Lately, William Lane Craig has been demanding that Richard Dawkins debate him, and has gotten quite insistent lately as he tours England. I don’t see the point in anyone debating Craig: he’s a nobody who has contributed nothing to the intellectual world; he’s a professional debater and apologist, a rhetorical gunslinger for Christ, and there’s no purpose to enaging him (I know Hitchens took him on…but Hitchens has been our rhetorical gunslinger). Dawkins is a top-flight evolutionary biologist and a masterful craftsman of the English language. I don’t think there’s even anything interesting to discuss with Craig. So Richard Dawkins has taken the time to explain why he refuses to debate William Lane Craig. It’s a terrific put-down. I’m going to have to steal from it next time that importuning dweeb Vox Day starts pestering me to debate him.
I was pleased to see that one of Dawkins’ points was one that is not made often enough: William Lane Craig is a nasty, amoral excuse for a human being.
John Loftus of Debunking Christianity has been begging WLC for a debate. He is a former student, so he knows WLC’s tricks.
As expected, there are a fair number of hate-you-no-matter what-Richard-Dawkins! comments.
They are as weenie as usual, with a few being extra-weenie. It’s a pleasure to think as highly of Prof. Dawkins as I do when I see the gutter-level quality of those who hate, lie, or pretend to dismiss him.
If you dislike Dawkins’ work, it says very much about you – none of it complementary – and nothing about him at all. It does allow your opinions on any related issues to be summarily dismissed with a reaction ranging from an eyeroll to a guffaw.
How petty and sniveling is the hatred of this man expressed! God-botherters are nothing without the police at their beck and call, or at least sure to look the other way.
Bart Ehrman already dispatched with Craig, anyways:
For me, one of the best lines from that article was:
“I have consistently refused, in the spirit, if not the letter, of a famous retort by the then president of the Royal Society: ‘That would look great on your CV, not so good on mine’.”
Dr. Dawkins never ceases to amaze me at how effortlessly and politely he slaps someone across the face.
“In the interests of transparency, I should point out that it isn’t only Oxford that won’t see me on the night Craig proposes to debate me in absentia: you can also see me not appear in Cambridge, Liverpool, Birmingham, Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow and, if time allows, Bristol.”
Classic line!
Why isn’t William Lane Craig positively screaming for someone to kill him? Shouldn’t he welcome a fast track to the heavenly reward he thinks is so much better than this earthly drudgery?
WLC challenged me to debate with him. He must’ve thought I was someone important!
Dawkins should challenge WLC to this debate: Is Evolution True?
Indeed it is!
I think only the British can wield the English language like that – sarcasm with such elegance!
Dawkins provides an excellent reason for any person to refuse to debate Craig. It’s not just that Craig is a nobody compared to the eminent Dawkins, but that Craig openly supports atrocities if carried out with the apparent approval of his god.
Craig’s favorite tactic is to word the debate question in such a way that his side is favored, such as “Do we need God to be good?” There is an automatic assumption in that question that there is a god. If Dawkins could choose the question to be debated, such as “Did humans evolve from lower forms of life?” then he could take Craig to the cleaners (and leave him there).
I was trying to remember where I’ve heard the name William Lane Craig. Then it hit me. It must have been that documentary I watched on horses’ asses.
It’s ironic that WLC’s website is “bethinking.org”. If WLC was a bit better at thinking he might have a whole different career.
It’s particularly entertaining to hear Dawkins attempting an Australian accent for this line!
Vox Day,
Yeah, stay away from this misogynistic psycho.
Ooops, here the link for #15:
http://fstdt.net/QuoteComment.aspx?QID=84101
… also, I’d like to point out that Dr. Dawkins will be not-debating me on the evening in question, as well…
So… umm… if anyone would like to come watch me eat my dinner while I harangue* an empty chair placed at the other end of the table, feel free.
(*/I feel my event will be superior to William Whosits, too. As I’ll take requests** for the subject of said harangue, and admission is free, ‘long as you BYOB.)
(**/Really, anything goes. Original sin. Unoriginal sins–I find, by the way, I generally enjoy those ones more. But bear in mind that quality in harangue, as in all such improv, cannot so much be guaranteed. Generally, the sillier the subject to begin with***, the better the result, I find.)
(***/So for best results, you could probably just crib from whatever Whosits is saying said eve.)
Stephen Law debated William Lane Craig recently.
http://stephenlaw.blogspot.com/2011/10/brief-sketch-of-my-overall-argument-in.html
Craig should offer to debate the woman from this video: Debunking the Kalam Cosmological Argument of William Lane Craig
Craig’s arguments involving science and math are very shallow. He says very stupid things about infinity and probability, and he is very selective in picking ideas from cosmology which he can spin to fit his view. (Hint: starting from your conclusion and working backwards is not the best way to do science.) He relies on slick delivery and the ignorance of the audience to give the impression he knows what he is talking about. Craig even took a ride on the Intelligent Design Creationism bandwagon, and so far as I know has not repudiated the bad probabilistic arguments he used in that capacity, even though his errors have been pointed out by numerous critics. Shallow and slick may work well in the time constraints of a debate, but they do not hold up as well to in-depth analysis.
Here is Craig recently claiming that the faster-than-light neutrino result supports his views on cosmology:
lies and waffles
If Dawkins could choose the question to be debated, such as “Did humans evolve from lower forms of life?”
I hope Dawkins wouldn’t chose that topic per se because it’s a misunderstanding of evolution. Evolution is not a ladder with “higher” and “lower” rungs. Humans certainly evolved from other life forms, but there’s no particular reason to refer to them as “lower”.
… hrm. Come to think of it, since I’ll also be not-debating any number of other people said evening, including Whatisface and many, many other non-interlocutors, I should probably open up this program a little further. Get some more chairs, and I can not-debate whomever anyone might request…
Speaking of those chairs, tho’, I find myself questioning the wisdom of Who, Now? in, apparently, speaking of placing an empty chair on his own stage, for this shindig of his…
I mean, it could make some history, seems to me. And garner some attention after all, if not quite in the fashion he had in mind…
As it has just struck me, see, that given the participants, said furniture has just been given an incredibly solid chance of winning this exchange. And handily.
(/On the other hand, it would be kinda heartwarming to see a formally widely-ignored armchair inadvertently launched on an eventually profitable speaking career in such a fashion.)
Gah, beat me to it.
The proper location for such debates is the courtroom, as shown by the Kitzmiller trial. The apologists haven’t one one in that venue and under rules of evidence and perjury since the Scopes Trial, IIRC, and they came to regret “winning” that minor skirmish too.
WL Craig is an amoral idiot. No big deal, that is common among fundies.
It’s striking how anti-intellectual the fundies are. Most religions have produced a few thinkers of note here and there.
About the only theologian the fundies produced was Rousa Rushdooney. A psycopathic mass murder wannabe whose great idea was to set up a US theocracy and slaughter 99% of the current residents of the USA.
I notice several commenters on Dawkins Guardian piece say they think Dawkins is afraid to debate William Lane Craig. I have no idea whether Dawkins is or isn’t afraid, but when someone who knows you only by repute acts as if he has a claim on your time, makes more and more demands that you accommodate him, and casts aspersions on you when you don’t give into his demands, that is frightening. Anybody could be excused for being uneasy in such a situation. After all, that’s how stalking (if not worse) begins.
So next week we should all post up videos of Dawkins not debating us?
Dawkins’ command of the English language is something to which I aspire. I don’t think I have ever heard a “F-ck off” made with such gentility and style.
My FSM, it must be early. Scrap the ad-homonym fallacy in the second line and replace with “won one…”
raven (repost from Coyne’s blog, Why Evolution is True)
Posted October 18, 2011 at 7:02 pm
wikipedia edited for Length
Norman L. Geisler is a Christian apologist and the co-founder of Southern Evangelical Seminary outside Charlotte, North Carolina,
He holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from Jesuit Loyola University. Geisler is well known for his scholarly contributions to the subjects of Christian apologetics, philosophy, and moderate Calvinism and is the author, coauthor, or editor of over 60 books and hundreds of articles.
Geisler has written 60 books, founded a seminary, and also testified in a court case that he believes UFO’s exist and are piloted by demons from hell (a common fundie belief).
This is what passes for thought in the fundie world.
“In the interests of transparency, I should point out that it isn’t only Oxford that won’t see me on the night Craig proposes to debate me in absentia: you can also see me not appear in Cambridge, Liverpool, Birmingham, Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow and, if time allows, Bristol.”
May I suggest we all leave #EmptyChairs around for Dawkins’ nonattendance? Seems he’s not-attending a lot of things… ^_^
Correction to #13. Looks like bethinking.org is not actually WLC’s website. It’s just so full of promotion of WLC’s “Reasonable Faith Tour” that I was fooled.
Randomfactor,
Yeah, the debate format is where your opponent can tell 50 lies in 10 minutes. And correct 5 in your 10 minutes. Plus, yelling objection while striking a dramatic pose is always fun.
You have to remember that Vox Day comes from a short line of sociopaths or psychopaths.
His father is doing a long prison sentence right now. IIRC, one of his crimes was threatening to kill a federal judge who ruled against him.
Indeed. People like Vox Day are why we have police, courts, and prisons. I’m surprised he hasn’t yet managed to do something deserving of prison time. That we know about anyway.
Well, it does kinda write itself.
And it’s something we do tend to see from apologists, and pretty regularly.
I haven’t thought terribly rigorously on it, but it is a curiosity. I’ve these hazy notions developing around it. Something to do with the unconsciously assumed privilege membership in the dominant religion is thought to confer. At one point it was assumed unbelievers had to be silent; that even openly gainsaying religionists’ claims was simply not done–you could disbelieve only so long as you shut up about it, didn’t actually directly confront the nonsense.
This assumption having partially broken down, in some places (notwithstanding certain folk still trying to enforce this unwritten rule in their various ways–see also accomodationism), now the assumption is: we have the privilege to demand they hear out our tedious BS in person, notwithstanding the many millenia we’ve already had and absurd number of fora we still have in which to make our arguments. We are the godly. We have the authority our deity has conferred upon us. You unbelieving plebes must hear us blither on. Respect our authoritah!
And note that in a sense, whatever the psychology behind it, this, too, is to be expected, just from how religion propagates. The former strategy of getting people just to shut up having partially broken down, at the very least, they figure they have to appear to have an answer, however limp. So they will continue to jaw, continue to claim to ‘debate’. As repetitively and tediously as always. And this, too, is the very essence of how religion–much like any generally not-especially-useful product–is sold. Just keep repeating the pitch, however vapid it may be. Keep the attitude that you’ve actually got something, and some folk, at least, will tend to assume you actually do. And see also brand advertising.
If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that WLC is some third world dictator preparing to annihilate some arbitrarily defined group of people. Never have I heard a person with any less horrific intentions sweet-talk for genocide like Craig seems to do so routinely. What he says is actually even more sinister than the Islamic myth about the 72 virgins, because in Craig’s view, not only do the perpetrators eventually ascend to paradise, but the victims actually want to be killed and they’ll be so much happier once they’re dead. Thus, by slaughtering them you are doing them a great favor. I’m definitely with Sam Harris here: there’s nothing more immoral than this.
I know one should not measure dick length, but how many papers has Dawkins published and how many has this craig chap published?
I’d be worried about getting in an in-person debate with WLC, but not for the reasons he thinks: I’d be constantly worried that he and his followers would, at the drop of a hat or roll of the dice, suddenly riot, turning the region into an orgy of violence, pillage, and rapine in their god’s name.
After all, in those quotes of his, he’s pretty much told us that he doesn’t believe in any concept of morality.
One of WLC’s arguments is the Moral Argument for God.
1. We are either theists or reductionists.
2. Reductionism cannot account for intrinsic values.
3. Theism can account for intrinsic values.
4. There are intrinsic values.
5. Therefore, godidit.
His favorite example to demonstrate step 4 is the Holocaust, which he portrays as absolute immorality.
He argues on alternating days that Germans killing Jews is absolutely immoral and Jews killing Canaanites is moral.
There is one consolation in that the Old Testament stories are not supported by archaeology.
Note: WLC invoked Godwin first.
Just the right touch of understated humor makes this an epic takedown. Brilliant work!
I know I shouldn’t feed stupid trolls. But here goes.
How many worthwhile papers and books has WL Craig published versus how many worthwhile papers and books has Richard Dawkins published?
Craig is at zero here*. Even I am way ahead of him.
*Arguable. If negative numbers are appropiate, one could easily say Craig’s contributions to humanity are decidely rather negative. Way less than zero.
It’s all a game of gotcha to these fools. Make one mistake, or say one thing that they can twist to their advantage and they’ll never let it go, like Enyart and his “victory” over Eugenie Scott. The sad part is they are married to their religious crap, and will keep spewing it until they die off.
He’s not “amoral” – he has beliefs regarding right and wrong – he just doesnt follow them (or they are repugnant). He’s “immoral” not “amoral”
In order to be an apologist you have to confront the fact that you’re a “spin doctor for god” – which means, first off, acknowledging that the evidence regarding god is poor, that if god existed it would be an evil being, etc. So I’d describe Craig as “dishonest” – which is about as low as you can go. Calling him a “dishonest shithead” is more poetic.
Craig:
So, if, say, three guys are on trial for killing a family in their home, a perfectly good defense would be: “Well, we didn’t want to kill anybody. We were the actual owners of the home and everything in it and we were just taking back what was ours. No, we’re from out of town and had never seen the home or stuff before, but we wanted it. It’s not our fault the family was home. If they’d been out doing something else when we’d come in, nobody would have died”?
Sounds like a confession to me.
Wrong question. How many Citations do said publishing have.
One could post a video of not debating Craig. Empty chair; my clever rebuttal, “But William – you’re just offering the ‘usual proofs’ of god’s existence. Speak up.”
It’s also how they support themselves.
There is big money to be made feeding the fundies lies, hate and hypocrisy. Even an old fool like Harold Camping raised millions predicting the end of the world, wrongly as it turned out three times now.
Delguido raised many millions babbling on about how the gays are out to get everyone.
It’s big money and it’s easy money. All you have to do is have an ice cube in place of your sense of morality and ethics
@Marcus
If we go by the model of levels of moral development I think Craig would classify as one of the amoral levels. Things are not good or bad for any reason, just because of orders given. He is obedient to an authority he believes will reward him.
Great, he goes directly to fail mode in the first premise.
Unstated premise “There are intrinsic values”
A reductionist would say that what Craig calls intrinsic are really emergent.
Sufficient but not necessary. Just because it can account for it doesn’t mean it’s right.
Every step of his argument is horribly flawed.
Oh, Craig cannot be a “a nasty, amoral excuse for a human being” as you call him.
Let me go and read the articles.
…
Holy shit, he’s somehow worse! I mean, fuck, at least most modern apologist frown on the idea of killing children and genocide. I guess Craig thought taking those two ideas and running with them was sound.
And we supposedly cannot be good without this god? This hideous creation of disturbed minds, this phantasmic rationale for mass murder? This, and the innumerable other examples like it, are why I agree with Hitchens; religion really does poison everything.
Sooo… mass child murder is OK, so long as you do in pursuit of ethnic and religious ‘purity’? I think William Lane Craig is in serious need of professional help. How could anyone think child murder was OK even if Craig’s fantasy of heaven existed? It’s still child murder. That seems pretty unambiguously wrong to me.
We are supposed to feel sympathy for the self-righteous murdering fanatics who perpetrated the massacre now? Should we also assume that the only ‘true victim’ in murder cases is the murderer? Afterall, all the trauma of brutally butchering your fellow humans clearly overshadows the pain and fear of the person actually being murdered…
And there it is, the favourite tactic of the aplogists for all religious violence (and indeed violence of any stripe) – blame the victim. It’s all the fault of the victims, you see. If they had just run away, then the poor soldiers wouldn’t have been traumatised with all the raping, pillaging and murdering they were apparently forced to engage in. There is, of course, no question that a bunch of violent, religiously fanatical blood-hungry soldiers in the midst of sacking a city would ever dream of pursuing their victims. They would have all obediently stopped at the city outskirts and allowed their terrified victims to escape without harrasment. This , naturally, being the case throughout history where religiously motivated armies have had defenceless civilian populations of the run… Oh, wait, that’s not right…
What worries me most of all is that Craig seems so invested in justifying this biblical account of genocide as being a moral act. I wonder if he is not simply seeking to create a rationale for violence against contemporary groups that he feels do not fit in with his interpretation of the will of his god? Afterall, if supposedly god-sanctioned massacres were morally unimpeachable then, why not now? Perhaps he, or some of his followers, might be of the opinion that, just as they believe god laid an injunction upon the Israelites to slaughter the Canaanites, perhaps they are being called upon to do the same to modern groups that they believe anger their god. If so, homosexuals, liberals, feminists and atheists are going to be high on their target list.
Craig and his ilk are not merely repugnant; they may well be dangerous. Dawkins is right not to want to offer this cretin any credibility be sharing a forum with him.
I respect and admire Richard Dawkins but at times I sometime question his debate style. When he crushes and humiliates his debater with a barrage of cruel retorts I sometimes wonder whether he might lose the sentiment of the audience as they rally to the defense of their prophet. This time though he was not wrong in showing no mercy for William Lane Craig. Craig is not debating but rather using the public stage to slander Dawkins in abstentia. Like the fictional character Elmer Gantry, he is no more than a carny huckster. It is more than appropriate to swiftly and firmly expose why this man should not be given any respect. There is no reason whatever to deal with this fraud.
AJ Milne said:
And then I fell in love. Again. This is too good for just an internet. I’m not sure what to do. How about an internet (a nice sniny one) and a cranberry-walnut oatmeal cookie? And a nice glass of the beverage of your choice.
In other words, you totally rock.
Tell me something, how can this:
“the death of these children was actually their salvation. We are so wedded to an earthly, naturalistic perspective that we forget that those who die are happy to quit this earth for heaven’s incomparable joy. Therefore, God does these children no wrong in taking their lives.”
ever be “truth” if the slaughtered children (and adults alike) were not christians? They wouldn’t, even in Craig’s fantasies, be awarded the kingdom of heaven with a happy demise, but instead the eternal sufferings of hell, wouldn’t they?
Or am I missing something?
Some sheppard!
Some of the responses at the Grauniad are astonishing. There seem to be legions of people who believe that Dawkins is so much intellectually inferior that he must be afraid to debate the great thinker that is WLC. In fact, there are several students of sophisticated theology (TM) there who dismiss RDs arguments against God as so weak and trivial that he would be completely and utterly crushed by WLCs sophistication.
WLC is a coward for not debating me when I challenged him to do so. He’s simply afraid, because he knows that I’d win completely.
How does that work, now (no, I didn’t really, but what if I had)? A person has no right to do what he wants with his own time? I mean, sure, there are better reasons not to debate WLC, but shouldn’t “No” actually be enough in most contexts (Presidential candidates are expected to “debate,” however that’s quite a different matter)?
I actually don’t think the “moral argument” is that good, since it would be a good weapon against the pathetic apologist (morality is now off the table, or what?). That he’s an insipid fool is a good reason not to debate him. Should “48 chromosome Jesus” guy be able to demand a debate with a scientist?
Glen Davidson
AJ again: (You are on a roll today, hon)
Oh, I see. Like gay people. Just be quiet about it and we won’t kill you much.
Unless we can gain political capital thereby.
Or we feel like it.
