Fasting... for the Purpose of Godliness

Fasting… for the Purpose of Godliness

 

 

1.    Donald Whitney Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life—Rev. and Expanded (NavPress, 2014).

 

2.    “Christian fasting is a believer’s voluntary abstinence from food for spiritual purposes.” (192)

 

a.    Believer

b.    Voluntary

c.     Abstinence from food for a spiritual purpose

 

·     Note: Can be abstinence from other good/normal things: 1 Corinthians 7.5

 

3.    Kinds of fasts in the Bible

 

a.    Normal fast: abstaining from all food but not water (Matt 4.2; Luke 4.2)

b.    Partial fast: limited diet (Dan 1.12; Matt 3.4)

c.     Absolute fast: abstain from all food and liquid (Ezra 10.6; Esther 4.16; Acts 9.9)

d.    Supernatural fast: Extended absolute fast for lengthy time requiring God’s supernatural provision (Deut 9.9; 1 Kings 19.8)

e.    Private fast (Matt 6.16-18)

f.     Congregational fasts (Joel 2.15-16; Acts13.2)

g.    National fasts (2 Chronicles 20.3; Nehemiah 9.1; Esther 4.16; Jonah 3.5-8)

 

·     Historical note: Presidents John Adams, James Madison and Abraham Lincoln all proclaimed national fasts.

 

h.    Regular fasts

 

·     Old Covenant: God required one on the Day of Atonement (Lev 16.29-31)

·     Jews in Babylon instituted four more regular fasts (Zechariah 8.19)

·     Pharisee in Luke 18.12—fasted twice a week

·     John Wesley wouldn’t ordain a man who didn’t fast twice a week!

 

i.      Occasional fasts: special occasions as need arises (Matt 9.15)

 

j.      “The most common fast among Christians today would probably fall under the categories of normal (abstaining from food but drinking water), private, and occasional.” (195)

 

4.    Fasting is expected in the New Covenant… but not commanded

 

a.    Matthew 6.16-18: “…when you fast…”

b.    Matthew 9.14-15 “His people fast as part of their longing for and anticipation of His return.” (197)

c.     Believers in the book of Acts (9.9; 13.2; 14.23)

 

5.    Matthew 6.16-18: fasting so that no one sees—what does this mean?

 

6.    How long and how often?

 

a.    Jesus gave no command on this; need to be Spirit-led

b.    Examples in the Bible

·     One day or part of day (Judges 20.26; 1 Sam 7.6; 2 Sam 1.12; 3.35; Nehemiah 9.1; Jeremiah 36.6)

·     One night (Daniel 6.18-24)

·     Three day fasts (Esther 4.16; Acts 9.9)

·     Seven day fasts (1 Sam 31.13; 2 Sam 12.16-23)

·     Fourteen day fast (Acts 27.33-34)

·     Twenty-one day fast (Daniel 10.3-13)

·     Forty day fasts (Deut 9.9; 1 Kings 19.8; Matt 4.2)

·     Unspecified lengths (Matt 9.14; Luke 2.37; Acts 13.2; 14.23)

 

7.    Fasting is to be done for a purpose

 

“Having a biblical purpose for your fast may be the single most important concept to take away from this chapter.  In real life, here’s how it works: As you are fasting and your head aches or your stomach growls and you think, I’m hungry!your next thought is likely to be something like, Oh, right—I’m hungry because I’m fasting today. Then your next thought should be, And I’m fasting for this purpose __________________.(199)

 

8.    Fasting as a Protestant… in love with the doctrine of Justification by Faith!

 

a.    Fasting is not about earning merit with God!

 

b.    While fasting often rehearse the gospel of God’s grace received by faith

 

9.    Ten biblical reasons for fasting

 

a.    (1) To strengthen prayer (Ezra 8.23; Nehemiah 1.4; Acts 13.3

Of all the purposes for fasting found in Scripture, fasting in order to strengthen prayer receives the most emphasis by far.  In fact, in one way or another, all the other biblical purposes of fasting relate to prayer. 

