Craig: Well, in the book, I have only time to discuss some of the most striking, but they are unbelievably striking, Sean, and I think what you can show is that these archaeological signatures of modern human behavior go back hundreds of thousands of years in Africa and Europe and the Middle East, indicating that human beings originated on this planet sometime before the divergence of the human race into different species like Neanderthals, and Homo sapiens and Denisovans (an extinct subspecies of humanoid creatures that allagedly interbred with modern humans)
McDowell: This part of your book, to me was one of the most interesting, when you walk through the emergence of art, the emergence of tools, these very complex building structures that were made, language development, like burying the dead, there’s clear signs that these are people, human beings, whatever their size and body structure that are sufficiently similar to us and we categorized as being human.
Craig: I think that’s right. And I am not willing Sean to write Neanderthals out of the human race. I think that kind of dehumanizing attitude is, frankly morally unconscionable.It’s a kind of racism in a way.
These were people just as much as ancient Homo sapiens were, just as much as we are, and we should not dehumanize them in that way.
On a recent podcast, famed debater and philosopher William Lane Craig, in the news recently on account of his article in First Things where he decries Genesis 1-11 as “myth” while explaining that “Adam and Eve” were basically beatified cavemen that lived 750,000 years ago, mockingly laughs at all dumb young-earth creationists who take the first 11 chapters of the Bible literally, and who believe there was a talking snake and a literal Adam. Watch the video—his chortling is quite gruesome.
The story of Adam and Eve, I think it should prompt us not to be over literalistic in the way we read these narratives. And once you begin to look at them in terms of mytho-history, it’s difficult to look at them in any other way.
I mean, when you read a story, about two people in an arboretum, with these magical trees, whose fruit if you eat it, will grant you immortality, or knowledge of good and evil.
And then there’s this talking snake who comes along and tempts them into sin. And then you have this anthropomorphic God walking in the cool in the garden and calling out audibly to Adam in his hideout, you think ‘Well, of course, this is figurative and metaphorical language.’ This isn’t meant to be read in this sort of literalistic fashion.
And so once you begin to see these narratives this way, I think you’ll begin to ask yourself, ‘how can I read them any other way?’ It would be like reading Aesop’s Fables literalisticly, as really about talking animals, for example, rather than as figurative or metaphorical, in order to teach some moral lesson.
This is not the first time that Dr. William Lane Craig has sounded off on Young-earth creationists. During his 2019 weekly Sunday school class on Christian doctrine and apologetics, he mocked them endlessly, saying among other things:
I think it’s evident that unless one adopts the literal young earth creationist interpretation, Genesis one doesn’t really say anything about how God created life on Earth…Truly, young-earth creationists live in a different universe than most of us do. This is crank-science, and Christians should not be attracted to it.
Bonus comments from the interview
I think that’s right. And I am not willing, Shawn, to write Neanderthals out of the human race. I think that kind of dehumanizing attitude is, frankly morally unconscionable. It’s a kind of racism in a way. These were people just as much as ancient Homo sapiens were, just as much as we are, and we should not dehumanize them in that way.
For those whohold to the doctrine of original sin, that is to say that we are culpable for Adam’s sin, or that Adam’s sin corrupted human nature. And we all bear that disease, the historical Adam is absolutely crucial, because if he is merely a fictional character that never existed, obviously, we cannot be culpable for the wrongdoing of a fictional person or be corrupted by his fault. Now, I myself don’t hold to that classical doctrine of original sin. I think that that is neither taught in Genesis three or in Romans five.
Now, I would be disingenuous, Shawn, if I were to say, I don’t want the young earth creationist interpretation to come out true. Okay. To me, that is a nightmare. My greatest fear is that the young earth creationist might be right in his hermeneutical claim—that Genesis does teach those things that I described earlier. And I say that would be a nightmare. Because if that’s what the Bible teaches, it puts the Bible into massive, I think irredeemable conflict with modern science, history and linguistics, and I don’t want that to happen.
This is a distinction which is widely made among New Testament scholars, when it comes to dealing with how the New Testament treats figures in literature that the New Testament authors cite. So, for example, when they talk about Moses, is this the Moses that actually lived? Or is it the Moses as described in the Pentateuch? When they talk about Adam, is this the actual historical Adam? Or is this just the Adam of the story, and you cannot assume too quickly, that the literary figure is the same as the historical figure.
