You guys are missing the point with Ahmed’s coin example. We can say with high confidence that the probability of a coin landing either heads or tails is 50% because not only can we run multiple trials to demonstrate this, but also because we know the factors affecting a coin toss. However, with the so called fine tuning our sample size of observable universes is one, and we have no idea what possible factors affect the values of the constants and quantities, so to say that the fine tuning is highly improbable is just as silly as saying that the odds of a coin landing heads during a coin toss is highly improbable. After all, if you had no previous knowledge of the factors affecting a coin toss you couldn’t rule out any outcomes and they would have to be assumed to have identical probabilities. Einstein said “Either everything is a miracle or nothing is.” That quote applies perfectly to the fine tuning argument. Either all states are highly improbable or no state is highly improbable.
*"we have no idea what possible factors affect the values of the constants and quantities"* Yeah actually we do, they appear in equations but your impression that physicists just made up numbers because they had no "previous knowledge of the factors affecting" it, is wrong.
Craig's 'understanding' of the probabilities involved in evolution, reminds me of the quote which goes to the effect that 'it's very hard to understand something if your livelihood is dependent upon your misunderstanding of it'
I like the way Craig tries to give his arguments weight by saying that there are "whole books" on each one, thus suggesting that, if his arguments lose in the debate, or seem like complete bullshit, it is due to the lack of time to properly address them. Craig goes on to misrepresent the big bang, and to presume that eternity is impossible (could be true) and then to propose an eternal god. I cannot see how WLC is not creating atheists left and right, except that I vaguely recall what it was like to want my religion to be true so much that I would accept anything that made it seem at least somewhat rational.
"The "slavery" of ancient Israel was a loving arrangement for someone who was in debt, and couldn't pay it. They were treated very well..." Implying that slaves were treated well simply because it wasn't a lawless affair and that there were a handful of laws/rules that governed its institution is astonishing -- and when I read the term "loving arrangement" I almost fell out of my chair. Take a deep breath, close your eyes, clear your mind, open your eyes and read the following passages:
'infinity is an idea in your mind, not something that exists in reality' So an infinite god is just an idea and not something that exists. WLC pretty much refutes his own proposition in 3 minutes.
The argument is to show that matter and energy are not past eternal. In theism, God exists outside of space time, so the statement is not a contradiction in terms.
kivio It was simply a philosophical argument at that point to try and argue that it is impossible for the infinity to exist probably to preempt any possible argument for a past eternal universe. Completely ignoring that god is meant to not just be infinite into the past and future but infinite in power, infinite in knowledge, etc.
"The servant will be severely punished, for though he knew his duty, he refused to do it. But people who are not aware that they are doing wrong will be punished only lightly. Much is required from those to whom much is given, and much more is required from those to whom much more is given." (Luke 12:47-48 NLT) I wish we could go back in time, free these slaves and put you in front of them where you can tell them to their faces that they were in a "loving arrangement".
Craig says that atheists must show that there could be a world in which there is no "gratuitous suffering" in which as many people come to be in heaven. How easy does he want to make it? 1) A world in which god is not a dick and lets everyone into heaven. 2) A world in which god (being omnipotent) has foreseen that no one will do evil 3) A world in which god reveals himself unmistakeably to everyone There are more, but this took me about as much time to think of as it took to type. Gee, I must be WAY smarter than god!
43:35 Good to see that Craig isn't above still using his old Kai Nielsen quote mine. I thought he had stopped using it since I hadn't come across it since his debates with Michael Tooley (1994) and Ingmar Persson (1999) (curiously, Craig had already debated Nielsen himself in 1991). If anyone bothers to check the actual pages that Craig's quote (mine) originates from, and with Craig's reputation for "creative" use of sources there's every reason to, the curious inquirer will find that Nielsen actually is far closer to Arif Achmed's no evidence is a reason not to believe, than to Craig's _'absence of evidence is not evidence of absence'_ (as Craig has put it elsewhere).
Here's what Kai Nielsen actually wrote. The _italics_ are in Nielsen's original text, while I've highlighted Craig's quote mine in *bold*. Note that the stuff after Craig's *'In short, to show that the proofs do not work is not enough, by itself,'* doesn't appear in Nielsen's original at all. Also, when reading the entire Nielsen piece, it's obvious that Nielsen was arguing for an, arguably extreme (if consistent), methodological impossibility of "disproving" the existence of ANY being as demonstrated by his use of Santa Claus and unicorns. Not to mention that the final line (Nielsen's last in that chapter) is basically supporting Arif Ahmed in saying that it is the believer who must supply the evidence for the positive existence of God and if (s)he fails, then it's not unreasonable to dismiss said existence. Kai Nielsen, _"Reason and Practice: A modern introduction to philosophy"_, Harper & Row, 1971, pp. 143-144: 'First, as J.J. C. Smart points out, if the arguments for the existence of God are shown to be unsound, it does not _follow_ that God does not exist. What does follow is that the arguments do not disprove the atheist's claim that God does not exist or answer the agnostic's question about the existence of God by showing that God does exist. *To show that an argument is invalid or unsound is not to show that the **_conclusion of the argument is false._* It is only to show that the argument does not warrant our asserting the conclusion to be true. *All the proofs of God's existence **_may_** fail, but it still may be the case that God exists.* It may still even be the case that God's existence will someday be proved, for someone may think up a new proof that will not fail. That such an argument has yet to emerge gives us reasons to be sceptical, but it does not give us sufficient grounds for saying that it is impossible to give such an argument. *In short, to show that the proofs do not work is not enough, by itself,* to destroy faith. After all these years of religious discussion, if none of the proofs work, we are in a position to assert justifiably that since the proofs are unsound it is not correct to assert that belief and unbelief are on par and that in such a situation one can justifiably believe what one wants to believe. Rather, in such a situation belief is on the defensive, and the burden of proof is on the believer to give us some reason for believing in God. After all, if there is no _evidence_ for the existence of God, then the probability that He exists is very low. We most certainly cannot justifiably assert that belief in His existence is on a par with disbelief, if there is no evidence at all for believing that He exists. We cannot, strictly speaking, disprove the existence of Santa Claus or unicorns, either, but the probability of their existence is, to put it conservatively, rather low. If there is no evidence that there is a God, we can have no rational reason for believing that He exists, while we have very good reasons for believing that He does not exist, namely, that there is no evidence at all for the existence of a putative reality bearing the extraordinary descriptions given to God. thus, it is not fair to assert, given the failure of the proofs, that belief and disbelief are on a par. If the proofs fail and if the appeal to religious experience provides no evidence that there is a God, the burden is on the believer to provide some other reason for belief in God.'
Having watched/listened to more of Craig's debates than I care to admit, it doesn't surprise me to see this considering all the other underhanded and clearly deceptive tricks Craig has used over his career. In this particular case, the content of his quote mine is irrelevant as Craig argues against a straw man. Ahmed never said this proved God doesn't exist only that lack of evidence is a good reason not to accept the hypothesis. It is ironic that the support that Craig uses for his straw man argument is a quote that he takes out of context and twists it to mean exactly the opposite even when the original text supports the very point he is trying to refute. Is it deception or incompetence?
jemmerx It's deception. I simply cannot contemplate such a systematic use of misrepresentation of opponents and scholarship over such a span of time by a man holding two Ph.D.s to be mere incompetence. This track record is far too well-documented, incl. some really feeble replies from Craig when caught red-handed, e.g. by Lawrence M. Krauss. Thus it seems implausible that Craig doesn't realise what he's doing and yet he's continuing regardless. Craig has simply long since gone way beyond the point at which we can plausibly invoke Hanlon's razor to explain (and possibly excuse) his behaviour. Likewise, it's indicative of Craig's actual purpose with his never-ending-debate-circus that despite receiving a ton of excellent objections to his arguments he has actually changed very little in the two or three decades he's been using them. Instead of incorporating criticism to improve his ideas, he simply makes vague claims about the criticism being unreasonable or inapplicable, often by name-dropping some well-known academic/scholar whom he claims has completely invalidated whatever objection is raised. As a historian, I find Craig's resurrection argument to be the most irksome, but that's merely because it involves an academic field in which I have some expertise. I've noticed that physicists will similarly take the most issue with Craig's use of physics (e.g. in his Kalam), while philosophers will latch onto Craig's philosophical reasoning. Having a good insight into why Craig's resurrection argument is, to put it bluntly, a load of bollocks. Being able to follow the criticism of Craig's other arguments by experts in the fields under scrutiny, as well as seeing his use of "dirty tricks" drawn from U.S. high school "win at all costs"-style debating has again led me to the conclusion that Craig is simply using his debates to: A) Preach to the choir. Basically to give the impression to those who already share his religious beliefs that these constitute a "reasonable faith" (however, once the premises are scrutinised, it becomes clear that Craig is presenting "faith-based reason" or "rationalised faith" approach, since Craig is ultimately a fideist). B) Give the impression that Craig is a hotshot academic. In reality, Craig literally belongs to the lunatic fringe, having never held a steady teaching position anywhere outside the kind of U.S. Evangelical "universities" that still employ him (Biola and Houston Baptist). Both of his currrent employers have biblical inerrantism and a certain level of biblical literalism inscribed in a dogmatic statement of faith that all their employees must adhere to - so much for free academic enquiry... Not only that, but while Craig loves to present himself as a "professional philosopher", he has, to my knowledge, never done any philosophical work which hasn't been directed to defending Christianity/theism, or to defend his premises of those arguments (e.g. his philosophy of time arguments are solely directed towards making his Kalam work). C) Give the impression that subjects that are generally settled are actually hotly contested. Similar to climate change deniers and other cases documented in the 2010 book _Merchants of Doubt_, Craig use the debates to give the impression that topics are under heavy academic discussion, when often his opinions are largely confined to his Evangelical co-religionists. Concrete examples are Craig's evolution denial and his insistence that the New Testament can essentially be read as a piece of unvarnished history. Like the ID'ers with whom Craig sympathises, he simply dress up his theology in fancy-sounding academic rhetoric to make it sound like scholarship, rather than preaching.
