments

[22:14–25:17]

• Student Keshe asks: does saying the universe is eternal imply necessity?
• Dr. Craig: No; a universe that exists forever might still be contingent—another logically possible universe could have existed.
• Connects this to modern cosmology and the Kalam cosmological argument: the universe likely had a beginning, which marks its contingency even more clearly.

Quotes:

"Merely making the universe past eternal doesn't make it necessary."
— Dr. Craig [22:50]

"If something exists necessarily, then it must exist eternally, because if it begins to exist, that shows that its nonexistence is possible."
— Dr. Craig [24:09]

• If the universe began, its sheer coming into being screams contingency and the need for an explanation.

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8. The Atheist’s Standard Response and Its Problems

[27:04–27:36]

• Typical atheistic move: accept the principle of sufficient reason for everything in the universe but not for the universe itself (the “taxicab fallacy”).
• Dr. Craig calls this arbitrary and ad hoc.

Quote:

"The universe just exists without any explanation, which I think is arbitrary and ad hoc."
— Dr. Craig [27:31]

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9. The “Nothing” Alternative and Krauss’s Physics

[27:40–31:53]

• Student David brings up Lawrence Krauss and the claim that the universe “came from nothing.”
• Dr. Craig clarifies: in physics, “nothing” is actually a physical state, not literal non-being.
• Krauss’s popular language misrepresents the science.

Quote:

"He makes all sorts of self-contradictory statements. He's using the word nothing there in a way that is scientifically misrepresentative of the physics... it's not nothing in the sense of non-being or not anything."
— Dr. Craig [31:00–31:28]

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10. Further Study and Resources

[31:53–34:29]

• Suggestions for reading Leibniz on contingency:
  • Leibniz Selections (ed. Philip Wiener)
  • Use libraries and interlibrary loan for scholarly resources.

Quote:

"This is an untapped treasure trove of stuff... Use your local library. This is an untapped resource that most people don't know about."
— Dr. Craig [34:09]

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11. Final Reflection: The Rich Concept of God

[34:29–34:52]

• The argument leads to a concept of God as:
  • An uncaused, unembodied, transcendent mind who exists with metaphysical necessity.

Quote:

"So this argument gives us a very rich concept of God. An uncaused, unembodied mind who transcends the physical universe and even space and time themselves, and exists with a metaphysical necessity of its own nature."
— Dr. Craig [34:40]

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Notable Quotes & Moments

| Time | Speaker | Notable Quote / Moment | |--------|-----------------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 01:06 | Dr. Craig | “If the universe has an explanation of its existence, then that explanation is a transcendent personal being.” | | 03:32 | Grünbaum (via Dr. Craig) | “The universe just exists inexplicably. It is contingent, but it just has no explanation for why it exists.” | | 08:20 | Dr. Craig | “A universe which is made up of different quarks would not be the same universe... it would be a different universe because it’s made up of a different collection of quarks.” | | 14:12 | Dr. Craig | “Abstract objects don’t stand in causal relations... So the cause of the universe cannot be an abstract object.” | | 16:02 | Dr. Craig | “Getting back to a personal agent and appealing to agent causation will enable you to explain how you get a contingent effect like the universe from a necessarily existing cause.” | | 22:50 | Dr. Craig | “Merely making the universe past eternal doesn’t make it necessary.” | | 24:09 | Dr. Craig | “If something exists necessarily, then it must exist eternally, because if it begins to exist, that shows that its nonexistence is possible.” | | 27:31 | Dr. Craig | “The universe just exists without any explanation, which I think is arbitrary and ad hoc.” | | 31:00 | Dr. Craig | “He’s using the word nothing there in a way that is scientifically misrepresentative of the physics…” | | 34:40 | Dr. Craig | “So this argument gives us a very rich concept of God. An uncaused, unembodied mind who transcends the physical universe and even space and time themselves, and exists with a metaphysical necessity of its own nature.” |

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Core premises revisited: [00:19–01:42]
• The “Universe as necessary being” response: [01:42–04:34]
• Matter and quantum fields as necessary?: [04:38–08:46], [17:18–18:38]
• Personal nature of the first cause: [12:45–16:22]
• Eternal universe and necessity: [22:14–25:17]
• Kalam cosmological tie-in: [24:43–26:55]
• Krauss and 'nothing': [27:40–31:53]
• Leibniz resources and wrap-up: [31:53–34:52]

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Tone & Takeaways

Dr. Craig adopts a reasoned and professorial tone—at times gently humorous and always rigorous—inviting critical questions and responding thoughtfully. The discussion is intellectually thorough, filled with analogies accessible to both laypersons and advanced students of philosophy. This episode offers a clear, cumulative case against the idea that the universe is metaphysically necessary, pushing listeners to consider the necessity of a transcendent, personal explanation—and thus, God.

