0:26

Bill, I think that you have more

0:28

than answered the allegations of

0:30

certain YouTube atheists on

0:32

what's become known as the lowering

0:34

the bar controversy. Not

0:36

only have you devoted a podcast and

0:38

a question of the week on it, but you appeared

0:41

on other podcasts to discuss it.

0:43

And rather than rehearse the whole thing, I'll

0:45

just refer our listeners to the website

0:48

for the backstory. But today

0:50

we want to interact with some excerpts from

0:53

the young man who asked you

0:55

the now famous question.

0:57

Kyle. Kyle has a

0:59

podcast, and he invited some

1:01

other podcasters to join him

1:03

in discussing various atheist reactions

1:07

to you, spoiler alert

1:09

here. They're not impressed with

1:12

the atheist reaction and

1:14

build these young men who are

1:16

well versed in apologetics and philosophy

1:19

and theology. I'm impressed with

1:21

all of them and they they did get together.

1:23

They talked for an hour and a

1:25

half. And I just had to go

1:27

in and get a view excerpts. But

1:31

I gotta tell you that they're They've been

1:33

interacting with your work. They're

1:35

positive about what you said

1:37

and how you answered. Kyle has

1:40

not abandoned his faith.

1:42

He's a deep thinker. He tries

1:44

to be fair. And we'll

1:46

hear from him in just a moment, but But Bill,

1:49

we're a few weeks beyond this.

1:51

What do you make of all the Hoopla that

1:54

has surrounded this? Well,

1:56

I have to tell you, Kevin, that I'm just

1:58

so gratified

1:59

at the response

2:02

to

2:03

my original question of

2:05

the week in response to Kyle, this

2:08

is why I write this

2:10

weekly question of the week.

2:13

In the first place, it was

2:15

a help to Kyle. It

2:18

encouraged him and strengthened

2:20

him in his own Christian faith and

2:22

walk. And and that just makes it

2:24

all worth it. But more than that,

2:27

it has an even wider impact

2:30

upon all the Christians who now

2:32

learn something about differences

2:34

between pragmatic and epidemic just

2:37

vacation and are

2:39

better educated now in

2:42

the defense of the Christian faith as a

2:44

result of this controversy. And then

2:46

finally, this

2:48

sort of thing gets a rise out

2:50

of the atheists on the secular

2:52

web. And by doing so,

2:55

it gets them to engage with

2:57

this work and causes even

2:59

more attention to be drawn

3:01

to the gospel and to Christ.

3:03

And so for all those reasons, I

3:05

am just very gratified

3:08

by the result

3:11

of this hoopla, as

3:13

you call it. In this first

3:15

clip, Kyle is asked to

3:17

further explain his

3:19

question to you. Here's clip number one.

3:22

What's that what you were talking about? It seems you're

3:24

you weren't talking about apportioning your beliefs

3:26

to the evidence as much as apportioning your

3:28

credences to the commitment that you're

3:31

So it's like things that are more

3:33

consequential, you're looking for more

3:35

evidence. which Yeah. So

3:37

that was sort of what I was trying

3:39

to ask, Craig, and I think Polygy

3:42

might have misunderstood at least

3:44

that portion of the question. When I asked the

3:46

question originally, I was sort of like in a

3:48

panic mode, so to speak, in the sense

3:50

that if Christianity requires

3:52

AB and C. And if AB and C have a

3:54

lot of cost to them, it

3:56

wasn't that I was having intellectual doubts.

3:58

It was more, like, practical

3:59

to have, like, shouldn't we raise the bar

4:02

of evidence if it requires like,

4:04

if the belief requires very,

4:07

like, high practical bars, so to

4:09

speak, like, if you're gonna live, you know, if you're gonna be a

4:11

Christian, you're gonna have to live a certain way,

4:13

right, that you might necessarily want to

4:16

Right? And so, like, you know, my issue was,

4:18

okay. Shouldn't we raise the bar of evidence

4:20

if Christian requires this? That was

4:22

what I was run into at the time, it

4:24

wasn't, like, necessarily doubting the my Christian

4:26

beliefs, it was more like, shouldn't we just raise the

4:28

bar higher than where it's at

4:30

now, basically?