DebatingWombat I'll admit that my question was rhetorical but I'm happy you replied this way as you have stated my own position on his tactics better than I could ever have. I have long since felt that the entire purpose of his debates is to help maintain the current flock of believers than to convert anyone. Could any of these arguments really covert someone who doesn't already believe in the conclusion? In my humble opinion, with the exception of a few fringe cases, I don't think they can. They are arguments that lack substance. I have to admit that when it comes to Craig, I have this need to watch his debates in much the same way drivers need to slow down to observe an accident.
... that "slaves were in a loving relationship with their owners". I should of left the discussion right at that point. If a slave owner is upset with his slave he cant beat him/her with a rod to death just as long as the slave survives a "day or two". "When a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod so hard that the slave dies under his hand, he shall be punished. If, however, the slave survives....
his holy spirit epistemology example was very insane...I think a mentaly ill person can actually use that argument too... If everybody show you all evidence in the world proving that you're wrong..but as long as you believe that you're right...you have all the reason to believe in yourself.... I mean a crazy person don't believe that they're crazy right?
I have to say that WLC failed in this debate. The most obvious issue I have is his objective moral values argument. It's very hollow...almost content free. If one concedes the premise that God existing yields objective moral values, epistomologically speaking, this becomes a disaster since a "changeless" being, changes his mind on moral issues, mocking the concept of objective moral values. Craig doesn't seem to know what is in fact actually evil. Arif seems to have a moral compass whereas Craig lacks one and seems to only be concerned with exculpating his God of atrocities. The question becomes why does the atheist know what is moral, but the theist doesn't, if the atheist has no "basis" as Craig suggests. Arif rightly understands that morality is an obligation to each other, but Craig just dismisses it and repeats his straw man that atheist's views entail that humans are just animals devoid of morality.
+Scrupulous Atheist I've always just regarded morality as one aspect of human behavior. I've never understood why these marionette strings have to be attached for some people to make sense of their own behaviors.
Craig DOES NOT KNOW THE FIRST THING about the so-called "fine-tuning" issue. And why would he? - he's not a theoretical physicist; he merely quote mines the topic. Look to Victor J Stenger's book "The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning" to read an theoretical physicist jump all over this non-issue.
Craig's point about the Burden of Proof argument just falls flat on its face at the most basic level because it completely misunderstands thee topic of the debate. Craig says that the fact that the premises of an argument fail is not proof that the conclusion is false. This is correct, I could provide a terribly flawed argument for the existence of chickens, but the poor argument doesn't prove that chickens don't exist. It's the same with Craig's poor arguments for God. However the debate isn't about whether or not God exists, it's about whether or not is is reasonable to believe that God exists. Showing the gaping holes in an argument doesn't demonstrate that the conclusion is false, but it does demonstrate that there is no good reason to think that it is true. If there is no good reason to think that something is true then why believe in it at all?
SuperSupermanX1999 Well said! The sad truth is that Craig probably already knows what you say is right--he's certainly smart enough to catch his opponents' occasional lapses in logic. The question is why he keeps sticking to arguments that he ought to know are deeply flawed.
+ghettofreeze Because his arguments make sense to the average layman who wont go home and do any real critical thinking. I talked to a WLC fan who has bought his books and follows everything he has published. When you talk to people like that they regurgitate WLC's argument. Since we don't talk in a debate format it makes it easier to systematically correct each argument.
0:02:14 Look who's talking about self-contradiction... "This shows that Infinity is just an idea in your mind, NOT something that exists in reality." That's cool Dr. Craig. But I'm just curious: How long have God existed, did you say again?
To answer Arif's question on fine-tuning probabilities: some of these constants and quantities are so finely tuned to the point where an adjustment as small as 1 in 10^10^100 would result in the universe either collapsing on itself or expanding too fast. Roger Penrose calculated this: it's the cosmological constant and it really is such an absurdly high degree of precision that's required for it to have successfully resulted in the correct expansion rate of the early universe (initial very early state). It's physically possible , ie there are possible worlds in which the expansion was too fast or too slow. there's no metaphysical necessity requiring the successful fulfilment of these requirements ; ie it's not necessary that the universe expanded the way it did in the same way that numbers and logic are necessary. And there are dozens of other constants and quantities all of which are extremely sensitive to adjustment with regard to how the universe will end up (ie life permitting or not). It's incredibly unlikely for all of the physical, contingent, non-necessary events in the universe to have magically resulted in conforming perfectly to all of these absurdly unlikely probabilities. The probabilities are well established in the scientific literature and is genrally not controversial at all. The process for determining them, however, is difficult and would require training in cosmology / astrophysics. It was unfair on Arif's part to ask Dr Craig to spend his entire statement on very esoteric material which probably wouldn't be easily understood by an undergraduate audience. As for the coin example, the shift in probabilty from flipping a coin to, say, the coin becoming an elephant, is so absurdly high. Arif is reaally straining by saying that it's LOGICALLY possible it could happen; sure, of course it's not a logical contradiction, but it's so unlikely to occur that the possibility of it happening isn't even worth considering for any practical purpose. On the other hand, it's not unlikely at ALL for there to be variations in the behaviour of matter , the smallest adjustment of which would result in no life at all being able to come forth. It's much more likely, for instance , for the electro-magnetic constant to have been off by a hair (thus causing galaxies or planets being unable to form) than it would be for a coin somehow turning into an elephant or flying away in the wind.
Carroll lost to Craig, if you pay attention to the content of the debate. It boiled down to Craig giving arguments for why he held to the causal principle (while Carroll just asserted that we shouldn't, without giving an argument), and Craig challenging Carroll to name and defend a working model featuring a past-eternal universe and evading the Boltzmann Brain problem and Carroll simply claiming the models existed and failing to prove it. There's more, but those are the highlights.
I stopped at the 5:40 mark for this comment. So the universe had a beginning and therefore that means a God exists because Craig is unable to think of anything else and nobody else will ever be able to come up with any other explanation? What is the name of that fallacy????
Has anyone ever explained to Craig that just because we don't (yet) know what "caused" the universe, it doesn't mean that he gets to insert his magical friend by default?
Scott Bowser Yes, many times his debate opponents have pointed out that he is using the "god of the gaps" argument. Why he persists in using the same game plan, year-in and year-out, in every single debate is open to speculation. He might be the worst kind of cynic who victimizes other believers, or he might be a victim of his own scam. Or perhaps he sees himself like a criminal defense attorney who knows that his client is guilty; it's just a job and he can take satisfaction from the fact that he does it better than any other apologist (although that's not saying much).
s bushido Its called "Godspackle (TM)" Got a crack in your knowledge or understanding? Have no fear, we have the solution.... Godspackle (TM) fills any crack, chasm, or abyss regardless of depth or breadth. Sets to working strength in 5 minutes and is able to form the foundation for whatever belief system you wish were true.
SphankeyPD breadth [ bredTH ] NOUN noun: breadth the distance or measurement from side to side of something; width: "a black sweater outlined the breadth of his shoulders" synonyms: width · broadness · wideness · thickness · span · diameter
Oh man. Why do people hold WLC in such esteem. Every time I hear him debate I always catch myself thinking that his arguments sounds like an intellectualized version of something you might hear down at the pub around 4 AM.
"Holy Spirit Epistemology." When you boil it all down, this is the entirety of Craig's argument and that is alarming. When someone can argue through the teeth that the main reason they believe, and feel absolutely justified in doing so, cannot be differentiated in any way from a hallucination.
+jemmerx Any psychotic or delusional person can make the same argument with the same strength: "I believe X, so I'm justified in believing X." It's a bizarre and nonsensical statement that Craig would not accept in any context except defending his own brand of christianity.
Ahmed's best point comes up with the issue of morality. Modern Christianity tries to teach 21st century (or at least 19th century) morality, depending upon your sect, and must try to reconcile that with the pre-first century morality in the Bible.
That's for damn sure. Craig's exact words were, "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." It almost makes you wonder why people bother debating him to begin with, since he admits no amount of reason or evidence could convince him to cease belief in the faith he chose.
I look forward to your further remarks (and am starting to wonder if PMs wouldn't be a much better format for a variety of reasons). I appreciate you taking the time. Let me just say, before you go on attacking the fact that infinity is indeed a number, and is treated as such in the transfinite arithmetic, you might want to Google (or Wikipedia) the name "Georg Cantor".
1) The "farthest extreme" of why there is something at all, rather than nothing, is CATEGORICALLY different than any other consideration of causation. Philosophers have always recognized this category difference. Once you've got SOMETHING, it is all about explaining how one thing leads to another. But when there isn't ANYTHING, there is a categorically different question of how you get something from not-anything.
cont Just because you personally don't have evidence or experience that something may be true, doesn't mean that no one else does, or that the thing is necessarily false.
The question is “Does god exist?” Craig decides that two things must be discussed: 1) what good reasons are there to think god exists and 2) what good reasons are there to think god doesn’t. Ok, here is the prestidigitation. Just consider the question: until something is proven to exist it is impossible to prove that it doesn’t and what the something is doesn’t matter at all. Well he jumped all on this deep inquire by deciding to discuss the negative first thus ending any reasonable discourse.
No, I fully appreciate your point. I am all for new research and improved (or even completely revised) understandings. But there are some distinctions that do not change. And the distinction between "something" and "nothing" is definitely one of them. When theoretical physicissts say "nothing isn't nothing anymore", they are stepping out of their field, into the realm of philosophy, where they are infantile amateurs. It would be like a philosopher (like Craig) trying to do quantum physics...
I'm still waiting for your explanation as to why it is moral to act consistently with God, as opposed to just saying it's moral to act consistently with reason/empathy. How do you determine which basis is the true 'objective' basis for morality? This is the real question you have yet to answer.
"You had everything right until your complete non-sequitor of a conclusion!" Change is an integral comstituent of time. Therefore, if there is change, there is time. If there is time, there is change. But, the absense of time would not allow for change to bring about time. "And to say immaterial things cannot experience change or affect the physical world is to PREsume that dualism is false. That is an unwarranted presumption." mutbutyt's response addressed this well.
Dualism is not supported scientifically. If you're going to use dualism to explain anything, the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate its mechanism. And even if you do that, you still wouldn't have proved minds can exist independent of matter.