 

 

b.    (2) To seek God’s guidance (Judges 20.26-28; Acts 14.23)

 

c.     (3) To express grief (1 Sam 20.34; 31.13; 2 Sam 1.11-12; 

 

d.    (4) To seek deliverance or protection (Ezra 8.21-23; Esther 4.16)

 

e.    (5) To express repentance and the return to God (Joel 2.12; Jonah 3.5-8)

 

f.     (6) To humble oneself before God (1 Kings 21.27-29; Psalm 35.13; but Lk 18.12)

 

g.    (7) To express concern for the work of God (Nehemiah 1.3-4; Daniel 9.3)

 

My heart is hungry for ‘all the fullness of God.’ I long for a deeper work of God in the midst of his people.  I yearn for a mighty tide of missionary zeal to spread a passion for the supremacy of Christ in all things for the joy of all peoples. I long to see unmistakable, supernatural new birth taking place week in and week out through the compelling witness of God’s transformed people wherever he is named.  –John Piper

 

h.    (8) To minister to the needs of others (Isaiah 58.1-12)

 

i.      (9) To overcome temptation and dedicate yourself to God (Matthew 4.1-11)

 

j.      (10) To express love and worship to God (Luke 2.37)

 

Fasting can be a testimony—even one directed to yourself—that you find your greatest pleasure and enjoyment in life from God. It’s a way of demonstrating to yourself that you love God more than food, that seeking him is more important to you than eating, that Jesus—the Bread of heaven (see John 6:51)—is more satisfying to you than earthly bread.  When you fast you remind  yourself that unlike many (see Philippians 3:19), your stomach is not your God. –Donald Whitney

 

10.Starting out…

 

a.    Skip one meal

 

b.    Twenty-four hour fast: skip breakfast and lunch

 

Fasting is a hard discipline to practice without its consuming all our attention.  Yet when we use it as part of prayer or service, we cannot allow it to do so. When a person chooses fasting as a spiritual discipline, he or she must, then, practice it well enough and often enough to become experienced in it, because only the person who is well habituated to systematic fasting as a discipline can use if effectively as a part of direct service to God, as in special times of prayer or other service. –Dallas Willard 

A Critique of Erik Wielenberg's Godless Normative Realism

 

A CRITIQUE OF ERIK WIELENBERG’S GODLESS NORMATIVE REALISM

Erik Wielenberg sets out to provide a justification for objective morality within a framework of philosophical naturalism.  He recognizes that some influential philosophical atheists have argued that the denial of God renders moral realism unlikely.  Wielenberg takes up the challenge of defending “the plausibility of a robust brand of moral realism without appealing to God or any weird cognitive faculties.”[1]  He refers to his view as “Godless Normative Realism” (GNR). Wielenberg summarizes his view in the following manner:

It is a version of moral realism in that it implies that there exist ethical facts that are objective in the sense just explained.  It is non-natural in that it implies that ethical facts and properties are not reducible to natural facts and properties.  And it is non-theistic in that it implies that objective morality does not require a theistic foundation; indeed, the view implies that objective morality does not require an external foundation at all.[2]

 

Moral facts are thus, sui generis in that they are not reducible to natural properties or in need of any external foundation.  Moral states of affairs supervene on natural states.  As Wielenberg states, 

For example, the claim that the property of intrinsic badness supervenes on the property of pain is logically to the claim that necessarily, pain is intrinsically bad… at least some of the supervenience relationships between moral and non-moral properties are brute facts.”[3]  

 

Wielenberg refers to these moral facts as “substantive, metaphysically necessary, brute facts.”[4]  These “basic ethical facts” are simply part of reality and to ask “where they come from?” or “on what foundation do they rest?” is misguided.[5]

            Wielenberg’s project is bound up with providing a critique of theistic ethics—especially Divine Command Theory ethics (DCT). He has to argue that theistic versions of moral realism are not more adequate or robustly explanatory. This attack on DCT is crucial for Wielenberg since his defense of GNR proceeds “not primarily by providing positive arguments for it but rather by defending it against various objections as well as fleshing it out further.”[6]  This argumentative strategy is important to note in that criticisms of GNR by advocates of DCT will often be met by a tu quoque response in which Wielenberg alleges that the DCT of ethics suffers from the same difficulty and, thus, offers no reason to consider DCT as explanatorily advantageous.  

            Although Wielenberg’s thought is nuanced and creative there are a number of potential problems.  Four areas of controversy for his thesis will be examined: (1) the issue of moral Platonism, (2) the nature of Wielenberg’s naturalism, (3) evolutionary arguments against naturalism as applied to Wielenberg’s ethics and (4) the nature of moral obligation.

