Big Hominid versus William Lane Craig

William Lane Craig is a philosopher and theologian with an evangelical Christian background. Many in academic circles know him as one of the foremost apologists for the Christian worldview. In a recent blog post, Dr. Vallicella linked to some YouTube videos of Craig giving a presentation of some sort. This might have been in the context of an atheism/theism debate.

In the comments section of Dr. V's blog, I took issue with Craig on a couple points. My initial comment received two replies, and I have just written a reply to those comments. I reproduce the relevant part of the comment thread here.

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Kevin's comment:

WL Craig says: "The purpose of life is not human happiness, as such, but rather knowing God and eternal life."

Is Craig saying that knowing God is unconnected with human happiness? I should think that most theists would argue that knowing God is the ultimate happiness (or bliss, or whatever the correct word is). If that's the case, then why can't God create beings that enjoy full knowledge of him without having to send his poor creatures through the existential wringer?

I also have trouble with Craig's "hidden harmony" argument-- the idea that a greater, perhaps unknowable, divine purpose can somehow make human suffering meaningful. My gut reaction to this has always been, "Look a concentration camp survivor in the eyes and say that to her with a straight face: your suffering and your family's suffering were part of a larger plan." How many people seriously believe such a twisted notion?

If the hidden harmony argument is true (and based on Craig's overview of the epistemological difficulties inherent in trying to assess whether suffering has a point, it seems only God can truly know), then I'd rather not have anything to do with such a God.


Kevin

Dr. V's reply:

Kevin,

Craig does not mean that human happiness is unconnected with knowledge of God. Ultimately, human happiness consists in the knowledge of God. Why the existential wringer? The trad. answer would be in terms of free will, Original Sin, etc.

I don't have the time to discuss this in detail, but I think what it comes down to is that your intuition that there cannot be a providential plan given the fact of evil trumps every other consideration.

Timothy's reply:

Kevin,

You wrote:

"Look a concentration camp survivor in the eyes and say that to her with a straight face: your suffering and your family's suffering were part of a larger plan."

Christians, including concentration camp survivors, take comfort in that very sentiment (e.g. Corrie Ten Boom).

If the hidden harmony argument is true (and based on Craig's overview of the epistemological difficulties inherent in trying to assess whether suffering has a point, it seems only God can truly know), then I'd rather not have anything to do with such a God.

If there is a God, then the hidden harmony argument or something like it must be true. And if there is a God, then by definition you can't help but have everything to do with him one way or another.

I wrote in response:

Timothy,

re: camp survivors taking comfort in hidden harmony

That's a good point, and it's one I've encountered before. I actually don't mind so much that the sufferer should try to comfort him- or herself with such a thought, but it seems perverse for another person to suggest it to them.

And just as there's anecdotal evidence for sufferers who accept the hidden harmony argument, there's anecdotal evidence for sufferers who don't. Europe's current status as "post-Christian" is partly due to the harrowing effects of World War II. Post-WW2 French existentialism became popular in part because it saw the cosmos as fundamentally absurd (NB: I don't share that view), with people not so much discovering meaning as building it through their choices.

If there is a divine plan of some sort, this seems hard to reconcile with human freedom. If everything we do somehow fits into that plan-- and because it's a plan, I assume there is supposed to be a specific outcome-- I have to wonder just how free any of us really is.

I think I'll go and write something about this on my blog. But yes, Dr. V, at a visceral level, I find the idea that something as massive as Stalin's purges or the Holocaust might be part of a divine plan utterly repulsive.

If God, like human beings, created a plan with a certain objective, but allowed our freedom and the waywardness of Heisenbergian matter to diverge from that plan... that would go a long way toward alleviating my disgust. But if everything is ultimately Part of the Plan-- no. No.


Kevin

I'm sure there will be more to this.

Craig argues, in the linked videos, that atheists cannot justifiably claim that pointless suffering exists. His argument actually makes sense, for it comes down to the "horizoned" (i.e., limited) nature of human knowledge and experience. God or no God, the universe is an unimaginably huge place, so how can we possibly make such sweeping claims (e.g., "some suffering is pointless") without having grasped even a fraction of the Big Picture? I'm willing to concede this to Craig.

The problem with Craig's argument, though, is that it's not exactly a ringing endorsement of the traditional Christian conviction that there is a divine plan of some sort. What Craig's argument comes down to is a claim of epistemic parity-- "You can't know, and I can't know, either."

This puts both the believer and the nonbeliever in the same boat, and the Christian is then left with "I have faith" as his or her only justification for believing that all suffering has a point. From the modern standpoint, the claim "I have faith" becomes problematic when viewed in the larger arena of rival religious traditions, many of which make contradictory truth claims when you start looking at the specifics of their belief structures, and which also cite "faith" as the impetus behind their claims. So... who's right?

I have for years been horrified by the idea that human evil on a grand scale can all be considered part of a larger plan. It's one thing for a parent to punish a child and to say, "You'll understand why this is happening when you're older and wiser." It's quite another thing to claim "Divine plan!" when faced with an evil like black slavery, or the slaughter of Tutsis by Hutus, or the ravages of World War II. The difference between these two examples is, to my mind, not a difference of degree, but of kind. I haven't put my finger on why that's true; perhaps that will be fodder for another post.




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