AJ Milne @ 21;
and @ 34;
You know, your right about this stuff writing itself. Having read this, the following piece of whimsy just came to me…
Ahem;
WLC: “…and that is why genocide is A-OK as long as god says so. You get a heavenly reward, and your victims really are better off dead anyway.”
formally widely-ignored armchair: (silence)
WLC: “Where is your smart rebuttal to that, eh, PROFESSOR?
formally widely-ignored armchair: (silence)
WLC: “Nothing to say? Are you so dazzled by my wit, charm and erudition that yoou are struck dumb? That is, dumber than usual (inane giggle)?”
formally widely-ignored armchair: (silence)
WLC: “Answer me, damn you! Acknowledge my greatness!”
formally widely-ignored armchair: (silence)
WLC: “There you sit, oh high and mighty la-di-da PROFESSOR, smugly silent. Looking down on me. DARING TO JUDGE ME! I am a holy man! Chosen by god!”
formally widely-ignored armchair: (silence)
WLC: “And what do you believe in? Science? It’s your religion, after all. That and atheism. You act like evidence matters! Only faith matters PROFESSOR!”
formally widely-ignored armchair: (silence)
WLC: “You think you can wear me down with your sanctimonious refusal to speak, but I am wise to you… Wait… Were you whispering to that coffee table? He’s in on it, isn’t he? You… your all conspiring against me! Admit it, every piece of furniture in the world is a fully paid up commie-nazi-baby-eating godless abomination!”
formally widely-ignored armchair: (silence)
WLC: “Don’t play the innocent with me! I know what you get up to with that red velvet chaise lounge. It’s disgusting! Its unnatural! And god did say, let not the armchair lie down with the chaise lounge as he would with the foot stool, for it is an abomination.. Err, well if he didn’t he meant to…”
formally widely-ignored armchair: (silence)
WLC: “Why? You want to know why? Because I say so, damn it! I am the man of faith here, I know the will of god!”
formally widely-ignored armchair: (silence)
WLC: “Evidence!? Its always evidence with you souless unbelievers isn’t it? I’ll give you evidence! Die, apostate!”
*WLC rushes formally widely-ignored armchair with a lamp in one hand and a bible in th other, trips over the piece of furniture and falls, breaking his arm in the process*
WLC: “Arrghhh! The pain!” *WLC addresses the now empty hall* “You all saw that! You’re all my witnesses! The illustrious PROFESSOR, this man of peace and reason, tried to kill me!”
formally widely-ignored armchair: (silence)
WLC: “Ha! Anything you say now is as good as an admission of guilt!”
formally widely-ignored armchair: (silence)
WLC: “Oh, very cunning. You win this round, PROFESSOR, but I will get you yet, you see if I don’t!”
As PZ has pointed out earlier, I really don’t understand why Craig’s position on the slaughter of Canaanite children doesn’t justify, nay, demand abortion. The apparent consequence of his view is that we are morally obligated to kill as many innocent babies and fetuses as possible, to ensure that the maximum number of souls get to heaven. I would really like to hear his argument as to why this isn’t the case.
WLC? WC more like. He’s full of it!
Gregory @ # 52: … perhaps they are being called upon to do the same to modern groups that they believe anger their god. If so, homosexuals, liberals, feminists and atheists are going to be high on their target list.
Not to mention Palestinians, Iranians, Iraqi nationalists, Afghan tribalists, and any other Muslims unwilling to make the proper deals with the proper Western oil corporations.
God Wills It!
William Lane Craig is noted for doing a five-point debate: there are “five good reasons” to believe in God. Although he sometimes swaps out the 5 arguments from a larger list, right now he seems to be trotting out 1) Contingency Argument, 2) Kalam, 3) Fine Tuning, 4) the Resurrection of Jesus, and 5) Objective Moral Values.
This is a lot of ground to cover in the short amount of time allotted for a public debate. You’ve got the fields of philosophy, cosmology, statistics, history, and ethics. WLC has honed his intuition-friendly rhetorical arguments over the years so that they are both clear and wrong — but not clearly wrong. To show why he is wrong, you need to go a bit deeper into philosophy, cosmology, statistics, history, and ethics. There goes your time.
And there goes your area of specialty. How many atheists are experts in all these fields? Get a little out of your depth and you can be baffled (or look like you are baffled) by bullshit. Slick Willy is very good at figuring out where his opponents are strong — and hammering on other areas. He will then crow over how many of his points were “dropped.”
Most apologist debaters avoid written debates. They like to be able to manipulate an audience and take the atheist unawares. Can’t do that in print as well as in person. Their arguments are shallow when you analyze them: the simple sound bite is their friend.
BTW, there is a guy on Youtube who has been discussing WLC in a very sophisticated (to me, though I grant I am a bourgeois in these matters) way. He starts here.
I also like his discussion of morality here.
He’s cute, too.
I listened to the Craig vs Hitchens debate this morning and Hitchens crucified him.
Craig’s talking points were the sort of drivel that Bertrand Russell demolished nearly 90 years ago. Various incredulous statements about the nature of the universe amongst others.
By contrast Hitchens was logical amusing and to the point. I saw some of Craig vs Sam Harris and it was pretty much the same.
So I understand why Dawkins doesn’t feel like debating him. Not because Craig is some intellectual heavyweight but more likely because he is an attention whore and simply not deserving of debate.
As PZ has pointed out earlier, I really don’t understand why Craig’s position on the slaughter of Canaanite children doesn’t justify, nay, demand abortion
It is morally indefensible to allow a pregnancy to come to full term, or even to allow a single egg to go unfertilized. Not only abortion, but extramarital sex and, if necessary, rape. All for the glory of Lane’s god.
Pierce R. Butler @ 62;
God as celestial oil baron?
Yeah, that sounds about right. It would certainly explain the Republican’s foreign policy priorities and their tendency to fellate big oil…
William Lane Craig is an absolute idiot when it comes to anything to do with reality relating to discoveries made by the use of the scientific method. He also believes in something called ‘god’. Last time I checked, there is no such thing. So, again… a child’s mind trapped in a crazy body. Debate? You don’t necessarily get to the truth of reality with debate. Dialectic? Maybe. If both sides focus on REALITY, instead of one side insisting on claptrap.
@ 60, yes, yes, yes. I’ve used this argument in discussions of abortion many times and have never gotten a coherent reply.
If he knows what’s good for him, Craig will not debate an armchair. It would be self-defeating, since most of his “deep” arguments come right out of Armchair Philosophy.
“Like comes only from like.”
“Mind is immaterial.”
“Whatever begins to exist must have a cause.”
“There’s no right or wrong unless there’s an authority.”
“If the chances against something occurring are high, then it must have been chosen.”
“Agent causation is different than physical causation.”
“People would never die for a lie.”
“All things have an irreducible essence.”
“You can’t get something out of nothing.”
“Infinity can’t exist.”
“If there’s good and bad, then there must be a Perfect.”
“Eyewitness testimony is the strongest testimony there is.”
“Everything has a purpose.”
Without an armchair, where would armchair philosophy be? Craig better be careful or he’ll have nothing to rest his case on.
And Catholic theology supports the slaughter of adults, once they’ve confessed and cleansed their souls, of course.
Within the Christian worldview you’ve got to do a lot of theological work to justify suffering Christians to live at all.
We all know that Craig is a Christian apologist whose objectives are, as he says in his book Reasonable Faith, (i) “shaping culture”, (ii) “strengthening believers”, and (iii) “evangelizing unbelievers”.
I’m an atheist, but what I don’t like are cheap ad-hominem attacks. Craig does have several explicit and well-structured arguments for theism that need to be dealt with one by one. If you want to familiarize yourself with them, this is the book to read:
* Craig, William Lane. On Guard: Defending Your Faith with Reason and Precision. Colorado Springs, CO: David C. Cook, 2010.
(Cackles delightedly…)
(Bows…) Kind. But y’know, with a setup man like Whosits, it really is a bit of a cakewalk.
The all-too-believable hauteur, especially, in Gregory G.’s bit reminds me of another thing I hadn’t quite said about this presumption thing previously noticed: that this peculiarly arrogant fronting–this presumption that they’ve some sort of authority to demand an audience–is probably also part of the low-rent Jedi mind trick quasi-authorities like the priestly are always trying to pull. Act like an authority, act like you belong there, like you should have a place of pride at the funeral to declaim your god’s glory or eat all the hors d’oeuvres or whatever, and hope people will just grant it to you. Which, indeed, your marks may well do–perhaps out of custom, unvoiced assumptions, cultural vibes they’ve absorbed–we are always told at the cinema and elsewhere, of course, that these people are addressed as ‘Father’ or ‘Padre’ or ‘Reverend’ or ‘Your Ministerliness’ or whateverthehell, which no doubt assists this effort, at least in some circles.
Similar game here, anyway, I figure. This is the parish priest figuring, hey, I can command the young miscreants to come stand before me and suffer my twittery, warbly rambling on their sins, as such is my social station as the local messenger of the divine*–a de facto custom, methinks, even in Baptist-and-family sects where, theoretically and on paper, at least, that authority’s position as local divine messenger is, in fact, somewhat diluted from previous highs.
And it prolly really pisses ’em when it falls this flat. Hence these peculiarly desperate–and comic–histrionics about the rejection. It’s really not good for someone who only has that ‘authority; on the strength of custom and their very attitude to have it all go pfft quite so unceremoniously.
(*/I almost wrote ‘the Divan’. Furniture on the mind, go fig. And again, let’s face it, the Divan’s thoughts here, too, might well be less a waste of time.)
Myron sed,
Why don’t you paraphrase one for the unwashed, my atheist brother?
I’m not spending my good money on a book that you did all but post the Amazon link for after seeing his abhorrent rationalizations.
BTW: You might want to look up what an ad-hominem actually is before chastising some curiously unnamed parties for engaging in it.
@Gregory Greenwood
Nice story, but after all that silence, I think I prefer this ending to the imaginary tale:
formally widely-ignored armchair: “fuck you”
Myron, insults are not ad hominem attacks. No one is saying that WLC’s arguments are bad because WLC is an idiot. That would be the logical fallacy we call ad hominem. And it would be wrong, because WLC is not an idiot. He’s worse than an idiot, IMO.
What we are saying is that WLC’s arguments are not“well-structured” or even very precise. They are at best, as someone said, “sound bites” that someone not thinking very clearly might find persuasive, but only if you grant his premises, which, if you are rational, you cannot do.
I strongly suggest that you watch the videos I recommend @64.
OK, was looking for something on Google and saw this.
For anyone that wants their head to explode.
….”During this time of Thanksgiving, science has yet to provide an explanation as to why there are still so many turkeys available after they were all killed last year. We will tell you why: Jesus blesses us with those turkeys, end of story”….
http://www.landoverbaptist.org/news1100/science.html
Would any of those “well-structured-arguments” be allowed in court, at least normally? Say I’ve been accused of some crime, and I say it was God’s doing, would they accept these arguments for God as at least possible culprit?
No?
Then why should we deal with them? Many of us know those “arguments,” plus why they’re generally relegated to “History of Philosophy,” discarded claptrap. Yes, we know that they can sound good, but they’re typically predicated upon fallacies of some sort or other, especially upon ancient ideas that we can know through “reason” (or “clear and distinct” mental recognition) that of which we lack knowledge via evidence. Courts and science dispensed with this junk in part because it was recognized in philosophy that it really was so much mental wanking, at least considering what we know now about efficacy of processes.
WLC uses this ancient garbage because it does sound good to audiences. It is not. Indeed, pretending that such BS is worthy in front of people who don’t know any better could be considered to be yet another good reason not to debate this charlatan.
Glen Davidson
You do realize that “explicit” and “well-structured” are not synonyms for “true” or “compelling,” right?
Why? Otherwise he wins?
Myron, what unique argument does WLC have that has not been dealt with?
Bill, Landover Baptist is a well known satirical site.
Cute, but quoting Landover Baptists is like quoting the Onion.
Glen Davidson
Of course they are. What they are not is ad hominem arguments.
Internet logicians always insist that that 2-word Latin phrase always refers to the logical fallacy.
But any good descriptivist has to admit that it is actually used very often in other ways (e.g. for ‘attacks’ as opposed to ‘arguments’).
William Lane Craig is a lying scoundrel who rides the Gish Gallop to a lather with crop and spurs flailing, and relies on his opponents being more honest, ethical, polite, and fair than himself to get away with it. They let him talk without calling him on it, and he lies, lies, lies.
I have nothing but contempt for the lying P.o.S. since seeing this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkBD20edOco
He name-drops philosophical arguments, presenting a false version of the genetic fallacy immediately at the outset of his blooble–a strawman version of the genetic fallacy, Gish Gallops on through a jumble of fallacious arguments, and then blabbles out a blatant lie, stating that the value of c in Einstein’s famous equation is an arbitrary assumption [2:28 to 2:47]. This is a lie. Maxwell’s equations (1865) showed a the speed of light in a vacuum to be a constant (which Maxwell gave as c, so Einstein wasn’t even using his own nomenclature but that established 40 years earlier), and that that speed is isotropic was supported by Michelson’s experimental observations in 1887, more than a hundred years before William Lane Craig lied about it. Victorian Era science was beyond his acceptance, so he had to lie about science established in the Victorian period in a televised debate in order to score a point against a philosopher arguing against his theism. Pftah. That the speed of light is isotropic was indicated by theory and observation (by Michelson, Poincare, Lorentz, and others), and Relativity did not make it up, but presented a theory to describe it and predict from that theoretic framework. Relativity was not built, unlike Craig’s own blather, on arbitrary ad hoc constructs (this is projection on his part, pot–>kettle/kettle–>pot), but on theory that worked. The predictive power of Relativity, more that a century later, is still current and formidable. Relativity works, Maxwell’s equations work, Quantum Mechanics works. Cell phones, GPS, Internet, computers, electric lights, television, etc., etc., etc.,…the Standard Model is not arbitrary apologetics, it works.
[And William F. Buckley is just another “Eli” who left that institution without an education–if he had taken classes in science when at Yale and paid attention, in other words, were he an educated man, Buckley would have known that the value of c is not arbitrary, but based on observation–that’s high-school science, folks! And he was too stupid to think that the very television system that his show was broadcast on was possible only dependant on the validity of Maxwell’s Equations, Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics–i.e., the Standard Model. Duh. “Put that in your pipe and smoke it.” Two men totally devoid of intellectual integrity.]
My cell phone works because, at the degree of resolution required by our current high technology, Relativity and Quantum Mechanics are supremely accurate and correct interpretations of reality and are not arbitrary; indeed, not only is their descriptive power staggeringly accurate, their predictive power is, too: of the tens or hundreds of millions of GPS units worldwide, they all work, all the time, as dependably as, say, light switches. Relativity is the frame of reference in which the GPS satellites and the triangulations derived therefrom work, taking into account relativistic effects such as frame-dragging, etc. I charge my phone with its cool GPS app by means of electricity off of power lines, some percentage of which is generated by nuclear power plants–which work because the descriptive power of quantum physics translates to predictive power when applied to engineering. It works every time, as dependably as, say…light switches.
Prayer does not work as dependably as, say…light switches. And sophisticated theology is just…sophistry; whereas sophisticated science…works.
Q.E.D.
This is one of those “explicit” and “well structured” arguments for theism.
Myron, it would be an ad-hominem attack if Dawkins had said “WLC condones genocide, therefore his ideas about the existence of God are wrong”. It is not an ad-hominem attack when he says that he finds the guy repulsive and does not want to share a stage with him.
What a waste of precious hours of our lifes that would be. Outline the best one in one paragraph, if that is not possible, I don’t want to hear it.
@ChasCPeterson,
Thanks for the clarification. So it is an ad-hominem attack but not an ad-hominem argument. Very good. What is an ad-hominem attack?
Raven, that was a work of satire from a satirical site.
Like: everything must have a beginning, therefore god.
That’s some sophistimacated apologetics, for sure.
But if you’re going to say he has arguments “that need to be dealt with one by one” is it fair for me to say that Epicurus, Hume, and Sextus Empiricus had arguments long before Craig, which he ought to first refute one by one?
So Craig wants to debate? Let him agree to a condition first: that he may be interrupted at the first lie, that he has to shut up while that lie is being thoroughly pointed out, that he then has to concede the lie, apologize, concede the debate, and admit that he is a liar whose case can not be built without a lie and so is itself a lie.
A scientist would not have a problem with that condition, because science is verifiably not lie-based. I.e., isotropy of c is shown observationally and when later converted to applied science in engineering applications works. Craig lies about the universe, but the universe doesn’t lie about itself.
But Craig won’t agree to that. He’d not finish his first “point”.
But Dawkins is right not to sink to that level. It demeans Dawkins’ CV and aggrandizes Craig’s. And as seen so many times before, Craig Gish Gallops until he hits on a phrase the opponent isn’t comfortably prepared to refute, and then he yells gotcha, and pretends that the fallacious arguments and factual falsehoods prior to that moment are assumed to have been true thereby.
Myron, as others have pointed out, labeling Craig ‘dispicable’ or with other less-than-flattering epithets is not an ad hominem attack on his arguments. By even making an attempt to justify genocide he has demonstrated that the labels fit. These labels are thus statements of fact.
His arguments are separate from this, though the argument in this case is justifiably ridiculed and treated with contempt. It is simply an absurd argument which taken to their logical conclusions (again as others have noted) lead to places where Craig would deny having to go to.
But I too would like to read some of these “explicit and well-structured arguments for theism”. His favorite argument – the Kalaam Cosmological Argument – has long since been thoroughly demolished yet he continues to propagate it. This makes him dishonest. Again, not an ad hominem but a statement of fact. A philosophical argument can be perfectly structured, but if its premise is bollocks, it is still untrue.
It is not up to us to dismantle his arguments. It is up to Craig to demonstrate his arguments are true, which is something I am totally unaware he has ever even attempted. If you think otherwise, then you have fallen for Craig’s typical dishonest debating strategy of dumping a whole load of arguments on you while you waste all your time defending. I’d rather cut to the chase and simply demand that he substantiate his arguments.
I have my doubts about much of this comment but one phrase in particular.
Alex @86, in re Myron’s @72
And then show us how you “dealt” with it. Since you are an atheist, we can assume that you have “dealt” with it, or Craig’s argument would have had you praying the sinner’s prayer and you would no longer be an atheist. Right?
The whole Kalam argument really is a kalamity. Every single point can be refuted with “no, that’s not a valid statement. go away.”
I think it’s time for a new meme:
“Where Richard Dawkins Isn’t”
OR
“Dawkins’ Not Here, Man”
It’s very simple. Place an empty chair at any gathering or event that you would like to have Richard Dawkins attend, but where he won’t be. Take a photo of the empty chair in that setting, and post it to the social networking website of your preference mentioning that Mr. Dawkins didn’t make it to your dinner/bar mitzvah/Super Bowl party/debate on the existence of god.
Take WLC’s proposed tactic as seriously as it ought to be taken.
Doesn’t the Kalam argument lead one to asking what god’s god is. The first cause of god.
I hated this argument when I first read it as Aristotle’s prime mover.
Eekk. Reading my 93, I see I didn’t make it clear that it is Myron I would like to answer my request for how he “dealt” with WLC, not Alex.
And Rev BDC, I agree that there is one statement in Myron’s comment of which I am very suspicious (sorry, I’m old, and occasionally get hit with an inability to end a sentence with a preposition–I’m not claiming it’s a harmless affliction, but I hope you will all tolerate it).
I am especially suspicious since he appears to be a drive-by “I am an atheist but…” commenter.
Your assertion that you are an atheist butt (ie I’m an atheist, but…) fails to endear me to you or your position. Quite the contrary; it illustrates to me that you’re either a liar or an idiot. Neither is flattering. Much like the “I used to be an atheist” comments. Great, I have immediate disrespect for your intellect for the type of drivel you push out as having convinced you. You’d have gotten a better reaction if you claimed you were always a christian.
The sinner’s prayer? you mean “Lord, don’t let my room mate/parents/spouse/whatever hear?”
