William Lane Craig seems to have become the go-to guy for a certain sort of public function.
He's the credentialed theistic philosopher who is up for a debate with the most prominent atheists of our day.
Credentialed? Yes -- he has two PhDs, one in philosophy, one in theology, respectively from the University of Birmingham (1977) and the University of Munich (1984).
Up for debating? Yes: as a high school student he was actually in the all-state (Iowa) debate team and he seems to have honed that craft since. [Is a debate team as an extracurricular activity a midwestern thing? I don't think it's big in the northeast.]
The go-to guy? Yes, he has debated the late Christopher Hitchens as well as the very much with us Sam Harris and Lawrence M. Krauss.
On an internet bulletin board to which I make occasional contributions, someone recently asked what Craig thinks of Immanuel Kant. I was happy to provide the answer. Not very highly.
After all: it was Kant's position that human reason ("pure reason" if you will) cannot get us to a knowledge of the really real. Kant sought to justify that view with a set of "antinomies," that is, of apparently binary statements in which both of the contrary propositions can, it seems, be proven. One of Kant's examples is the binary pair: the world began to exist; the world did not begin to exist. There are decisive seeming arguments to the conclusion that the first statement is necessary AND to the conclusion that the second, a "no" to a beginning, is also necessary. Thus, to Kant's way of thinking, reason is stymied and the question is left open for faith.
Craig reacts to that particular Kantian argument as forcefully as do the atheists he debates. They are certain Kant gave up on reason too readily and so is he. He maintains that Kant's arguments for a necessary beginning are sound, his arguments for the impossibility of a beginning are weak: thus, there is no antinomy.
Of course Craig is committed to that view as a Thomist.
For my part: I used to have a low opinion of Kant but it has mellowed a bit over the years.
As to the antinomies, I think most of them can be solved by the recognition of an ambiguity: that is, by making a distinction. In this case, I suspect that the answer turns on what a certain former President might consider a distinction over what one's meaning of "is" is.
If the word "universe" (or the word "existence") requires continuity of time and space with the here and now, the totality of that which is in the past of the now, in the now, or in the future from the now, then I suggest the argument for the necessity of a beginning is sound.
But if by "universe" we allow for a multiverse of discontinuous time lines, not overlapping except that some give rise to others at discrete diverging moments (which look like a collapsing star and the emergence of a black hole within one universe, the big bang of another) then I suggest the argument for the other side of the antinomy is sound. There need have been no beginning of the multiverse: we can with logical consistency posit a "steady state" at that level, which has lasted forever.
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