The Language of Argument

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C H A P T E R 2 1 ■ R e l i g i o u s R e a s o n i n g

Jews, Christians, and Moslems share all of these claims about God, but they

are accepted by traditional theologians.

The readings in this chapter are about the traditional Christian God.

William Lane Craig argues for the existence of a traditional Christian

God. Edwin Curley then argues against the existence of such a God. These

readings are slightly revised transcripts of a live debate that occurred at the

University of Michigan in 1999, so they bear some marks of that setting.

FIVE REASONS TO BELIEVE IN GOD

by William Lane Craig

Good Evening! I want to begin by thanking [Michigan Christian Grads] for

inviting me to participate in tonight’s debate. And I want to say what a privi-

lege it is to be debating so eminent a scholar as Professor Curley. When I was

a doctoral student writing my dissertation on the cosmological argument for

God’s existence, Dr. Curley’s work on the famous philosopher Benedict de

Spinoza was a valuable resource to me in trying to analyze Spinoza’s own

argument for God. So it’s a genuine honor to be sharing the podium with

Dr. Curley tonight.

Now in tonight’s debate it seems that there are two basic questions that

we need to ask ourselves:

I. Are there any good reasons to think that God does not exist?

And

II. Are there good reasons to think that God does exist?

Now with respect to the first question, I’ll leave it up to Dr. Curley to present

the reasons why he thinks that God does not exist. Atheist philosophers have

tried for centuries to disprove the existence of God. But no one has ever been

able to come up with a convincing argument. So rather than attack straw men

at this point, I’ll just wait to hear Professor Curley’s answer to the following

question: What good reasons are there to think that God does not exist?

So let’s move on, then, to that second question: Are there good reasons

to think that God does exist? Tonight I’m going to present five reasons why

I think that God exists. Whole books have been written on each one of these,

so all I can present here is a brief sketch of each argument and then go into

more detail as Dr. Curley responds to them.* These reasons are independ-

ent of one another, so that if even one of them is sound, it furnishes good

grounds for believing that God exists. Taken together, they constitute a pow-

erful cumulative case that God exists.

* For a popular presentation of these arguments and responses to typical objections, see my

booklet God, Are You There? (Atlanta: RZIM, 1999).

Source: Five Reasons to Believe in God by William Lane Craig from The Craig-Curley Debate:

The Existence of the Christian God from Reasonable Faith, 2007. Reprinted by permission of

William Lane Craig.

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