Sorry we got mixed up there! If you mean the "anecdotes" of Pyle, Dacey, and Tooley who agree with me about the burden of proof for atheists, then my response is: I wasn't appealing to them as anecdotal examples; I was appealing to the statements they made which substantiate my position. They argue AGAINST the idea that they have no burden, and then show how an atheist should shoulder that burden. If you show up at a debate, and all your opponent's arguments are available...
I am watching the debate now. I think Craig´s argument is that for "Objective" Morality to exist it needs a foundation. The word objective is principal in his proposal. This is from Wikipedia : "Objectivity is a central philosophical concept which has been variously defined by sources. A proposition is generally considered to be objectively true when its truth conditions are met and are "mind-independent"-that is, not met by the judgment of a conscious entity or subject"
"An actually infinite number of rooms cannot actually be filled...." Exactly, therefore, the though experiment fails because all the so called absurdities hinge on a hotel where "ALL the rooms were occupied", so it seems that you have defeated yourself. "just as an actually infinite set of events can never actually be completed." I agree, but this is not an argument that demonstrates that an infinite regress of events is impossible or even unlikely for that matter. ....
+s bushido Obviously, Craig never argued "We don't know, therefore god" as so many of you have been programmed to claim in response to anything resembling a Christian argument. Instead, once he has established that the universe had a cause, he gives a conceptual analysis of what that cause must be. As the cause of space and time, it must be spaceless and timeless and therefore immaterial. But there are only two things that fit that description - either an abstract object (e.g., a number) or an unembodied mind. And since abstract objects do not stand in causal relations, therefore it's plausible that the cause of the universe is a timeless, spaceless, immaterial, unembodied mind (which is what people mean by "god").
3. So, no line with an end can regress infinitely in the other direction. Put this way, the argument clearly begs the question at step 1: We have no reason to assume that an infinite process needs to 'start,' and the problem of an infinite process 'arriving at the end' after 'starting' an infinite distance away is a contradiction in terms. I would also argue: for a causal sequence that has led to our present state, P, each member of the sequence has some....
Oh, now I can read the rest of your responses. I feel I've addressed all of your points, except this one pesky little misconception: Set theory does indeed treat events as members or "objects" within a set of events. In fact, with your support of Teleological arguments, you must have at least *glanced* at Probability Theory. In mathematics, probability of an event is calculated using set theory, with events as the members of the set. QED.
1) When will you comprehend this very simple point that I keep repeating and repeating ad nauseum? I have never disagreed that a mind must be "capable of thought". Indeed, looking back, I was the FIRST to use that description of a mind. But there is a big difference between being CAPABLE of thought, and being always thinking. You yourself are not always thinking. You began thinking this morning, when you woke up. That doesn't mean you didn't have a mind while you slept, it just wasn't thinking.
... everything doesn't just pop into being uncaused out of nothing. 3) You came into existence. You did not exist 200 years ago, but you exist now (both of those statements are absolutely undeniable, and they constitute absolute proof that you began to exist). 4) It may just have "changed states", but the "state-changing" can't go on forever into the past. An actually infinite sequence cannot exist in reality.
HH does not demonstrate the impossibility of an actual infinite, but the impossibility of comprehending an infinite in any finite structure (like a hotel) or process (like contacting, checking-in and out, etc., an infinite number of guests). In short, it demonstrates the impossibility of "supertasks". The problem with HH's first example is that there will always be at least one person displaced from his/her room in order to create the vacancy. There will always be at least.....
Well, I obviously can't respond to all that's been posted in my absence, but I'll respond to the slavery issue: 1) There were still laws governing behavior toward the foreign slaves; they were not to be mistreated. 2) The passage says nothing of "sex slaves", it says the man can either take the woman as a wife, or he must treat her as a daughter. 3) Saying slaves who become Christians should be obedient, hard workers is no statement about the rightness of slavery; but about the work ethic...
"Because the connection between atheism and nihilism seems so obvious to me. I can't see how you can derive moral imperatives and purpose from a atheist perspective." That isn't an argument. If, for example, Hume's treatise on moral values (i.e. that they cannot be derived from non-moral facts) is true, then materialism is at *just as much* of a handicap as theism is in producing objective moral values. In other words, theism doesn't lead to objective values; nothing does.
....a big deal to him evidenced by naming his book and video series 'Cosmos'. Sagan wrote, “Cosmos is a Greek word for the order of the Universe. It is, in a way, the opposite of chaos. It implies the deep interconnectedness of all things. It conveys awe for the intricate and subtle way in which the Universe is put together.” Evidence for order is observed in mathematics, physics, and every other field of science. As rocket physicist, astronautics engineer and space....
2) My examples were only meant as substantiation; the central point is that debators are supposed to present several points of support for their position, and it is indeed the job of the opponent to tear down the other's arguments and erect arguments of their own. Craig always does so, and rightly insists that his opponents do so.
4) But I have shown that Craig does not use an over-abundance of points, that his opponents have used even more points against him, and that this is standard debating practice. Your complaint is unfounded.
I'm only responding to thank you both, and to point out to everyone reading that you never responded to my points about the KALAM (which I thought was the subject here, not some other unrelated Biblical points). And yes, I will respond to your passage, revo. People should know what it means. A fatal blow does not usually take days to kill. It is usually instant. So, if the slave lingers, then it is not possible to know the blow killed him. And the owner has been punished by losing....
Yeah it has been a lot. But I'm actually headed to work now, and (in all honesty) have grown tired of this debate, as it's clear neither of us is going to convince the other. I concluded with Massimo's reply to Perry, which is in effect the same response I've been arguing with you, and Massimo made my case for me. So at this point, I'll leave it there. Thanks for the convo, though.
Arguments often given for the mind being immaterial are that 1) We know ourselves as immaterial entities, *possessing* bodies and brains, and we can imagine our bodies being gone, and yet ourselves remaining (such as in Kafka's metamorphosis, where he is transformed into a large beetle) without any logical contradiction arising; 2) There are things about consciousness that are not YET satisfactorily explained by materialist models (I'm willing to see if they are explained later)...
"However, you may purchase male or female slaves from among the foreigners who live among you. You may also purchase the children of such resident foreigners, including those who have been born in your land. You may treat them as your property, passing them on to your children as a permanent inheritance. You may treat your slaves like this, but the people of Israel, your relatives, must never be treated this way." (Leviticus 25:44-46 NLT) ...........
1. Ehrman questioned him on it, seeing it as important to evaluate his whole relationship to the historical documents that he's appealing to. "How does he expect us to believe he's holding to a historical evaluation of these sources? Based on his own previous assumptions, these texts *have* to be accurate." 2. Okay I'll put it in a simpler way: two wrongs don't make a right. Saying "oh but some of his opponents did it too" doesn't excuse Craig's action. Again, it doesn't help you at all.
Is belief in belief reasonable... Yes. Some premises have to be granted, To entertain any set of propositions. Is belief in gods reasonable... It would depend on what one claimed a god was...
Edit: Dacey himself did NOT use the *former* approach (of trying to prove a negative via showing the concept to be incoherent), but rather stated he was going to defend the latter: reasonably believing God doesn't exist due to insufficient evidence, as ALL atheists in debates with Craig do. And YOU stated Dacey argues properly for atheism. Thanks for ceding my point :)
The philosophical problem with an infinite regress is not based on my intuition of time, nor on time as we know it. It is based on the fundamental concept of one event preceeding another.
Yes it did, as Ehrman pointed out: "So apparently it's O.K. to have theological assumptions about the resurrection, but it's not O.K. to have theological assumptions about the historical sources that the belief in the resurrection is based upon. If the belief in the resurrection is based on certain sources which are in the Bible and if these sources by their very nature have to be inerrant, then naturally you would conclude that the resurrection had to happen." Cont'd...
The point is that moral values are unconditional "ought" statements. We simply cannot say what we "ought" to do without a desired outcome to actualize. Now here is the real biter: what makes one desired outcome "better" than another? Nothing. Therefore what we "ought" to do, and what we value, is certainly not objective, and is instead a product of our society/socio-biological evolution/etc... This does not make it mere preference either, for it isn't just a "preference" that we dislike pain.
...sequence cannot get started, and we lose all subsequent antecedent causes -- including the cause of P. We are not however "taking away" any particular member of the series, only denying it the special status of being the first member. But if we don't "take it away", then all the subsequent antecedents are still there, and we have no trouble arriving at P.
So Craig starts out by trying to weasel out of the burden of proof for the positive assertion that a God (in his case, the specific, interactive theistic god of the Christians) exists?
Craig has done a HUGE amount of work and writing on the subject of the philosophy of time. You drastically over simplify his position. What Craig has shown was that Einstein's interpretation of the Lorentzian effects was based on Einstein's commitment to logical positivism, and verificationism. Einstein only said "there is no favored reference frame" because such a reference could never be verified empirically. However, verificationism has been abandoned, and yet no one seems to have told the...
The "slavery" of ancient Israel was a loving arrangement for someone who was in debt, and couldn't pay it. They were treated very well, and were set free on a regular cycle (whether the owner wanted to or not). However, the slave could choose to remain, which also shows that they were treated well, or else this would be a vacuous provision. It was NOT the evil kind of slavery you imagine. It was a loving provision.
That the Bible cites cases in which God communicates to kings and prophets in no way proves God cannot and does not communicate to people otherwise. But you say you would need evidence. Likewise, I would require evidence for anyone claiming to personally have experienced God. Thus, I think the best question remains “how do we know if a person’s claim of a personal experience with God isn’t a delusion or hallucination, or otherwise a false or falsely attributed perception?
Please stop spamming entire pages. It is hard enough to respond to a few posts. 1) He makes deductive arguments. if someone can't address them, that really isn't his problem. And, as I showed, Atkins and D'sousa tried giving him lots of points to deal with, and he didn't wet his pants about it; he responded. 2) Atkins, Law, and many others mentioned in their rebuttals all the things "Craig still hasn't answered". It's part of debate. These are not babies; they're scholars. They can take it.
4) But, if they are so easily countered when looked at in writing, why is it that Craig's esteemed opponents (who have Craig's written work available to them for preparation, and to whom Craig typically supplies an outline of his arguments pre-debate) still can't counter him during debate time? Craig does not do what Gish does, and you have never given an example where he did. Craig gives points to support his position. As any debator should do.