4:31

Well, I think that Kyle

4:34

wasn't panic mode when he wrote that

4:36

question because he wanted

4:39

to raise the bar so unrealistically high

4:41

that he was asking for an

4:44

appearance of the Virgin Mary or Edelman

4:46

of Christ himself And

4:48

what I wanted to say in response was

4:51

that any kind

4:53

of pragmatic just verification

4:56

for raising the bar would

4:58

also be or

5:01

give opportunity for

5:03

pragmatic justification for

5:05

lowering the bar. Though when it

5:07

comes to pragmatic justification, that

5:10

can either raise or lower the

5:12

bar. And so one can be

5:14

pragmatically justified in

5:16

believing things that are

5:18

epistemically improbable. And

5:20

one of the benefits of this controversy

5:23

was that it gave me opportunity to

5:25

talk with fellow

5:27

philosophers or experts in this

5:29

area. For example, Liz

5:31

Jackson, who writes

5:33

and publishes in this

5:36

area of pragmatic and epistemic

5:38

justification. And

5:41

Liz, in our conversation

5:44

said that there is really nothing

5:46

that is so low epistemically

5:50

in terms of its probability

5:52

that you could not be pragmatically justified

5:56

in believing it. And so

5:58

it seemed to me that they the

6:01

advice that I gave to Kyle was

6:03

exactly correct. This

6:06

next clip discusses the

6:08

difficulty of

6:10

setting one's own subjective

6:13

standard of evidence. They got

6:15

into that a little bit. Here's clip number two.

6:17

my biggest

6:17

issue was this whole thing is, like, how

6:19

do you measure evidence? Like, how do you know when

6:21

it's gotten fifty or sixty percent building

6:23

on what you said? Like, I

6:25

don't know how to really measure the amounts.

6:27

When when like in skeptic, like like Paul

6:29

here says, like, you need a lot of evidence in proportion

6:31

to the evidence. I'm always like, well, how do we

6:33

know when it's enough? Like, this just seems like everyone

6:35

sets their own subjective standard to determine

6:38

when there's enough evidence. And I'm I'm always

6:40

kinda going like, well, I don't know

6:43

where you set your subjective standard or how we

6:45

can actually measure to know there's enough evidence.

6:47

I just think at the end of the day we need to go with

6:49

the best explanation that's we could that's

6:51

the way we serve judges, which is gonna be the least

6:53

ad hoc, the most plausible, that kind of thing. It's

6:55

really hard to measure people's

6:57

subjective standard for what they think is

6:59

enough evidence. Well,

7:00

I think that this fellow has

7:03

put his finger on a real problem

7:05

and that is that it's

7:07

very very difficult to

7:09

assign these sorts of epistemic probabilities.

7:14

You can't put specific numbers

7:16

to them. And so you just

7:18

have to make rough estimates. Like, the probability

7:21

is not very low, or

7:23

there seems to be a

7:25

high probability that

7:27

this is the case. But he is

7:29

quite right in saying that for so

7:31

many people, these are subjective.

7:33

I remember talking with a campus

7:36

crusade staff member at the

7:38

University of British Columbia in

7:40

Vancouver. who remarked

7:42

to me that it seems like everyone

7:44

has inside of them

7:46

a skeptical dial which

7:49

he turns way up

7:51

when it comes to Christianity, but

7:53

then he turns way down

7:56

when it comes to his own world

7:58

views. And if he applied

8:00

the same standards equitably, his

8:03

own views would come out unjustified

8:06

and would fare no better than than the Christian

8:09

Faith. So this really is

8:11

a a problem and it's interesting

8:13

that the a person in the

8:15

podcast says, Let's

8:17

work instead with inference to the best

8:19

explanation. That is to say,

8:22

we don't try to assign these probabilities

8:25

But let's see which

8:27

hypothesis has the

8:29

most explanatory power, the

8:31

most explanatory scope

8:33

is simpler, is less

8:35

ad hoc. And those would

8:37

be other means

8:39

of assessing the value

8:42

of explanatory hypotheses

8:44

or worldviews. Yeah.

8:46

That's Mike Jones. He has a channel on

8:48

YouTube called inspiring philosophy.

8:50

and man, he is he's good.