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Transcript

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

Welcome to Defenders, the teaching class of Dr. William Lane Craig. Today An Excursus on Natural Theology, Part 7. For more resources from Dr. Craig, go to reasonablefaith.org We've now looked at the

two premises of the argument from contingency

[Student or Participant]

or God's existence that are under dispute,

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

and those were, as you recall, that everything that exists has an explanation of

[Student or Participant]

its existence, either in the necessity of

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

its own nature or in some external cause. Or more simply, I said we could

[Student or Participant]

reformulate that as every contingent thing has an explanation of its existence.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

And then I offered a defense of the second premise, that if the universe

[Student or Participant]

has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is God.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

And again, if you find that premise

[Student or Participant]

too jarring to suit your taste, that could be reformulated as well to a more modest premise.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

You could reformulate that as if the universe has an explanation of its existence, then that explanation is a transcendent personal being.

[Student or Participant]

You don't have to call it God

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

if you don't want to, but this

[Student or Participant]

will be a metaphysically necessary, transcendent personal being which has created the universe. And then the defense that you would give of the premise would be similar.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

So I think we have good grounds

[Student or Participant]

for thinking that these two premises are true. And therefore, if the universe exists, it

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

has its explanation or ground in such

[Student or Participant]

a metaphysically necessary transcendent being. Now, what can the atheist do at this point?

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

Well, I think he does have one recourse left to him, though. It is a radical one. He can retrace his steps, withdraw his objection to premise one, and instead admit that, yes, the universe does have an

[Student or Participant]

explanation of its existence.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

But he might say that explanation is that the universe exists by a necessity

[Student or Participant]

of its own nature.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

The atheist can regard the universe as a kind of God substitute.

[Student or Participant]

It is the metaphysically necessary being that explains why everything else exists.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

So for the atheist, the universe could be a sort of surrogate for God as the metaphysically necessary being that grounds

[Student or Participant]

the existence of everything else.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

Now, this would be a very radical step for the atheist to take, and in fact, I cannot think of any contemporary atheist philosopher who says such a thing. Several years ago, I was participating in a conference on the philosophy of time at City College in Santa Barbara, and I thought that Professor Adolf Guernbaum, who

[Student or Participant]

was speaking at the conference and is

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

a vociferous atheistic philosopher, was flirting with this idea that the universe exists necessarily. But when I raised the question from the floor whether he thought that the universe exists necessarily, he was very indignant at the suggestion. Of course not, he said, and went on to say the typical line that

[Student or Participant]

the universe just exists inexplicably. It is contingent, but it just has no explanation for why it exists.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

Now, the reason that atheists haven't been eager to embrace this escape from the

[Student or Participant]

argument, I think, is fairly obvious when

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

you look about the universe.

[Student or Participant]

None of the things that make the

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

universe up seem to exist necessarily.

[Student or Participant]

Whether we're talking about planets or intergalactic

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

dust or radiation or stars or or galaxies, none of these things seems to exist necessarily.

[Student or Participant]

They all seem to be contingent.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

They could all fail to exist. In fact, at one point in the past, when the universe was very, very dense and very hot, none of them did exist.

