I've been developing an online Philosophy of Religion course. This is one of the lecture/videos I created recently for it. A discussion of the problems with Craig's view on faith.
Monday, December 2, 2013
Problems with Faith
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3 comments:
Great video! Is it for an online course at Sac State, or are you developing a free online course (by any chance)?
I have become a big fan of sites like Khan Academy, Complexity Explorer (led by Melanie Mitchell through the Santa Fe Institute; provides very cool info on complexity science!), Coursera, etc. However, such sites, while becoming enormously popular, are greatly lacking in the philosophy departments--which I think is unfortunate.
Do you have any thoughts on these kinds of sites and this evolution of education, McCormick?
I think you misunderstand Craig’s view. In the following link Craig explains what he means by the witness of the Holy Spirit and its role as a foundation of one’s Christian faith:
http://www.reasonablefaith.org/the-witness-of-the-holy-spirit
I think that in this contribution Craig illustrates his point very well by the example of someone who is accused of a crime based on much evidence pointing to his guilt, but who knows that he is innocent and who, based on his subjective knowledge about his own innocence, refuses to take into consideration a change of his view in view of the seemingly overwhelming evidence against it. Such an attitude certainly isn’t irrational.
As for your objection that people of other faiths could appeal to the witness of the Holy Spirit as a confirmation of their religious convictions as well is in my view ungrounded, as to my knowledge most religions don’t have anything comparable to the witness of the Holy Spirit. There does seem to be something of the sort in Mormonism, a kind of “feeling in one’s bosom” that Mormonism is true, but I think that such a feeling is much different from the witness of the Holy Spirit.
In my view the witness of the Holy Spirit is more than just a feeling. It is the work of the Holy Spirit in a Christian’s life as described in Romans 8,1-9 or Galatians 5,16-18.
Often discussions of what faith is gets a bit out there.
I think understanding faith as "belief and trust in God" is sufficient.
The bible is full of examples where faith is brought to people through reasoning ("As was his custom, Paul went into the synagogue, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures.." acts 17:2)
and proof.(The author of John's gospel is clear the miracles were proof that Jesus was from God.)
The whole notion that faith must be against the evidence etc is just fashionable among some people. The bible has a different view.
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