8:53

Next, they discuss how

8:55

Paulo GEA, by the

8:57

way, Bill, I sent polygya,

8:59

an email, and I apologize for

9:01

butchering his name. So

9:03

many times, I it it

9:05

wasn't on purpose. In fact,

9:07

somebody in com a a couple of people who said it

9:09

in comment, you're mispronouncing his

9:11

name just to harm his credibility. No.

9:14

Not at all. That that's that's

9:16

not the case. at at all.

9:18

I was on a podcast. It was an

9:20

atheist podcast. I was I guess on it several

9:22

years ago, and they called it Appalachia.

9:25

with a j sound for the g. And

9:27

so I it all kind of whirls

9:29

around your head, but it's polygea.

9:32

And in this clip, they discussed he

9:34

poisons the well. That was

9:36

clearly poisoning the well. Yeah. That was just

9:38

poisoning the well. Like, that's that's literally the fallacy.

9:41

Like, oh, look look what he says. For the

9:43

next time you hear him, visit the Colm, just

9:45

remember who you're getting that's a

9:47

textbook example of poison oil. That's all

9:49

I'll say. And I was just gonna say, okay. Like, it will

9:51

even like, Craig didn't believe that. And you thought that

9:53

Christianity, like, had to be at

9:55

least ninety nine percent sure before you could

9:57

commit to I'm pretty sure Willie

9:59

Blake Craig is really

9:59

confident that Christian is true. I

10:02

was just gonna say. Like, to say

10:04

he just past killed wager himself and

10:06

now because of that, all of his

10:08

work is just meaningless. Well, not

10:10

only that, but notice so notice

10:12

the key context by

10:14

which Craig was referring to

10:16

in in his response. And this is something that

10:18

apologies is completely ignored, which

10:20

is he's talking about when he first

10:22

converted. He's not, like, presenting his

10:24

entire case for Chris and

10:26

theism on this one response

10:28

to a question. He's just giving

10:30

a practical reason

10:32

for why he converted even when he was younger.

10:35

Right? I mean, of course, when he got older, he

10:37

found reasons to believe. Right? But

10:39

I feel like Paul's just really, like,

10:41

just being extremely unteritable to

10:43

Craig. Howard Bauchner: I

10:44

think these are very perceptive comments.

10:47

He's absolutely right when he

10:49

describes This as my initial

10:51

reaction as a sixteen year

10:53

old non Christian high school student

10:56

who had no evidence for the truth

10:58

of Christianity but was

11:00

simply struck that it

11:02

seemed to me to be true when I

11:04

read the new testament. There was

11:06

the ring of truth about it.

11:08

And so these pragmatic considerations

11:11

were important for me,

11:13

especially at that time.

11:15

And I I did wonder about

11:17

these attacks what was the

11:19

purpose of them? Why

11:21

were they making this

11:23

criticism? Because even if

11:25

I were in error, about what

11:27

I said, how would

11:29

that impact the soundness

11:32

nice of the columb cosmological

11:35

argument or the argument from

11:37

fine tuning, which have been

11:39

offered and defended by

11:41

myriads of people besides myself.

11:44

It did seem to be a

11:46

strategy to poison the well

11:49

so that people would not look

11:51

at those defenses or

11:53

would discount them based

11:55

on these personal considerations. In

11:58

this next clip, they clear up another

12:01

confusion. Here's clip number

12:03

four. I think that they were

12:05

interpreting you as saying, like,

12:07

the evidence for Christianity is

12:09

so bad. What do I do? That wasn't

12:11

well, that's the thing. If if I did think the

12:13

the evidence for Christian was bad, I would have said it

12:15

in my question, but notice I didn't. I

12:17

wasn't

12:17

I didn't say that it was. But

12:19

I

12:19

think that's right. What how they're interpreting

12:22

you? So then that Yeah. That

12:24

what they would expect Craig to

12:26

answer with is, oh, here are these

12:28

arguments that are actually good evidence, but because

12:30

he's not doing that, oh, then

12:32

there isn't actually good evidence. You

12:34

have to lower your episodic bar.

12:37

IIII hope that's not uncharitable.