[Student or Participant]

So these things don't exist necessarily.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

And the universe is just the collection

[Student or Participant]

of all these things.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

So it would seem the universe doesn't exist, and necessarily. And so atheists have not been eager

[Student or Participant]

to try to adopt this escape route from the argument.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

Now, somebody might say in response to this, well, granted that all of the things in the universe are contingent, nevertheless, what about the matter that they're made out of? Maybe the matter itself exists necessarily, and then it just takes these different contingent configurations, and so that all of these different configurations of matter, like stars and

[Student or Participant]

planets and galaxies, are contingent, but the

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

matter itself, matter, is necessarily existent. Well, I think the problem with this suggestion is that according to the standard model of subatomic physics, matter is itself composed of tiny fundamental particles like quarks and electrons, and all of the things in the universe are made out of these tiny fundamental particles. Indeed, the universe just is the collection of all of these particles arranged in different ways. So let's focus on the quarks and talk about them. Couldn't a collection of different quarks have existed instead of the collection that actually does exist? Does each and every one of these quarks exist necessarily? Well, it seems crazy to think that each and every quark in the universe exists by a necessity of its own nature, so that there couldn't have been fewer quarks, or there couldn't have been more, more quarks or different quarks. This is the only collection of quarks that could possibly have existed. That seems crazy. Now, notice what the atheist cannot say at this point. He cannot say, well, all of these quarks are just different configurations of matter,

[Student or Participant]

and they could have been different, but

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

the matter itself exists necessarily. He can't say this because quarks are not made up of anything else. They just are the fundamental units of matter.

[Student or Participant]

So that if the quark doesn't exist, the matter doesn't exist. Quarks aren't composed of anything else. They just are the fundamental units of matter. So without the quarks, there wouldn't be any matter.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

But then it seems obvious that a different collection of quarks Quarks might have

[Student or Participant]

existed Instead of the collection that actually does exist.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

Now, if that were the case, suppose

[Student or Participant]

a different collection of quarks were to have existed.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

I think then you would conclude a

[Student or Participant]

different universe might have existed.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

If a different collection of quarks could

[Student or Participant]

have existed, a different universe could have existed.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

Now, to see this point, I want to invite you to think about the

[Student or Participant]

shoes that you have on right now. Think about the shoes you're wearing.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

Could those shoes have been made of

[Student or Participant]

steel instead of what they're made out of?

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

Now, certainly you could have had a pair of steel shoes that were the

[Student or Participant]

same shape and size as the shoes that you're wearing.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

But would they be the same shoes, or wouldn't it be a different pair of shoes? A steel pair of shoes? Could the very shoes that you have

[Student or Participant]

on have been made of steel?

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

Well, I think the answer is obviously not.

[Student or Participant]

They would be a different pair of

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

shoes, not the very shoes that you have on. And the same would be true of the universe. A universe which is made up of different quarks Would not be the same universe. Even if all of those quarks were arranged in in exactly the same way so that the same macroscopic objects existed. It would be a different universe because

[Student or Participant]

it's made up of a different collection of quarks.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

Now, somebody might object at this point. Well, wait a minute.

[Student or Participant]

They might say the matter in my

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

body is completely recycled every several years

[Student or Participant]

so that the molecules or the particles that I have in my body today Are not the ones that I had, say, when I was a little boy.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

And yet I'm the same person. I remain identical even though all of

[Student or Participant]

the matter in my body is completely recirculated. And there's none of the particles in my body now that used to be there.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

So they might say, analogously, a universe could be identical across different possible worlds, Even though it's made up of a

[Student or Participant]

wholly different collection of core.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

I think that these two situations are not analogous, though. And the crucial disanalogy is that the difference between possible worlds does not involve any kind of intrinsic change. There is no enduring subject which undergoes

[Student or Participant]

a change from one state to another. Whereas in my body there is an

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

enduring subject that goes through intrinsic change. So comparing different universes in different possible worlds would be more like comparing human bodies which have no connection whatsoever with

[Student or Participant]

each other and are made up of different matter.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

In that case, I think you would say it's not the same body. These are different bodies because the one doesn't change into the other one, as

[Student or Participant]

my boyhood body changed into my adult body.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

In the case where there is no

[Student or Participant]

intrinsic change and there's completely different matter making up the object, you would have two objects. You would have two human bodies. Similarly, you would have two universes.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

Now, is there any discussion on that point as to why it's plausible to

[Student or Participant]

think the universe is. Is not metaphysically necessary?

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

Yes.

[Drew]

Drew, I'm wondering about, like Spinoza, do you think he would have bit the bullet and said, yes, it is. And do you have any idea what response he might have?

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

Yeah, that's why I said no.