1) The point of HH is that you cannot fill all the rooms, just as you cannot complete an actually infinite series of events. Hilberts hotel says nothing of "doubling", "holding them in our hands", or "moving them around". It is the filling of an infinite number of rooms which is paradoxical; just as it is the completion of an actually infinite sequence of events which is incoherent and impossible. 2) The problem with the planets is indicative of the nonsensical nature of an actual infinity...
I'm curious... how do YOU read "a mind is an entity capable of thought" as being different from "a mind is capable of producing a succesion of thoughts"? Did I miss something here??
"there could not have been an infinite sequence of events prior to NOW, or else we'd never have gotten here" This statement requires an argument, but there is none other than hand-waving. Let's create a real argument and see how it stands-up: 1. In order for a line (e.g., a timeline) to arrive at some point (e.g., the present), it must have an origin. 2. If it has an origin, then it has a beginning. So it is not an infinite regress. .....
Ahmed is one of Craig's most worthy opponents. I wish there were more like him. But that just makes the fact that Craig emerged unscathed from yet another debate all the more remarkable. William Lane Craig is a Jedi knight.
Craig: objective moral values exist because deep down we know they do! Arif: this argument could be accepted in the church but not here! Craig: I simplified it, actually, Dr. Philosopher So and So says that we know deep down that they exist!
I agree with you. We developed because these molecules were all we had to work with. Saying that a little more or less would kill us is nonsensical and is looking at things in the wrong order. It also confuses the way of looking at probabilites. The term fine tuning also seems to be a bit ironic considering how incredibly hostile the universe as a whole is (with no way for us to survive in most of it). Even this planet has huge areas which are largely not suited for us (oceans..).
Hey Jacopman, man that is a good question and point. God is not the author of confusion but that can come in when people don't translate the hebrew correctly. I think it is as simply as that. King James' men weren't inerrant in there translation and there are other errors in other translations."is there any book in history more confusing in understanding its orignal text?"- the Vedas...will take you for a real spin.
Re: nothing- as I tried to develop the point in the context of the KCA - it is perhaps inaccurate to say that no material is simply nothing. The phenomenon of particles popping into and out of existence does suggest that there is not a clear something/nothing distinction which the Kalam arguments seem to rely upon
3) Dacey recognized his burden of proof and argued as to WHY we would expect more evidence than what we have. The point that "absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence" may be repeated like a mantra, but only because people seem to keep needing the reminder. Pyle was honest and accepted that it is a legitimate point. Dacey too. Tooley says it rather well here: /watch?v=OBEKUBOMA_0 (at 30:37).
...architect Wernher von Braun said: “The natural laws of the universe are so precise that we have no difficulty building a spaceship to fly to the moon and can time the flight with the precision of a fraction of a second.” If the Universe didn't exhibit profound order, harmony and regularity how could this be accomplished?
I am a simple minded person, I hardly detect deceptiveness on anyone´s intentions, be it theist or atheist, but I respect your position. The Arguments Craig use are not defende by him alone, they have been defended for centuries, by many other philosophers and intelectuals, like C.S Lewis, though somewhat modified.
1) I don't see why you call them a reflection of our reason, when we are clearly DISCOVERING them in the natural world. It's like the existence of the external world. It isn't a reflection of our reason, we just perceive that its there. We can't PROVE it is, but it is more rational to believe it than not. 2) It isn't an argument from ignorance. It is the conclusion of mathematicians based on what we DO know about infinities and logical coherence. 3) There is no infinity involved in being...
No, that is completely irrelevant since we are talking about the central definition of a term; not an auxiliary fact about that position. The central defintiion of "theism" is "belief that God exists". The central definition of "atheism" is "belief that God does not exist", and this is borne out in many references; not just the EoP. The idea of an agnostic atheist makes as much sense as the idea of an agnostic theist. It's nonsense, and built entirely on an attempt to dodge burden of proof
"We have never seen something begin to exist, but rather just a recombination of already existing stuff. " If you have noticed Craig has changed his KCA because of this argument, which is an indication that he recognized that it was flawed. He now says "come to be" instead of "begins to exist".
"If the laws of physics are fundamentally lawful- then it means fundamentally things are not random." They are lawful, but there is some randomness built into the system, which prevents hard determinism. Science has taught us that the Universe is highly structured, with precisely defined parameters - in-fact all science is founded on the assumption that the physical world is ordered - and the most powerful expression of this order is found in the laws of physics. Nobody knows where....
Considering we got our fingers burned on the whole 'if it looks designed it is designed' before, it puts a mere reformatting of the same argument on dubious territory to begin with. And when you think back on all the other truths about the universe that were once considered supernatural actually having a naturalistic cause, it's very foolish to think this last one will not have one as well.
Well done to Arif for taken for exposing some of Craig fallacies. Craig often fails when he has to go one on one with a true expert in one specific topic but he often succeeds in winning debates where he gets to use his well rehearsed shotgun tactics to tangle his opponent in a web of circular reasoning which is difficult to comprehensively refute in the strict time limitations of these formal debates but here Arif cuts the web to pieces.
"How can there be intent without a (personal) cause of the universe?" Again, define "intent/purpose" for me, and explain to me how a personal cause of the universe would give us "intent/purpose" of a sort that materialism couldn't. Like I said, it seems like you don't understand that the derivation of moral values from non-moral facts is a problem for *both* the theist and the non-theist.
... most applicable definition is that, time is the measure of change over duration. it is intrinsically tethered to space. Thus, for anything to experience time, it must occupy space, since space is also seen as consisting of the element of time. It, then, goes without saying that anything which is spaceless, is also timeless. Anything which is everywhere, all at once, would not experience time, but express it instead. Anything which is everywhere all at once would be space, itself. .....
I noticed the lack of a question mark, but I typo far too often to "cast the first stone" as it were! Philosophers have come to recognize that it is wrong, especially in the wake of Bayes theorem. No matter how extraordinary a claim, the evidence just needs to be such that P(E|H) >> P(E|~H). Moreover, there is no reason in any probability calculus why supernatural events should be "unlikely". Unless you presuppose naturalism, that is. But that would be begging the question, wouldn't it?
I am prepared to accept that there are conceptual barriers to understanding whereby we cannot expect to be able to simply extrapolate familiar metaphors in the hope of encompassing the whole of reality. We have both hit this barrier but you reconcile this dissonance by positing a God which you find more cognitively comfortable All the properties attributed to God are by definition entities of organised complexity unless you change their definitions which avoids clarity
Just prior to the BB there was matter, but not 'atomic' matter. We are talking about extreme compression of elementary particles . This would have generated a truly enormous gravitational force - hence the compression - its a positive feedback effect. But perhaps at some critical level there is a breakdown of gravity- at this point, the enormous concentration of energy can be released - this is Inflation
'psychological phenomenon' is not meant to be synonymous with psychopathology- it is a feature of human psychology that we have traditionally sought out intentional causative agents. This is a feature of our nature which produces a particular bias in our interpretation of the harmony. So I'm suggesting this is independent of what's really going on
1. He pacts in his arguments with several claims and assumptions. The 'discussion' between Craig and Kagan involved them putting forward arguments, and they responded to (arguing against) the claims of the other. And I watched it; Kagan made Craig look like a novice on moral philosophy. 2. Yes it does, given the alloted time to fully unpack and respond. Craig nearly always mentions "My opponent didn't address...", but because there wasn't enough time.
4. Craig's rhetorical skills that allow him to make (seemingly) good counter-points may aid him well, regarding *debate*. But when we're talking about getting to the heart of the matter - what's true or not - this is when *thoughtful* responses require sufficient time. Kent Hovind made quick responses to lots of counter-points; doesn't change the fact that he was being disingenuous and dishonest in his responses. But it makes those who side with him (creationists) think he "won" his debate.
@digiD Interesting that you think physics existed before the BB. Is it not reasonable to suppose that the laws of physics allowed for BB to occur? On what basis do you posit a God (with all the assumptions which that entails) in preference to the more parsimonious explanation?
Curious,who do you consider as REALLY good?Since I heard WLC is the top or close to the top of the apologetic debater. I'm looking to learn debating and this could be good reference.
I don't I was ever called arrogant. Please explain. And I don't think I'm ignorant in this sense, Many people live there lives without thinking too much about meaning. So I don't think it's ignorance but "too much" awareness. The notion that ultimately everything has no meaning really saddens me. If I was ignorant, I wouldn't care about it.
Exsaint, these objections have already been raised here, but I'll answer them again for your sake: 1) It would need to be a conscious agent with free will, or else it could be eternal while its effect was finite. 2) To say that everything that comes into existence has a cause to do so is more plausible than its negation. The only other view is that things can just pop into being with absolutely no cause, which is worse than magic (and which would make it inexplicable that just anything and...
No, you missed the point of Hilbert's Hotel completely. The point is that there would always be NEW vacant rooms for the infinite guests to move into. The point is that, no matter how many rooms you fill (from 1 to infinity) you always have as many left as when you started. This shows conclusively that there could not have been an infinite sequence of events prior to NOW, or else we'd never have gotten here (literally, since "never" just means "not until "forever" completes"). QED I think.
You guys are missing the point with Ahmed’s coin example. We can say with high confidence that the probability of a coin landing either heads or tails is 50% because not only can we run multiple trials to demonstrate this, but also because we know the factors affecting a coin toss. However, with the so called fine tuning our sample size of observable universes is one, and we have no idea what possible factors affect the values of the constants and quantities, so to say that the fine tuning is highly improbable is just as silly as saying that the odds of a coin landing heads during a coin toss is highly improbable. After all, if you had no previous knowledge of the factors affecting a coin toss you couldn’t rule out any outcomes and they would have to be assumed to have identical probabilities. Einstein said “Either everything is a miracle or nothing is.” That quote applies perfectly to the fine tuning argument. Either all states are highly improbable or no state is highly improbable.
Unfortunately Arif didn't flesh out that argument, because it is an excellent one.
*"we have no idea what possible factors affect the values of the constants and quantities"*
Yeah actually we do, they appear in equations but your impression that physicists just made up numbers because they had no "previous knowledge of the factors affecting" it, is wrong.
Wow, Arif Ahmed is brilliant
Since Craig always repeats the same opening argument, You can listen to Arif's opening argument from 20:31
You're welcome
You can skip his first rebuttal too, since he replays that from a script too.