12:39

There's

12:39

obviously some sort of disconnect here. because

12:41

here's the thing. I actually think Craig understood my

12:43

question better than they did. Yeah. I agree in

12:45

that sort of way. was a

12:47

really important thing for me. I

12:49

I wanted to connect with Kyle.

12:51

And so rather than just

12:54

try to say look at all the great

12:56

evidence for Christianity, I wanted

12:58

to address what I thought was his

13:00

central concern, namely,

13:03

that these pragmatic considerations

13:06

can serve to

13:08

raise the level of

13:10

evidence that you would demand in

13:12

order to believe something. And what I wanted

13:14

to suggest is that

13:16

if that's right, pragmatic

13:19

considerations can also

13:21

decrease the amount of evidence that you should

13:23

demand in order to believe

13:25

something. And I firmly

13:28

think that with

13:30

respect to the truth of the

13:32

gospel, that

13:34

you are pragmatically unjustified

13:36

and and and believing it even

13:38

if you don't have

13:40

very good evidence for it.

13:42

In this next clip, Bill, they

13:44

clarify what you meant by the one

13:46

in a million chance of

13:49

being true. Here's clip

13:51

number five. And

13:53

he doesn't think I I think square point

13:55

is he's not saying that he thinks the actual

13:57

probability of sharing the truth is one in a

13:59

million. He's saying

14:00

at the time as a teenager, he felt

14:02

even if that is the case, that would be worth

14:04

it. Now, of course, he hadn't looked at the evidence the time

14:06

he didn't know needed feeders and just what the

14:08

information he had, which was that experience.

14:10

But he's done. If he looked at his

14:12

debate Bart Ermin, he does an entire

14:14

bayesian formula for the probability of the

14:16

resurrection. So it's not as if he doesn't. He

14:18

thinks it's actually low. he's

14:20

just saying that from that perspective. So, yes,

14:22

I I will agree with everyone that I think

14:24

Paul is misunderstanding, and I think he's

14:26

unintentionally voicing the well here,

14:28

and that's just unfortunate. Howard Bauchner:

14:30

Yeah, thank you for that.

14:32

That that is quite right.

14:34

You know, sometimes Christian apologists

14:36

like to give testimonies of

14:39

how they became a Christian because

14:41

the evidence led them to

14:43

this conclusion and they were persuaded

14:45

to believe even against their will.

14:47

That's not my testimony. I'm

14:50

afraid. I I was utterly naïve

14:52

with respect to the arguments

14:54

for god's existence or

14:57

the historicity of the gospels.

14:59

It was simply that when

15:01

I heard the gospel read

15:03

the new testament, it just struck

15:06

me so powerfully as

15:08

being true. It had the the ring

15:10

of truth about it, and I

15:12

could see that if this is

15:14

the truth, then for goodness'

15:16

sake, it it's the most wonderful

15:18

news that's ever been announced.

15:21

And so he's

15:23

quite right in saying that I wasn't trying to

15:25

give an assessment of the

15:27

odds of the truth of the Christian

15:29

faith. Let's go to this next clip

15:31

then, and Bill, this one starts

15:33

out with Big Foot.

15:35

And the Elvis is alive and

15:37

his asswatch in queueing on. He will be

15:39

leading in everything because all he needs is

15:41

one piece of edits. And that's good enough for

15:43

William. Okay. But here's okay. That that's

15:45

where I I just really just

15:47

miss, like it's like, no. This guy

15:49

doesn't know what to talk about because he's he's

15:51

trying to compare it to okay.

15:53

SaaS watch. Okay. we're not we're

15:55

not talking about I mean, is he really trying to

15:57

compare Krishnani to SaaSwatch here?

15:59

Well, you

15:59

know, like, how would PaaS GoaaS GoaaS GoaaS GoaaS

16:02

GoaaS GoaaS Your argument is not going

16:04

to work. for for that.

16:06

Right. Right. Right. I mean, there's no

16:08

utility in believing that Sasquatch exists

16:10

first. How about you, maybe, in your space?