Which if true translates to “I’m an atheist but I’m also an idiot…”
otrame,
It’s ok, I can deal with it ;)
AJ Milne @ 73;
I’m glad you liked it. It took quite a while for my fevered imagination to come up with that line.
Yup. I based that massive sense of entitlement and pseudo-authority on various clerics and blathering godbots that I have had the misfortune to run accross. Indeed, some of them have even trolled our own beloved tentacled fortress of justice, Pharyngula, from time to time
—————————————————————-
Fleegman @ 75;
That approach offers its own avenues. You leave it ambiguous as to whether the armchair’s eminently justified sentiment is its own voice, or is simply something that Craig hears in his head…
Sigh. Craig does not have explicit and well-structured arguments. He has facile fallacies and facile falsehoods.
In other words, well-dressed dishonesty. He will not concede dishonesty when caught, but simply drivels new apologorrheatics.
In a “debate” he can not be called on it point-by-point, whereas in print he can. That’s why he’s not calling for an online, text-based debate. He gets his time to speak, and Gish Gallops by. The opponent then has to belly up to the bar and refute, refute, refute, and that is a lose-lose game, because the horseman has disappeared over the hill already. (Its sort of like the guard at the castle gate in Holy Grail when Lancelot charges past, running through his buddy in passing: he turns ineffectually and confused, and intones vaguely, “hey…”.)
Craig is quick and dishonest. So let him “debate” in print, so that each and every fallacy and falsehood can be addressed–and undressed and shown for the bald-faced misrepresentation it really is, and what that makes him. In a court of law, that is perjury, and a perjurer should be called to account for each occurrence. But again, in a debate, he can’t get called on it per dishonest statement, and that’s what is needed.
As for the well-structuredness of Craig’s arguments, you can freely download the Argument Maps from the publisher’s website:
http://www.davidccook.com/catalog/resources/OnGuard_ArgumentMaps_Images.pdf
@Myron
Why the hell should I clutter up my space with Fuhrer Craig’s nonsense?
Myron, what argument that WLC present that you think is particularly strong.
Those are not well formed. They’re cartoonish idiocy.
Seriously. From the link.
Theist: Everything must have a cause therefore God exists
Atheist: what about god
Theist: God doesn’t need a reason it’s self existent
Jesus fuck….yeah fucking bulletproof there.
Fucking idiot.
Remember the courtier’s response isn’t valid because of post hoc rationalizations!
The boat can float because of my band-aid!
So, WLC, you can use someone’s absence as an admission of defeat? There is no limit to the number of debates I could win that way. Why, right now, by that standard, I am winning a debate against the Pope. Once I’ve finished off His Holiness (rhetorically speaking, of course) I plan to soundly (intellectually) thrash WLC.
In addition to the abject defenses Craig makes for genocide, he is actually not being true to the biblical account of them. There is, for instance, no afterlife in the OT. God does not threaten to torture the heathen forever, nor does he reward his slaves with a place in heaven. As a Christian, Craig might argue that the assertions deployed in the NT apply to the OT as well, even if they’re never expressed in it. But according to the NT a ticket to paradise comes only by accepting Jesus as whatever sort of savior he’s supposed to be, which obviously wasn’t an option at the time of the OT. So, either heaven just wasn’t an exclusive party before Jesus, or the post-mortal wing of the villa was suffering from construction delays. Whichever brand of intellectual poison you choose to ingest, the assumption of eternal life for butchered babies is not biblically warranted. As impossible as it seems, God’s hideousness is even greater than Craig’s.
I want to publicly challenge WLC to a debate. Topic: Did WLC rape and murder an 11 year old girl in 1995?
His silence on this issue will speak volumes.
And yet WLC thinks as long as it is inspired by his god, it is justified and has pity for the killers.
I see meme creep.
If Dawkins accepts the debate it should be on the topic “Did humans evolve from lesser forms” that way he can blitz everyone and argue the contrary and spend his time explaining how that is a flawed view of evolution and pull a Chewbaca defense.
@Jaine
WLC has refused to debate the issue…one has to wonder what he’s afraid of.
You’re really happy with that response from Dawkins? Couldn’t he do a bit better than pointing, laughing, and calling Craig names? It’s not exactly classy, and not exactly productive.
Ivan, please explain when genocide is justified.
We’re not laughing, Ivan. Because it’s not funny.
Ing, Glenn Beck has also declined to debate the issue. Perhaps they worked together.
But, but we defined God as being self-existent. So it’s no problem for God.
Somehow…I never quite understood how theists think they can trump any argument by saying that “God is self-existent” or some such thing.
That is just something you (theists) said. You really can’t tell the difference between that and actual facts?
Glen Davidson
AJ Milne @ 34 – I agree with your assessment.
Right now con$erva_pedia has its 15 questions evilutionists cannot answer. They even have a cartoon of the organization sponsoring this on display. It has a man chopping down a tree marked evolution and the branches are marked with abortion, porn, etc.
It’s pathetic in that if the theory of evolution was actually replaced by another theory or if we all became creationists; I doubt it would end abortion or porn or femanism or anything else they think evolution causes.
One more thing, Ivan; how come WLC debating an empty chair not considered to be an act of pointing and laughing?
Inane Janine, I don’t think genocide is ever justified. But I’m not really sure why you’re asking me that…
Alex, let me clarify. I don’t think that pointing and laughing is a good dialogical strategy.
Inane Janine, I had no intention of defending WLC.
@119
It was very classy. He was actually fairly kind to WLC. He could have said, “I will debate you if we stick to a structure that allows me to address each of your claims immediately after you make such claims. You will not be allowed to ‘Gish Gallop’.” And WLC would have refused to abide by this structure and therefore it would have been WLC who refused to debate.
Me? I would have said, “In your dreams, you lying sack of shit.” And that, I admit, would not be classy.
I think the hypothesis that porn is caused by Darwinism can be firmly excluded by the fact that photography was invented in the 1820s. This of course means that photographic porn was invented a few weeks later. Darwins’s book was published almost half a century later.
Not without, you know, doing science and finding out what did, or at least could have, happened.
They don’t stoop to do science. Why should evolutionists have to, you know, work on discovery.
Here’s the 15, BTW
Some not about evolution per se, some quite wrong, like “life looks designed” (sorry Dawkins, not really), many with implicit or explicit falsehoods. Evolution is a “fundamentally religious idea,” you know, because it results from scientific inference rather than relying upon the Bible or some such thing.
Glen Davidson
Ivan, if you fucking bothered to read what Richard Dawkins wrote, he will not debate WLC because WLC is the type who does justify genocide.
Congratulation, you are a more ethical person than WLC. Though that is a very low bar.
Ivan, there is NO defense for genocide, no justification. Not now, not ever. Even if god orders it, the proper response is not “yes, master”, but “HELL NO!!!” So, yes. We point, but we don’t laugh. We point and feel nothing but contempt for anyone defending the indefensible. Dawkins’ reasons are more than sufficient. And the names? If the shoe fits….
“William Lane Craig has been demanding that Richard Dawkins debate him”
False. Craig has had no hand in the appeals to debate Dawkins. Those demands come exclusively from external organizations trying to set up a debate.
Ok, I admit, a did laugh some at the idiotic empty chair schtick. The genocide, not so much.
Gee, I suppose that understanding apparent relatedness (now that’s what life really looks like, a genealogical tree) as actual relatedness, along with mechanisms that appear adequate to explain how, isn’t a scientific breakthrough. Not like yawping that “life is designed” is a true breakthrough.
Knowing that we share genes with lab animals, such as mice, is useless to further discovery. Because design explains slavish derivation so very well.
Glen Davidson
Ing wrote:
“Theist: Everything must have a cause therefore God exists
Atheist: what about god
Theist: God doesn’t need a reason it’s self existent.”
Craig does not claim that everything must have a cause but that everything that begins to exist must a cause. And, according to theism, God never began to exist because is eternal, which means that he was never caused to exist by anything.
Yeah, wait a minute, lets us lesser atheists capitalize on Craig the same way! We can all just start challenging him to debates (I’m a nobody of course), and as he turns us down we can use theatrics to leverage his shitty name to build our own! And bonus: good = god’s demand? It’s like shooting fish in a barrel!
I asked a couple christians once if god told them to kill their first born son (a la Abraham), and to my surprise they both said yes! (They were otherwise very nice people.) But I think most people understand that we institutionalize people who claim god is telling them to kill people because it is a strong indicator that they have lost their mind.
It’s so bizarre that people follow Abraham, but no one pays attention to the guy on the street corner with the sandwich board proclaiming the end is nigh…
Does he have any evidence to back up this assertion? Because QM seems to prove this wrong. So his argument starts with premise #1 being at least unsupported if not incorrect. Hardly rock solid.
Thanks for your reply Inane Janine. I actually did fucking bother to read it, if you care to know. Also, I wasn’t trying to defend WLC, as I wrote above. And I sure don’t see how my character or lack thereof comes into this conversation.
Shamelessly Atheist, I will say yet again that I am not defending WLC. So I am neither directly nor indirectly defending genocide in any way whatsoever.
When I register a bit of disagreement, is that really a sufficient reason to accuse me of defending genocide?
Do you understand that the claims he’s making about God are completely unsubstantiated?
Glen Davidson
So, in order for this argument to work, one must concede that god is eternal. Look up “begging the question”.
Alex @128.
That presupposes that you can only define “porn” as photographic, which isn’t true.
Online Merriam-Webster:
And, as you are doubtless aware, pornography by the above definition has been around since people started making pictures, not just photographs. Scroll down this page for examples. I should say that the “Venus of of Willendorf” pictured at the beginning of the page was probably not intended as porn, but as a “good luck on being fertile” charm. Even in those days they noticed that women who were very, very skinny did not get pregnant very often and reasoning from that, we get the Venus statues.
Ivan, it shows that you are willing to keep your theism up and center when you claim that all RD is doing is laughing and pointing at WLC when RD is pointing out the character of WLC.
And fuck you, Ivan.
Actually, this much I agree with. Something that doesn’t exist never began to exist. Anyway, it’s just as easy to say that the universe never began to exist, thus no need for a creator.
Vox Day? That….. asshole is why I stopped blogging for a long time. He and his band of monsters descended on my blog and threatened to rape and murder me via using my IP to find me when they couldn’t argue me out.
Excuse me while I throw up.
“Craig legitimizes divine genocide. Therefore, his arguments for theism are unsound and don’t even deserve to be addressed.” – That’s a blatant fallacy, isn’t it?
Projection of monumental disproportion. This concedes, at least, Dawkins’ stellar qualifications within the field of biology. Craig is an abysmal philosopher, with no qualifications outside of … well, or inside, either, for that matter… philosophy.
Philosophy is not a category of sophistry-sport, in which lies are points scored with rounds won by accumulating the most points in a set time. Craig’s method is scatter-gun falsehoods and fallacies. His method is dishonest post-hoc rationalizations.
Technically, he’s not even really a “philosopher”, if there is any rigor to that term. He is a Christian apologist–so he reasons backward from that pre-assumed conclusion, which is already a philosophical failure by definition–who utilizes facile dishonesty as his prop for post hoc rationalization.
So, to address the quote above: Its the pot calling the driven snow black. Utterly absurd.
It is a little more complex than that. The argument is that god is the basis of ethical action. Yet secular ethical action is demonstrably better. Therefore, the moral argument for god is worthless.
Speaking of blatant fallacies, Myron, why did you lie about being an atheist?
Sure is. Who said it? I can’t seem to find it here or in the linked article.
Myron, drop the “atheist” act. By this time, you are fooling very few people.
HGi Myron,
I notice quote marks there, but funny thing is, I don’t see where anybody actually stated them?
Could it be that you’re quoting your own filtration of everyone’s points?
If so, why should anyone pay close attention to what your mind produces?
(I doubt, too, that you’ll understand the analogy…)
Inane Janine, OM, Conflater Of Arguments says:
So, in order for this argument to work, one must concede that god is eternal. Look up “begging the question.”
No question is begged because being eternal is simply part of the concept of God.
WLC debates an empty chair and loses.
Really. You are a self deluded schmuck.
Do you know how silly that sounds? “Part of the concept of unicorns is that they exist. Therefore let’s assume they exist. From this we conclude that unicorns exist.”
So Inane Janine, a bit of disagreement is not only sufficient reason for you to assume I’m defending genocide, but it is also sufficient reason for you to assume that I’m a theist? I am an atheist. (And… I still don’t support genocide.)
Chris Booth, we might disagree on Dawkins’ “philosophical” (or you can pick a different term, if you like) acumen. But I think we can agree on this principle: skill at one activity does not ensure skill at another. So Dawkins obviously has skill at biology and at explaining science to laymen. But the question of whether he has skill at, say, careful abstract reasoning of the sort involved in “philosophy,” that is another matter. The answer may very well be yes—but Dawkins’ biology cred’ does not ensure that it is.
No, sadly, he doesn’t know how silly that sounds. He also doesn’t know how lying about being an atheist pretty much kills any chance he might have of being taken seriously.
In other words, assuming that a concept is true in order to prove that a concept is true is in fact question begging.
Out of curiosity, Ivan, can you point us to your post chastising WLC for making such a trumped up act of calling Dawkins a coward, et. al.? Or do you just whine when the rhetorical rapier is pointed in one direction?
Myron:
*CHOKE*
While you’re looking up “begging the question,” also look up “death by irony.”
Ivan, fucking read what I wrote! I have not accused you of supporting genocide.
So you are an atheist? Fine. Please explain why all RD is doing is pointing and laughing when it seems that RD has provided enough reason to ignore WLC’s demand of a debate.
WLC is a flea.
“Myron, why did you lie about being an atheist?”
“Myron, drop the “atheist” act. By this time, you are fooling very few people.”
You guys make me laugh!
I can’t be an atheist because I refuse to participate in the primitive Craig bashing that is now so fashionable among the atheist internet community. Bravo!
Ever heard of the Principle of Charity?
“The ‘Principle of Charity’ states that interpreters should seek to maximize the soundness of others’ arguments and truth of their claims by rendering them in the strongest way reasonable. In other words, when there are different translations that could reasonably well explain an individual’s speech or behaviour, the one that should be chosen above the others is (ceteris paribus) the one that renders it most rational under the relevant cicrumstances. These circumstances might include the physical backdrop to the case, the subject’s wider set of beliefs or, in the exegesis of a philosophical text, other writings by the thinker in question. Accusations of such logical vices as bias, prejudice and blatant inconsistency should, if possible, be resisted unless evidence compels them. More simply put, the Principle of Charity demands that another’s position or behaviour be portrayed in the best possible light. A related principle, the ‘Principle of Fidelity’, enjoins us to render other people’s claims and arguments as accurately as possible—even when doing so might not be to our argumentative advantage. … One might say that according to the principle of charity, others’ arguments are to be presumed strong, their views cogent and their behaviour sensible and proper until shown to be otherwise.”
(Baggini, Julian, and Peter S. Fosl. The Philosopher’s Toolkit: A Compendium of Philosophical Concepts and Methods. 2nd ed. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. pp. 115-16)
This comment is intended to cause sexual excitement, and this:
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depicts sexual behavior. Is this comment "pornographic"?
What a horribly poor definition! Since the porn-nature of an image apparently is dependent on the intent of the producer and the viewer’s intent or the impact on the viewer is irrelevant, one can imagine all kinds of rather odd scenarios in which images were produced without intent (robotically, perhaps?) that were not “pornographic” but might be quite stimulating to the viewer. If there’s an objective definition of “pornography” it would have to effectively include the relationship between the mutual goals of the producer and the viewer.
Myron is right. No question is being begged.
What is being engaged in is circular reasoning. Which is a piss-poor argument.
Shorter philosopher: I can’t hold my own in an argument; here, hold this for me. (runs off)
Myron, you are so charitable that you concede the main point before the argument begins.
You have to prove that god exists before you can claim it’s eternal. Until you do that, it’s moot, and quite often just a way to weasel out of the contradictions theists defined into their various god hypotheses.
@Ivan
I had a look at your blog. You are not an atheist.
Gosh, I wonder what else Myron was lying about?
Biology, at the level RD and people like him understand it, requires building and testing abstract models of real world processes. It fundamentally requires abstract reasoning, of kind far more worthwhile than anything WLC is capable of.
I’m trying to imagine how to maximize the soundness of Craig’s arguments. Fuck. That’s like trying to maximize the pleasure of a migraine. The only thing I can come up with is to throw them in a lake and replace them with something less stupid.
Myron, could any one say that the debates of WLC include the “Principle Of Charity”?
Erulóra Maikalambe says:
“Part of the concept of unicorns is that they exist. Therefore let’s assume they exist. From this we conclude that unicorns exist.”
That is certainly fallacious. Normally, the words “existent”/”nonexistent”, “real”/”unreal”, “fictional”, “imaginary” are not to be used as semantic parts of definitions.
There are two different questions:
1. What is part of the content of the concept C?
2. Are there (real) objects which fall under the concept C?
Even if being necessarily existent is considered to be part of the God-concept’s content, the question whether there is a necessarily existent god is certainly still unanswered, because the statement that there is a necessarily existent god can be denied without self-contradiction.
Myron, there are concepts of god that does not require god to be eternal.
Fucking understand?
The ‘anything that begins to exist must have a cause’ argument is so poor as to be worthy only of being pointed at while laughing. Even if we except the (unjustified) premise that something that begins to exist must have a cause, we don’t know that 1) the universe can be said to have ‘begun to exist’ and 2) have no reason to conclude that the thing that caused the universe to ‘begin to exist’ is ‘God’. Idiocy.
fastlane, I happened to come across this post and Dawkins’ piece. I chose to comment. I guess I’d say my whining was largely a function of what I happened to read, given my views as an atheist, my active interest in such matters, the blogs I’m subscribed to, etc. Obviously no one reads everything written, and registers all possible whining in response.
Inane Janine, you wrote in comment 120, “Ivan, please explain when genocide is justified.” You intended by that question no accusation at all? Dawkins can obviously decline to debate WLC if he pleases. He could do so with no stated reason. He could do so because of what WLC has written regarding genocide. But doing so for the latter reason, and in the precise way that Dawkins did, is surely not the most productive way he might decline.
pj, I’m not sure exactly what you mean. I don’t believe there is a God. That qualifies me as an atheist. You liking all of my views is not necessary for me to be an atheist.
Thanks, all, for the fun discussion! I have to get to work, but I’ll try to check back later.
Bronze Dog says:
“You have to prove that god exists before you can claim it’s eternal.”
The concept eternity is an essential part of the concept of God, which means that if God existed, he would be eternal. And, of course, the $1,000,000 question is whether God exists, since a nonexistent god isn’t eternal.
Ivan, you have no answered my question; how was RD’s column just “laughing and pointing”. Also, thank you for acknowledging that I did not accuse you of justifying genocide.
Assclam.
The most productive way? What the hell is that supposed to mean? I think that Dawkin’s was trying to ‘produce’ the impression in the minds of readers that WLC is a rather nasty buffoon. I believe he succeeded.
Wrong. Wrong! Fucking wrong!
There are concepts of god that does not require it to be eternal.
Inane Janine, OM, Conflater Of Arguments says:
“Myron, there are concepts of god that does not require god to be eternal.
Fucking understand?
It should be clear that in this context here I’ve been referring to the god of Christian monotheism, which is the one in whose existence Craig believes.
Myron, you really can’t be so parochial and maintain any respect here. There are MANY concepts of god that do not include eternal existence. MANY. It is only considered a part of the essential nature of a god in the most commonly believed religions in the West.
Hey folks, I’m some random dude nobody cares about. I’ll be talking next week about why Linux sucks. I have challenged Linus Torvalds to come and discuss this matter with me at my mom’s living room, but I didn’t get an answer from him. Therefore, I will put an empty chair next to the sofa to symbolize his cowardice and his silent, implicit acknowledgement that he would lose against my solid arguments and sharp wit. My parents are so proud.