[Student or Participant]

Contemporary atheist Drew is pointing out the 17th century Dutch philosopher Baruch or Benedict de Spinoza did believe that the universe

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

is a sort of God substitute. He coined the famous phrase Deus sive

[Student or Participant]

natura, God or nature. So he took the universe to be

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

God and to exist with metaphysical necessity. So you're right, there are or have

[Student or Participant]

been people like this.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

But I can't think of anybody on

[Student or Participant]

the contemporary scene that would defend Spinozism or this alternative.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

Now, where you would find it, I

[Student or Participant]

think would perhaps be in pantheistic religions, some form of Hinduism or Buddhism.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

That regards though there they usually think

[Student or Participant]

that the universe is illusory, not that it's necessary, but I could imagine a pantheist saying something like this. But you won't find this among your

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

typical Western naturalistic atheist. And the response, I think, would be

[Student or Participant]

exactly what I've given. I think that given the fact that the universe is made up of this collection of fundamental particles, it would just

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

seem utterly implausible to say each and

[Student or Participant]

every quark in the universe exists by a metaphysical necessity of its own nature. That just to me is utterly implausible.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

Yes.

[Student or Participant]

Over here on the side.

[Amy]

Yes, Dr. Craig, I was having an issue with what you were saying at the beginning as you're reintroducing the stuff from. And I'm sorry to bring it up again because I don't know if I. If you guys already moved past it, but the personal part of what you're saying, that the creator of the universe must be. I guess I didn't get that in the previous case.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

All right.

[Student or Participant]

Amy had asked me about that after class the other day, and the argument

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

there was we get to a being which is beyond space and time, beyond matter, and energy because it's the cause

[Student or Participant]

or explanation of the existence of the universe.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

So this has to be an immaterial, spaceless, timeless, metaphysically necessary being. Now, if you ask yourself what could possibly fill that description? Something that is spaceless, timeless, immaterial, metaphysically necessary. It seemed to me that there are only two things that I can think of that could possibly fit that description. Either an abstract object, like a number

[Student or Participant]

or other mathematical object, or else an unembodied mind or consciousness. An unembodied mind could be immaterial, timeless, spaceless, and metaphysically necessary.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

But here's the rub. Abstract objects don't stand in causal relations. It's definitive of what it is to

[Student or Participant]

be an abstract object is that it's causally effete, it's causally impotent, it has no causal powers.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

So the cause of the universe cannot

[Student or Participant]

be an abstract object. And therefore, by logic it follows that it must be an unembodied mind or consciousness.

[Amy]

Okay, I guess the part or person. Okay, but how? What do you mean by person? You mean it has the traits of a person or do you mean an absolute?

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

By a person I mean a mind.

[Student or Participant]

Okay, A self conscious individual endowed with intellect, self consciousness and will.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

There's actually another really nice argument for

[Student or Participant]

the personhood of this first cause that maybe I'll go ahead and share with you.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

That was suggested by one of my

[Student or Participant]

students at Talbot in class. He pointed out, how do you get

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

from a necessarily existing cause to a

[Student or Participant]

contingent object like the universe?

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

If the cause is an impersonal sort

[Student or Participant]

of mechanically operating set of necessary insufficient

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

conditions, then if the cause is necessarily there and is sufficient for its effect, the effect should be there necessarily as well. So if you have a necessary being

[Student or Participant]

as your cause, you're going to have

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

the effect existing necessarily, though dependent upon the cause. How do you get a contingent effect from a necessary cause? And I think the answer is if the cause is a personal agent endowed with freedom of the will who can

[Student or Participant]

freely choose to create a contingent effect.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

So getting back to a personal agent and appealing to agent causation will enable you to explain how you get a

[Student or Participant]

contingent effect like the universe from a necessarily existing cause.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

I think this is a great argument.

[Student or Participant]

I really like this argument for the personhood of the first cause.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

So that gives us two independent arguments

[Student or Participant]

for the personhood of the first cause, namely, the argument from the properties that it must have as being immaterial, spaceless, timeless, etc. And then the other argument from how do you get from a necessary cause to a Contingent effect.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

So I think that there are good

[Student or Participant]

reasons to think that that second premise is true.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

Wholly apart from the fact that, as I say, it's virtually synonymous to what

[Student or Participant]

the atheist himself says. And remember there we talked about how the atheist typically says that if atheism is true, the universe has no explanation of its existence, which is logically equivalent

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

to saying that if the universe has

[Student or Participant]

an explanation of, of its existence, then

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

atheism is not true, that is to say God exists. So I think that makes the second premise very plausible indeed.

