Show Notes
Dr. William Lane Craig tackles some of the most controversial questions concerning the first book of the Bible. Was Adam a real, historical person? If so, who was he and when did he live? Drawing on his book In Quest of the Historical Adam, Dr. Craig argues that Genesis 1–11 is best read as "mytho-history": grounded in real people and events, yet told in the figurative, symbolic language of ancient Near Eastern myth — not unlike the way the Psalms or apocalyptic literature aren't meant to be taken literally.
Dr. Craig makes the case that Adam and Eve must predate not only Homo sapiens but Neanderthals, whom he argues were fully human, tool-making, dead-burying persons, placing a historical founding couple as far back as 750,000 years ago, among the species Homo heidelbergensis. Along the way, he addresses why he considers young earth creationism a "nightmare scenario" for reconciling faith and science, why the doctrine of original sin doesn't require what most people assume it does, why a real Adam matters for the authority of Scripture and the words of Jesus, and how evolution and a historical Adam might fit together through what he calls a divinely imparted "rational soul."
More from In the Arena: The Debates and Lectures of William Lane Craig
In March 2015, Dr William Lane Craig was invited to give multiple lectures at the Cadbury Lectures at the University of Birmingham in England. In this second lecture, Dr. Craig addresses the challenge of Platonism to God's nature.
Rhett McLaughlin, co-creator of Good Mythical Morning, sat down with Alex O’Connor to explain why he walked away from Christianity. Joining Sean McDowell, Dr. Craig reacts to ten clips from that conversation. Do Rhett’s reasons for leaving hold up under scrutiny? Listen in as Dr. Craig takes them on one by one.
Dr. Craig joins Eric Metaxas on Socrates in the City for a conversation that begins with whether we can know that God exists. Why does Dr. Craig consider apathy a greater obstacle to belief than atheism? What does he think kept Christopher Hitchens from engaging the arguments? The discussion then turns to Dr. Craig's Systematic Philosophical Theology: how Scripture can be both the Word of God and the words of men, what inerrancy does and does not require, and why he tentatively places the historical Adam and Eve some 750,000 years ago, as ancestors of Neanderthals as well as modern humans.
Can there be meaning or morality without God? And what's the real difference between God and the Flying Spaghetti Monster? Dr. William Lane Craig takes on Richard Dawkins' central argument against God, explains what it means to call God a necessary being, and answers hard questions about whether Jesus' story borrows from pagan myth, whether Christianity can be the one true religion, and how heaven can be joyful if loved ones are missing.
Catholic apologist Trent Horn sits down with Dr. William Lane Craig to compare their paths from high school conversions to public debate, then turns to the argument that has defined Dr. Craig's career. Dr. Craig explains how a clearance-table copy of Stuart Hackett's The Resurrection of Theism led to his doctoral work on the kalam cosmological argument under John Hick. He also explains why he sees newer work, including causal finitism from Alexander Pruss, Rob Koons, and Andrew Loke and the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem, as strengthening the premise that the universe began to exist. The two discuss Hilbert's Hotel, St. Bonaventure's argument against an infinite past, and theories of time. Dr. Craig argues that the growing block view Trent finds attractive is incoherent.