Reasonable Faith

Guest (Male): Dr. Craig, my faith is on a delicate balance. I believe in God, I have faith in Christ, but I believe if I can't reconcile my epistemic issues, I could end up losing it. It seems like at every positive reason for having faith, whether it be personal experience, the evidence for the resurrection, natural theology, philosophical arguments for God, and more, the academic consensus is against us in most cases. Academically, Christianity seems to be on the back foot. I recognize that my impression may be distorted by online interactions and debates. I am often disappointed when Christians do not exhibit the level of intellectual rigor and carefulness that I have found in your work.

However, when I investigate these issues on my own, it often seems that the scholarly consensus is against the Christian position or that there is much more to the issue than Christian apologists initially make you aware of. This problem recently arose for me concerning a abiogenesis. When I watched your dialogue with James Tour on Capturing Christianity, I found much of what he said convincing, but upon further research, I discovered that one, his field is not a abiogenesis, and two, his views are controversial and frequently criticized as being influenced by intelligent design. My trust was further shaken when I learned that Tour rejects evolution because I find the evidence for evolution extremely difficult to deny.

Discovering that someone rejects it makes me question my ability to trust their judgment on adjacent scientific matters. This leaves me in a difficult position as a layman. I lack the expertise to independently evaluate the science, yet I also don't know how to determine which experts I should trust. At the same time, I personally find the evidence for Jesus's resurrection compelling, and your work played an important role in convincing me of its truth. Yet online, I encounter atheists accusing even you, someone whom I have found to be remarkably careful and rigorous of intellectual dishonesty or reasoning toward conclusions you already believe.

As a layman, I rely on intelligent and scholarly Christians to give me accurate and sound reasons. So when I see atheists online accusing Christian thinkers of intellectual dishonesty, it makes me rather concerned. One, am I giving too much credit to the opinions of atheists online? Is Christianity a respected position academically? Two, if a abiogenesis is proven, is it a threat to the Christian faith? Three, most importantly, how can we distinguish legitimate theological development from ad hoc accommodation to scientific discoveries? Sometimes it seems that Christianity can accommodate almost any scientific conclusion. If evolution is true, then God created humanity through evolution.

If a abiogenesis is true, then God created a universe in which a abiogenesis occurs, etc. I understand that discovering a natural mechanism does not necessarily exclude God as an ultimate explanation, but I worry that we can always reinterpret our theology so that Christianity remains compatible with whatever science discovers. At what point does this become an ad hoc attempt to protect our beliefs from falsification rather than a legitimate understanding of how God acts through the natural world? Thank you for your time and God bless. Riley, United States.

Dr. William Lane Craig: I commend you, Riley, for facing head-on the danger of losing your faith and writing me about your questions. Nevertheless, I find your situation tragic because your distress is so unnecessary. And that for two reasons. First, you seem to assume that the rationality or warrant for Christian faith is exclusively evidential. But the work of philosophers like Alvin Plantinga over the last 30 years or so has shown that Christian belief can be a properly basic belief, not grounded on argument, but grounded in the witness of the Holy Spirit. You should read Plantinga's book Warranted Christian Belief, published by Oxford University Press in the year 2000.

I also interact with cutting edge work on Plantinga's epistemology in volume one of my Systematic Philosophical Theology, published by Wiley Blackwell in 2025. The very practical implication of the proper basicity of Christian belief is that we as Christians need to be walking daily in the fullness of the Holy Spirit, not quenching the work of the Spirit in our lives through sin or grieving him through disobedience. This is thus a very practical motivation for righteous Christian living. If you are walking with the Lord, then you will not lose your faith, even if you have unanswered questions.

Indeed, I've often said that the key to victorious Christian living is not having all your questions answered, but learning to live with unanswered questions. Secondly, secularists have failed both, first, to refute the arguments for Christian belief, and second, to justify their own non-theistic or non-Christian worldview views. I've taken these arguments into the lion's den of the secular university and debated them with top secular opponents. You've doubtless seen these debates on YouTube. Do you think that my opponents managed to succeed in either task one or two? Their failure with regard to task two is especially apparent.

It's striking to me that your letter focuses entirely upon task one, but you seem to let the secularists off the hook when it comes to task number two. How well are they doing in offering arguments and evidence for their own worldview? Now to consider one, the first task, the purported refutations of arguments in support of Christian belief can hardly be deemed successes. With regard to the arguments of natural theology for God's existence, the arguments of thinkers like Alexander Bruce and Joshua Rasmussen in support of the argument from contingency. Bruce and yours truly in support of the Kalam cosmological argument.

Luke Barnes and Robin Collins in support of the argument from fine tuning. David Bagger and John Hare in support of the moral argument. And Alvin Plantinga, Rasmussen, and C. S. R. Bernstein in support of the ontological argument remain unsurpassed. With respect to the evidence in support of Jesus's resurrection, there's nothing to override the positive case made by thinkers like Dale Allison, N. T. Wright, Michael Licona, Gary Habermas, Steven Davis, Richard Swinburne, and Timothy and Lydia McGrew. Have you read the work of these thinkers, Riley? Or have you contented yourself with non-peer-reviewed pabulum on the internet?