Inane Janine, OM, Conflater Of Arguments says:
“There are concepts of god that does not require it to be eternal.
Again, I’ve been talking about the monotheistic concept of God and not about any old concept of a god.
Fine. That is still begging the question. One has to give him an eternal god in order for WLC to prove his eternal god.
Not at all convincing unless one believes as WLC does.
This is an assertion without proof.
Hitchens rule: An assertion without proof or evidence can be dismissed without proof or evidence.
You’re wrong Myron. In many religions gods are created and destroyed all the time. The Olympian gods were the children of Titans. Athena was birthed from Zeus’es head.
BTW, your laughable repeat of Craig’s repeat of Kalam and Aquinas is also wrong. It assumes what it claims to prove. It reduces down to god is eternal without cause so god exists.
If you put in The Invisible Pink Unicorn or the Easter Bunny in place of god, it works exactly as well.
And this is why any thinking adult considers Craig a liar and a propagandist. It rarely even comes up with his own lies.
The main reason for Dawkins to debate Craig is that Dawkins is one of the so called Four Horsemen of the New Atheism and is certainly one of, if not the, most publicly known atheists in the world.
Craig is one of the foremost appollogists and defenders of Christianity. The basic argument is, if you are going to write this book against theism, why don’t you debate one of its main defenders?
The obvious counter-argument this raises, is why didn’t Craig, or anyone else, try to organize this event before Dawkins debated Lennox and other prominent theists?
And as a digression, for whatever reasons Hitchens and Harris thought Craig was worth debating.
Here also is the first of 10 parts of one of the best debaters to take on craig.
I see, if I outright state that it exists, that’s a fallacy. But if I imply it by saying “God is eternal”, then it’s okay by you. The phrase “God is eternal” is shorthand for “God exists eternally”. Thus to assume God is eternal is to assume God exists, because the former depends on the latter. Thus the argument is circular. Your premise relies on your conclusion. There is no soundness in this argument for me to maximize.
There’s nothing inherent in monotheism that requires an ‘eternal’ god. You’ll sometimes hear Christians claiming that God exists ‘outside space and time’ — which is a different (mostly meaningless) claim from the claim that he is ‘eternal’.
Ivan, read jose at @183 and try to understand why WLC’s act of debating empty furniture is the true act of “pointing and laughing”.
Ivan:
I see, a tone troll then.
The reason I asked the question I did is because you seemed to feel fully justified in metaphorically blasting Dawkins for his tone, while completely ignoring the larger context in which his entire piece was published.
Let me know if you still don’t get it, and maybe someone else can explain it to you using smaller words.
I see Myron still hasn’t actually provided an example of one of WLC’s arguments he finds compelling….
And Myron demonstrates what a load of presuppositional crap WLC drags to his “debates,” as well as the sterility and banality of such flagrant abuses of knowledge.
Yes, Myron, it’s utter contemptible shit like yours that no longer deserves any debate.
Glen Davidson
Brian, a debate is only for show. All it does is show who has the greater rhetorical chops. It does not show who has the more sound ideas.
@Ivan
Read some more of your writings. I concede the point: you seem to have lost your faith *very* recently (less than month ago you were quite preoccupied with constructing a personally appealing theology from Bible and Bible only), and you still desperately want Christianity to be true. You are uncomfortable with the moral nihilism that atheism seems to imply, and you are very annoyed at the happier sort of atheists. Such as Dawkings.
I feel sorry for you and hope that you will find a way to live life as happy and fulfilled atheist. Many of us have.
Craig does not claim that everything must have a cause but that everything that begins to exist must a cause.
but, both mathematically and empirically, this is entirely incorrect.
so, why should we pay attention to Craig again?
Nope, it is the illogical way theists try to avoid having to show how their imaginary deity came about. Nothing but smoke, mirrors, and handwaving. Nothing but lies, bullshit, and presuppositions.
Ivan is, however, both a liar – since his blog makes abundantly clear he is a Christian – and a halfwit, since only a halfwit would tell a lie so easily proven to be so.
Come to think of it, you could model your future lying on Myron’s example: obvious but still just about deniable.
Kalam has problems with logic and is just a word game.
There are other problems.
It assumes the universe isn’t eternal, that it started from no where and no when.
That probably isn’t the case. The net energy of our universe is ZERO. Which means something. Most Cosmologists today are leaning towards our universe being a quantum fluctuation in a larger and endless multiverse.
Worse still, Craig shared a platform with Sam Harris — a man who advocates torture. You can’t make this stuff up.
fastlane says:
“I see Myron still hasn’t actually provided an example of one of WLC’s arguments he finds compelling.
I didn’t say that I find some of his arguments compelling. What I do say is that you can’t simply deflate them with a dismissive hand wave.
You fucking bloody well can if you dealt with those arguments in the past.
Also, I ask again, is WLC “charitable” to his opponents in debate?
What I do say is that you can’t simply deflate them with a dismissive hand wave.
actually, you can if you aren’t ignorant of the many false premises and assumptions he uses.
what you meant to say is YOU can’t easily dismiss them.
If god existed. That’s something that hasn’t been demonstrated. I certainly haven’t seen any evidence of anything resembling a god. And even if every theist did agree on the “eternal” property, there’s still very rampant and continually growing disagreement on countless other properties and predictions of gods. I don’t see what makes one god definition more accurate than any other when they’re all lacking evidence.
I think another elephant in the room is that this idea is also working backwards: You’re defining an entity in a vacuum, not in the context of the known world. Why do you think a god would have the property of being eternal? What observations did you collect to make that conclusion?
If I were a physicist describing a hypothetical particle, I would have to define it in terms of how it interacts with the known universe, how those interactions explain previously unexplained phenomena, and try to conduct an experiment where I can demonstrate that it those properties. If the experiment fails to meet my predictions, I’m the one who has to go back to the drawing board and change the definition of my particle and try again.
What you’re doing is the equivalent of inventing the Minovsky particle from Mobile Suit Gundam: Some sci-fi anime writers invented a particle out of nowhere so that they could use it in their plot devices. The defined properties of the Minovsky particle may be precise and detailed, but without experiments or series of careful observations in the real world to determine the accuracy of the description, it’s all just fluff in your head.
Simply saying that god is eternal by definition amounts to “because I said so.” I’d accept that answer from a DM who made up his own monster for his fantasy setting, but not from someone trying to describe something that allegedly exists in the real world.
Not according to Mormons.
So, you disagree with Craig that God necessarily exists?
Sorry, that comment was directed @Myron.
You say that as if you think somebody here tried to do that. Have an example? The truth is, his arguments are PRATT. They have been dealt with time and time again, here and elsewhere. So to come in here and tell us we can’t just dismiss him is to be rather presumptuous on your part. So either provide a reason he should be taken seriously, or shut up. So far his arguments that have been dealt with in this thread have been demolished. Or do you still not concede that?
Ichtyic says:
“‘Craig does not claim that everything must have a cause but that everything that begins to exist must a cause.’
but, both mathematically and empirically, this is entirely incorrect.”
What positive reasons are there for believing that uncaused existence beginnings are (metaphysically) possible?
(To anticipate a likely reply: It is not at all clear that cases of radioactive decay are causeless events, nor that these events can properly be described as “beginnings of the existence of something”.)
Myron, now you are comparing a measurable event to a metaphysical question.
Myron,
since you’re arguing that WLCs arguments are compelling, can you do me the favor and outline a good one so I can “more than handwave” at it? I really don’t want to buy and read his book first because I really don’t have the time, so it would be of great help if you could help with that.
pj
Ouch! I hit my head on my desk!
Myron @ 173;
The trouble with treating the god hypothesis as a purely abstract philosphical issue is that it does not deal with the reality of religious belief ‘on the ground’, so to speak. The vast bulk of religions, as they are practiced day-to-day by their adherants, propose the literal existence of a deity who possesses agency – the ability to interact with the observable, quantifiable universe. Indeed, it is common among modern religions to attribute unlimited agency to this being, such that it is considerd to be an omnipotent creator deity.
Once you start making sweeping claims about the nature of physical reality being dependent upon a godhead, then it is not possible to retreat back into a position that says that god is purely a philosophical construct. A truth claim about quantifiable reality must be backed up with scientific evidence if it is to be credible. No theist has ever provided such credible evidence for god. In its absence, the semantic contortions of ‘sophisticated theology’ are moot. If god cannot be proven to exist, then the null hypothesis must hold. Requiring that atheists prove a negative is unreasonable – the burdern of proof must fall on those who make the extraordinary asserion of god.
@ 177;
You are employing a very modernistic and monotheist-centric concept of godhead. History has several examples of polytheist beliefs that included demi-gods as well as notional divine entities that, through one means of another, ‘fell’ and were stripped of some or all of their supposed ‘divine powers’ – Prometheus being a case in point – or were even rendered ‘mortal’. Then there are the belief systems that included the proposition that some humans were capable of ‘ascending’ to the state of becoming a deity, and cultures that were ruled by nominal ‘god emperors’. The idea that a god can ‘die’ in some circumstances is also not without precedent in religious belief. The idea of an ‘eternal’ god is actually far from ubiquitous and may indeed by quite a recent innovation in the history of religious belief.
That in #209 was supposed to read
“…since you’re arguing that WLCs arguments are not compelling but cannot be dismissed easily either…”
This will be my last reply for a while, as I seriously need to get to work.
fastlane, I’m not ignoring the context. Because I am not defending WLC. Even given whatever WLC has said or done, Dawkins’ response still wasn’t the most productive. Two wrongs don’t make a right, you might say.
pj, close, but no cigar. Less than a month ago I posted things I’d written somewhere around a year previously. If you want to get picky, I started in May of ‘10 to have serious doubts about the existence of God, worked through them for about 15 months, and then this past August began identifying as an atheist. But even if you wanted to pick at that May ‘10 date, that wouldn’t be the whole story. It’s not as if I first discovered atheism then. I had a firm understanding of atheism and its implications years beforehand, read a few atheist books including The God Delusion, etc. As for happy atheists, I wouldn’t say I’m annoyed by them, and I do indeed hope to become one. What I would say, though, is that many happy atheists seem blithely unaware of some of the implications of atheism, and smuggle some ultimately religious comfort into their atheism.
KG, no cigar, and no closeness. If you think my blog identifies me as a Christian, then the halfwit shoe might be on the other foot.
Google ‘vacuum energy’. Relevant to the simple question of whether something uncaused can begin to exist, and very relevant to how the universe began.
Ivan,
congratulations, way to go.
But,
“unaware of some of the implications of atheism, and smuggle some ultimately religious comfort into their atheism.”
Is only true in a very limited sense. Happy atheists certainly do not smuggle comfort from supernatural sources into their atheism. If I feel inspired and uplifted by looking at the stars and feeling a oneness with the universe (and I do), that is an experience that is of the same type as religious experiences, but not at all inconsistent with a purely atheistic world view. You know, for us atheists, the world has the meaning which we give it.
Just as well. You have not explained how RD could have been “more productive”.
WLC: For Kids
Little Billy: Hey Ing! Come see the dragon I have in my backyard
Ingling: A dragon really? I don’t think you have a dragon where is it?
Little Billy: In my backyard!
Ingling: You’re back yard is empty thou-
Little Billy: It’s invisible
Ingling: I’m not going to play with you
Little Billy: How can you just dismiss my dragon by saying my backyard is empty when my dragon has invisibility as an important elemental characteristic! You have to address it’s invisibility before you dismiss-
Ingling: The invisibility you made up because your claims run contrary to logic and common sense…And it’s NOT an inherent characteristic of dragonness! It’s one you added because you couldn’t produce a classical dragon
Little Billy; NUHHUH DRAGONS ARE INVISIBLE!
Ingling: I’m going home to play legos
—————————————-
To Myron and Ivan, does this explain the issue to both of you?
Sure it was, tone troll.
Post Script
WLC Jr’s Potty Seat: “Fuck you, Billy”
My own point of emphasis: Even if every theist in the history of mankind did agree on gods having the property of being eternal, so what? Just because an idea is popular and traditional doesn’t mean it’s true. There was a stretch of time where almost every human likely believed the Earth was stationary.
Extension of Gregory’s point: There are lots and lots of different definitions of “god” out there, all equally baseless as far as I can see. Why should we treat Myron’s any differently?
Myron @ 184;
That seems to amount to moving the goalposts to me. You said @ 177;
Ing, careful, the eternal Carl Sagan might press copyright charges there…
Virtual Particles
@Alex, Tyrant of Skepsis
I’m clearly getting them stoopid cooties :D
@Alex
You can’t prove I’m not the ghost of Carl Segan
It’s a well known fact that posing as Ing is a characteristic of Ghostly Sagan. Therefore, my existence proves Ghostly Sagan.
Actually it’s not even that. It’s about a hypothetical uncaused first cause that you’re labeling God to try to sneak in extra characteristics without demonstrating their necessity. You could use WLC’s argument and replace God with “Azaroth” or “Hypothetical Singularity Adam” and it works even better.
It was interesting that the comments in the Detroit Free Press ran to “the Michigan country club that changed its mind about allowing Richard Dawkins to speak there is a private club so they can do what they want so there ha atheists!” and no one said anything about how said club had repudiated its signed rental contract with the Center for Inquiry.
Indeed, Ing. And that’s even physical. Of course, they now usually argue, that is not a good example because the universe in which that happens, already exists, but the universe as some kind of supporting structure may as well be eternal, with our universe springing up as a quantum fluctuation.
@Alex
Also the characteristics if any of “Nothing” are not established at all. We have no baseline or any grounds to even guess what they are.
Though if we wanted to try pure reason…laws of causality are part of time/space that are due to our universe existing (ie stuff exists) if we had no stuff there’s no time/space and no causality and no laws of inertia or thermo dynamics…therefore there is no reason for mater NOT to spontaneously exist in nothingness because all the limitations on such an event are dependent on the existence of time/space. Once that happens though you have time/space so the process can only go forward towards causality not reverse back towards nothingness. I argue Nothing due to being non-causal and non-chronological is inherently unstable and will suffer an inevitable decay into Something.
#bullshitIamnotaphycist
Oh, my mistake. Can you make an updated version of Cosmos maybe? That would be really cool.
Damn it! Clumsy fingers got the better of me.
Second attempt.
Myron @ 184;
That seems to amount to moving the goalposts to me. You said @ 177;
Now you suddenly want to redefine this as referring only to the christian concept of god, thereby ignoring the broader history of religious belief even though christianity clearly possesses attributes drawn from earlier belief systems. You cannot say that because Christianity and many other monotheisms include a concept of an eternal god, that it is a necessary attribute of a hypothetical god that it is eternal – merely that the unevidenced concept of god favoured by a certain system of creation mythology includes this attribute.
If one accepts the idea of a creator being for the purpose of argument, why is it necessary to assume that it is eternal? If we are going to place evidence to one side in any case for a moment, then why isn’t it equally possible to assume that the hypothetical creator subsequently died/dissapated/travelled permenantly to another reality and that the universe continues without its originator?
I have considered possessing Neil Tyson
The bad news is WLC is right. The good news is that everyone is going to heaven to hang out with Jesus after they die, including atheists.
Proof: Heaven is a period in your experience compared to which no greater period can be conceived…
@Ramus
This win you receive is the win that which no greater win can be conceived
As for the question of how the universe began, here’s my answer and preemptive retort:
1) I don’t know, yet.
2) Why should I artificially restrict the set of possible answers to gods? Even if all the current non-god hypotheses end up being falsified, the answer could just as easily be a different non-god answer mankind hasn’t imagined, yet. Without good evidence, there’s no basis to favor gods in general as an explanation, much less any specific god hypothesis. I won’t commit to any of those answers until I see good evidence.
Not even all Christians. Just the concept used by Real True Christians™. Mormon God is not eternal, and I think there were other sects with that view as well.
Ivan,
Here’s a quote from your blog, specifically from a post entitled “My Theology, Part 2”.
I say again: what is the point of a lie that is so easily shown to be so, Ivan?
magicthighs says:
“So, you disagree with Craig that God necessarily exists?”
I think that logically necessary beings are logically impossible beings that are necessarily nonexistent in all possible worlds, because their existence can be denied without self-contradiction. And the only intelligible meaning of “metaphysically/ontologically necessary being” I know is “essentially eternal being”: An essentially eternal being exists eternally, i.e. uncreatably and indestructibly, in all possible worlds in which it exists; but it is a logically contingent/non-necessary being in the sense that it doesn’t exist in all possible worlds.
And that’s why no ontological argument for the existence of God can be sound.
The theist Richard Swinburne writes:
“God is supposed to exist ‘necessarily’. Some have understood this to mean ‘of logical necessity’, i.e. it would be incoherent to suppose there to be no God. Atheism does, however, seem to be a coherent position, even if false; and so other theists have understood God’s being necessary as his being the ultimate brute fact on which all other things depend.”
(“God,” by Richard Swinburne. In The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, edited by Ted Honderich, 2nd ed., 341-342. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. p. 342)
Of course, if Craig accepted the essentially eternal existence of God as “the ultimate brute fact”, i.e. as an inexplicable contingent fact, then he would have to reject Leibniz’s Principle of Sufficient Reason, which he staunchly defends.
Ing 228,
You know, I am one, but that doesn’t help much in this case. I am pretty sure that no-one has a handle on how to correctly treat “springing into existence” as a dynamical process outside of space and time. That does not mean that the theologians are right, it means that they sure as Hel don’t have to say anything reliable about it either. The physics is unclear, therefore you cannot deduce anything from it. The theologians, who don’t understand the physics, merely think that they have a basis to start their annoying arguments from, like that Kalam train wreck.
If we wanted do describe dynamics, that means you need some sort of parameter that you scroll through, under which a physical system undergoes changes. If you don’t have that, no-one knows what the hell can be said at all. Especially not the apologist Theologians, who have no clue. They claim that there’s a problem that can only be resolved with their God figure – but they don’t understand the problem, and even if they understood it, they certainly couldn’t say anything reliable about it.
So, by “hang out” I assume that we will all be naked?
Alex, Tyrant of Skepsis says:
“Myron, since you’re arguing that WLCs arguments are compelling…”
Again, I am not arguing that his arguments are compelling!
Myron, I corrected myself immediately. Now, back to the main point, can you describe one of those arguments that you find uncompelling, but not easily dismissable? Please?
I think we should start referring to it as “Hitchens’ Hammer”
All Myron wants is that we take WLC seriously.
Sorry, I will not. If I do, I have to start taking flat earthers, creationists and alchemists seriously.
Almost as bad as George Bush, Darth Cheney, The Tea Party/GOP and much of the US government who, in fact, have actually tortured tens of thousands to little or no effect.
Bunch of lame trolls today. We need better trolls.
Well I will be.
No matter how many times you guys ask me to put some clothes on.
I wish these religious freaks would stop claiming to be atheists. We know what atheists are like, we see them everyday.
We also know what xians are like. Most of us, including myself, are…ex-xians.
Waffler, of the Waffler Institute says:
“Google ‘vacuum energy’. Relevant to the simple question of whether something uncaused can begin to exist, and very relevant to how the universe began.”
Whatever is produced by or emerges from vacuum-energetic processes has a cause: the vacuum-energetic processes.
Again, what positive reasons are there for believing in the possibility of uncaused existence beginnings?
Myron,
What positive reasons are there for believing that uncaused existence beginnings are (metaphysically) impossible? If a claim is to be used as a premise (in an argument that claims to be about reality, not mathematical abstractions), we should surely require some grounds for thinking it true.
Why is it not at all clear? Such assertions are empty.
