Todd Phillip has a Master of Divinity with training in Hebrew and Greek, completed a fellowship at Princeton University, and earned a Doctor of Ministry from Dallas Theological Seminary. He spent more than 20 years preaching Christianity in some of the largest churches in America. He is no longer a Christian. He now describe himself as an agnostic atheist.
About a month ago, Phillips release a YouTube video, “8 Reasons I left Christianity”:
William Lane Craig responded:
Phillips has responded to Craig.
I think this one of the most devastating rebuttals to Craig I have ever encountered. What did you think?
Great response, thanks for sharing!
I was particularly interested to see what Craig had to say about divine hiddenness, especially since there’s been some discussion on this issue. It is a common explanation for God’s hiddenness that irresistible belief in his existence is incompatible with humans freely choosing to love God. Both Philips and the atheist woman were arguing against *that* explanation, which Craig doesn’t hold. Yet, Craig responded as if they were arguing against a *different* explanation.
Craig’s uncharitable rebuttal to the woman was especially galling, where he gave examples of our inability to freely believe the falsity of certain facts (e.g., we can’t choose to believe that Trump is not president). None of his examples were relevant to her argument! Her argument was that knowledge of God’s existence is compatible with freely choosing to accept or reject relationship with him, and Craig agrees with this. Craig acted like she was totally confused and making a basic error, when, in reality, he was attacking a clear strawman. Coming from Craig, this was very disappointing to see. He should have directed his response to the Christians who think irresistible belief in God’s existence is incompatible with freely choosing to love him, rather than mislead his audience.