So I was curious what you meant when you said, quote, the academic consensus is against us in most cases, end quote. How so? It is true that most university professors, like most people in general, are not Christian believers, but that's hardly surprising. The question is how the arguments and evidence stack up. Now certainly you're correct in saying that popular level apologists often, and I quote, do not exhibit the level of intellectual rigor and carefulness that we desire, and that there is much more to the issue than Christian apologists initially make you aware of, end quote.

But please understand that these apologists are making material accessible to lay people. I too have to put the cookies on the bottom shelf in my public debates and lectures. But the above-mentioned scholars cannot be faulted in their academic work for superficiality or a lack of intellectual rigor and care. So I wonder what arguments are you talking about? Fortunately, you give an example for our consideration. A abiogenesis, the thesis that life originated from non-life. Your example peaked my attention because in volume three of my Systematic Philosophical Theology on the Doctrine of Creation, I have a long excursus on the origin and evolution of life, something rather unusual for a book on systematic theology.

Referring to the work of Professor James Tour of Rice University in Houston, you mentioned that despite finding much of what he said convincing, you were disturbed to discover that, and I quote, one, his field is not a abiogenesis, and two, his views are controversial and frequently criticized as being influenced by intelligent design, end quote. What remarkable reasons for thinking that what he said was not true? Neither of these points, even taken at face value, does anything to show that what he said was false. You clearly need to be more critical in your thinking, Riley. Regardless, with respect to point one, Tour's field is organic chemistry, and he is extraordinarily eminent in that field.

That is the field that investigates a abiogenesis. Tour does not himself devote his research to a abiogenesis because he's convinced that the effort is basically fruitless. His views on the meager results of origin of life research and the challenges facing a scientific account of the origin of life are expert views that are widely shared and cannot be dismissed. As for point two, this is precisely the sort of scurrilous ad hominem attack that internet critics too often engage in. What is truly controversial is the various suggested scenarios to explain scientifically the origin of life. Moreover, Tour is a methodological naturalist who rejects intelligent design theory.

He has made it abundantly clear that he would never, as a scientist, infer that the origin of life is to be explained through divine creation. He is simply deeply skeptical of the current origin of life scenarios. The criticism of him that you mention is nothing more than a personal smear. It gets even worse. Quote, my trust was further shaken when I learned that Tour rejects evolution, end quote. How skepticism about the biological theory of evolution, which commences only once life does exist, is relevant to what he says about a abiogenesis is unclear. This looks like another ad hominem attack.

In any case, what do you mean by evolution? Today, the so-called neo-Darwinian modern synthesis has come under such sustained criticism that no one knows what the mechanisms explaining biological evolution are. So even if the thesis of common ancestry is true, there remains plenty of doubt about the adequacy of current evolutionary theory to explain it. As for James Tour, I have no idea what he thinks about evolution since to my knowledge, he never addresses it. Besides all this, a abiogenesis is an open question for the Christian theist. We have no idea how God brought about the origin of life on this planet and can follow the evidence where it leads.

This has no impact upon the cogency of the theistic arguments mentioned above. So what about the evidence for Jesus's resurrection? I appreciate your kind remarks about my work. When people online accuse a scholar, quote, of intellectual dishonesty and reasoning toward conclusions you already believe, end quote, then this is a red flag alerting you to the fact that you are dealing not with an academic, but with a popularizer. Scholars never accuse a fellow scholar of intellectual dishonesty. They may criticize his arguments severely, but they do not attack his personal character. It is typical of internet influencers that accusations of dishonesty and lying come all too quickly to their lips.

Moreover, accusing someone of reasoning toward conclusions that he already believes is a textbook example of the genetic fallacy. One's personal motivations or prior beliefs are irrelevant to both the logical validity of one's argument and the truth of its premises. Therefore, you cannot just trust these people, but must demand concrete evidence for their allegations. Now I appreciate that this leaves you, quote, in a difficult position as a layman. I lack the expertise to independently evaluate the science, yet I also don't know how to determine which experts I should trust, end quote. I don't know any easy answer to that question.

You need to learn how to weigh the soundness of arguments so as not to be misled. This is hard work. I found that Professor Tour's agnosticism is widely shared in the origin of life community. You can learn to trust certain scholars like Alvin Plantinga by their proven track record. So in answer to your specific questions, one, am I giving too much credit to the opinions of atheists online? Yes. You need to graduate to actually reading the published work of scholars. Is Christianity a respected position academically? Yes. It is a respected minority position which has a place at the table, especially in certain fields.

Two, if a abiogenesis is proven, is it a threat to the Christian faith? I take it that you mean if a naturalistic account of a abiogenesis were proven, etc. Not at all. The Bible does not tell us how God created life on this planet. We should follow the evidence where it leads. Three, how can we distinguish legitimate theological development from ad hoc accommodation to scientific discoveries? This is a very good question which I confronted in my work on the historical Adam. It seems to me that we must first bracket the findings of modern science and exegete the biblical text to determine the meaning that the author and his audience would have ascribed to it.

Only after we have determined what the text teaches are we ready to answer the question whether the text is compatible with the discoveries of modern science. See my book In Quest of the Historical Adam, published by William B. Erdmanns in 2021 for an exemplification of this method.