16:13

I I think he's also just completely misunderstanding

16:16

what Craig is saying here because

16:18

Craig's not saying is, hey, there here's one

16:20

data point that supports like, the

16:22

hypothesis of Christianity. Therefore, you

16:24

should believe it. Like,

16:26

Craig is saying, like, evidence in the

16:28

absence of defeaters is reason to believe

16:30

in Christianity. and I think Polojja

16:32

is completely missing

16:34

that. You know, you know, what also kind of just

16:36

bothers me is like, I'll hear Christian

16:38

say this, and I'm like, okay. But I hear

16:40

atheists say the opposite. So when I was on David

16:42

Smalley's podcast, I was presenting evidence. And

16:44

he brought up the

16:46

idea that if, like, if if Christianity is true,

16:48

we need to raise the bar much higher

16:50

because if it is true, I need to adjust

16:52

my lifestyle, and so I and he must have a

16:54

much higher bar if standards can affect how he

16:56

was living. When I was on the podcast when I

16:58

believe died, they said something similar as well.

17:00

It just so I've seen atheists do this,

17:02

but in opposite where they think they gotta raise such

17:04

a high standard because it would affect

17:06

their life in many ways. So they

17:08

gotta judge it by such a big it

17:10

seems like a much higher standard. So they're going in

17:12

the opposite direction of Craig. And not

17:15

a lot of, like, videos about that.

17:18

So I I just I don't I never really thought

17:20

this was a big deal because I've seen Christian do this, and

17:22

I've seen an atheist do the opposite.

17:24

Yes. He's absolutely right. You

17:27

you can't have the

17:30

pragmatic considerations encroach on

17:32

the epidemic so as to raise the

17:34

bar without also allowing

17:36

the possibility that the

17:38

pragmatic could encroach on the epidemic

17:40

to lower the bar as the case

17:42

may be. And this will not apply

17:44

just willy nilly to everything.

17:46

There needs to be what I described as a

17:48

cost benefit analysis

17:51

in order to be pragmatically justified

17:53

in holding some belief.

17:55

I also note here too

17:58

that the notion

17:59

of

18:00

Believing what seems

18:03

to be true to you in the absence of

18:05

a defeater is

18:07

rational. And that's pertinent to

18:09

this question of the

18:11

witness of the holy spirit and

18:14

the experience that I had that

18:16

Christianity just seemed true

18:18

to me it had the ring of

18:20

truth about it. And so in

18:22

the absence of some defeater,

18:24

which I didn't have, I

18:26

was perfectly within my rational rights in

18:29

believing it. This next

18:30

clip refers to your work bill on

18:34

approaching other religions. The

18:37

it's sometimes called the outsider

18:39

test when evaluating

18:42

worldviews. Here's clip number seven. By the way, if

18:44

you wanna know Craig has an outside

18:46

test of create go on YouTube and type in

18:48

Williamly Craig properly, basic belief in

18:50

other religions. and someone asks him that question. He gives the answer

18:52

in terms of, like, well, we would look for

18:54

defeaters and those other religions. So he's not saying,

18:56

yes, Christianity is primatization.

18:58

true. He's not a preset positionist. A preset positionist would say

19:00

you have to presuppose the

19:02

Christian God to even do logic, and Craig is

19:04

not saying that. He's saying if you had

19:07

this experience of the Holy Spirit in reformed epistemology,

19:09

you are warranted to believe in that

19:11

experience unless there is a defeater if

19:13

you trust your senses. the argument. So

19:15

it's not the same thing as presuppositionism. So,

19:18

yes, if someone if a Hindu had a

19:20

religious experience and they didn't

19:22

have any connection to any

19:24

other group and didn't know that. I think that they

19:26

would be warranted to believe in that. But if they do know

19:28

about the religions and their arguments don't

19:30

hold up, then I think they would have to give that would

19:32

have to switch that out for a different belief. So this is why it depends on

19:34

what evidence you have available to you. You can't

19:36

fault someone for not knowing if the evidence wasn't

19:39

available to them. So Oh, I

19:41

think just as miss is getting these two

19:43

categories mixed up here. That, hey,

19:45

man. I thought I could say to that.