            First, consider the issue of moral Platonism. There is an interpretative ambiguity in Wielenberg’s work as to whether his view is a version of moral Platonism. William Craig, as a critic of Wielenberg’s position, has consistently described the position as Platonic.[7]  Wielenberg has admitted to a kind of moral Platonism in his book: 

Craig is correct that in Robust Ethics and elsewhere I committed myself to the existence of abstract entities like propositions and properties.”  I did so because I didn’t see how, for example, people could have moral obligations without there being an abstract property like being morally obligated.[8]

 

In response to Craig’s interaction with his views, Wielenberg seems ready to jettison the Platonic aspect of his project.  In light of this, it will helpful to briefly describe the entailments of Wielenberg’s view on both the Platonic and non-Platonic interpretation.

            Platonism posits a bifurcation of reality into two causally unconnected domains.  How these domains relate to each other is a perennial problem and Wielenberg has no discussion as to how this relationship between a realm of abstract objects and a realm of concrete objects is possible.  In light of Wielenberg’s notions of supervenience, Craig asks, “How can a physical object somehow reach out and causally connect to a transcendent, causally isolated, abstract object?”[9]  Wielenberg attempts to lessen the tension in this argument by appealing to theism’s conception of divine causation as an analogy for his conception of supervenience.  But, as Craig, argues, this analogy fails in that within the theistic framework both God and the universe are concrete objects with causal powers which can be causally related to each other.  “But,” as Craig notes, “how physical objects can be causally connected to abstract objects is wholly obscure.”[10]

            Does the non-Platonic interpretation, seemingly embraced by Wielenberg after criticism of the Platonic version, offer a better alternative?  In relinquishing the Platonic version of his thesis this opens him to the charge that “his ‘metaphysics of morals’ becomes vacuous.”[11]  In rejecting moral Platonism, Wielenberg’s position loses what it was claiming to provide, namely, a metaphysical basis for non-naturalistic moral realism.  Beyond this criticism there is the further problem for Wielenberg’s revised, non-Platonic understanding of his project—the problem of uninstantiated properties.

Suppose some moral property, say, loyalty or civility, has not yet been instantiated in the course of human evolution.  How, then, can some physical situation be causally related to loyalty so as to cause its supervenience upon that physical state of affairs?  For there is literally nothing to be causally related to, there being as yet no instance of loyalty.  The physical state of affairs must be able to reach out and instantiate the moral property itself, in which case we are back to a mysterious causal connection between physical objects and abstract objects.[12]

 

Thus, on either a Platonic or non-Platonic understanding, Wielenberg’s conception of moral properties supervening on non-moral states seems problematic.

            Another area of concern regarding Wielenberg’s view is his conception of naturalism and to what extent his view is “naturalistic.”  It will be helpful to see Wielenberg’s own words describing his position.

In contemporary philosophy, the term “naturalism” is used as a label for a wide range of views.  I endorse a number of theses that are commonly associated with naturalism, including (i) there is no God or non-physical souls; (ii) every physical event that has a cause at all has a complete physical cause; and (iii) the physical sciences are entirely successful in their own domains. At the same time, I reject a number of claims that are commonly included in strong versions of naturalism, including (i) all there is to reality is the natural or physical world and (ii) empirical science is the sole source of human knowledge.[13]  

 

One could quibble with the looseness of some of these descriptive indicators of naturalism but Wielenberg’s general picture is clear. His is a “naturalism” which has more to it than the “natural world.”  This is an ontological claim.  It is matched by the epistemological claim that science is not the sole source of human knowledge.  Wielenberg recognizes, at times, that his view of “robust causal connections” between moral properties and non-moral properties “builds a suspiciously convenient (from a human perspective) degree of order and rationality into the basic structure of the universe.”[14]  In order to forestall any concerns about his naturalistic bona fides he likens his view to philosophy of mind researcher David Chalmers and his views on the relationship between naturalism and Chalmers’ understanding of qualia.  For Chalmers, qualia are sui generis and not reducible to physical processes.  In light of this, Wielenberg argues:

My brand of robust normative realism is naturalistic at least to the extent that Chalmers’ naturalistic dualism is.  Like Chalmers, I endorse the existence of non-physical properties but do not reject the causal closure of the physical or deny that the physical sciences are entirely successful in their own domains. If naturalistic dualists can get by without invoking the forces of darkness, then so can robust normative realists.[15]

