Category Archives: William Lane Craig

William Lane Craig

Finally, as always, I am grateful to my wife Jan, not only for her help with early portions of the typescript, but even more for the encouragement and interaction (‘Honey, what do you think? Does the number 2 exist?’).

William Lane Craig, God Over All: Divine Aseity and the Challenge of Platonism, Oxford, 2016, p. viii

William Lane Craig

The idea that a developing fetus is part of the woman’s body is so biologically ignorant that I would call it medieval, except that would be to insult the medievals! The fetus is not like an appendix or a gall bladder. From the moment of its conception and implantation in the wall of the mother’s uterus, the fetus is never a part of her body, but is a biologically distinct and complete living being which is, in effect, “hooked up” to the mother as a life-support system. To say a fetus is part of a woman’s body is like saying that a person on life support is part of the iron lung or the intravenous equipment. Having an abortion is not like having an appendectomy. It is killing a separate human being, and to try to justify that on the grounds that a woman can do what she wants with her own body is just politically correct ignorance.

William Lane Craig, Hard Questions, Real Answers, Wheaton, 2003, pp. 118-119

William Lane Craig & James Sinclair

Although G. W. F. Leibniz’s question, Why is there (tenselessly) something rather than nothing, should still rightly be asked, there would be no reason to look for a cause of the universe’s beginning to exist, since on tenseless theories of time the universe did not begin to exist in virtue of its having a first event anymore than a meter stick begins to exist in virtue of having a first centimeter.

William Lane Craig & James Sinclair, ‘The kalam Cosmological Argument’, in William Lane Craig & J. P. Moreland (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, Malden, Massachusetts, p. 184

William Lane Craig

[W]hen my wife, Jan, and I were on Campus Crusade staff at Northern Illinois University our movement was infiltrated by certain Christians who believed that physical healing was included in the atonement of Christ, and thus no Christian ever needed to be sick. Just pray to God and He will heal you!

Well, the result of this was that some of our students were throwing away their glasses, claiming that they were healed, even though they couldn’t see any better. I remember confronting one of them by asking, “Are you healed?” He said, “Yes, I am.” So I said, “Well, can you see any better?” “No,” he admitted. “So then how are you healed if you can’t see any better?” I asked. “Because my faith isn’t strong enough,” he said. “I am healed, but I just don’t have faith to believe it.” And so these poor, nearsighted students were going around trying to study and attend classes without their glasses, claiming that they were healed but that they lacked the faith to believe that God had answered their prayers. I wonder what those Christians would say about someone who dies from cancer despite prayers for healing: that he really was alive and well but just appeared to be dead because he lacked the faith? What those Christians needed was not more faith, but some common sense!

William Lane Craig, No Easy Answers: Finding Hope in Doubt, Failure, and Unanswered Prayer, Chicago, 1990, p. 45

J. P. Moreland and William Lane Craig

Because philosophy operates at a presuppositional level by clarifying and justifying the presuppositions of a discipline, philosophy is the only field of study that has no unquestioned assumptions within its own domain. In other words, philosophy is a self-referential discipline, for questions about the definition, justification and methodology of philosophy are themselves philosophical in nature. Philosophers keep the books on everyone, including themselves.

J. P. Moreland and William Lane Craig, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, Illinois, 2003, p. 13