Okay, no, on the whole I’m very little like Sisyphus. I don’t kill travelers and guests for fun or seduce close family members. In a way, though, by pointing out the failures of the gods, we anti-theists are all Sisyphus, punished to eternally push the boulder of credulity back up the mountain.
Which is where William Lane Craig comes in. In his 1994 book, Reasonable Faith, Craig writes:
…When a person refuses to come to Christ it is never just because of lack of evidence or because of intellectual difficulties: at root, he refuses to come because he willingly ignores and rejects the drawing of God’s Spirit on his heart. No one in the final analysis really fails to become a Christian because of lack of arguments; he fails to become a Christian because he loves darkness rather than light and wants nothing to do with God.
I can say with some confidence that my heart is completely unillustrated. Furthermore, I ask, “What would that drawing look like?” Although, I guess since God is rumored to be transcendent and incorporeal, that drawing would lack form, so the very fact that my heart has no drawings on, in or around it is, oops, proof of God’s existence. Damn it all!
Craig has a new book:
Naturally, when I saw the subtitle, I knew this was a challenge I couldn’t resist. First of all: Precision!? Many words can be used to describe Christianity. Precise isn’t one of them. Secondly, if you are arguing for a god that is, by nature, unknowable, mysterious or any other adjective meaning essentially that nobody has a goddamned clue so don’t even try, then reason is not something you can use to defend it because you do not know what you are defending. Your own argument says, blatantly, that you can never know what you are defending.
I am looking forward to reading his attempt, though. Floundering and nonsensical as it may be. And I’ll comment on it here as I work through the book. I may or may not attack it in order. I haven’t decided yet. There are a few chapters I’m more eager to get to than others, like chapter four, “Why did the Universe Begin?”, in which, on the page I happened to open to at random the first time I picked up the book, Mr. Craig states that God exists in the same way that numbers can be said to exist. In other words: God is an abstract concept in the human mind, like a meter, or the square root of -2. Very impressive. Or chapter six, “Can We Be Good Without God?” in which he makes the, apparently profound, distinction between being good without belief in God and being good without there being God.
Suffice it to say, I cannot wait to start and I plan to provide a running commentary here as I go along. I’ll do my best to quote the book faithfully and provide context, though I doubt it will make much difference. Check back soon for updates!
On Guard, Chapter 2: “What Difference Does it Make if God Exists?”