19:47

That was excellent. And

19:49

I think that the

19:50

great insight

19:52

of Alvin Flanagan's reformed

19:55

epistemology is that he sees

19:57

what is right about presuppositionalism

20:00

without making the presuppositionalist

20:03

mistake of reasoning in a

20:05

circle that you have to presuppose

20:07

Christianity is true in order to prove

20:09

that it's true. Rather

20:11

planning his point is that

20:13

you can have properly basic

20:15

beliefs that seem to be true

20:18

to you you are perfectly

20:20

rational to believe in them so long as

20:22

you do not have defeaters for

20:24

those beliefs. And like

20:26

the a podcast or planning

20:28

it would say that a person in other

20:30

religion could say exactly

20:32

the same thing he is not

20:35

confronted with certain defeaters.

20:37

So I'm really impressed with the

20:39

grasp on the issues that

20:41

these young apologists seem

20:43

to have. Bill, here's the

20:45

final clip. And even

20:47

though it's somewhat of a side issue,

20:49

I included it because I think

20:52

it's interesting. they get into

20:54

the hiddenness of

20:56

god or divine hiddenness. Here's

20:58

clip number eight.

20:59

how do we it's just hard to really determine

21:02

what if if Christianity has met a

21:04

high up systemic heart or not because it's

21:06

all subjectively determined by

21:08

each person like,

21:10

Timothy, it's such an extremely high bar

21:12

that's just unreasonable. And you

21:14

could say that maybe, like, the little ladies at the

21:16

church has got a really low bar. I

21:18

mean, like, do we really judge this? This just seems subjectively

21:20

said. Doesn't Delahonty think

21:22

that even if God were a peer to him, he would think

21:24

it's a hallucination Or is

21:25

that He said that stuff like that. He said similar

21:28

stuff. He told me that when in our debate, he's

21:30

well, he said even if he was convinced Scott

21:32

existed, he wouldn't worship them. But he

21:34

also said he doesn't know what would convince him, but god does know.

21:36

And so the burden is on god to

21:38

to demonstrate that. But I I think that

21:40

the whole point of of this is that

21:42

I think it's I think incorrect. So, no, you know,

21:45

Swinburne, but Swinburne talked about the joy of

21:47

seeking. And I think the idea that, you know, we

21:49

all have these channels and we're doing this right now. We're

21:51

talking about theology and

21:53

apologetics because there is stuff to discuss and

21:55

debate. If God was as obvious as the existence of

21:57

trees or something, I think we would go out our

21:59

lives and be in towards it. I think the idea that we

22:01

have to work and we have to study and we have to

22:03

learn, not only builds up our own self

22:05

discipline, but makes us more engaged and more

22:07

interested to learn more about God

22:09

just told us everything upfront, I think we'd

22:11

come really bored with it. So I I'm excited that

22:13

we have to -- Yeah. -- discuss these and disagree

22:15

on things. I think that just makes it more

22:18

worthwhile. Yeah. You could

22:18

just say something like God has

22:21

axiological reasons for keeping an

22:23

episodic distance.

22:24

This is wonderful. I

22:26

I think that what these fellows realize

22:30

is that the

22:33

seeking of god is

22:35

conducive toward finding the

22:38

genuine knowledge of god. And

22:40

that's why the Bible urges us

22:43

seek and you will find.

22:45

But for the person who is indifferent,

22:48

who's cold, hearted,

22:50

who is even hostile to

22:53

god. That person is

22:55

unlikely to find god

22:57

or to be convinced because heart

23:00

is so closed. So there is

23:03

genuinely something beneficial

23:05

and worthy in the

23:08

need to seek after

23:10

god in order to come to god

23:12

on god's terms and

23:14

not to stand back full one's

23:16

arms be as skeptical as one

23:18

can and demand unrealistic

23:21

evidence that you know will never be

23:23

supplied and so to feel

23:25

comfortable. in

23:25

your unbelief. Bill in

23:27

conclusion, I I

23:29

know that you probably agree with me that the

23:31

the future seems to be in pretty

23:33

good hands here. We -- Oh. -- it's very

23:35

encouraging to see these

23:37

young men getting together and discussing

23:40

these issues, interacting with

23:42

your work, and, as you

23:44

said, getting a good grasp of so

23:46

many of the things that have come out

23:48

in this whole controversy.

23:50

I agree completely, Kevin.

23:52

I commend these young

23:55

apologists for what they're doing. This gives

23:57

me confidence that our side is

23:59

going

23:59

to win. because we outthink the

24:03

other side.