But suppose we concede for the sake of argument that we know of no clear cases of “uncaused existence beginnings”. Now, if time began with the Big Bang, it is not clear that the universe did begin to exist, since in the normal case, this requires that there was a time before it existed. Now Craig, I now, attempts to get round this by defining “existence beginnings” in such a way that the universe does count as beginning to exist at the Big Bang even if there was no time prior to that; but this begs the question: the difference between this case and other cases of “existence beginnings” might make all the difference.
@234:
I have often used the following sentence with regard to how the universe came about: “We don’t know, and neither do you.”
It’s that last part that theists have trouble with. If you declare that something hasn’t been proven to a scientific certainty (and I’m speaking of “pre-Big Bang” states), theists will declare this to be a “gotcha” moment, where they insert their absolute dead-serious certainty that their particular deity acted in a very specific manner within a set of specific time constraints.
…and neither do you…
Cuts their “gotcha” moment off at the knees.
“He’s no worse than Dick Cheney” isn’t much of an endorsement in my book.
KG, here is a quote from the preceding post, My Theology, Pt. One:
Ing, I wasn’t asking, but sure, it looks like a pretty good explanation to me.
fastlane and Erulóra Maikalambe, since when does the slightest dissent make a person a troll, tone or otherwise? I sort of expected more from people who profess to value reason and critical thinking.
Here’s a bit more from Ivan – note the date. Rather an odd thing for someone “identifying as an atheist” to post, no?
Admittedly there are posts from October where Ivan portrays himself as a nihilistic atheist; but when Ivan gives us such contradictory evidence about himself, I think we can only conclude that whether the inconsistencies result from dishonesty or from confusion, he’s not worth taking seriously.
1.Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
2.The universe began to exist.
3.Therefore, the universe has a cause.
4.This cause is the Pink Unicorn of the classical internet, and is Invisible.
Makes just as much sense. A proof for the existence of the Invisible Pink Unicorn.
Cthulhu, this is lame.
Premise 1 is untrue. At the quantum level, the universe is indeterminate and virtual particles come into being from a vacuum in a sea around us.
Premise 2 is uncertain but probably not true.
Premise 3 is uncertain but probably not true.
Premise 4 is simply an assertion without proof, data, or evidence. It has nothing to do with the first 3 premises. It assumes that god exists in the first place.
Kalam isn’t even faulty logic. It is just a lame word game. And that is why thinking children and adults consider WL Craig to be an idiot.
Your concern with Dawkins’ response to Craig is nothing but tone trolling. You have not addressed any of the substance of his response, instead referring to it as “pointing and laughing”, and basically saying that he’s hurting the cause (which is concern trolling).
I could have sworn this was on the Cupcake Bingo card, but I don’t see it.
KG, I’m flattered that you are so rapt reading my blog that you’re missing replies here. But let me repeat: the series of posts you’re reading began with part one, which began thusly:
There was a piece about this on BBC Radio 4 a few days ago.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b015ygx2/Sunday_16_10_2011/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b015ygx2
(starting at 20:45)
He was accused of making “slippery and contorted and very obscure” arguments and being “unpleasent … and hard to believe he is interested in a disinterested search for the truth” by the chairman of the Humanist Society.
WLC himself was then interviewed (26:20), and denied it, but did seem to me to be slippery and contorted and not interested in a disinterested search for the truth. (Particularly when he claimed that it was extraordinary that he was “being criticised for allowing the other side to make its case”, which makes it sound as if all the nasty/bad arguments aren’t actually his).
And he did make the “It was good to kill the adult Cannanites because they were all so evil, and it was good to kill their children because they would go to heaven, and it wasn’t genocide because they could have just abandoned their homeland” claim.
The thing that bugs me about these apologists for the Flood or the conquest of Cannan (ok, one of the many things that bugs me) is that they never even attempt to explain what was so wicked about the Cannanites / Antideluvians so as to justify their extermination. Its always just “Well, God/the Israelites are good, so everyone they killed must have deserved it. And if they killed all of them, then they must all have been really, really bad. So killing them all was all the more justified.”
Is there a name for that fallacy?
WLC hasn’t demanded anything – you’re just wrong about that. As a matter of fact the demands are coming from organisations that invited him, he said he’d probably rather not debate Dawkins. It’s funny to see how people in the new atheist camp speak about how nasty WLC is, and start calling him all sorts of nasty names! WLC doesn’t stoop to such girly tactics.
“William Lane Craig has been demanding that Richard Dawkins debate him, and has gotten quite insistent lately as he tours England.”
Dr Craig has not sought to have this debate, it has been set up by independent groups each time.
The demand has really come from the wider public (Christian and secular), of whom are interested in seeing the two most prominent contemporaries for their respective worldviews exchange arguments on behalf of their positions.
Word-salad. Particles appear from nothing in a vacuum, as predicted by quantum mechanics. There is no ’cause’, no ‘vacuum-energetic process’. They just do, and that they do is a predicted consequence of the uncertainty principle, and has been observed. Saying that the cause is the ‘vacuum energetic process’ is just another example of question begging. What is the cause of vacuum energy? Why, the thing that causes vacuum energy, of course.
Again, what positive reasons are there for believing in the possibility of uncaused existence beginnings?
What positive reasons are there for believing that anything begins at all?
“girly tactics”? Oh, you are about to be eviscerated, scumbag.
WTF?
Cthulhu, this is stupid.
There is no such thing as the vacumm-energetic process. This is just gibberish.
Are you being deliberately obtuse, or do you think that kind of misogyny is going to win you friends here ?
I’m going to wander over to my FaceBook page, and tag all of the empty chairs as Richard Dawkins. And I’ll definitely set up an empty chair at my next D&D game so that he can take a break from not-debating WLC and not-game with us.
@Myron
Nice rhetorical trick, by insisting that springing into existence itself is an entity in need of creation, you define uncaused existence to be impossible.
But behold my explanation: The the Universe emerges from nothing via Universe-creating processes.
Btw, just in case you’re trying to go for an infinite regress now, those are actually eternal. As I said earlier in a post, theologians have nothing reliable to say about this because the physics is far from resolved. In the meantime, the crap I make up is just as valid as what a thousands of sophisticated theologians construct in 2000 years.
How does WLC get around the problem that claiming everything has to have a cause applies as much to the existence of god as it does to the universe.
He is supposed to be a philosopher so he will know he cannot simply say god does not need a cause.
Odd that two different Pauls would come in at the exact same time to tell us that WLC didn’t demand a debate. And of course, one’s a sexist asshole.
As for the other:
Is the wider public going to set up the empty chair?
More like misokorasy in this case :)
But from the rest of the post, I would say, the latter.
Well, yes he does — he says ‘God is eternal’. It’s the sophisticated theology.
I thought it must be something like that.
I do wish they would come up with something a bit more original. Something that is not so obviously bollocks.
What attribute is there that we can bestow upon the god figure that we cannot bestow upon the Universe itself? In return, what attributes are there that christian apologetic theologians bestow upon the god figure that are unnecessary? The answer is
– none
– personality, intent, complexity
So, the God hypothesis is unnecessary. Due to lack of evidence, it is also unjustifiable.
Alex, Tyrant of Skepsis says:
“Nice rhetorical trick, by insisting that springing into existence itself is an entity in need of creation, you define uncaused existence to be impossible.”
No, I don’t! All I said was that products of vacuum-energetic processes don’t begin to exist causelessly, since those processes are their causes.
“But behold my explanation: The the Universe emerges from nothing via Universe-creating processes.”
Then those pre-existent universe-creating processes are the cause of the universe’s beginning to exist.
(By the way, how could the physical universe as whole possibly have been created by physical processes that are essentially part of the physical universe. Do you believe in physical self-creation?)
Do you believe in physical self-creation?
Once again, do you have any evidence that anything is ever created?
Racev says:
“There is no such thing as the vacumm-energetic process. This is just gibberish.”
No, it isn’t! The so-called vacuum, i.e. “empty” spacetime, is full of energy and energetic processes taking place therein.
And that is why you were told you were talking bollocks. Vacuum-energetic processes is not a term used in physics. You are making shit up.
I like to call it “Red Team/Blue Team Morality,” myself. There’s quite a lot of fundies who believe any action is automatically justified by being in the right affiliation. Anything Red Team does is automatically correct and moral because they’re on Red Team.
As for the fallacies and other bad logic involved, I’d say it’s circular logic, false premise, and contradiction: For the latter, the act of mass murder is evidence that God/the Israelites were very evil, which contradicts the premise that they were good.
Unless you believe someone can play “Renegon” (Renegade/Paragon) like I’ve heard of in Mass Effect.
Myron, i was being facetious, but only to make a point.
My whole point is that we do not know whether the universe is ever created or eternal, whether such a notion makes any sense, and if it has a beginning as seen from the inside, whether that means that it, in any sense of the word, had to spring into existence.
Therefore, the theologians have nothing to work with.
Yet, they act as if they did and produce crap deductions based on that which are entirely motivated by their a priori notion of what is supposed to come out. In short: They don’t know what the hell they are talking about.
And it was pointed out to you that there are no such processes. Why do you ignore that?
Myron,
Please provide a citation for the use of the term “vacuum-energetic processes” in a university level text book, or even in a scientific paper.
Aaron Pound says:
“Once again, do you have any evidence that anything is ever created?
Yes, but that’s a red herring anyway.
Well, I’m not sure what you are all on about with the vacuum energetic processes, but in our universe there are of course things like quantum fluctuations that give rise to what can be described as virtual particles existing for a short period of time. They are measurable, and the theory which predicts them is extremely reliable (it is the most exact theoretical prediction in the history of science)
Ivan @ 156:
Ivan, there is a lot wrong with this post. You start out with a strawman, morph it into a red herring, and the rest is pabulum. Yes, accomplishment in one area does not map one-to-one with accomplishment in another. So? That is irrelevant here. Craig has no “philosophy cred”, particularly not of the “careful abstract reasoning” sort. Lying is not “careful abstract reasoning”. Craig is not even simply a bad thinker, he’s a liar. Pay attention. You are new to thinking, so I’ll reiterate: lying and logical fallacies and Gish galloping are not “careful abstract reasoning” of any sort, “”philosophical”” or otherwise.
I put the words above in quotes, because it seems that you are using them as buzz-words rather than really comprehending them. Again, pay attention. If you are sincere, you are new at this thinking stuff, and don’t have it down yet. The word “careful” has a meaning. The word “abstract” has a meaning. The word “reasoning” has a meaning. You don’t grok any of those meanings. Mendacious logorrhea intended to logjam an opponent, Craig’s M.O., is emphatically not “careful abstract reasoning”, it is in fact the opposite. Thinking requires attention, Ivan, so try to follow what I just said.
It seems you haven’t read any of Dawkins’ books. It also seems that you are totally unfamiliar with science and how it works. Dawkins, if you have the intellectual chops to “get” it, has produced a remarkable body of delightfully careful abstract reasoning–in sentence after sentence in paragraph after paragraph in chapter after chapter in book after book. One doesn’t garner the kind of respect in scientific circles that Dawkins has by failing in careful abstract reasoning. I’d suggest you start with The Selfish Gene…and pay attention.
On the other hand, any one can put out their shingle and claim to be a “philosopher”. So, I have a question: Your comment suggests that you think that Craig “has skill at, say, careful abstract reasoning”. Are you holding him up as an exemplar of this? There has been a lot of presentation in this thread of examples of Craig lying and engaging in failed logic and dishonest debating techniques. He is facile and smooth in delivery, but he does not present “careful abstract reasoning”. I am not prepared to accept the definition of “willful, scheming mendacity” to be “careful abstract reasoning”. And I can’t imagine a philosopher being lionized down the ages for mendacity; the point is to avoid it. So, again, are you holding him up as an exemplar of “careful abstract reasoning”?
If so, then please explain how willful dishonesty is representative of “careful abstract reasoning of the sort involved in “philosophy””.
now that’s not nice…
I thought it was a bit generous.
“In July of last year, I wrote a letter…” – Ivan@255
Yes, I know. But it is not in any way clear from looking at Part 1 (I admit I have not read the whole series) that you have now changed your mind. I would expect someone who actually wanted blog readers to understand their posts would have made clear at the beginning of such a series of posts that the posts no longer represented their position. Of course, it’s your blog, and you can be as obscure as you want on it, but I think the charge of halfwittedness stands: only a halfwit blogs and does not take care to be understood by readers.
Personally, I think you’re suffering from a bad case of self-importance – just because you can no longer believe you will live forever, you decide nothing has any real value – and that the very obvious “God-shaped hole” in your belief system will either close up – and you’ll see that this melodramatic nihilism is rather childish – or you’ll recover your faith and bore everyone with stories of how you used to be an atheist.
Alex, Tyrant of Skepsis says:
Well, I’m not sure what you are all on about with the vacuum energetic processes, but in our universe there are of course things like quantum fluctuations that give rise to what can be described as virtual particles existing for a short period of time.”
Bingo! I was talking about quantum fluctuations, which are energetic processes in spacetime. And they are the causes of the appearance of virtual particles; and so we have still no example of something causelessly popping into existence.
Strike “childish” in the last sentence of #286; insert “adolescent”.
Myron,
there’s not much physical point distinguishing the quantum fluctuations and the virtual particles. What you have to have for all this is a spacetime in which it takes place, and fields in it which are governed by the corresponding laws of quantum physics. But what does that have to do with WLCs arguments? I refer to my previous few posts.
Myron,
I am still waiting. Do you intend to answer, or are you going to admit the term was meaningless ?
The appearance of a virtual particle is a quantum fluctuation: it’s not caused by one unless things can cause themselves – in which case, why can’t the universe (which, indeed, some theorists think is a quantum fluctuation)?
Matt Penfold,
he meant ordinary vacuum fluctuations as they are part of the Standard Model. The trouble is more what they have to do with anything. If anything, you can use their presence to argue that there is precedent for stuff appearing out of nowhere. I certainly don’t see how you would use them to argue the opposite.
Admit it, Myron, you know less about quantum mechanics than I do* – possibly even less than William Lane Craig!
* Which isn’t much
Chris Booth, if you say that I am new to thinking, you must be new to reading. For I am still not defending WLC. As for Dawkins, I have read two of his books, and I actually plan to read The Selfish Gene some time soon. As I’ve said above, Dawkins is excellent at explaining science to a non-scientist like me. But just because I don’t have a doctorate in a scientific discipline doesn’t make me “new to thinking.” If you must know, I have a bachelor’s in philosophy and a master’s in education, and I’ll be starting law school next fall. Judging from the low reading comprehension demonstrated by your attributions regarding WLC, I’m guessing I may have a bit more reading and thinking experience than you do.
KG, I apologize for giving my readers more credit than you deserved. I didn’t think I needed to belabor the fact that part one comes first.
KG, aren’t thesauri great?
Alex, Tyrant of Skepsis (I like yer nom, by the way) @ # 284:
Really?
I didn’t mean to be not nice, actually…. –sigh–
Thanks. It would be nice if Myron was to admit he is talking bollocks though.
@Ivan
Hence the name – Thesaurus Rex
No, quantum fluctuations are particles appearing from nothing. It’s been explained above, but there’s no ’cause/effect’ relationship that allows anyone to predict the appearance of said particles. They appear ‘from nothing’. Quantum fluctuations are not ‘energetic processes in spacetime’.
Myron:
Can you describe these energetic processes? In detail. Give me the cause, not just some mumbo-jumbo about “vacuum energetic processes.”
Then do me a favor. Since everything that has to exist has a cause, tell me how a god might come to exist. Then, assuming you’re going to answer “God is eternal, it’s one of his intrinsic properties,” tell me how, “The universe exists in a larger metaverse, which is eternal and has no beginning,” is any different from the god answer.
“In the interests of transparency, I should point out that it isn’t only Oxford that won’t see me on the night Craig proposes to debate me in absentia: you can also see me not appear in Cambridge, Liverpool, Birmingham, Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow and, if time allows, Bristol.”
Gold.
I do so love a nice, dry, British “fuck off you manky little git”.
Someone of the intellectual stature of Craig pestering Dawkins to debate him reminds me of the Black Knight, arms and legs hacked off, bellowing at King Arthur’s back: “Come back and fight! I’ll bite your bloody legs off!”. The difference between Craig and the Black Knight, however, is that Craig hasn’t a metaphorical leg to stand on in the first place.
Even without his jaw-dropping defences of holy genocide and his bass-ackwards concern for the mental health of the poor wee lambs ordered to do the murdering (who were “just following orders”, I’m quite sure), Craig’s little more than a slick used-Christ salesman with delusions of grandeur.
nigel,
this is what I was trying to convey in #272, there’s a difference, in that they both are equally powerful, but the god answer makes many unnecessary additional assumptions.
Before I go to bed I just want to mention that you can hear Richard Dawkins in conversation with the Chief Rabbi at this link – http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006r9xr
A good example of what Richard is like up against a religious person with a better brain and less ego-driven than old Whotsisname.
Hey guys, the question was whether there are any convincing examples of a thing or things popping into being without a cause or sufficient reason!
I still haven’t seen any!
Alex:
Yeah. I saw that. I was actually just copying you, since that question hasn’t been answered yet (that I saw).
The God Conjecture just doesn’t hold up against other similar naturalistic conjectures. It multiplies entities unreasonably.
Myron:
You’ve seen them.
You’ve just not understood them.
There’s a difference.
Well you would see the particles popping into existence in a vacuum, they are far too small.
Of course, vacuum fluctuations have been explained to you, so there is a example for you, even if you cannot actually see it happen with your eyes.
I am not a my best today, but I just want to stir the pot: quantum fluctuations are a result of field equations coupled with the uncertainty principle. To say they are something from nothing is not strictly accurate. Yes, we measure something, things like the casimir effect and the lamb shift that were predicted by this, but we have no understanding of mechanism for how these things work. Is spacetime a quantum foam as it is often characterized? Then virtual particles are not coming from nothing, just from the least that our universe has to offer. The truth is that we know nothing about nothing, not even if it is possible for nothing to exist, let alone whether it is stable.
Here is the thing though, we do know that something exists and that it has properties consistent with generating universe creation events, so the only thing that needs to be eternal is spacetime. No personal entity with zero evidence of its existence needs to be conjured up to explain what something that is manifest in our universe can explain as well.
Myron:
Further, this trades on the assumption there’s no sufficient “reason”* for the cause of the universe. You’re making many assumptions about the nature of the origins of the universe of which you are ignorant.
* “Reason” is a loaded word — hence, the scare-quotes. It denotes intent. As such, in this context, it appears to be an attempt to smuggle in your conclusions, eg: teleology. This is yet another subtle attempt at question begging. You’ve looked that up, right?
Myron
Vacuum is not a synonym for empty.
Vacuum is the absence of atmospheric pressure.
I can pull vacuum in a porcelain oven. Does that make me god?
Spontaneous events, such as production of particle-antiparticle pairs in the vacuum or nuclear decay have no cause.
Ivan,
Really, your stupidity is tiresome. Your Part one does not say, anywhere, that the letter no longer represents your views. How exactly did you expect readers to know that? Perhaps the clue is in an earlier post, but unless you are swollen-headed enough to believe that anyone who chances on your blog reads the whole thing in chronological order, it’s a mystery to me that you did not clearly indicate that this was the case. Why didn’t you, Ivan? You can tell us.
There’s a difference between spontaneous ie uncaused and self-caused which Myron is implying can’t happen. This is one of the equivocations often used in arguing against modern cosmology by apologists.
@dexitroboper
What’s the meaning of self-caused and spontaneous that you allude to? And what does it have to do with modern cosmology? I’m not trying to tease you, honestly interested.
Dhorvath:
I know that. Myron doesn’t.
But Myron is trading on the very same ignorance he uses to explain the necessity of his god. He’s attempting to use a god-of-the-gaps argument: because we can’t explain the specific causal event that resulted in our universe, a god must exist.