[Student or Participant]

Yes, we'll have a question from Taewon here.

[Taewon]

Dr. Craig, I want to ask an antagonistic view. That is, if matter and energy are interchangeable, can we not think of this, this necessity as a energy which are converted back into matter in that relationship?

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

You know, Taewon, I think that perhaps what the non theist could do here would be to say that these fundamental

[Student or Participant]

quarks or these fundamental particles are different

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

configuration of underlying quantum physical fields.

[Student or Participant]

And that that's what underlies these particles that appear in different ways. And that would be an interesting, I think response.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

But then it would require you to

[Student or Participant]

say that these quantum fields exist necessarily. And again, that just doesn't seem to be true, that these things have metaphysical necessity. They seem to be contingent. And I'll, I'll reinforce that in just one more moment with my next point.

[Taewon]

Would you classify energy as the timeless material?

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

No, no, no.

[Student or Participant]

That's clearly something that exists in space and in time and as you say, can be converted into matter and matter back into energy. That's Einstein's famous equation, E equals MC squared. So energy and matter would be convertible quantities. Any other discussion of this point? Yes, Bruce has a point.

[Bruce]

If you had a consciousness as necessary like they do in pantheism, you wouldn't have any. It doesn't reflect itself except in other deities and manifestations. So it doesn't show itself causally either. So you would, you would reject some kind of universal consciousness, right?

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

I mean, in Hinduism, for example, these

[Student or Participant]

gods are not ultimate reality. Ultimate reality is impersonal and propertyless, can't be characterized. So these gods like Shiva and Vishnu

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

and so forth are just in a

[Student or Participant]

sense illusory manifestations of this impersonal, absolute. They're not the ultimate reality.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

All right. What I've argued here is that it's implausible to think that the universe exists necessarily. Why? Because it's made up of stuff which

[Student or Participant]

is obviously contingent things like quarks and electrons.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

Now the claim that I'm making here, I think becomes all the more obvious

[Student or Participant]

when we reflect on the fact that

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

it seems entirely possible that the fundamental

[Student or Participant]

building blocks of nature could have been

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

substances quite different from quarks and electrons and so characterized by a whole different set of laws of nature. Even if you say that the laws of nature are metaphysically necessary, that this is the only way that quarks and electrons could have behaved, nevertheless the laws of nature could still have been different because there could have been different substances than quarks that exist endowed with different dispositions and different properties, so that you

[Student or Participant]

would have a whole different set of laws of nature.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

There's no reason to think that only quarks are possible and that there couldn't have been other kinds of particles instead of quarks, and that therefore there could

[Student or Participant]

have been a quite different universe. And I think it would be utterly

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

implausible to say that that would be the same universe. That would be like saying that a pane of glass, a glass window, a pane of glass, could retain its identity if it had been made of steel instead. That seems obviously absurd.

[Student or Participant]

That would not be the same window if it were made of steel instead of made of glass.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

So I think that we have quite

[Student or Participant]

good grounds for thinking that in virtue of its composition or constitution, that the universe doesn't exist metaphysically necessarily. And that's probably why very few of any contemporary atheists appeal to this to try to escape from the argument. Any other comment on that defense?

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

Yes, cash.

[Keshe]

Hi, Dr. Craig.

[Cash]

I have a question about past eternity and necessity and that, you know, like Carl Sagan in the opening sense of cosmos, which is pretty famous, he essentially substituted the John 1:1. He the cosmos is all that ever was, all that ever is, and all that ever will be. And I'm just wondering, if an atheist says, if he makes the claim that the universe has a state of past eternity, is that essentially claiming necessity for it? I'm wondering about that relation.

[Student or Participant]

Yes, we've talked about that now a

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

couple of times in the class, and

[Student or Participant]

I've tried to point out that merely making the universe past eternal doesn't make it necessary.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

And I think the easiest way to see that is to imagine that the

[Student or Participant]

universe is past eternal. Imagine that the universe never began to exist.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

Wouldn't it be logically possible for our

[Student or Participant]

universe to exist instead?