 

This appeal to “Chalmers-like” naturalism can be challenged.  It does not appear as if this brand of naturalism is sufficiently “natural” enough.  J. P. Moreland explains:

However, Chalmers’ approach is a version of panpsychism, and it is ‘natural’ in only two senses: it is not theistic and it establishes ‘regular and normal’ connections between the relevant states.  But it is not natural in the sense that panpsychist mental entities are odd and not at home in a physicalist, naturalist ontology, nor can their existence be adequately explained by the Grand Story with its combinatorial processes, a point that Chalmers acknowledges.[16]

 

Therefore, even though Wielenberg wants to refer to his view as “naturalistic,” it contains features that do not comport well with a full-blown naturalism.  In his interaction with Wielenberg, J. P. Moreland attempts to specify the nature and boundaries of philosophical naturalism.  Moreland notes the three areas of ontology, epistemology, and a creation account.  These categories must also be internally consistent with each other and that by clarifying the relationship between these three categories will allow a picture to emerge regarding what ought to constitute the naturalist’s ontology.[17]  Moreland then describes naturalism as follows: “Fundamentally, naturalism is the view that the spatio-temporal universe of entities postulated by our best current (or ideal) theories in the physical sciences, particularly physics, is all there is.”[18]  But it is precisely this definition that Wielenberg says he rejects.[19]  This opens Wielenberg up to the charge of having a “bloated” ontology.[20]  Wielenberg seems content to respond that his is a naturalism which has the features needed to justify objective moral realism.  His ontology and epistemology stretch to accommodate whatever is needed to explain non-naturalistic moral realism.  This seems ad hoc and, thus, a theistic philosophical system would have greater explanatory power and scope.

A third area of criticism regarding Wielenberg’s view revolves around the idea of the “creation story” of naturalism, as so named by Moreland.  For the atheist, naturalistic evolution is “the only game in town” to generate humans.[21]  This evolutionary process is non-teleological in that it is not guided by intelligence that is goal-oriented as to the final outcome.  In light of this a number of philosophers have utilized Alvin Plantinga’s “Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism” (EAAN) to develop “Evolutionary Moral Debunking Arguments” (EMDA).[22]  Space constraints forbid an exhaustive analysis of this argument but the basic idea is that the combination of the belief in naturalism with the belief in evolution renders the probability of one’s cognitive faculties as low. This is due to the fact that evolutionary mechanisms track for survival and reproductive advantage and not for truth.  Adam Lloyd Johnson summarizes the argument as applied to moral beliefs:

Given N[aturalism] and E[volution], I see no good reason to think our moral intuitions point to, or are connected with moral truth that exists beyond our own subjective preferences.  If the origination of our moral beliefs can be explained by their evolutionary survival value, then what reason is there to think they also happen to be objectively true?  Surely there is no objective evidence for them; all we have to go on is our subjective intuitions and there is no reason to think those are reliable, given Nand E.[23]

 

So, if our moral beliefs happened to align with truth, which Wielenberg’s perspective posits, this would be the result of a “lucky coincidence” thus further rendering his view as ad hoc.  Wielenberg does admit that if “there is no God, then it is in some sense an accident that we have the moral properties that we do.”[24]  He also admits that his “view undoubtedly entails that certain elements of the universe (the actual laws of nature and basic ethical facts) fit together in a nifty and perhaps amazing way.”[25]  It is precisely here that Wielenberg’s theistic interlocutors argue that Wielenberg’s GNR lacks the explanatory depth and scope that DCT exhibits.  

            The fourth area of critical analysis in regards to Wielenberg’s non-theistic moral realism concerns the nature of moral obligation.  Even granting Wielenberg’s defense of “brute ethical facts,” this state of affairs does not automatically create an ethical obligation to obey those ethical facts.  As Olli-Pekka Vainio argues: 

We can think that, e.g., numbers and mathematical rules are brute facts but they do not compel us morally.  Failing in [a] math test makes us stupid but not guilty.  Non-natural brute moral facts need therefore an additional guilty-making property, which cannot be reduced to harm.[26]

 

Wielenberg attempts to specify the nature of obligation (i.e., the “additional guilty-making property”) by grounding moral obligation in the fact of having a normative reason to act.  Wielenberg uses the example of a fellow student who has his arm engulfed in fire and is screaming for assistance.  The example further stipulates that you have time and access to a bucket of water.  From this example, Wielenberg concludes, “The intrinsic features of the student’s pain makes his pain intrinsically bad; those same intrinsic features also give me a normative reason to stop his pain.”[27]  Wielenberg’s thought here is open to at least two challenges.