Yet when we ask him to employ that same ignorance against something of which we are aware, something we can measure and even indirectly observe, he’s left with nothing. The explanatory power of a god covers a universe, but not quantum fluctuations in a vacuum below the Planck scale. The only conclusion is that the God Conjecture is truly not an explanation at all.
So I hold that the analogy is still sufficient. We use “uncaused” to mean, “a potential cause of which we are ignorant.” That description covers both the universal origin event, and the creation and rejoining of virtual particle pairs.
Which is what I think you’re saying in your last paragraph. I just don’t want Myron thinking he’s got an out vis-a-vis virtual particle pairs by declaring ignorance on one hand, and then declaring he has proof of a god by declaring ignorance on the other.
Nigel,
Sorry, I had hoped to clarify, but my fuzzy brain today should have clued me into silence.
Dhorvath, I was really just re-phrasing what you said, just to make sure I understood. Me not so bright today.
Also, I just wanted to make sure that Myron had a bit more to cover before going into his whole “God is eternal” question-begging dog-and-pony show.
Ivan @ # 294:
Hmmm. You noted one phrase and avoided my last question. Brave, that. Intellectually stalwart.
Well here’s your chance to show on this thread that you are a thinker and a reader rather than saying it a bit stridently: please answer this question:
Is your position that WLC is not mendacious?
Here’s a refresher:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkBD20edOco
Spontaneous means that an event occurs without any preceding events necessitating the events occurrence. Pair production in the vacuum and radioactive decay are examples of spontaneous events. Cosmologists think that the Big Bang was a spontaneous event like pair production. The universe persists because the total energy of the universe is believed to be zero and the uncertainty relation ΔEΔt ≈ h with E=0 means δT can be indefinitely long.Self-caused means that an object is its own cause of existence, a situation that appears to be paradoxical.
BTW, that an idea appears paradoxical, such as a physical object being self-caused is a metaphysical objection to the behaviour of the universe. The actual universe may not agree.
@dexitroboper
Thanks – so in this picture the Big Bang which we observe would be something like pair creation in a vacuum? I guess this Big Bang is something that is assumed to happen spontaneously in a pre-existing space-time background, because otherwise it does not make much sense to talk about events in the first place, right?
Did Myron ever explain why he lied about being an atheist?
dexitroboper says:
“Spontaneous events, such as production of particle-antiparticle pairs in the vacuum or nuclear decay have no cause.
I beg to differ! The appearance of virtual particles is causally grounded in physical dispositions (propensities) of a field or spacetime itself; and the decay of an atomic nucleus is causally grounded in its own physical dispositions. Therefore, such events are not causeless. For there are pre-existent physical conditions and dispositions which are responsible for them, at least in the probabilistic sense of making them likely to happen.
A genuine counterexample to the principle that there can be no causeless existence beginnings would have to be one where no pre-existent causal conditions or dispositions whatsoever are in any way relevant to or responsible for something’s beginning to exist or popping into existence.
When Craig says that absolutely causeless events would be “worse than magic”, he’s basically right.
Myron,
Reality is not required to behave how WLC says it should. It is time both you and he realised that.
Also, before you make any more stupid arguments, you need to explain why you lied about being an atheist.
Myron:
By what interpretation of the uncertainty principle, or even string theory, do you make these objections? Would you be referring to causal dynamical triangulations, or perhaps loop quantum gravity theory?
What are those dispositions or propensities of which you speak?
I’m just curious where your knowledge of this arises, since you seem dead-set on arguing against someone who has actual knowledge of the physics involved.
So you’re saying a god would be worse than magic?
I certainly agree.
Myron,
yes, as I have already said in #289, the quantum fluctuations and virtual particles which we measure are measured in a space-time, and seem to appear because there are fields present in this space-time which are governed by certain equations of quantum physics. This phenomenon therefore does not obviously apply in exactly the same way to the creation of the universe out of complete nothingness (whatever that means), but it sets a precedent for known laws of physics spontaneously producing events which are not preceded by obvious causes in the sense of a causal relationship in space-time. It may as well be that the universe is an eternal framework in which such spontaneous fluctuations happen, giving rise to events which are perceived as Big Bangs.
There now are a lot of pretty specific questions in this thread remaining unanswered by you.
Myron @ 303;
Many other commenters (with a far better understanding of physics than myself) have already pointed out that quantum fluctuations/virtual particles ‘pop’ into existence without a cause or any means of predicting the event – that’s your example.
In any case, I fail to see your logic. It seems to be; there are no uncaused causes (which is wrong as noted above) -> apart from god (for some reason) -> therefore goddidit.
The last link in particular is tenuous. If everything requires a first cause, then there is no reason to assume that god doesn’t need one, and we wind up pontificating on who god’s god is, and on who god’s, god’s, god is ad nauseam. If the claim is that god doesn’t require a first cause, then why does the universe? Without resorting to any special pleading, that is? Giving an imagined deity a ‘get out of causality free card’ – just because you say so – isn’t good enough. Either the rule holds, or it doesn’t. Saying that god has all the cheat codes to reality is just another way of rendering the premise of an unevidenced deity non-falsifiable – a crutch to prop up the fundamentally non-parsimonious and irrational god myth.
So, so tired of Craig. He has been trotting out these fallacious arguments — and having them torn apart — since I was in diapers or before. I am no philosopher, but even I can see the major problems with his arguments.
He wants a debate with Dawkins because Dawkins is a biologist, not a philosopher. Craig is, at least by degree, a philosopher. Which means, when one goes to the dark side as he does, he can twist someone’s mind up in knots. He’s also been a master debator since high school, and the debate format favors the person who can spray as much shit as possible: lighting fires is easier than putting them out.
These debates are gladiatorial games, rigged contests. It’s all a show. If one is going to debate Craig, one needs to be aggressive and take the fight to him; letting him run the show is the worst mistake to make, and you’ve already lost if you have. You also need to be a generalist; you need philosophy, logic, text criticism, archaeology, ethics and metaethics, anthropology, comparative religion, and theology as well as science.
*le sigh*
Do you not see that what you are now defining what you require in such a way that we could never have such a counterexample other than spacetime itself – because spacetime is such a pre-existent physical condition or disposition for anything for which we could have evidence of a beginning? So the fact that there are no other examples under this definition tells us precisely nothing about whether spacetime needs a cause.
Alex (to Myron):
Yeah. Pretty much all of them.
He probably should not try out for Dancing With The Stars, with all the grace he lacks in dipping and dodging.
@Alex, Tyrant of Skepsis what kind of physical reality underlies the Big Bang is a cutting-edge topic in cosmology. I don’t know enough to say what the current ideas are. Some speculations include that the Big Bang happens inside black holes in a previous universe, or that there are structures(? not sure if that’s the right word) in 11-dimensional space called branes that collide and produce Big Bangs. Sean Carrol’s blog Cosmic Variance is a good read about this stuff.
I wonder if others laugh at us atheists for being so devoid of heroes that we’re left trying to justify, defend, and applaud the cowardice of our notables. Or because, having dispensed with the belief in one or more perfect persons, we instantly try to plug the lacuna with someone as utterly undeserving as Dawkins. Gone are the days of Sartre, Hume, and d’Holbach, long gone.
Might be just you they are laughing at.
@dexitroboper,
Yep, I’ve indeed heard of those two. For the latter one assumes that there are those 10 or 11 dimensions (including time) of string/M theory respectively preexisting in which all this happens – it may well be, and it’s a good example for a scenario where our big bang happens within a larger framework of spacetime (rather than out of nothingness). The former is really intriguing, too. I think there’s a discussion of Steve Weinberg (who is by all means one of the smartest people walking the earth right now) and Richard Dawkins where he outlines the idea. It’s an application of the idea of evolution by natural selection to the anthropic principle. Very nice, only pretty impossible to test. But, as I never tire to point out, even if it’s metaphysics, it’s still metaphysics inspired by the best physics that is available, as opposed to the crap theologians put out, which is inspired only by their prejudice.
Also, I notice that no one aside from Bob Price who has any real historical knowledge about the Bible and the contemporary society debates him. Philosophical wanking back and forth is all well and good, but nothing beats being able to point to the text and say “No, you stupid fuck, that is NOT what it says.”
#113 above gave a good example: there WAS no idea of heaven or hell at the time the Canaanite genocides were taking place. Everyone went to Sheol. Everyone.
I would LOVE to see Thom Stark take Craig on about said genocides, drawing on his knowledge of “herem” warfare and cities “placed under the ban” as a ritualistic form of human sacrifice. He smacked Paul Copan silly in “Is God a Moral Compromiser?” which was a several-hundred page rebuttal and masterfully researched.
Someone needs to smack this guy down, hard and publicly.
Scott Scheule,
what the fracking frack are you talking about?!! Yes, the Pharyngula commenters (TM) absolutely worship Dawkins unconditionally. Not.
What’s your deal?
dexitroboper:
This is the one I like. I don’t think it’s necessarily more likely than the other ideas, it’s just one I like. This leads to Lee Smolin’s evolutionary universe, in which universes that are tuned to produce black holes are more likely to “reproduce,” creating universes that are more likely to produce black holes.
Of course, being tuned to produce black holes also means being tuned to produce matter, and eventually life and intelligence.
Anyway, I just like it. I don’t believe it’s true, of course, because belief while ignorant is a punishable offense.
At least, it should be.
No. This is equivocation on the meaning of the word cause. Uncaused events have no antecedent events. The existence of uncaused events is described by quantum mechanics and quantum mechanics models the physical reality in which spontaneous events happen, but saying quantum mechanics “caused” a spontaneous event is simply equivocation (a logical fallacy). When people argue that gods caused the universe, they mean the gods turned the universe switch to “on”, i.e. an antecedent. That’s not the same meaning of the word “cause” that the universe having a propensity to act in particular ways is.
Scott Scheule:
While I respect Dawkins, and have learned much from him, I wouldn’t call him a “hero.”
Steve Wozniak. Now, he’s my hero.
BTW, what’s a vacuous git like you whinging on about Dawkins for?
We are too busy laughing at and being horrified by the fundie xian heroes. Like the idiot liar, WL Craig.
They are all vaguely humanoid toads. Thoroughly evil toads. Robertson, Hagee, Falwell, Parsely, JD Kennedy, Cindy Jacobs, Walt Wagner, Craig, Bachmann, Palin, Rushdooney, and on and on.
There isn’t a single one I’d trust with a houseplant much less around pets or humans.
Raven,
Really, are you that ignorant?
Here is Craigs bibliography:
The Kalām Cosmological Argument
The Cosmological Argument from Plato to Leibniz
The Son Rises: Historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus
Apologetics: An Introduction
The Historical Argument for the Resurrection of Jesus during the Deist Controversy
The Only Wise God: The Compatibility of Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom
The Problem of Divine Foreknowledge and Future Contingents from Aristotle to Suarez
Assessing the New Testament Evidence for the Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus
Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom: The Coherence of Theism I: Omniscience
No Easy Answers
Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology (with Quentin Smith)
The Tensed Theory of Time: A Critical Examination
Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up? A Debate Between William Lane Craig and John Dominic Crossan
God, Are You There?
The Tenseless Theory of Time: A Critical Examination
God, Time and Eternity
Time and The Metaphysics of Relativity
Time and Eternity: Exploring God’s Relationship to Time
What Does God Know?
Hard Questions, Real Answers
God?: A Debate Between a Christian and an Atheist(with Walter Sinnot-Armstrong)
Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview
Creation out of Nothing: Its Biblical, Philosophical, and Scientific Exploration (with Paul Copan)
Reasonable Faith
On Guard: Defending Your Faith with Reason and Precision
Plus he has written dozens of articles published in peer-reviewed philosophical and scientific journals.
Richard Dawkins is a popularizer and only wishes to be on best sellers lists.
Gregory Greenwood says:
“Many other commenters (with a far better understanding of physics than myself) have already pointed out that quantum fluctuations/virtual particles ‘pop’ into existence without a cause or any means of predicting the event – that’s your example.”
No, this is not a genuine counterexample, because the virtual particles are produced by quantum-field processes.
“In any case, I fail to see your logic. It seems to be; there are no uncaused causes (which is wrong as noted above) -> apart from god (for some reason) -> therefore goddidit.”
The principle that whatever begins to exist has a cause isn’t theism-dependent. It can be defended by atheists as well!
“The last link in particular is tenuous. If everything requires a first cause, then there is no reason to assume that god doesn’t need one, and we wind up pontificating on who god’s god is, and on who god’s, god’s, god is ad nauseam. If the claim is that god doesn’t require a first cause, then why does the universe?”
Again, ad nauseam, Craig does not claim that everything that exists must have a cause but that everything that exists and began to exist must have a cause. God’s existence is uncaused because, according to theism, he never began to exist.
If God could be eternal, so could Matter/Nature; but given that God does not exist, the question is whether it could have been possible for Matter/Nature to pop into being ex nihilo et sine causa.
Here’s the crucial question again:
What positive reasons are there to believe that physical things such as a physical world can begin to exist or pop into existence “ex nihilo”, i.e. absolutely independently of and uninfluenced by any pre-existent causal circumstances, conditions, dispositions, potentialities, or propensities?
Well KG, there is the “About” tab, and the, um, title. Even without drawing on the biblical allusion, the “From ____ To ____” construction suggests some sort of change, don’t you think?
Christopher Booth, I genuinely apologize for some ambiguity in #294. By “your attributions regarding WLC,” I meant your attributing to me in comment #283 positions regarding WLC. I did not mean things that you yourself attributed to WLC. I have said nothing about WLC, and have nothing to say about him. (But my comment #294 was ambiguous, and could easily be read as attacking your own position on WLC, which would of course be saying something about him myself. I did not intend that.) So to directly answer your question in #317, “Is [my] position that WLC is not mendacious?”: No. I do not deny that WLC is mendacious. I’m not trying to affirm or deny anything about him.
Matt Penfold, was #333 generated by a script? I can’t code, but I’m pretty sure I could write an Excel formula to take in comment #332 and spit out that insult. Some of us are trying to have intelligent dialog here, and you just basically inserted a “your mama” joke. Kudos.
Or as they said in the days of Sartre: Gone are the days of Hume, d’Holbach and Lucretius, long gone.
If you care to browse the blog for mentions of Dawkins, idiot, you’ll find that he has been criticised by many regulars (me included) over a range of issues. The same is true of Harris, Hitchens, and indeed PZ.
Apologia Veritas,
You do realise Raven was looking for stuff that is not so obviously total bollocks ? Only looking at your list, you seem to have listed a lot of stuff that is just that.
I am sure it was just an oversight on your part and you will correct it.
Fixed your lie. WLC couldn’t write a real science paper if his life depended on it. After all, in science, evidence, not bullshitting, is required for a scientific paper.
You can find Dawkins publications here: Obviously more than just best selling books, as anyone who isn’t wearing blinders could see….
Sorry, but what the fuck are you on about ?
Scott Scheule, before you say anything as foolish again, do these two thing. Look up atheist objections to Sam Harris because of his advocacy of torture. Look up the backlash against RD for his ill informed statements about Rebecca Watson.
Now tell us how we have these “perfect” people to look up to.
@Apologia Veritas
That’s a very subtle nym
@Myron
It is a genuine example of there being processes in nature that do not seem to adhere to causality where an event within space-time needs to occur in order to cause another. As for the case outside of space-time, I dare you to even state what it would mean to make a statement about that. You don’t know it, because nobody knows it. There is no positive statement for God to be derived from this.
Yes. so. what?
Believe me, he doesn’t know what that means, and neither do you. There is nothing reliable we can conclude about such a hypothetical situation in which “nothing” exists and “something” begins. You cannot argue for anything in particular from this position of ignorance, and that of course includes the notion of a persona God.
The real question is here whether the idea of God adds anything to this discussion. If God could be eternal, so could be nature. The God hypothesis simply isn’t necessary, no matter how you frame it.
Nope, the crucial question is, what reason is there to postulate a God. There is nothing about your God that cannot be postulated for nature alone, without all the anthropomorphizing nonsense of a personal God with intentions. Please address this point.
Scott Scheule @ 332;
Firstly, it is not ‘cowardice’ on Dawkin’s part to not wish to give a known genocide apologist any credibility by sharing a forum with him. Secondly, most atheists don’t feel the need for ‘heroes’ anymore than we feel the need for priests, messiahs or imaginary sky fairies – we value reason, science and that which actually exists. If your argument is properly evidenced and your reasoning is sound then you will be given a fair hearing. If not, the fact will be exposed. This applies to everyone – no heroes, and no exceptions.
We are not trying to hold up Dawkins as ‘perfect’ or as a substitute for perfection. He is extremely well qualified in his field and his arguments against religious privilege and obfustication are sound, but he is no ‘high priest’ of atheism. When he is wrong – as in the case of his attitude toward ‘elevatorgate’ – there are any number of atheists prepared to call him on the fact without hesitation, fear or favour.
There are good reasons why so called ‘new atheists’ adopt a different approach. A great many modern atheists don’t care to engage on the theist’s own ground of obscurantist theology. We cut straight to the chase – where is the evidence for god? Without that, all the rest is rendered moot. No theist has ever produced anything close to credible, scientifically valid evidence. Until they do, the semantic contortionist act of ‘sophisticated theology’ is no more than meaningless smoke and mirrors.
I find it interesting that you post as if you are an atheist, yet the arguments you present denigrate atheism in its most strictly rationalist and scientific form.
Is there anything you want to tell us? Being upfront will earn you far greater credibility here than trying to sneak any theism in through the backdoor.
What articles has Craig published in scientific journals? I found some in the British Journal of the Philosophy of Science, and other philosophy titles, but none in scientific ones – although I admit my search was not exhaustive, as I only looked at the first 50 items produced by Google Scholar.
WTF?
Are you claiming that Dawkins is a coward for refusing to debate Craig?
There have been several reasons given in this thread for Dawkins not to debate Craig. Craig’s inherent dishonesty is one. Craig’s use of dubious rhetorical tactics like the Gish Gallop is another. The point that debates don’t determine anything other than who is a better debater is yet another. None of these reasons denote cowardice on anyone’s part.
I’m beginning to wonder if Scott Scheule was lying about being an atheist, just like Myron was.
–
Are you a liar like Myron, Scott Scheule?
It’s not “the crucial question”, it’s a fucking stupid question, because as I already pointed out, it is so phrased as to make it impossible that we could have examples of such a thing, other than spacetime itself, because anything we know to have begun will have done so within spacetime, which is such a pre-existent circumstance.
What’s with the dingleberries caring about popularity and best selling books? Do they think truth changes with the fall fashions?
Reminds me of Gabriel the racist troll who spent a year or so on my blog arguing that his racism, ageism, genetics denialism, postmodernism, and anecdotalist epistemology were absolute gospel truth because I’m a black Mexican Jew immigrant living in his mom’s basement with white guilt on welfare.
A sound argument is a sound argument is a sound argument. A fallacy is a fallacy is a fallacy. Who cares how popular Dawkins is or isn’t?
Oh, wait, that’s right: It’s a distraction, and I fell for it.
[meta]
Ivan:
<snicker>
I’ve seen your efforts, and trying they are, indeed. ;)
One think that can be said in favor of this statement, is that it is surprisingly not a “begging the question” fallacy.
You are an idiot troll. And nearly illiterate.
What I said was:
You are making the assumption that one’s worthwhile contributions are decided by the number of books one writes. That isn’t true at all. Craig is just a liar and a moron. Zero times X is always = zero.
Find a third grader and have them look up “worthwhile” in a dictionary for you. The math is beyond you, though.
Myron @ 342;
I don’t have much to add to Alex, Tyrant of Skepsis’ reply @ 349.