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

Well, of course it would, because we know this universe is logically possible. We exist in it, it's real. So if in an eternal universe it's logically possible that there could have been

[Student or Participant]

our universe instead, it follows that that eternal universe doesn't exist necessarily, it exists contingently, and there could have been a different universe instead.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

So Leibniz's argument is just wholly independent of whether the past of the universe

[Student or Participant]

is eternal or had a beginning.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

Now, Cash's point, though, does make a

[Student or Participant]

very nice segue to the next point that I wanted to make.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

And that is a second reason for

[Student or Participant]

thinking that the universe does not exist

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

by a necessity of its own nature is the fact that it appears to

[Student or Participant]

have begun to exist.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

If something exists necessarily, then it must

[Student or Participant]

exist eternally, because if it begins to exist, that shows that its non existence is possible. It came into being so that an

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

essential property of a necessarily existing being

[Student or Participant]

will be its eternality, being without beginning or end.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

And we have now pretty strong evidence

[Student or Participant]

that the universe is not past eternal, but had a beginning which would show its contingency.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

Now this takes us into the next

[Student or Participant]

argument that we're going to talk about,

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

the Kalam cosmological argument, which is based

[Student or Participant]

upon the beginning of the universe.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

And as I've said, I want to try to keep the arguments as independent

[Student or Participant]

from one another as we can, because

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

then if they're independent of each other, you multiply the probabilities by accumulating these

[Student or Participant]

independent arguments in favor of God's existence.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

So I think we've got good grounds

[Student or Participant]

for thinking the universe doesn't exist necessarily

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

quite independent of its beginning. But nevertheless, this does show how the arguments kind of dovetail into each other and reinforce one another. Because if the universe does have a beginning, that reveals the contingency of the universe. Not only that, but it reveals that the universe is contingent in a very special way, namely, it came into being out of nothing on the existence of an eternal universe, it would still exist contingently, but even though it exists eternally. But for the universe to exist contingently and have a beginning seems to be just doubly absurd, because now it comes into existence without any explanation whatsoever, out of nothing. So I can imagine giving the atheist a run for his money and saying, yes, if the universe is eternal, if

[Student or Participant]

it's always been there, it doesn't have a cause.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

But once you say the universe had

[Student or Participant]

a beginning and came into being, then it just seems to me completely implausible to think that there's no explanation of the existence of the universe.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

So the Kalam cosmological argument powerfully reinforces

[Student or Participant]

the argument from contingency by showing or

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

underlining the contingency of the universe in a very special way. Even if the universe is past eternal, it's contingent. But if it had a Beginning then

[Student or Participant]

that just makes its contingency all the more obvious and the need for an explanation just cries out all the more.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

So, as I say, atheists have not

[Student or Participant]

been eager to affirm that the universe exists with any sort of metaphysical necessity.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

Instead, the typical response to, to this

[Student or Participant]

argument is to just commit the taxicab fallacy and say the principle of sufficient reason applies to everything in the universe,

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

but don't apply it to the universe itself.

[Student or Participant]

The universe just exists without any explanation, which I think is arbitrary and ad hoc.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

Alright, any final comments or discussion of this argument?

[Student or Participant]

Yes, over here.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

Remind me of your name again too, please.

[Student or Participant]

I always forget, my name's David.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

David.

[Student or Participant]

Okay, all right.

[David]

So I talked to my brother yesterday a little bit and just kind of generated some thoughts. Yeah, And I was just thinking through this whole thing and I remember the debate you had with Lawrence Krauss and it kind of hits me saying that he's probably the best atheist that ever existed because he wants to prove that everything just came out of nothing. The reason why I want to say that is because my brother was saying, this is my brother Paul, he was saying, what is the opposite of God? The thought wants to come in and say, you know, it's devil, but it's not the opposite of God because God created him and he gives him the abilities and all that. So the way Christianity looks at God, that God is everything, he's all powerful, so on and so forth.

[Student or Participant]

Now Christianity doesn't think God is everything, right? That's pantheism.

[David]

Well, God created everything, right?

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

That's very different.

[David]

Maximal being. Yes. So the opposite of God, he was saying, is nothing. And that's why I believe kind of that that's where atheists has to stand on that, that things came out of nothing.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

Well, you know, let me just say, David, that it's difficult to know what

[Student or Participant]

a person means when they talk about

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

the opposite of a being. I think your example of the devil

[Student or Participant]

shows that a person might be thinking

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

opposite in terms of its moral qualities. In one sense, contingent beings are the

[Student or Participant]

opposite of God because he exists necessarily, independently.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

We exist contingently and dependently. So in one sense that's the opposite of God, but in the sense that God exists, I can see why you could say the opposite of that is that.