            First, if moral obligation is simply equated to having reasons to perform an act then this has the consequence of denying that are any supererogatory acts.  The act of sacrificing one’s life for another is a good action but most ethicists would argue that it is above the call of duty.  Wielenberg’s idea of equating “reason to do X” with “obligation to do X” seems too strong.  In his debate with William Craig, Wielenberg attempts to defend against this objection by modifying his view in light of the work of Joseph Raz.

Raz suggests that there is value in us being able to form our own plans and ideals for our lives and that value can generate reasons to refrain from acting on the total balance of moral reasons if doing so would be deeply at odds with our own life plans.  Acting on the total balance of moral reasons anyway in such cases is supererogatory.[28]

 

This move by Wielenberg seems questionable given his system.  Why is it not the case that the “total balance of moral reasons” does not provide a moral obligation that cannot be overridden?  This modification of view by Wielenberg (what he calls a “tweak”) is actually an abandonment of his earlier view.  “For now moral obligations are not determined by having decisive moral reasons for doing some action, which contradicts normative realism.”[29]  

            Even if Wielenberg can overcome the supererogation objection and hold to a view in which moral obligations are determined by having moral reasons, this view of obligation will be seen to fit better within a theistic context with a personal God.  As Vainio, relying on the work of Robert Adams, notes, “the central feature of ethics is the obligatory nature of moral facts, and obligations make sense only in social contexts.”[30]  Although Wielenberg states that these brute ethical facts of moral obligation just obtain, it does seem, as Stephen Evans states, that this is “the kind of truth that cries out for an explanation.”[31] And, again, it is the case that a theistic version of ethics provides a better fit for the moral features necessary to affirm moral realism.

            Erik Wielenberg has attempted to defend a non-naturalistic moral realism that is consistent with atheism.  A significant part of his project is to compare and contrast his view with divine command theory ethics in an effort to demonstrate the superior explanatory power of his view.  This paper has critically engaged Wielenberg’s view and found there to be significant problems in the following areas: (1) the issue of moral Platonism, (2) the nature of Wielenberg’s naturalism, (3) evolutionary arguments against naturalism as applied to Wielenberg’s ethics and (4) the nature of moral obligation.

---

     [1]Erik Wielenberg, Robust Ethics: The Metaphysics and Epistemology of Godless Normative Realism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), ix.

     [2]Erik Wielenberg, “In Defense of Non-natural, Non-theistic Moral Realism,” Faith and Philosophy 26 (2009), 24.

     [3]Wielenberg, “In Defense of Non-natural, Non-theistic Moral Realism,” 28.

     [4]Wielenberg, Robust Ethics, 38.

     [5]Wielenberg, Robust Ethics, 38.

     [6]Wielenberg, Robust Ethics, 39.

     [7]William Craig, “Review of Robust Ethics: The Metaphysics and Epistemology of Godless Normative Realism. By Erik J. Wielenberg. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014,” Philosophia Christi 19 (2017): 473; “Erik Wielenberg’s Metaphysics of Morals,” Philosophia Christi20 (2018): 333; and Craig’s contributions to William Lane Craig and Erik J. Wielenberg, A Debate on God and Morality: What is the Best Account of Objective Moral Values and Duties?Adam Lloyd Johnson, ed. (New York: Routledge, 2021).

     [8]Erik Wielenberg, “Reply to Craig, Murphy, McNabb, and Johnson,” Philosophia Christi20 (2018), 367.  Also, “Additionally, while in Robust EthicsI freely help myself to various abstract entities—e.g., properties and states of affairs—it may be that those aspects of my view are dispensable.” Johnson, ed., A Debate on God and Morality, 40.

     [9]Craig, “Erik Wielenberg’s Metaphysics of Morals,” 336.

     [10]Craig, “Erik Wielenberg’s Metaphysics of Morals,” 336.

     [11]Craig and Wielenberg, A Debate on God and Morality, 51.