From what I understand, current thinking is that strict chains of causality are not required for all phenomena at the quantum level, so talking about the supposed absence of ‘uncaused causes’ as if this somehow proves god is pretty quixotic.
There is no way that any positive argument for god can be made from the fact that science does not currently have all the answers about the origins of the universe. No one possesses absolute knowledge about this stuff. Not you, not me, not Craig, not even the finest scientific minds alive. You cannot then claim, as an argument from ignorance, that this is somehow proof of god. The best you can say is that there is no proof against god, but the notorious difficulty of proving a negative (there is also no proof against Pink Quantum Unicorns, the FSM or Cthulhu, afterall) combined with the principle of parsimony knocks down any claim that this lack of knowledge can somehow be transmuted into evidence for god – that claim gets cut to ribbons by Occam’s Razor – even without absolute knowledge of the workings of the universe, the god supposition is an unnecessary assumption. There is no way to go from ‘we don’t know’ to an immortal, omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent creator superconsciousness without something approaching actual evidence.
Myron:
Until you can provide evidence of your understanding of quantum events, this is complete and utter bullshit. You haven’t even defined “quantum-field processes.” What the fuck are they? What are the maths behind them? What is the evidence supporting them?
You’ve given nothing but bald-faced assertions. You can do better than that.* If you’re gonna play here among the big dogs, your gonna have to do better.
* No, you can’t. At least, not with the mettle (or lack thereof) displayed so far.
KG says:
“What positive reasons are there to believe that physical things such as a physical world can begin to exist or pop into existence “ex nihilo”, i.e. absolutely independently of and uninfluenced by any pre-existent causal circumstances, conditions, dispositions, potentialities, or propensities?” – Myron
It’s not “the crucial question”, it’s a fucking stupid question, because as I already pointed out, it is so phrased as to make it impossible that we could have examples of such a thing, other than spacetime itself, because anything we know to have begun will have done so within spacetime, which is such a pre-existent circumstance.
Then natural science is in principle incapable of providing any evidence for the view that absolutely causeless existence beginnings “ex nihilo” are possible! So much the worse for those who hold that view!
Myron:
Such as those who believe a god might exist.
Fortunately, the origin of the universe doesn’t depend upon such things.
If course it it cannot provide any evidence for that, because all scientific experiments take place inside space-time, and all testable scientific theories involve a space-time. My last 10 posts have addressed why this is not getting you anywhere in your argument against the atheistic default position, nor in an argument for a personal God.
He doesn’t know because he is just making stuff up as he goes along.
There are no such things as “quantum-field processes”. This is more gibberish.
So devoid of atheist heroes?
Mark Twain, Ingersol, Frederik Douglas, Douglas Adams, Arthur C Clark, Kurt Vonnegut, John Swift, Karl Sagan?
Says who?
@Myron
Why did you lie about being an atheist?
Why did you think lying was ok?
dexitroboper says:
“Uncaused events have no antecedent events.”
Of course, the meaning of the concept cause is relevant in this discussion.
In my understanding of causality, an uncaused event is an event which is causally ungrounded, i.e. which is not an amalgam of manifestations of any dispositions (dispositional properties, propensities, powers) of objects.
That is, uncaused events are absolutely “free”, i.e. absolutely independent of anything.
Only if you operate under the assumption that ancient philosophers using middle world instincts got the nature of causality exactly right despite their ignorance of modern sciences. And even then, they recognized that they had to engage in special pleading fallacies in order to shoehorn in whichever deity was in fashion that year.
In your understanding? Is that anything like your understanding that it’s OK to lie, Myron? Because you lied, Myron. Your told a lie. Yes, you, Myron, are a liar.
Myron argues physics about as well as I type, apparently.
Then natural science is in principle incapable of providing any evidence for the view that absolutely causeless existence beginnings “ex nihilo” are possible! – Myron
That’s because the idea of an existence beginning “ex nihilo” is not a coherent concept within the framework of relativity, because it implies that there was a time at which nothing existed – but whether the universe has not existed forever or not, there can have been no such time. Science may in future find evidence for a fundamental theory incorporating and replacing general relativity and quantum mechanics that also implies either that our spacetime has existed forever, or that it did indeed begin to exist without any antecedents. Or it may not, and the question may remain forever undecidable. So what? How is this supposed to get a proof of God’s existence started? Using such a dubious premise – you have given no positive argument for thinking it true – means that even if the argument is valid and the other premises unexceptionable, the argument does not establish the truth of the conclusion.
Someone drowned in a swimming pool. I filled the pool with water, therefore I caused the drowning?
Someone made conditions in which an uncaused even occurred therefore they caused the event?
Your physics
This simply isn’t true. Spacetime is necessary for particles to appear, or exist at all. But this doesn’t mean virtual particles are caused by the existence of spacetime. Saying they are is question begging.
And all of this is a giant distraction.
Know what no one has shown in physics? GOD.
If we’re arguing that casual uncaused events are impossible on what grounds does someone have that MONUMENTAL uncaused SENTIENT BEINGS are necessary?
It’s like ghosts are impossible therefore Totoro
swear from now on I could carry on this conversation with our friend Myron merely by pointing to past posts.
I got a bit too amused with the weirdness of (a)causality to stay focused on Myron’s big, sophisticated argument of “We don’t know, therefore MY god.”
It’s an argument from ignorance and encourages an atmosphere of defeatism mixed with Polly Anna. “I don’t know, therefore I give up and pretend that I do know, and that it’s something I want.”
SO how can such events as this be shown to occur? All you are doing is defining away the accepted meaning of “uncaused” in order to argue against uncaused events, ie you are assuming your conclusion.
@Dexitroboper
Don’t you see! Since such events are impossible it must ==God!
Waffler, of the Waffler Institute says:
“Spacetime is necessary for particles to appear, or exist at all. But this doesn’t mean virtual particles are caused by the existence of spacetime. Saying they are is question begging.”
The point is that virtual particles are produced by physical processes in a field or spacetime itself. Therefore, their appearances are not causeless.
By the way, in what sense is a radioactive-decay event an existence beginning? What physical thing begins to exist when an atomic nucleus undergoes radioactive decay?
Alpha, beta and gamma particles, neutrinos, muons, pions, kaons…
It is my understanding that quantum events are NOT CAUSAL.
It’s the Michael Behe defense
“That doesn’t count”
(emphasis mine)Really, there are no processes that produce these events. They do not have antecedent events, and so they are uncaused. If there were such a process, you could describe what it does.
You do know what the word “process” means in this context?
[OT]
Ing:
None are heroes of mine, or even ‘heroes’ in any meaningful sense of heroism, as I reckon it.
(It’s Carl, not Karl (and, for that matter, Ingersoll, if you refer to “Bob”) — and, dyslexic or not, some sort of hero he is to you when you can’t even spell his name right)
A polite correction would have been fine, asshole.
dexitroboper says:
Myron: “That is, uncaused events are absolutely ‘free’, i.e. absolutely independent of anything.”
“SO how can such events as this be shown to occur?”
You tell me!
“All you are doing is defining away the accepted meaning of “uncaused” in order to argue against uncaused events, ie you are assuming your conclusion.”
No, not at all. An event whose occurrence isn’t absolutely, i.e. both deterministically and probabilistically, causally independent from any pre- or co-occurring events/processes/activities and any pre- or co-existing causal conditions or dispositions can hardly be called uncaused.
[meta]
Hm, I guess I should retract part of my previous.
Frederik Douglass was indeed heroic by any reasonable definition.
[meta]
Ing:
And that’s what you got, O whiner.
Maybe you should consider reading for fucking context rather than being an obtuse pedantic smeg.
[meta]
Ing, maybe you should save the epithet ‘heroic’ for those who actually deserve it, rather than reducing its import by allocating it to writers you happen to like.
(Bah. I’ll leave this here)
“Dawkins provides an excellent reason for any person to refuse to debate Craig.”
Nonsense. There are two billion Christians in the world, and though most are not biblical literalists, a significant number are. The ‘Holocaust denier’ parallel does not hold. Dawkins’s so-called ‘reason’ for not debating Craig is, properly understood, precisely the opposite, viz. a great reason to debate Craig. Dawkins certainly has in this a much better reason to debate Craig than he had to interview Ted Haggard.
“Craig’s favorite tactic is to word the debate question in such a way that his side is favored, such as “Do we need God to be good?” There is an automatic assumption in that question that there is a god.”
The topic assumes no such thing, no more than “Do we need souls to think?” presupposes the notion that souls exist.
“One of WLC’s arguments is the Moral Argument for God.
1. We are either theists or reductionists.
2. Reductionism cannot account for intrinsic values.
3. Theism can account for intrinsic values.
4. There are intrinsic values.
5. Therefore, godidit.”
Craig has never defended anything like this. You uncritically accepted an inconceivably poor formulation of Craig’s moral argument cobbled together by a rather ignorant Craig critic.
“How many worthwhile papers and books has WL Craig published versus how many worthwhile papers and books has Richard Dawkins published?
Craig is at zero here*. Even I am way ahead of him.”
More nonsense. Craig is not only a philosopher of religion — he’s also a philosopher of time. Indeed, he’s considered to be a leading philosopher of time. My goodness, you’re already on the internet; how difficult would it be to research the question before posting such an obviously ignorant comment?
“Most apologist debaters avoid written debates. They like to be able to manipulate an audience and take the atheist unawares. Can’t do that in print as well as in person. Their arguments are shallow when you analyze them: the simple sound bite is their friend.”
Some of Craig’s debates have been turned into books, with the debate continuing in written form with numerous contributors and responses. Further, you can find in many of Craig’s peer reviewed articles what amount to written debates as Craig and Oppy or Smith (and so on) exchange responses and counter-responses. (It would be helpful if all of you would remember that Craig is a scholar first, not a debater. His CV makes this clear. He’s best known for his debates, sure, but Dawkins is best known for his popular works. Does it follow that Dawkins is not a scholar first, but a mere popularizer? I hope the point is clear.)
“I listened to the Craig vs Hitchens debate this morning and Hitchens crucified him.”
Here’s Hitchens on Craig: “I can tell you that my brothers and sisters, my co-thinkers, in the unbelieving community take him very seriously. He’s thought of as a very tough guy; very rigorous, very scholarly, very thoughtful. I say that without reserve. Normally I don’t get people saying to me ‘good luck tonight’ or ‘don’t let us down’ but with him I do.”
After the debate, the consensus was, among atheists and theists alike, that Hitchens had stepped way out of his depth.
“What we are saying is that WLC’s arguments are not“well-structured” or even very precise. They are at best, as someone said, “sound bites” that someone not thinking very clearly might find persuasive, but only if you grant his premises, which, if you are rational, you cannot do.”
Sure, peer reviewed academic journals and top university presses are known for publishing “sound bites,” and top philosophers are known for responding in peer reviewed academic journals to arguments that reduce to mere soundbites. Further, by one measure (references in the Oxford Handbook of Metaphysics) Craig’s work is engaged with on the level of philosophers like Strawson, Kripke, van Frassen, Wright, Smart, Dummett, Smith and Rosen!
“Like: everything must have a beginning, therefore god.
That’s some sophistimacated apologetics, for sure.”
Here we have yet another so called example of an argument Craig has never defended.
“It is not up to us to dismantle his arguments. It is up to Craig to demonstrate his arguments are true, which is something I am totally unaware he has ever even attempted.”
Excepting, of course, his hundreds of lectures and debates and interviews, peer reviewed articles and books. Aside from that, he’s never attempted to defend his arguments!
“Doesn’t the Kalam argument lead one to asking what god’s god is. The first cause of god.
I hated this argument when I first read it as Aristotle’s prime mover.”
Craig’s argument is very different from Aristotle’s.
“Craig does not have explicit and well-structured arguments. He has facile fallacies and facile falsehoods.”
See some of my comments above.
“In a “debate” he can not be called on it point-by-point, whereas in print he can.”
Craig has responded to Dawkins in print. Further, should Dawkins not show up at the last moment at the Sheldonian theater, Craig will be responding to a panel of experts on the subject of his refutations of Dawkins’s arguments (a speech on which Craig will be presenting in Dawkins’s absence; so, Dawkins can attempt to marginalize Craig all he wants, but the Oxford community will soon see that Craig is to be taken very seriously as a philosopher, and will come to suspect that cowardice is the reason Dawkins refused to debate him).
“Does he have any evidence to back up this assertion? Because QM seems to prove this wrong. So his argument starts with premise #1 being at least unsupported if not incorrect. Hardly rock solid.”
Do you honestly think that Craig never thought of the possible QM counterexample to the first premise of his KCA? He addresses this at great length. Honestly, you people don’t even care to inform yourselves. All I see here is irrational hatred of a man you know literally nothing about except, “Dawkins doesn’t like him” and “Dawkins claims that Craig is an apologist for genocide.” WWDD?
“Craig is an abysmal philosopher, with no qualifications outside of … well, or inside, either, for that matter… philosophy.”
Again, see some of my comments above.
OK, I’ve now gone through the first 150 comments on this thread, and have picked out the glaringly false and stupid comments. But the worst thing is, these are among the only substantive comments — the rest were merely insulting. I’ve read through more than a few threads on religion and philosophy here on Pharyngula, and I have to say that, in terms of ignorance, this is one of the worst. And I say this as someone who disagrees with Craig on a host of philosophical and theological issues.
All this sophistimacated philosophy is so ….
Funny.
Myron, ready to admit you lied about being an atheist? Doesn’t your god say you aren’t supposed to lie?
Scott Scheule, you too.
I find it especially funny that these idiots think that we will agree with them about something if they claim to be atheists.
They probably can’t even tell how we know almost immediately if they are lying about it.
dexitroboper says:
“Really, there are no processes that produce these events. They do not have antecedent events, and so they are uncaused. If there were such a process, you could describe what it does.
You do know what the word “process” means in this context?”
A process is a dynamic state of affairs consisting in some thing’s or some things’ instantiating some dynamic property or properties. In our case the things are fields or (regions of) space/spacetime and the dynamic properties are quantities of energy. And virtual particles are produced by such energetic spatiotemporal processes.
I used it in the same fucking context as the original post, take it up with them. Do me a favor and don’t address me ever again.
Myron, how about you put aside the causality semantics and try actually discussing where your god comes into all of this?
Even if you do somehow end up demonstrating something that qualifies as a cause for every bit of quantum weirdness, that won’t improve your god’s plausibility one iota.
Myron is a liar.
I called it.
Wasn’t difficult.
Which peers are you referring to?
No, there’s no need for all these criteria. An event with no antecedent events is uncaused. That’s an entirely sufficient definition and you are simply trying to add conditions to the definition so you can refuse to admit to the existence of uncaused events.
Craig has acquired a reputation as one of the very few effective fundamentalist debaters. He has made a number of smart but underprepared atheist opponents look inadequate.
If you can stomach them, it’s worth watching Youtube clips of his debates to see how he operates.
He uses updated versions of Duane Gish’s rhetorical devices. Multiple compressed arguments, articulately delivered at speed mixed with the crowd pleasing stunts of a seasoned debater.
He’s always well prepared and takes the time to check out his opponents published arguments. He uses Powerpoint material effectively to entrench his arguments. He knows enough about science to sound informed – at least to the unread.
He’s utterly disingenuous, his credentials are laughable and his ultimate conclusions are preposterous and offensive.
It’s notable that, despite his wonderful christian devotion to the virtue of charity, he frequently resorts ad hominem attacks (particularly when at vulnerable stages in his debates) and misdescribes learned consensus frequently. His attacks on people like Bart Ehrman (his most deadly opponent) are models of silkily urbane denigration. It’s a particularly nauseating feature of his intellectual hypocrisy.
His dozen or so arguments are all pseudo-philosophical tripe, skilfully tailored to appeal to rubes, based on buried false assumptions, full of question-begging dodges and honed to rhetorical perfection.
And those arguments are now all over the internet.
FWIW, Dawkins was wise to decline the debate. He’s hampered by the need to be truthful, accurate and logical and, no doubt, by the desire to avoid stepping on a turd.
Quite a string of lies there. Don’t expect anybody but the terminally bored to wade through that mess.
PZ Myers summarized WL Craig in his opening post:
Craig is a nobody in the intellectual world. And that includes philosophy. What he is, is a routine, garden vareity Liar for jesus, a fundie xian propagandist.
Even a lot of xians think he is an idiot. Craig only appeals to fundies. Who make up at most 20-30% of the world’s xians. I was a xian myself for nearly 5 decades and never even heard of him. In my natal sect he would have been considered a moron.
I would think illiterates and elementary school dropouts.
Thanks, raven.
“Craig is a nobody in the intellectual world. And that includes philosophy. What he is, is a routine, garden vareity Liar for jesus, a fundie xian propagandist.
Even a lot of xians think he is an idiot. Craig only appeals to fundies.”
Atheist philosopher Quentin Smith on Craig: “William Lane Craig is one the leading philosophers of religion and one of the leading philosophers of time.”
Christopher Hitchens on Craig: “I can tell you that my brothers and sisters, my co-thinkers, in the unbelieving community take him very seriously. He’s thought of as a very tough guy; very rigorous, very scholarly, very thoughtful. I say that without reserve. Normally I don’t get people saying to me ‘good luck tonight’ or ‘don’t let us down’ but with him I do.”
I could go on and on, but why bother? You’ve made up your mind, and the facts be damned.
The philosophical field really is a empty well then if Craig with his vacuous bullshit is well regarded.
So, then, Eric, give us something WLC has said that has some substance. I’ve certainly seen nothing more than a particularly vicious fundie so far.
John Loftus should show up to one of Craig’s one-sided debates wearing a Dawkins mask and sit down in the empty seat.
What’s a good analogy of being peer reviewed by philosophers?
His fantasy writing is wonderfully consistent?
His treatment of story and tying up loose ends in the game he designed is above all?
The Illusions he creates on stage are air tight?
“So, then, Eric, give us something WLC has said that has some substance.”
Check out Craig’s refutations of Dawkins’s arguments in TGD. You can easily find both lectures and written responses online. (I recommend this rather than any of Craig’s technical philosophical work because it’s easily accessible and easily understood; further, it has the advantage of both being to the point of the current thread and making it difficult for you to reject it on grounds of the vague ‘of substance’ qualification you included in your request.)
Oh please…
link?
Check out Yale’s Shelly Kagan utterly demolishing Craig:
“I could go on and on, but why bother?”
Somehow I doubt that. You’ll just use those same quotes over an over again. Twice now, I think. I’m not impressed, but keep it up. Maybe the third time will be more persuasive.
And doesn’t the Kagan/Craig dialogue put the lie to Dawkins’s ‘reasons’ for refusing to debate Craig? No one would deny that Kagan is an eminent moral philosopher, yet he thought Craig worthy of sharing the stage with.
By “substance” I mean backed by evidence and cogent logical arguments. I have yet to see any theist hypothesis that qualifies. They usually boil down to argument from ignorance and special pleading fallacies. And that’s after they invoke straw men and other lies about accepted science.
Oh, and when you provide a link, be specific about a particular point. It’s my prediction that if I pointed out the lies and fallacies involved in the first thing I read, you’ll accuse me of picking out his weakest arguments.
[meta]
Eric is known, hereabouts.
It seems he’s learnt his lesson in regards to attempting philosophical arguments, so now he’s on the (as he sees it) safe ground of merely appealing to authority and appealing to purported popularity.
For what that’s worth.
(heh)
If Kagan were Dawkins, yes.
@JM
Eric Hovind I presume?
No.
People have their own reasons and motivations. Why you’d think they should all line up agreeably is frankly hilarious.
No if I remember correctly, it’s another even more pretentious eric.
If that’s possible.
“Somehow I doubt that.”
Again, you’re on the internet, for goodness’ sake. Just do a quick search of what scholars have said about some of his better known books.
