Welcome to Defenders, the teaching class of Dr. William Lane Craig, today, and excurses on natural theology.

Part 4. For more resources from Dr. Craig, go to reasonable faith.org.

Last time I argued that belief in God and in the great truths of the gospel

are properly basic beliefs not only with respect to rationality,

but also with respect to warrant through the witness of the Holy Spirit.

So that by means of the Spirit's witness, we can be said to know that God exists and that these great things of the gospel are true.

Now, today, we come to a very important question that I've been postponing for the last two weeks,

and this is the question of defeaters of properly basic

beliefs. Plottinga emphasizes that the proper basicality of belief in God does not imply

its indefeasibility. That is to say, this belief is defeatable. It can be defeated by other

incompatible beliefs which come to be accepted by the theist. If a theist comes to accept

beliefs which are incompatible with his belief in God, then he has a kind of cognitive

dissonance, and in order to remain rational, he's going to have to give up some of his beliefs.

And perhaps it will be his belief in God that he will give up in order to maintain his rationality.

So for example, imagine a Christian who is confronted with the problem of evil against

the existence of God.

He's confronted with a potential defeater of his Christian belief in God.

If he's to remain rational in his beliefs, he's going

to have to have a defeater of this defeater of his Christian beliefs, a sort of defeater,

defeater, if you will. And this is where Christian apologetics can come in. It can help to formulate answers

to these potential defeaters. For example, the free will defense could be a way of defeating

the problem of evil. But Planniga also argues that in some cases, the original belief itself

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