William Lane Craig Quotes

We've already said that it's the Holy Spirit who gives us the ultimate assurance of Christianity's truth. Therefore, the only role left for argument and evidence to play is a subsidiary role. I think Martin Luther correctly distinguished between what he called the magisterial and ministerial uses of reason. The magisterial use of reason occurs when reason stands over and above the gospel like a magistrate and judges it on the basis of argument and evidence. The ministerial use of reason occurs when reason submits to and serves the gospel... Should a conflict arise between the witness of the Holy Spirit to the fundamental truth of the Christian faith and beliefs based on argument and evidence, then it is the former which must take precedence over the latter, not vice versa.

Well, there are two kinds of people in the world, my friend. Those who show up and those who get Eastwooded. You get Eastwooded.

More often than not, it is what you are rather than what you say that will bring an unbeliever to Christ.
This, then, is the ultimate apologetic. For the ultimate apologetic is: your life.

Richard [Carrier] takes the extremist position that Jesus of Nazareth never even existed, that there was no such person in history. This is a position that is so extreme that to call it marginal would be an understatement; it doesn't even appear on the map of contemporary New Testament scholarship.

Dr. Lewis Wolpert: But because there is a beginning doesn't imply a god.

The atheist believes the (Schlitz) beer commercial, which tells us to “Go for the gusto since we only go around once!” Now, I submit that’s a patently false view of ethics. If there is no God then Mr. Zindler is absolutely right—just live for total self-interest. There is no objective right and wrong. Nobody holds you accountable so just go for all the gusto you can get. Now, of course, you have to be rather careful about this because if you just pursue your unbridled lusts you may hurt other people and they, in turn, may try to get you back and diminish your gusto.

Is there no reason for life? And what of the universe? Is is utterly pointless? If its destiny is a cold grave in the recesses of outer space, then the answer must be yes.

Hitchens: I've got another question for you, which is this: How many religions in the world do you believe to be false?

The Bible says all men are without excuse. Even those who are given no good reason to believe and many persuasive reasons to disbelieve have no excuse, because the ultimate reason they do not believe is that they have deliberately rejected God's Holy Spirit.

And therefore, even though animals are in pain, they aren't aware of it. They don't have this third order pain awareness. They are not aware of pain, and therefore they do not suffer as human beings do. Now, this is a tremendous comfort to those of us who are animal lovers, like myself, or to pet owners. Even though your dog or your cat may be in pain, it isn't really aware of being in pain, and therefore it doesn't suffer as you would when you are in pain.

Moreover, if we believe, as I do, that God's grace is extended to those who die in infancy or as small children, the death of these children was actually their salvation. We are so wedded to an earthly, naturalistic perspective that we forget that those who die are happy to quit this earth for heaven's incomparable joy. Therefore, God does these children no wrong in taking their lives.
So whom does God wrong in commanding the destruction of the Canaanites? Not the Canaanite adults, for they were corrupt and deserving of judgment. Not the children, for they inherit eternal life. So who is wronged? Ironically, I think the most difficult part of this whole debate is the apparent wrong done to the Israeli soldiers themselves. Can you imagine what it would be like to have to break into some house and kill a terrified woman and her children? The brutalising effect on these Israeli soldiers is disturbing.

Therefore, 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.

If there is no God, then man and the universe are doomed. Like prisoners condemned to death, we await our unavoidable execution. There is no God, and there is no immortality. And what is the consequence of this? It means that life itself is absurd. It means that the life we have is without ultimate significance, value, or purpose.

Okay, look at it this way: if the evening news has a very high probability of being accurate, then it's highly improbable that they would inaccurately report the numbers chosen in the lottery. That counterbalances any improbability in the choosing of those numbers, so you're quite rational to believe in this highly improbable event.

What can we say about metaphysical naturalism? Again, I want to make two points.