Bill Craig and Mormon epistemology

A redated post.

William Lane Craig has been criticized for using the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit in a way that parallels what I have been criticizing as the "misuse" of the Mormon "burning in the bosom" appeal. I say misuse in deference to Mormons like Clark who say that there are legitimate limits on its use and that it cannot be used to simply dismiss any and all evidence that might amount to falsification of Mormon claims. In other words, what I am talking about is the use of it as what Steve Cannon calls a "Don't confuse me with facts" strategy. But this is what many Christians think happens to them when they give what they think are good arguments against Mormon claims. But is Craig caught up in the same strategy? Mark Smith, of the Contra Craig website, writes:

MS: In my twenty minute discussion with Craig, in the process of getting his signature, I asked him about his views on evidence (which to me seem very close to self-induced insanity). In short, I set up the following scenario:

Dr. Craig, for the sake of argument let's pretend that a time machine gets built. You and I hop in it, and travel back to the day before Easter, 33 AD. We park it outside the tomb of Jesus. We wait. Easter morning rolls around, and nothing happens. We continue to wait. After several weeks of waiting, still nothing happens. There is no resurrection- Jesus is quietly rotting away in the tomb.

I asked him, given this scenario, would he then give up his Christianity? Having seen with his own eyes that there was no resurrection of Jesus, having been an eyewitness to the fact that Christianity has been based upon a fraud and a lie, would he NOW renounce Christianity? His answer was shocking, and quite unexpected.

He told me, face to face, that he would STILL believe in Jesus, he would STILL believe in the resurrection, and he would STILL remain a Christian. When asked, in light of his being a personal eyewitness to the fact that there WAS no resurrection, he replied that due to the witness of the "holy spirit" within him, he would assume a trick of some sort had been played on him while watching Jesus' tomb. This self-induced blindness astounded me.

VR: I think it would depend on the context. If someone were to walk up to me and say they had invented a wayback machine, and I wasn't at all sure that it worked properly, and we got out and saw some hillside that looked like a Jewish graveyard from the 1st Century, and no one left the grave or rolled the stone away, then that woudn't be convincing. If there were reliable time travel technology, and we got some supporting evidence, the challenge might be more severe. Generally fundamental changes of belief occur because of a wide range of considerations, so it is hard to point to one thing that would alone do the trick. But I can imagine overwhelming contrary evidence against Christianity.

Comparing the Book of Acts to the Book of Mormon

It's what I thought. There's no comparison.

Why the founding of Christianity is far more difficult to explain than Mormonism or Islam

I talked about this in an earlier thread. With Islam, you have to take Muhammad's word for it that he was touched by an angel. Same with Mormonism and Joseph Smith. With Christianity, you have a pre-crucifixion story where Jesus is supposed to have performed miracles in public. Did these miracles happen?  The disciples, at least, are convinced by them, and that's why we find them dropping their nets and following. You also have Jesus making remarkable claims about himself. Trilemma considerations come into play here. Even if there are possible alternatives to liar, lunatic, or Lord, are the plausible ones? Then, you have the death and resurrection events, again, a public execution, and a resurrection claimed to have been seen by lots of people. Hallucination? Theft? Swoon? Wrong tomb? Evil twin? What happened?  And then you have such things as the preaching of Peter and the missionary journeys of Paul. With the missionary journeys you have a story of a series of encounters with government officials in those localities, and at least the facts about local government have been verified by archaeology. So what was Paul doing that got him hauled up before government officials on a regular basis? Just preaching peace and love, brother? The Book of Acts says that there were miracles at this stage, too.  And then he appeals to Caesar, when failure to do so would have gotten him released?


If you can understand the psychology of Muhammad or Joseph Smith, and that seems easy to do, more so for Smith than for Muhammad, then you can see how those religions started. With the founding of Christianity you have a long public history involving lots of kinds of people. There are no far-fetched theories designed to avoid the conclusion that Smith and Muhammad were true prophets.

In Islam and in Mormonism, you have those religions forming a government around their leaders. Muhammad goes military, and the Mormons move out to Utah and set up territorial government run their way. Christianity expands with no help from the government until 313 and Constantine.
So I think the founding of Christianity is far more difficult to explain than Mormonism or Islam.

Joseph Smith, the Mormon Church, and the definition of marriage

I'd love to write a dialogue between Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, who rise from their graves in fury because of the Mormon church's support for Prop 8 in California, and the present-day leaders of the Mormon Church. "You want marriage defined as a relation between one man and one woman? HOW DARE YOU? It's sure not how we defined it in our day!"

Gordon Hinckley is dead

The prophet, seer, and revelator of the Mormon Church has died at 97. Who replaces him will have a major impact on Mormonism, since, if anything, the president of the Mormon church is more powerful in the Mormon Church than the pope is in the Catholic Church.

A new word in the Book of Mormon

That's a way to deal with the problems generated by apparent conflict between science and one's holy book: just get the holy book changed a little.

P. S. One Brow is quite right, of course. The change is to the introduction, written in the 1980s. A more interesting question concerns what this does to the historic mission of the Mormon church. Historically, this has involved a special mission to Native Americans on grounds that they are Lamanites, that is, descendants of the Book of Mormon peoples. At one time this was the basis for an adoption program of Native Americans into Mormon households, and past President Spencer Kimball is notorious for having said that the program must be working because you can see the effects of greater righteousness in these adoptees by seeing that their skin has gotten whiter in the course of their adoption to those Mormon households. If Mormons stop believing that the people who live on the res are Lamanites, doesn't that entail that one of the Mormon Church's primary missions has been misguided all these years?

Another interesting question is whether the Prophet, Seer and Revelator (aka the President) of the Mormon Church could change the text of the book of Mormon if the PSR were to claims fresh revelation as a basis for doing so. Given a belief not only in modern revelation but also in ongoing revelation, this would be more to be expected coming from Mormonism than it would be coming from either Catholic or Protestant Christianity.

Did C. S. Lewis teach anything like the Mormon doctrine of deification

As man is, God once was. As God is, man may become. Lewis certainly didn't teach the first of these. But some present-day Mormon apologists are suggesting that Lewis accept the second half of this infamous couplet. This essay, by Gretchen Passantino, shows that this is simply ridiculous. We're creatures of God forever according to Lewis, not God's equal. To think otherwise is to quote selectively in a way that is patently dishonest.

HT: Jeff Downs

A Mormon for President?

A paper critical of Brigham Young University

Bad news for the Cougars, and the Mormons.