[Editor’s note: The denial of Original Sin is a form of Gnostic heresy (that in fact led to Arminianism!), and seems to be very common with the “intellectual” crowd these days.]
Frequently viewed as evangelicalism’s foremost Christian apologist, William Lane Craig’s name is most often associated with his ministry organization Reasonable Faith, the name of his most famous book and also weekly podcast.
A proponent of ‘mere Christianity theology,’ the professional philosopher gained prominence by pummeling atheists in the name of a ‘bare theism,’ seeking to have them acknowledge that, with the use of a well-executed presentation of Kalam cosmological argument, the preponderance of the evidence is that there is a First Cause in the universe.
While Craig is a member of and a Sunday School teacher at a Southern Baptist Church, he is Wesleyan in his soteriology. He is also a Molinist and social Trinitarian who has proposed a controversial Neo-Apollonarian Christology. Although Craig rejects Open Theism, he has stated (in the course of explaining Transworld Depravity) that God “has to play with the cards He’s dealt.”
In a new essay for First Things, Craig explains that Genesis 1-11 are all myths and ‘mytho-history’ that didn’t happen and are not to be taken literally, but it’s only in Genesis 12 with the story of Abraham that things become real and historical.
As far as how Craig does explain the references to Adam by Jesus and Paul, he uses the language of ‘true-in-story:
A statement is true-in-a-story if it is found in or implied by that story. So if I say, for example, that Gilgamesh slew the Bull of Heaven, my statement, though true-in-the-Epic of Gilgamesh, is false.
In the same way, references to Adam are true-in-a-story. They are true in the sense that Genesis records them as happening, but are similarly actually false. Craig asserts, “we can see how naive it is to argue that merely because some New Testament author refers to a literary figure, whether found in the Old Testament or outside it, that figure is asserted to be a historical person.”
Despite believing the stories in Genesis 1-11 never happened, Craig does not discount the idea that there was a ‘progenitor of the entire human race’ – some sort of ‘first couple’ which he ultimately surmises is a pre-homosapien caveman that lived nearly a million years ago.
A bevy of Christian apologists and philosophers, led by William Lane Craig, has released a collective statement directed towards Ravi Zacharias International Ministry, (RZIM) urging the embattled ministry to be fully transparent in their investigation of their namesake and emphasizing the need to “openly acknowledge their own complicity” in his abuses.
The statement, released on William Lane Craig’s Facebook page reads:
Statement concerning RZIM
As Christian philosophers and apologists who have respected Ravi Zacharias, we have been deeply troubled and grieved by Ravi’s documented sexual misconduct against women.
We are united in urging Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM) to approach the current investigation with transparency and objectivity with a view to full disclosure of the facts to the public.
Where necessary, the RZIM Board of Directors and leadership should also both openly acknowledge their own complicity and initiate institutional reforms at RZIM as well as provide restitution to those wronged.
The signatories are listed below:
William Lane Craig (President, Reasonable Faith; Professor of Philosophy, Houston Baptist University; Talbot School of Theology)
Michael Licona (President, Risen Jesus, Inc., Associate Professor of Theology, Houston Baptist University)
David Wood (Acts 17 Apologetics)
J.P. Moreland (Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, Talbot School of Theology, Biola University)
Mike Austin (Professor of Philosophy, Eastern Kentucky University, and current president of the Evangelical Philosophical Society)
Christopher Reese (Editor-in-chief, Worldview Bulletin)
Hugh Ross (Founder and President, Reasons to Believe)
Kathy Ross (Director, Reasons to Believe)
Robert B. Stewart (Professor of Philosophy and Theology, New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary)
Jerry L. Walls (Professor of Philosophy and Scholar in Residence, Houston Baptist University)
Sarah Enterline (Author; historical apologist)
Gary Habermas (Distinguished Research Professor of Apologetics, Liberty University)
Though RZIM has hired an independent auditing team to pursue matters further, every indication thus far is that RZIM has no intention of taking it seriously or expanding the scope of the probe.
One of Ravi’s victims who was at the center of an explosive sexting lawsuit a few years ago, and who we have been in contact with, has not been contacted by the investigators, even though she is the most well known and visible accusers who has been publicly maligned by RZIM and demonstrably lied about by Ravi and the organization.
