Inspirational Quotes by William Lane Craig

“The first question which should rightly be asked is: Why is there something rather than nothing?”[1]”

“Leibniz’s reasoning: 1. Everything that exists has an explanation of its existence. 2. If the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is God. 3. The universe exists.”

“is where Christian apologetics comes in. If Christians could be trained to provide solid evidence for what they believe and good answers to unbelievers’ questions and objections, then the perception of Christians would slowly change. Christians would be seen as thoughtful people to be taken seriously rather than as emotional fanatics or buffoons. The gospel would be a real alternative for people to embrace.”

“My claim is that if there is no God, then meaning, value, and purpose are ultimately human illusions. They’re just in our heads. If atheism is true, then life is really objectively meaningless, valueless, and purposeless, despite our subjective beliefs to the contrary. This point is worth underscoring, since it’s so frequently misunderstood. I’m not saying that atheists experience life as dull and meaningless, that they have no personal values or lead immoral lives, that they have no goals or purpose for living. On the contrary, life would be unbearable and unlivable without such beliefs. But my point is that, given atheism, these beliefs are all subjective illusions: the mere appearance of meaning, value, and purpose, even though, objectively speaking, there really isn’t any. If God does not exist, our lives are ultimately meaningless, valueless, and purposeless despite how desperately we cling to the illusion to the contrary.”

“Probabilities are relative to background information.”

“Two statements are logically equivalent if it is impossible for one to be true and the other false. They are either both true or both false. One of the most important logical equivalences is called contraposition. It tells us that any statement of the form “If P, then Q” is logically equivalent to “If not-Q, then not-P.” The example in the text of statements A and B is an example of contraposition.”

“Values and Duties Moral value refers to the worth of a person or action, whether it is good or bad. Moral duty refers to our obligation to act in a certain way, whether that action is right or wrong.”

“In Islam, only after standing before the judgment is someone's eternal destiny to be sealed. Jesus claimed to do only what His Father did, taught only what His Father taught, and in every way was the servant of the faithful. Thus it becomes more and more difficult to understand how God could speak so clearly through Jesus against violence (turning the other cheek) and then (supposedly the same God speaking through a later prophet) set up Sharia law, call for death for converts from Islam to any other religion (but especially to Christianity), or call for ritual death for anyone who might criticize or in any way portray an image of the prophet Muhammad.”

“While few would actually put it in these terms, faith is now understood as a blind act of will, a sort of decision to believe something that is either independent of reason or that makes up for the paltry lack of evidence for what one is trying to believe. By contrast, biblical faith is a power or skill to act in accordance with the nature of the kingdom of God, a trust in and commitment to what we have reason to believe is true.”

“Conclusion But given the truth of the three premises, the conclusion is logically inescapable: God is the explanation of the existence of the universe. This is no ill-defined flying spaghetti monster. The argument implies that God is an uncaused, unembodied Mind who transcends the physical universe and even space and time themselves and who exists necessarily. This conclusion is staggering. Leibniz has expanded our minds far beyond the mundane affairs of daily life. In the next chapter our minds will be stretched further still, as we try to grasp the infinite and discover the beginning of the universe.”

“Conclusion Therefore it seems to me that of the three alternatives before us—physical necessity, chance, or design—the most plausible explanation of the fine-tuning of the universe is design. That gives us a transcendent, super-intelligent Designer of the cosmos who has fixed the values of nature’s laws. Incredible! So now we have a third argument contributing to a cumulative case for the existence of God.”

“But apart from examining the arguments for and against God, how can the atheist justifiably make such an accusation? How does he know that God does not exist? Shouldn’t we at least look at the evidence? That is surely correct. Some philosophers have even argued that if the evidence for these two options were absolutely equal, a rational person ought to choose to believe in God. That is, if the evidence is equal, it seems positively irrational to prefer death, futility, and destruction to life, meaningfulness, and happiness. As Pascal said, we have nothing to lose and infinity to gain. But my aim in this chapter is more modest than that. I only hope to have gotten you to think about these issues, to realize that the question of God’s existence has profound consequences for our lives and that therefore we cannot afford to be indifferent about it. What I’ve at least done is to clearly spell out the alternatives. If God does not exist, then life is futile. If God does exist, then life is meaningful. Only the second of these two alternatives enables us to live happily and consistently. Therefore, it makes a huge difference whether God exists, a difference we should care about. Who cares? You should.”

“Modern man is the Cosmic Orphan because he has killed God. And, by doing so, he has reduced himself to an accident of nature. When he asks, Why? his cry is lost in the silence of the recesses of space. When he dies, he dies without hope. Thus, in killing God, modern man has killed himself as well.”

“Conclusion On the basis, therefore, of both philosophical and scientific evidence, we have good grounds for believing that the universe began to exist. Since whatever begins to exist has a cause of its beginning, it follows that the universe has a cause of its beginning.”

“Nor can science overcome the absurdity of life caused by death. Science cannot prolong life forever. It is noteworthy that Eiseley never returns to the question of death, which was awakened in him as a child, to show how science answers this problem. For it cannot. The religion of science has no answer to man’s deepest questions.”

“Given AC as a rival to naturalism, there is an additional burden of proof for a naturalist ontology that quantifies over sui generis emergent properties such as those constitutive of consciousness. After”

“it attempts to show that the necessary conditions of logical and mathematical reasoning, which undergird the natural sciences as a human activity, require the rejection of all broadly materialist worldviews. Reppert”

“The idea that the Big Bang theory allows us to infer that the universe began to exist about 15 billion years ago has attracted the attention of many theists. This theory seemed to confirm or at least lend support to the theological doctrine of creation ex nihilo. Indeed, the suggestion of a divine creation seemed so compelling that the notion that "God created the Big Bang" has taken a hold on popular consciousness and become a staple in the theistic component of ‘educated common sense’. By contrast, the response of atheists and agnostics to this development has been comparatively lame.”

“(Gal. 5:22–23). When this relationship is intact, the product in our lives will be righteousness (Rom. 6:16), and the by-product of righteousness is happiness. Happiness is an elusive thing and will never be found when pursued directly; but it springs into being as one pursues the knowledge of God and as his righteousness is realized in us.”

“THE KALAM COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT: A SIMPLE FORMULATION”