Craig's presentation 0:00
Arif's presentation 20:45
Craig's response 43:05
Craig - 0:00
Arif - 20:45
Craig - 43:05
Arif - 56:19
Questions - 1:09:53
Craig's 'understanding' of the probabilities involved in evolution, reminds me of the quote which goes to the effect that 'it's very hard to understand something if your livelihood is dependent upon your misunderstanding of it'
It's unfortunate that such an intelligent person should have to even engage in these sorts of arguments, but I'm glad he has.
I like the way Craig tries to give his arguments weight by saying that there are "whole books" on each one, thus suggesting that, if his arguments lose in the debate, or seem like complete bullshit, it is due to the lack of time to properly address them.
Craig goes on to misrepresent the big bang, and to presume that eternity is impossible (could be true) and then to propose an eternal god. I cannot see how WLC is not creating atheists left and right, except that I vaguely recall what it was like to want my religion to be true so much that I would accept anything that made it seem at least somewhat rational.
"The "slavery" of ancient Israel was a loving arrangement for someone who was in debt, and couldn't pay it. They were treated very well..."
Implying that slaves were treated well simply because it wasn't a lawless affair and that there were a handful of laws/rules that governed its institution is astonishing -- and when I read the term "loving arrangement" I almost fell out of my chair.
Take a deep breath, close your eyes, clear your mind, open your eyes and read the following passages:
'infinity is an idea in your mind, not something that exists in reality'
So an infinite god is just an idea and not something that exists.
WLC pretty much refutes his own proposition in 3 minutes.
The argument is to show that matter and energy are not past eternal. In theism, God exists outside of space time, so the statement is not a contradiction in terms.
kivio It was simply a philosophical argument at that point to try and argue that it is impossible for the infinity to exist probably to preempt any possible argument for a past eternal universe. Completely ignoring that god is meant to not just be infinite into the past and future but infinite in power, infinite in knowledge, etc.
Arnold Flibble infinity is impossible in space time i think is what he's getting at, not something that may exist outside of space time
"The servant will be severely punished, for though he knew his duty, he refused to do it. But people who are not aware that they are doing wrong will be punished only lightly. Much is required from those to whom much is given, and much more is required from those to whom much more is given." (Luke 12:47-48 NLT)
I wish we could go back in time, free these slaves and put you in front of them where you can tell them to their faces that they were in a "loving arrangement".
Craig says that atheists must show that there could be a world in which there is no "gratuitous suffering" in which as many people come to be in heaven. How easy does he want to make it?
1) A world in which god is not a dick and lets everyone into heaven.
2) A world in which god (being omnipotent) has foreseen that no one will do evil
3) A world in which god reveals himself unmistakeably to everyone
There are more, but this took me about as much time to think of as it took to type. Gee, I must be WAY smarter than god!
Craig - 0:00
Arif - 20:45
Craig - 43:05
Arif - 56:19
Questions - 1:09:53
43:35 Good to see that Craig isn't above still using his old Kai Nielsen quote mine. I thought he had stopped using it since I hadn't come across it since his debates with Michael Tooley (1994) and Ingmar Persson (1999) (curiously, Craig had already debated Nielsen himself in 1991).
If anyone bothers to check the actual pages that Craig's quote (mine) originates from, and with Craig's reputation for "creative" use of sources there's every reason to, the curious inquirer will find that Nielsen actually is far closer to Arif Achmed's no evidence is a reason not to believe, than to Craig's _'absence of evidence is not evidence of absence'_ (as Craig has put it elsewhere).
Here's what Kai Nielsen actually wrote. The _italics_ are in Nielsen's original text, while I've highlighted Craig's quote mine in *bold*.
Note that the stuff after Craig's *'In short, to show that the proofs do not work is not enough, by itself,'* doesn't appear in Nielsen's original at all.
Also, when reading the entire Nielsen piece, it's obvious that Nielsen was arguing for an, arguably extreme (if consistent), methodological impossibility of "disproving" the existence of ANY being as demonstrated by his use of Santa Claus and unicorns.
Not to mention that the final line (Nielsen's last in that chapter) is basically supporting Arif Ahmed in saying that it is the believer who must supply the evidence for the positive existence of God and if (s)he fails, then it's not unreasonable to dismiss said existence.
Kai Nielsen, _"Reason and Practice: A modern introduction to philosophy"_, Harper & Row, 1971, pp. 143-144:
'First, as J.J. C. Smart points out, if the arguments for the existence of God are shown to be unsound, it does not _follow_ that God does not exist. What does follow is that the arguments do not disprove the atheist's claim that God does not exist or answer the agnostic's question about the existence of God by showing that God does exist. *To show that an argument is invalid or unsound is not to show that the **_conclusion of the argument is false._* It is only to show that the argument does not warrant our asserting the conclusion to be true. *All the proofs of God's existence **_may_** fail, but it still may be the case that God exists.* It may still even be the case that God's existence will someday be proved, for someone may think up a new proof that will not fail. That such an argument has yet to emerge gives us reasons to be sceptical, but it does not give us sufficient grounds for saying that it is impossible to give such an argument. *In short, to show that the proofs do not work is not enough, by itself,* to destroy faith. After all these years of religious discussion, if none of the proofs work, we are in a position to assert justifiably that since the proofs are unsound it is not correct to assert that belief and unbelief are on par and that in such a situation one can justifiably believe what one wants to believe. Rather, in such a situation belief is on the defensive, and the burden of proof is on the believer to give us some reason for believing in God. After all, if there is no _evidence_ for the existence of God, then the probability that He exists is very low. We most certainly cannot justifiably assert that belief in His existence is on a par with disbelief, if there is no evidence at all for believing that He exists.
We cannot, strictly speaking, disprove the existence of Santa Claus or unicorns, either, but the probability of their existence is, to put it conservatively, rather low. If there is no evidence that there is a God, we can have no rational reason for believing that He exists, while we have very good reasons for believing that He does not exist, namely, that there is no evidence at all for the existence of a putative reality bearing the extraordinary descriptions given to God. thus, it is not fair to assert, given the failure of the proofs, that belief and disbelief are on a par. If the proofs fail and if the appeal to religious experience provides no evidence that there is a God, the burden is on the believer to provide some other reason for belief in God.'
Having watched/listened to more of Craig's debates than I care to admit, it doesn't surprise me to see this considering all the other underhanded and clearly deceptive tricks Craig has used over his career.
In this particular case, the content of his quote mine is irrelevant as Craig argues against a straw man. Ahmed never said this proved God doesn't exist only that lack of evidence is a good reason not to accept the hypothesis. It is ironic that the support that Craig uses for his straw man argument is a quote that he takes out of context and twists it to mean exactly the opposite even when the original text supports the very point he is trying to refute.
Is it deception or incompetence?
jemmerx
It's deception.
I simply cannot contemplate such a systematic use of misrepresentation of opponents and scholarship over such a span of time by a man holding two Ph.D.s to be mere incompetence.
This track record is far too well-documented, incl. some really feeble replies from Craig when caught red-handed, e.g. by Lawrence M. Krauss. Thus it seems implausible that Craig doesn't realise what he's doing and yet he's continuing regardless. Craig has simply long since gone way beyond the point at which we can plausibly invoke Hanlon's razor to explain (and possibly excuse) his behaviour.
Likewise, it's indicative of Craig's actual purpose with his never-ending-debate-circus that despite receiving a ton of excellent objections to his arguments he has actually changed very little in the two or three decades he's been using them. Instead of incorporating criticism to improve his ideas, he simply makes vague claims about the criticism being unreasonable or inapplicable, often by name-dropping some well-known academic/scholar whom he claims has completely invalidated whatever objection is raised.
As a historian, I find Craig's resurrection argument to be the most irksome, but that's merely because it involves an academic field in which I have some expertise. I've noticed that physicists will similarly take the most issue with Craig's use of physics (e.g. in his Kalam), while philosophers will latch onto Craig's philosophical reasoning.
Having a good insight into why Craig's resurrection argument is, to put it bluntly, a load of bollocks. Being able to follow the criticism of Craig's other arguments by experts in the fields under scrutiny, as well as seeing his use of "dirty tricks" drawn from U.S. high school "win at all costs"-style debating has again led me to the conclusion that Craig is simply using his debates to:
A) Preach to the choir.
Basically to give the impression to those who already share his religious beliefs that these constitute a "reasonable faith" (however, once the premises are scrutinised, it becomes clear that Craig is presenting "faith-based reason" or "rationalised faith" approach, since Craig is ultimately a fideist).
B) Give the impression that Craig is a hotshot academic.
In reality, Craig literally belongs to the lunatic fringe, having never held a steady teaching position anywhere outside the kind of U.S. Evangelical "universities" that still employ him (Biola and Houston Baptist). Both of his currrent employers have biblical inerrantism and a certain level of biblical literalism inscribed in a dogmatic statement of faith that all their employees must adhere to - so much for free academic enquiry...
Not only that, but while Craig loves to present himself as a "professional philosopher", he has, to my knowledge, never done any philosophical work which hasn't been directed to defending Christianity/theism, or to defend his premises of those arguments (e.g. his philosophy of time arguments are solely directed towards making his Kalam work).
C) Give the impression that subjects that are generally settled are actually hotly contested.
Similar to climate change deniers and other cases documented in the 2010 book _Merchants of Doubt_, Craig use the debates to give the impression that topics are under heavy academic discussion, when often his opinions are largely confined to his Evangelical co-religionists. Concrete examples are Craig's evolution denial and his insistence that the New Testament can essentially be read as a piece of unvarnished history. Like the ID'ers with whom Craig sympathises, he simply dress up his theology in fancy-sounding academic rhetoric to make it sound like scholarship, rather than preaching.
DebatingWombat I'll admit that my question was rhetorical but I'm happy you replied this way as you have stated my own position on his tactics better than I could ever have. I have long since felt that the entire purpose of his debates is to help maintain the current flock of believers than to convert anyone. Could any of these arguments really covert someone who doesn't already believe in the conclusion? In my humble opinion, with the exception of a few fringe cases, I don't think they can. They are arguments that lack substance.
I have to admit that when it comes to Craig, I have this need to watch his debates in much the same way drivers need to slow down to observe an accident.
... that "slaves were in a loving relationship with their owners". I should of left the discussion right at that point.
