William Lane Craig famous quotes

If you're sincerely seeking God, God will make His existence evident to you.
-- William Lane Craig

#Existence #Gods Will #Seeking God

Our churches are filled with Christians who are idling in intellectual neutral. As Christians, their minds are going to waste. One result of this is an immature, superficial faith. People who simply ride the roller coaster of emotional experience are cheating themselves out of a deeper and richer Christian faith by neglecting the intellectual side of that faith.
-- William Lane Craig

#Christian #Cheating #Emotional

If there is no God, then man and the universe are doomed. Like prisoners condemned to death, we await our unavoidable execution. There is no God, and there is no immortality. And what is the consequence of this? It means that life itself is absurd. It means that the life we have is without ultimate significance, value, or purpose.
-- William Lane Craig

#Mean #Men #Purpose

The Christian faith does not call for us to put our minds on the shelf, to fly in the face of common sense and history, or to make a leap of faith into the dark. The rational person, fully apprised of the evidence, can confidently believe...
-- William Lane Craig

#Christian #Believe #Dark

It's no longer enough to teach our children Bible stories; they need doctrine and apologetics.
-- William Lane Craig

#Children #Needs #Stories

The simple fact that the Christian fellowship, founded on belief in Jesus' resurrection, came into existence and flourished in the very city where he was executed and buried is powerful evidence for the historicity of the empty tomb.
-- William Lane Craig

#Christian #Easter #Jesus

The Bible says all men are without excuse. Even those who are given no good reason to believe and many persuasive reasons to disbelieve have no excuse, because the ultimate reason they do not believe is that they have deliberately rejected God's Holy Spirit.
-- William Lane Craig

#Believe #Men #Spirit

I have found that the more I reflect philosophically on the attributes of God the more overwhelmed I become at his greatness and the more excited I become about Bible doctrine. Whereas easy appeals to mystery prematurely shut off reflection about God, rigorous and earnest effort to understand him is richly rewarded with deeper appreciation of who he is, more confidence in his reality and care, and a more intelligent and profound worship of his person.
-- William Lane Craig

#Appreciation #Intelligent #Reality

In order to receive forgiveness, we need to place our trust in Christ as our Savior and the Lord of our lives. But if we reject Christ, then we reject God's mercy and fall back on His justice. And you know where you stand there. If we reject Jesus' offer of forgiveness, then there is simply is no one else to pay the penalty for your sin--except yourself.
-- William Lane Craig

#Jesus #Fall #Order

If Christians could be trained to provide solid evidence for what they believe and good answers to unbelievers’ questions and objections, then the perception of Christians would slowly change. Christians would be seen as thoughtful people to be taken seriously rather than as emotional fanatics or buffoons. The gospel would be a real alternative for people to embrace.
-- William Lane Craig

#Christian #Real #Believe

No one in the final analysis really fails to become a Christian because of lack of arguments; he fails to become a Christian because he loves darkness rather than light and wants nothing to do with God.
-- William Lane Craig

#Christian #Light #Darkness

Even if the disciples had believed in the resurrection of Jesus, it is doubtful they would have generated any following. So long as the body was interred in the tomb, a Christian movement founded on belief in the resurrection of the dead man would have been an impossible folly.
-- William Lane Craig

#Christian #Jesus #Men

More often than not, it is what you are rather than what you say that will bring an unbeliever to Christ. This, then, is the ultimate apologetic. For the ultimate apologetic is: your life.
-- William Lane Craig

#Apologetic #Christ #Ultimate

Should a conflict arise between the witness of the Holy Spirit to the fundamental truth of the Christian faith and beliefs based on argument and evidence then it is the former which must take precedence over the latter.
-- William Lane Craig

#Christian #Religion #Fundamentals

Faith is trust or commitment to what you think is true.
-- William Lane Craig

#Commitment #Thinking

The point is that if there is no God, then objective right and wrong do not exist. As Dostoyevsky said, “All things are permitted.
-- William Lane Craig

#Said #Dostoyevsky #There Is No God

I am an Orangeman first and a politician and member of this parliament [Stormont] afterwards.
-- William Lane Craig

#Firsts #Politician #Members

If true love came at a price, the price would be all worth while if i was spending it on you.
-- William Lane Craig

#Girlfriend #Would Be #Spending

It’s the combination of improbability with an independently given pattern that discredits chance.
-- William Lane Craig

#Patterns #Chance #Combination

The point is this: If God does not exist, then life is objectively meaningless; but man cannot live consistently and happily knowing that life is meaningless; so in order to be happy he pretends life has meaning. But this is, of course, entirely inconsistent—for without God, man and the universe are without any real significance.
-- William Lane Craig

#Real #Men #Order

Therefore, when a person refuses to come to Christ it is never just because of a lack of evidence or because of intellectual difficulties: at root, he refuses to come because he willingly ignores and rejects the drawing of God's Spirit on his heart. No one in the final analysis fails to become a Christian because of a lack of arguments; he fails to become a Christian because he loves darkness rather than light and wants nothing to do with god.
-- William Lane Craig

