Who is the Catholic William Lane Craig?

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I enjoy listening to WLC and have learned some good stuff from him, but I’m wondering who is the Catholic WLC? I know there are a great many Catholic apologists out there, but my perception is that they are defending Catholicism against Protestantism much more than against Atheism. Who are the Catholics bringing Catholic philosophical understanding of the existence and nature of God, etc to atheist audiences?

EDIT: I know of Peter Kreeft, and have listed to quite a bit of his stuff as well. So maybe my question is, who is the other Catholic WLC (though they do not seem to have identical focuses in any case).
 
I would say Edward Feser. I am not sure how much formal debate he does, but he maintains a blog through which he engages a lot of New Atheists. He also wrote a polemical book The Last Superstition which I find pretty amusing, although some people are put off by the polemics and conservatism. His books are very accessible but also respond to serious objectors. He is, in my opinion, remarkably fair (he is polemical towards New Atheists, but in books like Philosophy of Mind and Aquinas, he states one side’s argument clearly, details the criticisms against it, why certain criticisms fail, which other criticisms have been raised as a result, etc., regardless of whether he holds the position).
 
Feser is definitely top notch, but I think we are fortunate as Catholics to have a wide variety of different personalities with different philosophical focuses and styles all committed to the same doctrine. My “A-Team” of current Catholic philosophers:

Ed Feser
Peter Kreeft
Fr. Robert Spitzer
and let’s not forget Catholic Answers’ own up-and-coming Trent Horn

As for the faithful departed, while he’s most well known for his preaching, Abp. Sheen was quite the philosopher himself. If you can afford it, get yourself a copy of his early book, “God and Intelligence in Modern Philosophy.”

That said, I think it would be wonderful if W.L.C. were to come around to the Catholic Church.
 
Ed Feser and Alexander Pruss are probably WLC’s intellectual Catholic doppelgängers.
 
Although it would be wonderful if Dr. Craig became Catholic, and I would be wonderful if we had more people like him, I would just like to say that Dr. William Lain Craig doesn’t need to be Catholic to be useful. Pretty much everything he talks about is common to all Christianity, and a great defense of the faith against Atheism.
 
As far as writing about atheism is concerned, William Lane Craig is O.K.

But he doesn’t measure up to Paul Vitz’ Faith of the Fatherless. Vitz is a psychiatrist who became an atheist early in his career, then reverted to Catholicism. In Faith of the Fatherless he does a great job analyzing why many of the famous intellectuals of history became atheists, including Sigmund Freud.

I think his analysis blows away all the arguments for atheism by tracing it to a problem of the will, rather than of the intellect.

A great and entertaining read. I’m surprised by how many people have never heard of his book.
 
Charlemagne_II said:
As far as writing about atheism is concerned, William Lane Craig is O.K.

But he doesn’t measure up to Paul Vitz’ Faith of the Fatherless. Vitz is a psychiatrist who became an atheist early in his career, then reverted to Catholicism. In Faith of the Fatherless he does a great job analyzing why many of the famous intellectuals of history became atheists, including Sigmund Freud.

I think his analysis blows away all the arguments for atheism by tracing it to a problem of the will, rather than of the intellect.

A great and entertaining read. I’m surprised by how many people have never heard of his book.
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Charlegmagne: Let’s suppose that atheism is essentially, or predominately motivated by the will rather than the intellect. How does this show that the arguments for atheism fail? Take the following argument for example:
  1. If God exists, then gratuitous evil is impossible.
  2. But, gratuitous evil is possible.
  3. Therefore, God doesn’t exist.
How does the ill-motivated nature of atheism make either premise false? It seems irrelevant to me.

People may be convinced of atheism for the wrong reasons, but that doesn’t mean atheism is false: it just means they’re not justified in believing that atheism is true.
 
prodigalson2011 said:
As for the faithful departed, while he’s most well known for his preaching, Abp. Sheen was quite the philosopher himself. If you can afford it, get yourself a copy of his early book, “God and Intelligence in Modern Philosophy.”
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The late Elizabeth Anscombe is also fantastic (and has written on a very wide range of topics). Some collections of her writings have been released fairly recently - “Human Life, Action and Ethics,” “Faith in a Hard Ground,” and “From Plato to Wittgenstein.” She also wrote “Intention,” which is quite well regarded, though I’ve not read it.
 
Perplexity

**People may be convinced of atheism for the wrong reasons, but that doesn’t mean atheism is false: it just means they’re not justified in believing that atheism is true. **

Right. In which case, realizing they were convinced of atheism for the wrong reasons, they would cease to be atheists. 👍

But I think that if there are no cognitive reasons for being an atheist either, then you don’t go back to atheism. Having been an atheist, I can think of no cognitive evidence that God does not exist. Yet I do recognize, As Vitz recognizes, that the only reason I turned to atheism in the first place was much the same as it was for Freud and all the others he talks about (substituting God for a failed, absent, or abusive father figure, and then killing him off).

Makes sense to me, especially when you consider the case Vitz makes that in every instance he studied through biographical material available to him, this was a chronic pattern for choosing atheism.
 
Hm, well perhaps my atheism is motivated by father problems (seems more like my suspicion that the supernatural is unrealistic), but that doesn’t seem to undermine any of the arguments for atheism I endorse.
 
**but that doesn’t seem to undermine any of the arguments for atheism I endorse. **

Try as I might to imagine any, I’m baffled by the notion that there are arguments for atheism.
 
Perplexity said:
Hm, well perhaps my atheism is motivated by father problems (seems more like my suspicion that the supernatural is unrealistic), but that doesn’t seem to undermine any of the arguments for atheism I endorse.
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Perplexity! I thought you’d left us! Good to see you again! Excuse my exclamation points!
 
Charlemagne_II said:
**but that doesn’t seem to undermine any of the arguments for atheism I endorse. **

Try as I might to imagine any, I’m baffled by the notion that there are arguments for atheism.
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In my case, there are no arguments for atheism needed. The dogma of a literal Adam and Eve seem to make a clear case to reject the Catholic Church right from go.
 
StrawberryJam said:
In my case, there are no arguments for atheism needed. The dogma of a literal Adam and Eve seem to make a clear case to reject the Catholic Church right from go.
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Of course you need arguments for atheism, and so this objection would need to be formulated as one.

P1. If the Catholic Church is the One True Faith, then Adam and Eve were literal people.
P2. Adam and Eve were not literal people.
C. Therefore, the Catholic Church is not the One True Faith.

The problem is that the second premise is unprovable, to the best of my knowledge, and the first one is questionable at best, so this is hardly a strong argument against Catholicism.

More importantly, however, even if Catholicism were -false,- that still wouldn’t prove that atheism was -true.-

Also, I hesitate to compare Professor Peter Kreeft to Dr. William Lane Craig, since Craig formulates his arguments much more thoroughly and has a far better understanding of the nature and problems of Islam in the modern world. On the others, I have no objections yet.
 
I’ll throw a vote in for Br. Guy Consolmagno, S.J., the Vatican Astronomer. I haven’t heard any one-on-one debates with an atheist, but he is really smart, has a strong scientific background, and has a warm, human, geekily humorous nature that tends to win over a hostile crowd. He’s really good at proclaiming his faith to those with a scientific or technical outlook. Check out his book “God’s Mechanics” or search for his name on iTunes for some interviews and talks. His lecture at Harvard on “Heaven or Heat Death? Christian and Scientific Perspectives on the End of the Universe,” (available for free on iTunes U) was amazing in its scope and viewpoint.

Kreeft, Feser, Akins, and Fr. Spitzer are also great candidates.
 
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