     [12]Craig and Wielenberg, A Debate on God and Morality, 64.

     [13]Craig and Wielenberg, A Debate on God and Morality, 205.

     [14]Erik Wielenberg, “Evil and Atheistic Moral Realism,” in Explaining Evil: Four Views, W. Paul Franks, ed., (New York: Bloomsbury, 2019), 132.

     [15]Wielenberg, Robust Ethics, 15-16.

     [16]J. P. Moreland, “Oppy on the Argument from Consciousness,” Faith and Philosophy 29 (2012), 79-80.

     [17]J. P. Moreland, “Wielenberg and Emergence: Borrowed Capital on the Cheap,” in Craig and Wielenberg, A Debate on God and Morality, 95.

     [18]Moreland, “Wielenberg and Emergence: Borrowed Capital on the Cheap,” 95.

     [19]Craig and Wielenberg, A Debate on God and Morality, 207.

     [20]Craig and Wielenberg, A Debate on God and Morality, 108.  Consider also Craig’s description of Wielenberg’s “extravagant metaphysical claims” (32).

     [21]The language of “only game in town” comes from Alvin Plantinga, Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 24.

     [22]Alvin Plantinga’s argument is developed in Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and naturalism(New York: Oxford, 2011), 307-350. Philosophers using variants of this argument against Wielenberg include William Craig in Craig and Wielenberg, A Debate on God and Morality; Mark Linville, “Darwin, Duties, and the Demiurge,” in Craig and Wielenberg, A Debate on God and Morality, 166-184; Adam Lloyd Johnson, “Debunking Nontheistic Moral Realism: A Critique of Erik Wielenberg’s Attempt to Deflect the Lucky Coincidence Objection,” Faith and Philosophy17 (2015), 353-367.

     [23]Johnson, “Debunking Nontheistic Moral Realism,” 358.

     [24]Wielenberg, Robust Ethics, 56.

     [25]Wielenberg, Robust Ethics, 175

     [26]Olli-Pekka Vainio, “Objective Morality After Darwin (And Without God)?” Heythrop Journal56 (2015): 588.

     [27]Wielenberg, Robust Ethics, 8.

     [28]Craig and Wielenberg, A Debate on God and Morality, 43.

     [29]Craig and Wielenberg, A Debate on God and Morality, 53.

     [30]Vainio, “Objective Morality After Darwin (And Without God)?” 588.

     [31]C. Stephen Evans, God and Moral Obligation (New York: Oxford, 2013), 152.

Naturalism vs. Theism Chart from Paul Copan

Naturalism versus Theism: Which One Best Explains the Evidence?*

 

Phenomena We Observe	Theistic Context	Naturalistic Context
(Self-)Consciousness exists.	God is supremely self-aware/self-consciousness.	The universe was produced by mindless, non-conscious processes.
Personal beings exist.	God is a personal Being.	The universe was produced by impersonal processes.
We believe we make free personal decisions/choices.	God is spirit and a free Being, who can freely choose to act (e.g., to create or not).	We have emerged by material, deterministic processes and forces beyond our control.
We trust our senses and rational faculties as generally reliable in producing true beliefs.	A God of truth and rationality exists.	Because of our impulse to survive and reproduce, our beliefs would only help us survive, but a number of these could be false.
Human beings have intrinsic value/dignity and rights.	God is the supremely valuable Being.	Human beings were produced by valueless processes.
Objective moral values exist.	God’s character is the source of goodness/moral values.	The universe was produced by nonmoral processes.
First life emerged.	God is a living, active Being.	Life somehow emerged from nonliving matter.
Beauty exists (e.g., not only in landscapes but in “elegant” or “beautiful scientific theories).	God is beautiful (Ps. 27:4) and capable of creating beautiful things according to his pleasure.	Beauty in the natural world is superabundant and in many cases superfluous (often not linked to survival).
The universe is finely tuned for human life (known as the “Goldilocks effect)—the universe is “just right” for life).	God is a wise, intelligent Designer.	All the cosmic constants just happened to be right; given enough time and/or many possible worlds, a finely tuned world eventually emerged.

 

* Taken from Paul Copan, “A Moral Argument” in To Everyone An Answer: A Case for the Christian Worldview, eds. Francis J. Beckwith, William Lane Craig, and J. P. Moreland (Intervarsity Press, 2004), 114.