William Lane Craig Discredited His Entire Career as a Christian Apologist
His appeal to pragmatic justification for belief in God makes him look really bad
William Lane Craig (WLC) is a renowned Christian apologist who has spent all his life defending the Christian faith as reasonable. There is one podcast he did in 2022, in which he responded to a question that came from a Christian called Kyle. His response was so bad that it is reasonable (sarcasm intended) to question his sincerity in engaging in the ministry of apologetics. The YouTube version can be accessed below:
This episode shocked his followers, Christians and non-Christians alike. Lots of responses and criticisms poured in, like Paulogia’s. WLC promptly revisited the issue again and here is the transcript: Part One and Part Two.
I briefly wrote about this amazing admission of WLC previously, but I think it is worth unpacking more. If you have not read my treatment before, here is a link:
In that article, my main criticism toward WLC is that it does not matter how much benefit a proposition, if true, could bring to us, it has no bearing on the probability of that proposition being true.
In the present article, I discuss reasons why an appeal to pragmatic justification is useless and counter-productive in Christian apologetics.
How WLC appeals to pragmatic justification
WLC tries to convince Kyle to remain in the Christian faith by appealing to pragmatic justification. This is his initial explanation:
When I first heard the message of the Gospel as a non-Christian high school student, that my sins could be forgiven by God, that God loved me … and that I could come to know him and experience eternal life with God, I thought to myself (and I’m not kidding) I thought if there is just one chance in a million that this is true it’s worth believing. ... Far from raising the bar or the epistemic standard that Christianity must meet to be believed, I lower it.
In other words, even if there is only a slim chance that Christianity might be true, it is worth believing in it because of the huge potential benefits it brings.
In his follow-up podcast, WLC distinguished between epistemic justification and pragmatic justification. He stressed that even though he used pragmatic justification to respond to Kyle, it does not mean there is no epistemic justification for belief in Christianity. It’s just that epistemic justification is not necessary:
I do think that there are good arguments and evidence that epistemically justify Christian belief. I just don’t think they’re necessary. They are sound, they are available, but they’re not necessary for Christians belief to be rational. … There are good arguments and evidences to epistemically justify Christianity, but I would maintain that they’re not necessary; that Christian belief can be rational by being grounded in the inner witness of the Holy Spirit.
There are two huge problems with this approach.
First problem: It’s a wrong use of pragmatic justification
When we discuss issues of what is true or what actually happens in the real world, epistemic justification is the only suitable approach. Pragmatic justification has no place in such discussion.
The notion of pragmatic justification is useful when the context of the discussion is risk management. Risk management is about determining what actions to take, not what is true objectively.
To give an example, wearing a seat belt in a car is one form of risk management. The chance of me getting into a car accident is minimal, but if I get unlucky, at least I know I would not be thrown out of the car and sustain more serious injuries. So the sensible thing to do is to wear a seat belt. The principle applied here is that if the chance is low, but the consequence is great, then it is reasonable (or justifiable) to take precautionary measures.
On the other hand, if the chance is high, but the consequence is minimal, then preventative measures may be optional. During winter times, there is a high likelihood that I get shocked due to static electricity when touching a metal handle. It feels a bit uncomfortable to be shocked, but I don’t usually take precautions to prevent it from happening because it’s no big deal.
Determining if an action is justified is different from determining if something is true. The chance of me getting into an accident during any car trip may be one in 10,000~100,000. Since the odds are low, I am justified to say, “I believe I will not get into a car accident on this car ride.” The act of wearing a seat belt does not signify that I believe I will get into a car accident. In fact, if I really believe that the chance of being in a car accident is high (bad weather, late at night, car in bad shape, etc.), I would not even get into the car, rendering the decision to wear a seat belt or not a moot issue.