#Christian #Heart #Light

The idea that we live in a post-modern culture is a myth. In fact a post-modern culture is an impossibility; it would be utterly unlivable. Nobody is a post-modernist when it comes to reading the labels on a medicine bottle versus a box of rat poison! You better believe that texts have objective meaning!
-- William Lane Craig

#Reading #Believe #Ideas

The Christian religion, [Pascal] claims, teaches two truths: that there is a God who men are capable of knowing, and that there is an element of corruption in men that renders them unworthy of God. Knowledge of God without knowledge of man's wretchedness begets pride, and knowledge of man's wretchedness without knowledge of God begets despair, but knowledge of Jesus Christ furnishes man knowledge of both simultaneously.
-- William Lane Craig

#Christian #Jesus #Pride

Catching the apple doesn't overturn the law of gravity or the formulation of a new law. It's merely an intervention of a person with freewill who overrides the natural causes operative in that particular circumstance. And that is, essentially, is what God does when he causes a miracle to occur.
-- William Lane Craig

#Law #Apples #Miracle

The mere possibility provides no warrant for denying what I clearly grasp.
-- William Lane Craig

#Possibility

The renaissance of Christian philosophy has been accompanied by a resurgence of interest in natural theology, that branch of theology that seeks to prove God's existence apart from divine revelation.
-- William Lane Craig

#Christian #Philosophy #Renaissance

Certainty is an unrealistic and unattainable ideal
-- William Lane Craig

#Unattainable #Certainty

The way in which I know Christianity is true is first and foremost is the basis of the witness of the Holy Spirit in my heart. And this gives me self-authenticating means of knowing Christianity is true wholly apart from the evidence. And therefore, even if in some historically contingent circumstances the evidence that I have available to me should turn against Christianity, I do not think that controverts the witness of the Holy Spirit.
-- William Lane Craig

#Heart #Mean #Thinking

The person who follows the pursuit of reason unflinchingly toward its end will be atheistic or, at best, agnostic.
-- William Lane Craig

#Agnostic #Reason #Pursuit

Scepticism, ironically, draws its life's blood from claims to have a good deal of knowledge. For example, your friends claim to know, 'Since every possible option has not been explored, nothing can be said for certain.' That statement is itself a claim to knowledge!
-- William Lane Craig

#Blood #Atheism #Example

Part of the broader task of Christian scholarship is to help create and sustain a cultural milieu in which the gospel can be heard as an intellectually viable option for thinking men and women.
-- William Lane Craig

#Christian #Men #Thinking

But the argument is still unsound, because the first premise is false: there are other unmentioned alternatives, for example, that Jesus as described in the gospels is a legendary figure, so that the trilemma is false as it stands.
-- William Lane Craig

#Jesus #Religion #Example

Richard [Carrier] takes the extremist position that Jesus of Nazareth never even existed, that there was no such person in history. This is a position that is so extreme that to call it marginal would be an understatement; it doesn't even appear on the map of contemporary New Testament scholarship.
-- William Lane Craig

#Jesus #Would Be #Maps

Okay, look at it this way: if the evening news has a very high probability of being accurate, then it's highly improbable that they would inaccurately report the numbers chosen in the lottery. That counterbalances any improbability in the choosing of those numbers, so you're quite rational to believe in this highly improbable event.
-- William Lane Craig

#Believe #Numbers #Looks

I think Martin Luther correctly distinguished between what he called the magisterial and ministerial uses of reason. The magisterial use of reason occurs when reason stands over and above the gospel like a magistrate and judges it on the basis of argument and evidence. The ministerial use of reason occurs when reason submits to and serves the gospel…. Should a conflict arise between the witness of the Holy Spirit to the fundamental truth of the Christian faith and beliefs based on argument and evidence, then it is the former which must take precedence over the latter.
-- William Lane Craig

#Christian #Thinking #Judging

So whom does God wrong in commanding the destruction of the Canaanites? Not the Canaanite adults, for they were corrupt and deserving of judgment. Not the children, for they inherit eternal life. So who is wronged? Ironically, I think the most difficult part of this whole debate is the apparent wrong done to the Israeli soldiers themselves. Can you imagine what it would be like to have to break into some house and kill a terrified woman and her children? The brutalising effect on these Israeli soldiers is disturbing.
-- William Lane Craig

#Children #Thinking #House

The gospel is never heard in isolation. It is always heard against the background of the cultural milieu in which one lives. A person raised in a cultural milieu in which Christianity is still seen as an intellectually viable option will display an openness to the gospel which a person who is secularized will not [as such] part of the broader task of Christian scholarship is to help create and sustain a cultural milieu in which the gospel can be heard as an intellectually viable option for thinking men and women.
-- William Lane Craig

#Christian #Men #Thinking

Atheists themselves used to be very comfortable in maintaining that the universe is eternal and uncaused. The problem is that they can no longer hold that position because modern evidence that the universe started with the Big Bang. So they can't legitimately object when I make the same claim about God - he is eternal and he is uncaused.
-- William Lane Craig

#Atheist #Maintaining #Bangs