[David]

But atheists can't take that approach, saying that contingency is the opposite of God. The atheist has to stick with nothing, that that is their whole beginning, I guess.

[Student or Participant]

Okay, I think maybe I'm understanding more

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

what you're saying when you say the Opposite of God.

[Student or Participant]

You mean? What is the alternative explanation to God?

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

In a sense.

[Student or Participant]

Right. I think that's what you're saying.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

What's the alternative?

[Student or Participant]

And right.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

The alternative seems to be to say

[Student or Participant]

that there is no explanation of the existence of the universe. And in the case of someone who thinks the universe began to exist, like Krauss, and that would mean the universe

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

just came out of nothing, which is what he asserts.

[Student or Participant]

But I have to say he doesn't really mean it.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

He knows that in physics the vacuum

[Student or Participant]

state or these states that don't have classical space time in them are physical states.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

They're described by the laws of nature. So Krauss will say things like nothing actually weighs something.

[Student or Participant]

Everything is almost nothing.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

He makes all sorts of self contradictory statements.

[Student or Participant]

He's using the word nothing there in a way that is scientifically misrepresentative of the physics. It's a kind of colloquial way of speaking that isn't accurate. He's talking about states in which our general relativistic space time doesn't exist, but it is still a state of the universe.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

It will be a very early state

[Student or Participant]

of the universe in which these sorts of structures haven't yet emerged, but it's not nothing in the sense of non being or not anything. And so it's really a gross misuse of language and I frankly think a deliberate misrepresentation of the science. Any other comment on this argument?

[Keshe]

Yes, Keshe, I guess this is more of an endnote, but for further study in looking up Leibniz's work, he wrote in German and French and Latin, unfortunately not English. He wrote on dozens, if not hundreds of subjects. He wrote thousands and thousands of pages. And it doesn't seem like for this kind of discussion that there's a single representative work that I could pinpoint to say, you know, it would be fun to go back and read what he actually wrote about it. Is there a certain edition or. What we really need is the William Lane Craig simplified Leibniz.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

There already are such books. I'm glad you asked the question. There's a very nice volume called Leibniz Selections which includes all of these selected works that we've been talking about. Leibniz selection, I'm not exactly sure, but I think it's edited by Philip Wiener,

[Student or Participant]

or Wiener, I think he's the editor.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

Philip Wiener Leibniz Selections.

[Student or Participant]

And it will include all of these.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

Now you say, where am I going to get a copy of Leibniz Selections? You go to the East Cobb Library and order it on interlibrary loan. This is an untapped treasure trove of stuff. I rarely buy books. I go to interlibrary loan and get all of the stuff here in the little East Cobb Library. So for example, this past week I've been reading the three volume systematic theology of Francois Turretin, who was a Swiss 17th century Reformed theologian called Institutes of Elenctic Theology. And they got me that at the East Cobb Library on interlibrary loan. The week before, they got me a book by L.W. grenstedt called A Short History of the Atonement, which was published back in 1905

[Student or Participant]

or something like that.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

They'll get you all of this stuff free. It's free, so there's just no excuse. Use your local library. This is an untapped resource that most

[Student or Participant]

people don't know about.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

So thank you cash for that question, because this is how you can get this stuff.

[Keshe]

There's also, I just looked on Amazon, a copy for $0.41 with $3.99 shipping.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

Go for it. Was it Weiner who edited it? Yes.

[Student or Participant]

Excellent.

[Keshe]

Published in 1951.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

Let me just say by way of

[Student or Participant]

conclusion then, for this argument, given the

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

truth of the three premises, then the conclusion follows logically.

[Student or Participant]

God is the explanation of the existence of the universe.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

So this argument gives us a very rich concept of God. An uncaused, unembodied mind who transcends the physical universe and even space and time themselves, and.

[Student or Participant]

And exists with a metaphysical necessity of its own nature. This is an exalted concept of God. Let's bow for a benediction.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ

[Student or Participant]

be with your spirit, brethren. Amen.

[Dr. William Lane Craig]

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