If a slave owner is upset with his slave he cant beat him/her with a rod to death just as long as the slave survives a "day or two".
"When a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod so hard that the slave dies under his hand, he shall be punished. If, however, the slave survives....
The more I hear from Craig, the more I realize that he's well spoken and technically a good debater. But his substance is quite weak.
***** What if someone comes to believe in the truth/existence of something based on empirical proof?
his holy spirit epistemology example was very insane...I think a mentaly ill person can actually use that argument too... If everybody show you all evidence in the world proving that you're wrong..but as long as you believe that you're right...you have all the reason to believe in yourself.... I mean a crazy person don't believe that they're crazy right?
And yet no one's been able to show exactly *how* "his substance is quite weak". Hmm...
It took supernatural patience for me to sit through Craig's introduction!!
therefore, God!!!!
@@BigVK19 You don't get irony do you?
I have to say that WLC failed in this debate. The most obvious issue I have is his objective moral values argument. It's very hollow...almost content free. If one concedes the premise that God existing yields objective moral values, epistomologically speaking, this becomes a disaster since a "changeless" being, changes his mind on moral issues, mocking the concept of objective moral values. Craig doesn't seem to know what is in fact actually evil. Arif seems to have a moral compass whereas Craig lacks one and seems to only be concerned with exculpating his God of atrocities. The question becomes why does the atheist know what is moral, but the theist doesn't, if the atheist has no "basis" as Craig suggests. Arif rightly understands that morality is an obligation to each other, but Craig just dismisses it and repeats his straw man that atheist's views entail that humans are just animals devoid of morality.
+Scrupulous Atheist I've always just regarded morality as one aspect of human behavior. I've never understood why these marionette strings have to be attached for some people to make sense of their own behaviors.
Craig DOES NOT KNOW THE FIRST THING about the so-called "fine-tuning" issue. And why would he? - he's not a theoretical physicist; he merely quote mines the topic. Look to Victor J Stenger's book "The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning" to read an theoretical physicist jump all over this non-issue.
Craig's point about the Burden of Proof argument just falls flat on its face at the most basic level because it completely misunderstands thee topic of the debate. Craig says that the fact that the premises of an argument fail is not proof that the conclusion is false. This is correct, I could provide a terribly flawed argument for the existence of chickens, but the poor argument doesn't prove that chickens don't exist. It's the same with Craig's poor arguments for God. However the debate isn't about whether or not God exists, it's about whether or not is is reasonable to believe that God exists. Showing the gaping holes in an argument doesn't demonstrate that the conclusion is false, but it does demonstrate that there is no good reason to think that it is true. If there is no good reason to think that something is true then why believe in it at all?
SuperSupermanX1999 Well said! The sad truth is that Craig probably already knows what you say is right--he's certainly smart enough to catch his opponents' occasional lapses in logic. The question is why he keeps sticking to arguments that he ought to know are deeply flawed.
+ghettofreeze Because his arguments make sense to the average layman who wont go home and do any real critical thinking. I talked to a WLC fan who has bought his books and follows everything he has published.
When you talk to people like that they regurgitate WLC's argument. Since we don't talk in a debate format it makes it easier to systematically correct each argument.
Man, thanks for the good questions..I do enjoy peaceful conversation. Have a great one and peace be with you man.
0:02:14 Look who's talking about self-contradiction... "This shows that Infinity is just an idea in your mind, NOT something that exists in reality."
That's cool Dr. Craig. But I'm just curious: How long have God existed, did you say again?
To answer Arif's question on fine-tuning probabilities: some of these constants and quantities are so finely tuned to the point where an adjustment as small as 1 in 10^10^100 would result in the universe either collapsing on itself or expanding too fast. Roger Penrose calculated this: it's the cosmological constant and it really is such an absurdly high degree of precision that's required for it to have successfully resulted in the correct expansion rate of the early universe (initial very early state). It's physically possible , ie there are possible worlds in which the expansion was too fast or too slow. there's no metaphysical necessity requiring the successful fulfilment of these requirements ; ie it's not necessary that the universe expanded the way it did in the same way that numbers and logic are necessary. And there are dozens of other constants and quantities all of which are extremely sensitive to adjustment with regard to how the universe will end up (ie life permitting or not). It's incredibly unlikely for all of the physical, contingent, non-necessary events in the universe to have magically resulted in conforming perfectly to all of these absurdly unlikely probabilities. The probabilities are well established in the scientific literature and is genrally not controversial at all. The process for determining them, however, is difficult and would require training in cosmology / astrophysics. It was unfair on Arif's part to ask Dr Craig to spend his entire statement on very esoteric material which probably wouldn't be easily understood by an undergraduate audience. As for the coin example, the shift in probabilty from flipping a coin to, say, the coin becoming an elephant, is so absurdly high. Arif is reaally straining by saying that it's LOGICALLY possible it could happen; sure, of course it's not a logical contradiction, but it's so unlikely to occur that the possibility of it happening isn't even worth considering for any practical purpose. On the other hand, it's not unlikely at ALL for there to be variations in the behaviour of matter , the smallest adjustment of which would result in no life at all being able to come forth. It's much more likely, for instance , for the electro-magnetic constant to have been off by a hair (thus causing galaxies or planets being unable to form) than it would be for a coin somehow turning into an elephant or flying away in the wind.
What a smack down on Craig. This is worse than when he took on Cosmologist Sean Caroll.
Carroll lost to Craig, if you pay attention to the content of the debate. It boiled down to Craig giving arguments for why he held to the causal principle (while Carroll just asserted that we shouldn't, without giving an argument), and Craig challenging Carroll to name and defend a working model featuring a past-eternal universe and evading the Boltzmann Brain problem and Carroll simply claiming the models existed and failing to prove it. There's more, but those are the highlights.
@@Vic2point0 Are you a Christian apologist? I have seen you comment before and you seem to always side with the theists.
@@Demonizer5134 I'm an atheist, but I do tend to defend Christianity and theism in general against those who oppose them.
@@Vic2point0 I see that, and I'm curious why. If you are an atheist why are you always on youtube defending the theists?
@@Demonizer5134 Idk, I just try my best to care more about logic and truth than my absence of belief in a god.
I stopped at the 5:40 mark for this comment. So the universe had a beginning and therefore that means a God exists because Craig is unable to think of anything else and nobody else will ever be able to come up with any other explanation? What is the name of that fallacy????
Has anyone ever explained to Craig that just because we don't (yet) know what "caused" the universe, it doesn't mean that he gets to insert his magical friend by default?
Scott Bowser Some people have. Seems like a case of selective hearing/understanding.
Scott Bowser Yes, many times his debate opponents have pointed out that he is using the "god of the gaps" argument. Why he persists in using the same game plan, year-in and year-out, in every single debate is open to speculation. He might be the worst kind of cynic who victimizes other believers, or he might be a victim of his own scam. Or perhaps he sees himself like a criminal defense attorney who knows that his client is guilty; it's just a job and he can take satisfaction from the fact that he does it better than any other apologist (although that's not saying much).
s bushido Its called "Godspackle (TM)"
Got a crack in your knowledge or understanding? Have no fear, we have the solution.... Godspackle (TM) fills any crack, chasm, or abyss regardless of depth or breadth. Sets to working strength in 5 minutes and is able to form the foundation for whatever belief system you wish were true.
Breadth? XD new thing?
SphankeyPD
breadth
[ bredTH ]
NOUN
noun: breadth
the distance or measurement from side to side of something; width:
"a black sweater outlined the breadth of his shoulders"
synonyms: width · broadness · wideness · thickness · span · diameter
Thanks revo, I'm going to take your lead and go too. It's been a pleasure for me also. And thanks to Mentat for his fundi diligence. Cheers
Oh man. Why do people hold WLC in such esteem. Every time I hear him debate I always catch myself thinking that his arguments sounds like an intellectualized version of something you might hear down at the pub around 4 AM.
"Holy Spirit Epistemology." When you boil it all down, this is the entirety of Craig's argument and that is alarming. When someone can argue through the teeth that the main reason they believe, and feel absolutely justified in doing so, cannot be differentiated in any way from a hallucination.
+jemmerx Any psychotic or delusional person can make the same argument with the same strength: "I believe X, so I'm justified in believing X." It's a bizarre and nonsensical statement that Craig would not accept in any context except defending his own brand of christianity.
Ahmed's best point comes up with the issue of morality. Modern Christianity tries to teach 21st century (or at least 19th century) morality, depending upon your sect, and must try to reconcile that with the pre-first century morality in the Bible.
That's for damn sure. Craig's exact words were, "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." It almost makes you wonder why people bother debating him to begin with, since he admits no amount of reason or evidence could convince him to cease belief in the faith he chose.
I look forward to your further remarks (and am starting to wonder if PMs wouldn't be a much better format for a variety of reasons). I appreciate you taking the time.
Let me just say, before you go on attacking the fact that infinity is indeed a number, and is treated as such in the transfinite arithmetic, you might want to Google (or Wikipedia) the name "Georg Cantor".
1) The "farthest extreme" of why there is something at all, rather than nothing, is CATEGORICALLY different than any other consideration of causation. Philosophers have always recognized this category difference. Once you've got SOMETHING, it is all about explaining how one thing leads to another. But when there isn't ANYTHING, there is a categorically different question of how you get something from not-anything.
cont
Just because you personally don't have evidence or experience that something may be true, doesn't mean that no one else does, or that the thing is necessarily false.
The question is “Does god exist?” Craig decides that two things must be discussed: 1) what good reasons are there to think god exists and 2) what good reasons are there to think god doesn’t. Ok, here is the prestidigitation. Just consider the question: until something is proven to exist it is impossible to prove that it doesn’t and what the something is doesn’t matter at all. Well he jumped all on this deep inquire by deciding to discuss the negative first thus ending any reasonable discourse.
No, I fully appreciate your point. I am all for new research and improved (or even completely revised) understandings. But there are some distinctions that do not change. And the distinction between "something" and "nothing" is definitely one of them. When theoretical physicissts say "nothing isn't nothing anymore", they are stepping out of their field, into the realm of philosophy, where they are infantile amateurs. It would be like a philosopher (like Craig) trying to do quantum physics...
