Welcome to Defenders, the teaching class of Dr. William Lane Craig, today,

an excurses on Natural Theology, Part 29.

For more resources from Dr. Craig, go to reasonable faith.org.

We've been looking at epistemological objections to belief in God, and last time we examined

the atheist objection that in the case of God, there is no evidence for God's existence,

and therefore belief in God is unjustified. We should believe that God does not exist.

There is a sort of presumption of atheism.

Atheism is the default position unless and until there is adequate evidence to prove God's existence.

And I argued that this mistakenly equates the absence of evidence with evidence of absence,

and that you can't always do that.

Indeed, there are certain conditions that need to be fulfilled in order for the absence

of evidence to count as evidence of the absence of something.

Namely, the first condition we saw is that we have fully canvassed the area where the evidence

ought to be found.

And secondly, that if the entity did exist, then we should expect to find more evidence

of its existence than the evidence that we do have.

And in order for the atheist to justify his belief that God does not exist, he would

need to prove to us that both of these conditions

are fulfilled. And that puts a whole new face on the so-called presumption of atheism. We see

now it's not a default position at all. Indeed, it would involve the atheist in some pretty

heavy burden of proof. He would have to show that both of these

conditions are fulfilled, which I at least would argue he cannot. And so the debate over

...