WLC is not ignorant of the idea of risk management. He referred to it as “cost-benefit analysis”. He also admitted that truth is not in focus when it comes to pragmatic justification:
Epistemic justification focuses on providing truth-directed reasons in support of your belief. That is to say, it tries to marshal reasons to show that the belief is true. By contrast, pragmatic justification focuses on non-truth directed reasons.
The part where he gets confused is that a justifiable action is not the same as admitting a proposition is true. He thinks that if there is one chance in a million that Christianity is true, it is justified to believe it as true, but that is absurd.
If the reasons you give are not intended to show something to be true, how do you arrive at the conclusion that it is true?
If something has a very low probability of being true, it’s only reasonable to believe that it is NOT true, as opposed to believing it is true. How could it be otherwise? WLC ran the risk of discrediting himself when he made these nonsensical statements.
You cannot fake belief
Some Christians may contend that the action that Christianity requires people to do is to have faith, so the way a person takes an action is by believing in Jesus. But here is the problem. Can you really convince your brain to accept something as true even though you know the odds are low? How are we supposed to do that?
There is no cognitive difficulty for us to wear seat belts (an action) and at the same time believe that we will not get into a car accident (a belief). Wearing a seat belt does not require that we believe we will get into a car accident. But in order to be a Christian, we need to cognitively accept that God as described in the Bible exists in the real world (Hebrews 11:16). Even though Christian faith is more than acknowledging the existence of God, it cannot be less than that.
Some people assert that we can choose to believe something to be true even if it is highly unlikely to be true. It’s called epistemological voluntarism. But even if that were possible, why would we want to do that? If I know something is probably false, why should I force my mind to accept it as true? It’s like making my mind cheat itself. That does not make any sense.
Second problem: What is the use of evidential apologetics then?
If pragmatic justification can show that it is reasonable to believe in something that has a probability of 0.000001% being true, what is the value of trying to show Christianity’s alignment with reality? After all, WLC said that the inner witness of the Holy Spirit is sufficient to make belief justifiable. (In this YouTube video from 2012, he expanded on that statement.)
WLC may say that some people require epistemic justification before they make a decision to believe in Jesus, and for this reason, Christians should go along with that and provide truth-directed reasons for belief.
But if WLC truly believes that pragmatic justification makes Christian faith more appealing and lowers the bar to an extent that one chance in a million is sufficient to establish pragmatic justification, then there is no reason to go along with those who ask for epistemic justification. WLC should endeavor to convince them to shift to pragmatic justification instead.
In fact, this is what the Mormon Church has done. Mormons routinely ask non-believers to pray to Holy Spirit for confirmation that the Book of Mormon is true. They don’t emphasize evidential apologetics the same way evangelical Christians do. From the result of their evangelistic efforts (16 million believers today after just 200 years), I can’t say their strategies are wrong if the purpose is to get as many converts as possible.
What about other religions?
WLC said, “If there’s any evidence that it’s true then it’s worth believing in.” I wonder if WLC would grant other religions the same leniency of using pragmatic justification to lower the bar of standard?
For example, since the Islamic heaven has an added benefit of 72 virgins, it sounds more appealing than the Christian heaven, so am I justified to say that if there is any evidence that Islam is true then it’s worth believing in it? I doubt WLC would agree with it. My hunch is that WLC (and the majority of Christians, I presume) would launch all sorts of arguments based on logic and science to show that Islam does not pass the standard of epistemic justification.
It would be difficult to escape the charge of double standards.
Conclusion
Pragmatic justification is only useful when the outcome has been verified. The benefits of wearing seat belts have been proven. If that’s not the case, it does not matter how probable a car accident is, seat belt wearing is not justified.
Similarly, until heaven is proven to be real, and the probability of Christians entering into heaven ascertained, it’s useless to talk about pragmatic justification for the Christian faith.
Otherwise, what’s going to stop you from being conned if a scammer tells you that your uncle’s uncle’s brother-in-law died, and his inheritance of 100 trillion dollars is yours to claim?
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