I'm still waiting for your explanation as to why it is moral to act consistently with God, as opposed to just saying it's moral to act consistently with reason/empathy.
How do you determine which basis is the true 'objective' basis for morality? This is the real question you have yet to answer.
"You had everything right until your complete non-sequitor of a conclusion!"
Change is an integral comstituent of time. Therefore, if there is change, there is time. If there is time, there is change. But, the absense of time would not allow for change to bring about time.
"And to say immaterial things cannot experience change or affect the physical world is to PREsume that dualism is false. That is an unwarranted presumption."
mutbutyt's response addressed this well.
Dualism is not supported scientifically. If you're going to use dualism to explain anything, the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate its mechanism. And even if you do that, you still wouldn't have proved minds can exist independent of matter.
Sorry we got mixed up there! If you mean the "anecdotes" of Pyle, Dacey, and Tooley who agree with me about the burden of proof for atheists, then my response is: I wasn't appealing to them as anecdotal examples; I was appealing to the statements they made which substantiate my position. They argue AGAINST the idea that they have no burden, and then show how an atheist should shoulder that burden.
If you show up at a debate, and all your opponent's arguments are available...
I am watching the debate now. I think Craig´s argument is that for "Objective" Morality to exist it needs a foundation. The word objective is principal in his proposal. This is from Wikipedia : "Objectivity is a central philosophical concept which has been variously defined by sources. A proposition is generally considered to be objectively true when its truth conditions are met and are "mind-independent"-that is, not met by the judgment of a conscious entity or subject"
"An actually infinite number of rooms cannot actually be filled...."
Exactly, therefore, the though experiment fails because all the so called absurdities hinge on a hotel where "ALL the rooms were occupied", so it seems that you have defeated yourself.
"just as an actually infinite set of events can never actually be completed."
I agree, but this is not an argument that demonstrates that an infinite regress of events is impossible or even unlikely for that matter. ....
+s bushido Obviously, Craig never argued "We don't know, therefore god" as so many of you have been programmed to claim in response to anything resembling a Christian argument. Instead, once he has established that the universe had a cause, he gives a conceptual analysis of what that cause must be. As the cause of space and time, it must be spaceless and timeless and therefore immaterial. But there are only two things that fit that description - either an abstract object (e.g., a number) or an unembodied mind. And since abstract objects do not stand in causal relations, therefore it's plausible that the cause of the universe is a timeless, spaceless, immaterial, unembodied mind (which is what people mean by "god").
3. So, no line with an end can regress infinitely in the other direction.
Put this way, the argument clearly begs the question at step 1: We have no reason to assume that an infinite process needs to 'start,' and the problem of an infinite process 'arriving at the end' after 'starting' an infinite distance away is a contradiction in terms.
I would also argue: for a causal sequence that has led to our present state, P, each member of the sequence has some....
Oh, now I can read the rest of your responses. I feel I've addressed all of your points, except this one pesky little misconception: Set theory does indeed treat events as members or "objects" within a set of events. In fact, with your support of Teleological arguments, you must have at least *glanced* at Probability Theory. In mathematics, probability of an event is calculated using set theory, with events as the members of the set. QED.
Tell us all exactly when the laws of physics and logic were 'created' and how you know. There is a Nobel Prize awaiting you!
1) When will you comprehend this very simple point that I keep repeating and repeating ad nauseum? I have never disagreed that a mind must be "capable of thought". Indeed, looking back, I was the FIRST to use that description of a mind. But there is a big difference between being CAPABLE of thought, and being always thinking. You yourself are not always thinking. You began thinking this morning, when you woke up. That doesn't mean you didn't have a mind while you slept, it just wasn't thinking.
... everything doesn't just pop into being uncaused out of nothing.
3) You came into existence. You did not exist 200 years ago, but you exist now (both of those statements are absolutely undeniable, and they constitute absolute proof that you began to exist).
4) It may just have "changed states", but the "state-changing" can't go on forever into the past. An actually infinite sequence cannot exist in reality.
HH does not demonstrate the impossibility of an actual infinite, but the impossibility of comprehending an infinite in any finite structure (like a hotel) or process (like contacting, checking-in and out, etc., an infinite number of guests). In short, it demonstrates the impossibility of "supertasks".
The problem with HH's first example is that there will always be at least one person displaced from his/her room in order to create the vacancy. There will always be at least.....
Well, I obviously can't respond to all that's been posted in my absence, but I'll respond to the slavery issue:
1) There were still laws governing behavior toward the foreign slaves; they were not to be mistreated.
2) The passage says nothing of "sex slaves", it says the man can either take the woman as a wife, or he must treat her as a daughter.
3) Saying slaves who become Christians should be obedient, hard workers is no statement about the rightness of slavery; but about the work ethic...
"Because the connection between atheism and nihilism seems so obvious to me. I can't see how you can derive moral imperatives and purpose from a atheist perspective."
That isn't an argument.
If, for example, Hume's treatise on moral values (i.e. that they cannot be derived from non-moral facts) is true, then materialism is at *just as much* of a handicap as theism is in producing objective moral values. In other words, theism doesn't lead to objective values; nothing does.
....a big deal to him evidenced by naming his book and video series 'Cosmos'. Sagan wrote, “Cosmos is a Greek word for the order of the Universe. It is, in a way, the opposite of chaos. It implies the deep interconnectedness of all things. It conveys awe for the intricate and subtle way in which the Universe is put together.” Evidence for order is observed in mathematics, physics, and every other field of science.
As rocket physicist, astronautics engineer and space....
2) My examples were only meant as substantiation; the central point is that debators are supposed to present several points of support for their position, and it is indeed the job of the opponent to tear down the other's arguments and erect arguments of their own. Craig always does so, and rightly insists that his opponents do so.
4) But I have shown that Craig does not use an over-abundance of points, that his opponents have used even more points against him, and that this is standard debating practice. Your complaint is unfounded.
I'm only responding to thank you both, and to point out to everyone reading that you never responded to my points about the KALAM (which I thought was the subject here, not some other unrelated Biblical points).
And yes, I will respond to your passage, revo. People should know what it means. A fatal blow does not usually take days to kill. It is usually instant. So, if the slave lingers, then it is not possible to know the blow killed him. And the owner has been punished by losing....
Yeah it has been a lot. But I'm actually headed to work now, and (in all honesty) have grown tired of this debate, as it's clear neither of us is going to convince the other. I concluded with Massimo's reply to Perry, which is in effect the same response I've been arguing with you, and Massimo made my case for me. So at this point, I'll leave it there.
Thanks for the convo, though.
Arguments often given for the mind being immaterial are that 1) We know ourselves as immaterial entities, *possessing* bodies and brains, and we can imagine our bodies being gone, and yet ourselves remaining (such as in Kafka's metamorphosis, where he is transformed into a large beetle) without any logical contradiction arising; 2) There are things about consciousness that are not YET satisfactorily explained by materialist models (I'm willing to see if they are explained later)...
"However, you may purchase male or female slaves from among the foreigners who live among you. You may also purchase the children of such resident foreigners, including those who have been born in your land. You may treat them as your property, passing them on to your children as a permanent inheritance. You may treat your slaves like this, but the people of Israel, your relatives, must never be treated this way." (Leviticus 25:44-46 NLT) ...........
1. Ehrman questioned him on it, seeing it as important to evaluate his whole relationship to the historical documents that he's appealing to. "How does he expect us to believe he's holding to a historical evaluation of these sources? Based on his own previous assumptions, these texts *have* to be accurate."
2. Okay I'll put it in a simpler way: two wrongs don't make a right. Saying "oh but some of his opponents did it too" doesn't excuse Craig's action. Again, it doesn't help you at all.
Is belief in belief reasonable... Yes. Some premises have to be granted, To entertain any set of propositions. Is belief in gods reasonable... It would depend on what one claimed a god was...
Edit: Dacey himself did NOT use the *former* approach (of trying to prove a negative via showing the concept to be incoherent), but rather stated he was going to defend the latter: reasonably believing God doesn't exist due to insufficient evidence, as ALL atheists in debates with Craig do. And YOU stated Dacey argues properly for atheism. Thanks for ceding my point :)
The philosophical problem with an infinite regress is not based on my intuition of time, nor on time as we know it. It is based on the fundamental concept of one event preceeding another.
Have a good life, revo1974. I have appreciated your patience, and enjoyed our discussion.
Yes it did, as Ehrman pointed out: "So apparently it's O.K. to have theological assumptions about the resurrection, but it's not O.K. to have theological assumptions about the historical sources that the belief in the resurrection is based upon. If the belief in the resurrection is based on certain sources which are in the Bible and if these sources by their very nature have to be inerrant, then naturally you would conclude that the resurrection had to happen." Cont'd...
The point is that moral values are unconditional "ought" statements. We simply cannot say what we "ought" to do without a desired outcome to actualize. Now here is the real biter: what makes one desired outcome "better" than another?
Nothing. Therefore what we "ought" to do, and what we value, is certainly not objective, and is instead a product of our society/socio-biological evolution/etc...
This does not make it mere preference either, for it isn't just a "preference" that we dislike pain.
...sequence cannot get started, and we lose all subsequent antecedent causes -- including the cause of P.
We are not however "taking away" any particular member of the series, only denying it the special status of being the first member. But if we don't "take it away", then all the subsequent antecedents are still there, and we have no trouble arriving at P.
So Craig starts out by trying to weasel out of the burden of proof for the positive assertion that a God (in his case, the specific, interactive theistic god of the Christians) exists?
Craig has done a HUGE amount of work and writing on the subject of the philosophy of time. You drastically over simplify his position. What Craig has shown was that Einstein's interpretation of the Lorentzian effects was based on Einstein's commitment to logical positivism, and verificationism. Einstein only said "there is no favored reference frame" because such a reference could never be verified empirically. However, verificationism has been abandoned, and yet no one seems to have told the...
The "slavery" of ancient Israel was a loving arrangement for someone who was in debt, and couldn't pay it. They were treated very well, and were set free on a regular cycle (whether the owner wanted to or not). However, the slave could choose to remain, which also shows that they were treated well, or else this would be a vacuous provision. It was NOT the evil kind of slavery you imagine. It was a loving provision.
