[Host] The next question is...and it's going back to the question that we sort
of skirted around. Maybe we need to answer this: must God be personal?
[Craig] All right let me try to summarize briefly three arguments why I think that
the cause of the universe must be personal: The first reason would be causal
explanations can be either of two types it can be a scientific explanation in
terms of laws and initial conditions or it can be a personal explanation in
terms of an agent and his volitions. So for example if I walk into the kitchen
and see a kettle boiling and I say to Jan, "Why is the kettle boiling?" She could
say to me "Because the heat of the flame is being conducted by the copper bottom
of the kettle to the water causing the molecules to vibrate more violently
until they're thrown off in the form of steam." Or she could say to me "I
put it on to make a cup of tea would you like?" One is a scientific explanation the
other is a personal explanation.
Both of them are equally legitimate forms of causal explanation and in some
contexts one would be utterly inappropriate when the other would be
appropriate.
Now when it comes to a first physical state of the universe there cannot be a
scientific explanation of that in terms of initial conditions and natural laws
because it is the first physical state there is nothing prior to it
from which you could deduce it by natural laws based on prior
conditions. So the only kind of causal explanation that's available will be an
explanation in terms of an agent and his volitions and that gives you a personal
creator. Second reason the cause of the universe, as we've seen, must be timeless
and spaceless and changeless. Now they're only - and immaterial
and therefore immaterial. Now they're only two possible candidates that I can think
of that could fit that sort of description either an abstract object
like a number, a mathematical entity, these are timeless, spaceless, immaterial,
or else an unembodied mind or consciousness - a mind without a body. But
there's the rub,
abstract objects don't stand in causal relations that's definitive for what it
is to be an abstract object and therefore things like the number seven
for example have no causal effects upon anything from which it follows therefore
that the cause of the universe must be an unembodied mind or person. So that
would be the second reason. The third reason is that it's the only way in
which you can explain how to get an effect with a beginning from an eternal
cause. If the cause is sufficient to produce its effect then if the cause is
always there and is permanent
then the effect should be always there as well. For example, if the cause of
water's freezing is the temperature being below 0 degrees celsius then
if the temperature were below 0 degrees from eternity past it would be
impossible for the water just to begin to freeze a finite time ago - any water
that was around would be frozen from eternity. If the cause is there, its
effect must be there as well. So how do you get a cause which is permanent and
eternal and an effect like the universe which only began to exist 14 billion
years ago? The only answer to this conundrum I think is if the cause is a
personal agent endowed with freedom of the will
who can therefore create a new effect spontaneously without any antecedent
determining conditions. For example a man sitting from eternity could freely will
to stand up and thus you would have an effect with the beginning arise from an
eternal and permanent cause. So for those three reasons I think we have very
powerful grounds for thinking that this is not simply an uncaused first cause
but this is a personal being a personal agent which has chosen freely to bring
the universe into existence.