That the Bible cites cases in which God communicates to kings and prophets in no way proves God cannot and does not communicate to people otherwise. But you say you would need evidence. Likewise, I would require evidence for anyone claiming to personally have experienced God. Thus, I think the best question remains “how do we know if a person’s claim of a personal experience with God isn’t a delusion or hallucination, or otherwise a false or falsely attributed perception?
Please stop spamming entire pages. It is hard enough to respond to a few posts.
1) He makes deductive arguments. if someone can't address them, that really isn't his problem. And, as I showed, Atkins and D'sousa tried giving him lots of points to deal with, and he didn't wet his pants about it; he responded.
2) Atkins, Law, and many others mentioned in their rebuttals all the things "Craig still hasn't answered". It's part of debate. These are not babies; they're scholars. They can take it.
4) But, if they are so easily countered when looked at in writing, why is it that Craig's esteemed opponents (who have Craig's written work available to them for preparation, and to whom Craig typically supplies an outline of his arguments pre-debate) still can't counter him during debate time?
Craig does not do what Gish does, and you have never given an example where he did. Craig gives points to support his position. As any debator should do.
1) The point of HH is that you cannot fill all the rooms, just as you cannot complete an actually infinite series of events. Hilberts hotel says nothing of "doubling", "holding them in our hands", or "moving them around". It is the filling of an infinite number of rooms which is paradoxical; just as it is the completion of an actually infinite sequence of events which is incoherent and impossible.
2) The problem with the planets is indicative of the nonsensical nature of an actual infinity...
I'm curious... how do YOU read "a mind is an entity capable of thought" as being different from "a mind is capable of producing a succesion of thoughts"? Did I miss something here??
"there could not have been an infinite sequence of events prior to NOW, or else we'd never have gotten here"
This statement requires an argument, but there is none other than hand-waving. Let's create a real argument and see how it stands-up:
1. In order for a line (e.g., a timeline) to arrive at some point (e.g., the present), it must have an origin.
2. If it has an origin, then it has a beginning. So it is not an infinite regress. .....
Ahmed is one of Craig's most worthy opponents. I wish there were more like him. But that just makes the fact that Craig emerged unscathed from yet another debate all the more remarkable. William Lane Craig is a Jedi knight.
Unscratched? Ahmed mopped the floor with him.
Craig: objective moral values exist because deep down we know they do!
Arif: this argument could be accepted in the church but not here!
Craig: I simplified it, actually, Dr. Philosopher So and So says that we know deep down that they exist!
I agree with you. We developed because these molecules were all we had to work with. Saying that a little more or less would kill us is nonsensical and is looking at things in the wrong order. It also confuses the way of looking at probabilites.
The term fine tuning also seems to be a bit ironic considering how incredibly hostile the universe as a whole is (with no way for us to survive in most of it). Even this planet has huge areas which are largely not suited for us (oceans..).
Hey Jacopman, man that is a good question and point. God is not the author of confusion but that can come in when people don't translate the hebrew correctly. I think it is as simply as that. King James' men weren't inerrant in there translation and there are other errors in other translations."is there any book in history more confusing in understanding its orignal text?"- the Vedas...will take you for a real spin.
Re: nothing- as I tried to develop the point in the context of the KCA - it is perhaps inaccurate to say that no material is simply nothing. The phenomenon of particles popping into and out of existence does suggest that there is not a clear something/nothing distinction which the Kalam arguments seem to rely upon
3) Dacey recognized his burden of proof and argued as to WHY we would expect more evidence than what we have. The point that "absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence" may be repeated like a mantra, but only because people seem to keep needing the reminder. Pyle was honest and accepted that it is a legitimate point. Dacey too. Tooley says it rather well here: /watch?v=OBEKUBOMA_0 (at 30:37).
...architect Wernher von Braun said:
“The natural laws of the universe are so precise that we have no difficulty building a spaceship to fly to the moon and can time the flight with the precision of a fraction of a second.”
If the Universe didn't exhibit profound order, harmony and regularity how could this be accomplished?
I am a simple minded person, I hardly detect deceptiveness on anyone´s intentions, be it theist or atheist, but I respect your position. The Arguments Craig use are not defende by him alone, they have been defended for centuries, by many other philosophers and intelectuals, like C.S Lewis, though somewhat modified.
1) I don't see why you call them a reflection of our reason, when we are clearly DISCOVERING them in the natural world. It's like the existence of the external world. It isn't a reflection of our reason, we just perceive that its there. We can't PROVE it is, but it is more rational to believe it than not.
2) It isn't an argument from ignorance. It is the conclusion of mathematicians based on what we DO know about infinities and logical coherence.
3) There is no infinity involved in being...
No, that is completely irrelevant since we are talking about the central definition of a term; not an auxiliary fact about that position. The central defintiion of "theism" is "belief that God exists". The central definition of "atheism" is "belief that God does not exist", and this is borne out in many references; not just the EoP.
The idea of an agnostic atheist makes as much sense as the idea of an agnostic theist. It's nonsense, and built entirely on an attempt to dodge burden of proof
"We have never seen something begin to exist, but rather just a recombination of already existing stuff. "
If you have noticed Craig has changed his KCA because of this argument, which is an indication that he recognized that it was flawed. He now says "come to be" instead of "begins to exist".
"If the laws of physics are fundamentally lawful- then it means fundamentally things are not random."
They are lawful, but there is some randomness built into the system, which prevents hard determinism.
Science has taught us that the Universe is highly structured, with precisely defined parameters - in-fact all science is founded on the assumption that the physical world is ordered - and the most powerful expression of this order is found in the laws of physics. Nobody knows where....
Considering we got our fingers burned on the whole 'if it looks designed it is designed' before, it puts a mere reformatting of the same argument on dubious territory to begin with.
And when you think back on all the other truths about the universe that were once considered supernatural actually having a naturalistic cause, it's very foolish to think this last one will not have one as well.
Well done to Arif for taken for exposing some of Craig fallacies. Craig often fails when he has to go one on one with a true expert in one specific topic but he often succeeds in winning debates where he gets to use his well rehearsed shotgun tactics to tangle his opponent in a web of circular reasoning which is difficult to comprehensively refute in the strict time limitations of these formal debates but here Arif cuts the web to pieces.
"How can there be intent without a (personal) cause of the universe?"
Again, define "intent/purpose" for me, and explain to me how a personal cause of the universe would give us "intent/purpose" of a sort that materialism couldn't.
Like I said, it seems like you don't understand that the derivation of moral values from non-moral facts is a problem for *both* the theist and the non-theist.
... most applicable definition is that, time is the measure of change over duration. it is intrinsically tethered to space. Thus, for anything to experience time, it must occupy space, since space is also seen as consisting of the element of time.
It, then, goes without saying that anything which is spaceless, is also timeless. Anything which is everywhere, all at once, would not experience time, but express it instead. Anything which is everywhere all at once would be space, itself. .....
I noticed the lack of a question mark, but I typo far too often to "cast the first stone" as it were!
Philosophers have come to recognize that it is wrong, especially in the wake of Bayes theorem. No matter how extraordinary a claim, the evidence just needs to be such that P(E|H) >> P(E|~H).
Moreover, there is no reason in any probability calculus why supernatural events should be "unlikely". Unless you presuppose naturalism, that is. But that would be begging the question, wouldn't it?
I am prepared to accept that there are conceptual barriers to understanding whereby we cannot expect to be able to simply extrapolate familiar metaphors in the hope of encompassing the whole of reality. We have both hit this barrier but you reconcile this dissonance by positing a God which you find more cognitively comfortable
All the properties attributed to God are by definition entities of organised complexity unless you change their definitions which avoids clarity
Just prior to the BB there was matter, but not 'atomic' matter. We are talking about extreme compression of elementary particles . This would have generated a truly enormous gravitational force - hence the compression - its a positive feedback effect.
But perhaps at some critical level there is a breakdown of gravity- at this point, the enormous concentration of energy can be released - this is Inflation
'psychological phenomenon' is not meant to be synonymous with psychopathology- it is a feature of human psychology that we have traditionally sought out intentional causative agents. This is a feature of our nature which produces a particular bias in our interpretation of the harmony. So I'm suggesting this is independent of what's really going on
1. He pacts in his arguments with several claims and assumptions. The 'discussion' between Craig and Kagan involved them putting forward arguments, and they responded to (arguing against) the claims of the other. And I watched it; Kagan made Craig look like a novice on moral philosophy.
2. Yes it does, given the alloted time to fully unpack and respond. Craig nearly always mentions "My opponent didn't address...", but because there wasn't enough time.
4. Craig's rhetorical skills that allow him to make (seemingly) good counter-points may aid him well, regarding *debate*. But when we're talking about getting to the heart of the matter - what's true or not - this is when *thoughtful* responses require sufficient time. Kent Hovind made quick responses to lots of counter-points; doesn't change the fact that he was being disingenuous and dishonest in his responses. But it makes those who side with him (creationists) think he "won" his debate.
@digiD
Interesting that you think physics existed before the BB. Is it not reasonable to suppose that the laws of physics allowed for BB to occur? On what basis do you posit a God (with all the assumptions which that entails) in preference to the more parsimonious explanation?
Curious,who do you consider as REALLY good?Since I heard WLC is the top or close to the top of the apologetic debater. I'm looking to learn debating and this could be good reference.
I don't I was ever called arrogant. Please explain.
And I don't think I'm ignorant in this sense, Many people live there lives without thinking too much about meaning. So I don't think it's ignorance but "too much" awareness. The notion that ultimately everything has no meaning really saddens me. If I was ignorant, I wouldn't care about it.
Exsaint, these objections have already been raised here, but I'll answer them again for your sake:
1) It would need to be a conscious agent with free will, or else it could be eternal while its effect was finite.
2) To say that everything that comes into existence has a cause to do so is more plausible than its negation. The only other view is that things can just pop into being with absolutely no cause, which is worse than magic (and which would make it inexplicable that just anything and...
No, you missed the point of Hilbert's Hotel completely. The point is that there would always be NEW vacant rooms for the infinite guests to move into. The point is that, no matter how many rooms you fill (from 1 to infinity) you always have as many left as when you started. This shows conclusively that there could not have been an infinite sequence of events prior to NOW, or else we'd never have gotten here (literally, since "never" just means "not until "forever" completes"). QED I think.