“As a scientist doing theoretical research in gravitational physics and quantum cosmology, I found Dr. Craig’s thoughtful book highly interesting. He has carefully given arguments defending several different viewpoints for each of the many issues about time that he discusses, followed by critiques in which he emphasizes his own opinion. Reading Time and Eternity has forced me to develop better arguments for my own opinions (which differ considerably from Craig’s)…. I am certain that Time and Eternity will also stimulate your thinking about this fascinating subject and your appreciation for the God who created time as part of the marvelous universe He has given us.
–Don N. Page
Professor of Physics and Fellow of the Cosmology and Gravitation Program of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research
University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada”
“The nature of time is a continuing source of puzzlement both to science and in everyday life. It is also an important issue in theological understandings of the nature of God. In this interesting book, Professor Craig tackles this complex set of topics in a clear way. His discussion of the interrelated scientific, philosophical, and theological issues clears up many previous misconceptions and proposes a plausible understanding of the relation of God to time and eternity that many will find helpful.
–George Ellis
Professor of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics
University of Capetown”
“”Although my philosophical predilections often differ from Dr. Craig’s (as they do from those of everyone else I know), I have found that he is very knowledgeable about science and current cosmological ideas. He provides interesting insights into their implications for our shared Christian beliefs.”
Don Nelson Page, Professor of Physics, University of Alberta”
“”The third edition of William Lane Craig’s Reasonable Faith is simply a masterpiece. It combines clarity and applicability without sacrificing depth. Each chapter has three major parts. First, the topic is introduced with an extensive discussion of the historical development of the arguments and objections to the arguments. Second, Bill leads the reader into the depths of the most contemporary discussion. He treats the leading versions of the arguments for Christianity as well as the best of the objections. He has taken great care to achieve a thoroughness that is rarely found in apologetics texts. Third, he explains, through many personal examples, how the arguments in the chapter can be appropriated in personal evangelism. Combining these three elements is enough to make this text unique. The depth and quality with which each step is accomplished makes it indispensible.”
—Gregory E. Ganssle, Lecturer, Department of Philosophy, Yale University”
“”This is a wonderful exchange about the existence of God–fast, fair, informative, intelligent, sincere, and above all terrific fun. It covers such topics as the original cause of the universe, the possibility of genuine morality, the nature of miracles, and the problem of evil. As an introduction to these really basic issues, it is simply the best that I have ever read. I will be recommending it to my relatives, to my friends, to my colleagues, and to all of my students.”–Michael Ruse, Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy, Florida State University”
And yes, I could go on and on.
Still not impressed. Keep dropping names if you want. But your efforts are quite irrelevant.
Isn’t it amazing how theists love Craig?
So nice they’ll all felate the nice genocidal nut.
“It seems he’s learnt his lesson in regards to attempting philosophical arguments”
Indeed, it’s a waste of time here.
“People have their own reasons and motivations. Why you’d think they should all line up agreeably is frankly hilarious.”
Um, no, you missed the point. Dawkins tries to imply that Craig is unknown among philosophers and is merely a debater. The fact that a philosopher as eminent as Kagan takes him seriously enough to debate puts the lie to the implications Dawkins intends us to draw from his remarks about Craig by the conveniently unnamed philosopher friends of his.
@ Eric;
You are aware that Craig has acted as an apologist for religiously motivated genocide, I take it?
Are you sure you wish to defend such a man?
Those quotes aren’t telling me what his cogent, evidence-backed arguments are.
You’re asking me to find a needle in a haystack. So far, all I see is the hay that has been previously examined and burned. It’s not even original hay. Still no needles.
“Still not impressed. Keep dropping names if you want. But your efforts are quite irrelevant.”
See what I mean? I said that I could go on and on with references to the quality of Craig’s work among scholars, and you replied by suggesting that I couldn’t. When I did go on, you accused me of name dropping! As I said, irrational Craig hatred dominates here, the facts be damned.
It was name dropping then, and it’s name dropping now. Please, go ahead, drop some more names. The same ones, or new ones. Really, I don’t give a fuck.
The facts demand a rational hate towards Craig.
The fucker is pro-genocide.
[meta]
Ing,
No. Someone less clueless (and therefore even more intellectually dishonest) who often pops up when philosophy is mentioned.
(Tried to stroke me once, he did, when attempting to defend another religious pissant Courtier (Eagleton))
The fact is that Craig is an execrable genocide apologist, and as such is deserving of nothing short of derision. Seems pretty rational to me.
@Morales
I truly loath the philosophy as institutionalized wanking that Craig and apparently Eric use.
I find it baffling the idea that Craig is well respected. I hope Eric is a liar, otherwise the schools of formalized philosophy have clearly just become one giant dadaist joke. Shame no one informed the philosophers.
Quality isn’t a matter of who gives positive reviews, it’s determined by logical validity and evidential support (in other words, facts). Name dropping and the implicit appeals to authority don’t work.
Irrelevant, meaningless facts. Authoritarianism is a poor model of epistemology and antithetical to science and the pursuit of truth. “So-and-so said X about Y” isn’t evidence for Y’s hypothesis, so stop damning the important facts.
Eric, Don Page is an evangelical Christian, and well known for that bafflegab. It’s cute that you’re name-dropping in an attempt to back up Craig’s so-called science. It’s also sad.
Now, where were those substantive arguments?
I see Eric is back to get his ass handed to him again. He can’t prove his imaginary deity with philosophical sophistry (aka mental masturbation). It requires solid and conclusive physical evidence. Eric and evidence are strangers…
“Eric, Don Page is an evangelical Christian, and well known for that bafflegab.”
He has a PhD in physics from Cal Tech, and his dissertation was supervised by Thorne and Hawking. I’d say that makes him a legitimate authority when the issue is whether Craig understands the physics he references in his arguments (he’s certainly a more legitimate authority on that issue than anyone posting here). Now that doesn’t settle the issue, of course, but I didn’t intend it to. DJfav expressed doubt that I could provide favorable assessments of Craig’s work in addition to the two I previously referred to, so all I was doing there was showing him how easy those references are to find.
“(Tried to stroke me once, he did, when attempting to defend another religious pissant Courtier (Eagleton))”
I stand by that stroking. ;) You are one of the smartest of the regular posters on this site, though you have something of a tin ear for philosophical argument.
publisher or editor of 30 or more books with a number of leading atheistic philosophers (who no doubt know a great deal more about logic and reason than dawkins or the ranting arrogant an horribly ill informed fellow who writes this blog) like quintin smith, oppenheimer, smart and others. He has published over 80 peer reviewed philosophical articles and debated the best the atheist side can muster… And won. 2 use the excuse of ‘his better debating skills’ is just the usual dawkins-athiest cop out. He’s used the same material 4 20 or more years which has seen him deal regularly to the likes of flew, j smart, quentin smith, stenger, dennet, hitchen, harris, atkins, wolpert, grayling and more. You can dressup dawkins refusal however you like but wen he’s stripped bare its just cowardice like the atheist prof dr j came said. Are you not the slightest bit embaressed and humbled by the refusal of ur leader to stand up on stage and even try to beat craig? Its cringe worthy and ur faith in him is no less delusional than his book.
try reading some of craigs work with an open mind. Reasonablefaith.org
ur atheist philosophers of religion and science know a great deal more about this subject than dawkins or myerz and as a result have much more respect for craig’s work.
just see the debate between craig and law earlier this week to see how incoherent and non-rational law’s reasoning is…..and I wouldn’t hesitate 2 say law understands the arguments for and against theism better than dawkins.
Genocide.
The fuck is wrong with you people?
So easy you’ve probably got them sitting in a text file on your fucking desktop, wanker.
Then stop dropping his name like you believe in Authoritarianism as a model of epistemology, and provide us with a citation of one of his experiments or empirical observations that demonstrate the validity of your god hypothesis.
Why do you deliberately engage in this transparent stalling and bluffing? Are you just incapable of getting to the meat of an argument? All you’ve shown us is the fluffy nothing every cookie-cutter Creationist loves to pile on when we ask for plain facts. Where’s the beef?
[meta]
Eric, thanks for confirming your identity.
FWIW, I don’t consider you to be an outright liar (nor do you need to be), but I do wish you’d honestly examine the soundness of the premises before worrying about the inferential stage of arguments; that’s IMO the crux of your intellectual dishonesty (it may be cowardice, I grant).
Also, you know damn well that formal debates settle nothing about reality, only about who is the better formal debater.
(The Master Debater, if you like)
[meta]
Some stupid troll:
TSTKTS
“Then stop dropping his name like you believe in Authoritarianism as a model of epistemology, and provide us with a citation of one of his experiments or empirical observations that demonstrate the validity of your god hypothesis.”
I’m sorry, but obtuse comments like this are reason alone for me to avoid anything like a serious discussion of these issues with you. No rational person following this conversation could possibly conclude that anything I’ve said even implies that I “believe in Authoritarianism as a model of epistemology.” Indeed, since I’ve only quoted legitimate authorities (Hitchens excepted, though he is an intellectual), only a very poor understanding of the nature of fallacious appeals to authority could lead one to conclude that there’s anything wrong with my references at all (even if we ignore the all important context of the conversation). Clearly, I’m better off merely informing you of what’s out there and of what’s been said about it. If you’re interested in checking it out for yourself, go for it, and if not, ignore it. But at least you can no longer be excused on grounds of ignorance.
Sorry Eric, but the name-dropping you did is Authoritarianism.
If you don’t understand that you’re too stupid to be taking part in this discussion.
More fluff, Eric? Really?
It doesn’t matter if the authority is “legitimate” in this context because appeals to authority are still fallacious and unnecessary when we’re willing to look directly at the evidence. The REAL authority in science is the evidence, not the guy with fancy letters after his name.
A PhD does not turn a human into an unquestionable god.
And seriously, has anyone here not heard WLC’s spiels? It’s laughably childish. I fail to understand how so many ‘smart people’ find it impressive.
But all you’ve done is appeal to authority. Maybe if you weren’t such a one trick pony, we might take you more seriously.
And I’m sorry to say it, but especially not one who has a vested interest and has already had their mind trained to twist logic to conform to an authoritarian source.
I’m reminded of the Muslim scientists who made the argument that that Mecca time should be used since Mecca perfectly aligns to magnetic north and is the real center of the earth!
“FWIW, I don’t consider you to be an outright liar (nor do you need to be), but I do wish you’d honestly examine the soundness of the premises before worrying about the inferential stage of arguments; that’s IMO the crux of your intellectual dishonesty (it may be cowardice, I grant).”
Actually, philosophers are generally more interested in the truth of the premises than they are in the validity of the reasoning. Indeed, the main work the validity of the reasoning does in most arguments is show what premises you must reject if you are to reject some conclusion (think of this as the price you must pay for rejecting a conclusion — the more plausibly true the premise, the higher the price you pay for rejecting any conclusions that validly follow from it).
“Also, you know damn well that formal debates settle nothing about reality, only about who is the better formal debater.”
Of course I agree that they don’t settle anything about reality, but I disagree that all they do is show who is the better debater. But Dawkins seems to agree with me that public debates are of value, so that’s not the issue here.
So in other words Erik’s philosophers are fucking useless.
What Eric certainly seems to be saying in between the lines with his endless unnecessary (and therefore fallacious) appeals to authority: Evidence doesn’t matter, only the Absolute Authority with which the
godmanpriestPhD has been bestowed.Myron
Lets suppose this is true. It seems to me that you are defending God from the same principle based on a completely arbitrary definition concocted by a certain subset of theists. Does that seem intellectually honest or consistent to you? If it does, then I’m sure you will see the strength of my counter claim that one of the inherent properties of universey-ness is the ability to begin ex-nihilo, and that it follows that your objection is not applicable.
On a more serious note, the beginnings of the universe are a subject of contemporary physical research. Whether the universe began ex-nihilo, whether it began at all in the usual sense, or even whether it is actually a ‘universe’ or part of a larger system, are all matters of discussion. No one who knows much about these issues claims to have an unequivocal answer. What is clear, though, is that adding a mysterious, uncaused, intelligent entity into the mix does not yield any new insight about the universe. It just trivially violates Occam’s razor and appeals to people who want to see agency in the process.
BronzeDog, please, reread the discussion. Keep the *context* in mind as you move from post to post. Then look up just what constitutes a fallacious appeal to authority. You’ll quickly discover that you’re simply dead wrong on both grounds.
Sorry, but that’s a joke. WLC has not added even a footnote to any of the great philosophers who have tackled the question of religion. Certainly he has not pointed out the flaws in Hume, or demolished Sextus Empiricus’ tropes of pyrronism, nor has he – clearly, in the case of his being skewered for apologizing for genocide – refuted Epicurus’ formulation of the problem of evil. He’s not even original in ANY of his arguments – he’s trotting out old chestnuts that no philosopher wouldn’t recognize as already refuted and avoid. His main strategy, the Gish Gallop isn’t even original.
Unless by “leading philosophers of time” he meant “he’s a big liar for jesus.”
Seriously, Craig==Pro-Genocide. Are you all really that desperate to convince us that genocide is good? Do you really want us to take that argument seriously?
That argument shows WHY Craig is to be ignored. His thought process clearly moves from a conclusion backwards to what he needs to get there and he gives no thought to the validity or implications of his mental bulldozing.
God is good therefore the genocide he orders is good
not
If God ordered genocide would it be good, or would God be good?
One is an actual philosophical question that even Christians could think about and debate. The other is APOLOGETIC. Spin. PR.
Craig adds nothing new to philosophy. His whole goal is to say “None of those arguments count, now look over here!”
Eric, it seems you don’t understand what a fallacious appeal to authority is. You must meet two conditions. Are the authorities in question experts on the subject. And, is there a consensus among those experts. You seem to think you have passed the first test, but you have not even attempted to pass the second. Do all the relevant experts agree about Craig? If not, then your appeals are fallacious and you are merely cherry picking.
@Difav
It’s philosophy. Almost by definition there’s no consensus since the whole bloody field apparently exists between people’s ears.
Why is an appeal to imbued authority of a human necessary or relevant when you could be citing the actual evidence? Why do you keep distracting from the core issue?
Science isn’t settled by PhD’s making sacred, unquestionable dictates from an ivory tower. Science is settled by finding evidence, making careful observations, and sound logic, which you continuously refuse to cite.
Instead of doing something productive, you waste time trying to subvert scientific inquiry with a degree-waving fight over a postmodernist form of authority I do not recognize in this context.
The obvious conclusion is that you’re stalling after we’ve been continuously calling your bluff.
There is no beef. There is no needle in WLC’s haystack.
Eric:
You’re just rephrased what I wrote, as if you were disputing me.
(tsk)
Uh-huh — that would be why, in competitive public debates, “the teams are designated as either the Affirmative or the Negative”, right?
“Sometimes it is said that quantum physics furnishes an exception to premise (1) [= Whatever begins to exist has a cause], since on the sub-atomic level events are said to be uncaused. In the same way, certain theories of cosmic origins are interpreted as showing that the whole universe could have sprung into being out of the sub-atomic vacuum or even out of nothingness. Thus the universe is said to be the proverbial ‘free lunch.’ This objection, however, is based on misunderstandings. In the first place, not all scientists agree that sub-atomic events are uncaused. A great many physicists today are quite dissatisfied with this view (the so-called Copenhagen Interpretation) of quantum physics and are exploring deterministic theories like that of David Bohm. Thus, quantum physics is not a proven exception to premise (1). Second, even on the traditional, indeterministic interpretation, particles do not come into being out of nothing. They arise as spontaneous fluctuations of the energy contained in the sub-atomic vacuum, which constitutes an indeterministic cause of their origination. Third, the same point can be made about theories of the origin of the universe out of a primordial vacuum. Popular magazine articles touting such theories as getting ‘something from nothing’ simply do not understand that the vacuum is not nothing but is a sea of fluctuating energy endowed with a rich structure and subject to physical laws. Such models do not therefore involve a true origination ex nihilo.”
(Craig, William Lane. Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics. 3rd ed. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2008. pp. 114-5)
1. There are no observed examples of uncaused events. (The few alleged counterexamples don’t hold water.)
2. There are numberless observed examples of caused events.
3. Therefore, it is highly probable that all spatiotemporal events are caused.
So, the belief in the possibility of causeless existence beginnings is empirically unsupported, while there is plenty of inductive empirical support for the opposite belief.
And from the rational point of view, the proposition that whatever begins to exist must have a cause seems much more plausible than its negation.
So it seems that Craig’s KCA premise #1 has not been successfully defeated by any counterevidence or counterargument.
Given enough time to examine them, arguments and scientific evidence should stand on their own. There is no need to bring in the word of authorities unless there’s a time crunch requiring quick decisions.
Eric just seems angry that I’m demanding we invest time in examining the evidence (the “beef”) instead of just going along with the say-so his cherry-picked authorities.
In the first place, not all scientists agree that sub-atomic events are uncaused
uh, news to me.
this would be WLC, LYING, and you buying it hook line and sinker…
because you’re dumb.
here’s a tip:
you can take WLC’s word for it… or Stephen Hawking’s.
which person do you think knows more about physics?
yeah.
And the great thing about science is that if you’d like to take the time to read the papers or conduct the experiments yourself, you don’t even need to take Hawking’s word for it.
Authority is only meaningful when you want to save time. Scientists are not infallible godmen to be obeyed, they’re just people who have done the work more often. They can still make mistakes just like the rest of us mere mortals, and we can still question their conclusions by looking at the evidence and pointing out fallacies or inconsistencies.
Eric is a moron. He seems to think if he lies enough, somehow they turn into the truth. Much like WL Craig.
Most physicists probably have never even heard of Craig. He is an obscure person outside the fundie xian death cult swamp. A few who have such as Victor Stenger or Larence Krause are open about what they think of him. Not much.
Craig is also a creationist. This is a fundie religious doctrine that has been rejected by 99% of all scientists in relevant fields. How much wronger can you be?
BTW, Eric the Moron, many or most of us, including myself, have Ph.D.s or MDs. Appealing to authorities with academic credentials isn’t going to impress us. We are those authorities by that criteria.
There are no uncaused events, therefore God. Fucking brilliant.
This is a lie. It is also dumb.
Who or what is causing atomic transitions, radioactive decay, or virtual particle appearances. God, angels, demons, leprechauns, elves? Amuse us, do tell.
And who are these scientists that don’t agree that some quantum events are uncaused? It certainly isn’t the people that developed the theory, Feynman, Bohr, and so on. Name some names of those dissenting scientists.
You know what’s tiring about debating these guys? They use mashed fallacies and if you stop to face any particular fallacy, they just add more.
A baseline for an actual debate would be the pursuit of knowledge. Some genius mentioned earlier that you have to be generous in your interpretation of others. What that person does not mention is that the fallacy mash these fuckers spit, like WLC’s, is unending and designed to tire you out. It is not generous.
They’ll answer selectively, and spin as much as possible together without ever coming to a substantial conclusion, and refuse to do any of the systematic proof that scientists and scholars are taught to do, and it can be utterly mystifying because we’re used to a style in which proof and generosity matters.
Then they’ll gloss the same shit until you’re tired and declare victory, because they don’t understand the entire process in the first place. That style of non-argument is religious in organization, and it’s the only damn way they can think. If not A then B, despite A or B.
Frankly, I think the lot of them are absolutely worthless. Let me take the opportunity to personally invite each and every troll who shows up to defend WLC to insert a habanero soaked porcupine up their ass and rotate.
djfav says:
“There are no uncaused events, therefore God. Fucking brilliant.”
It’s certainly not that simple.
But the atheist who accepts the principle that there can be no uncaused existence beginnings cannot help but claim that Matter/Nature is eternal and hence uncaused. For otherwise he would have to accept Craig’s view that Matter/Nature was caused to exist by a transcendent spiritual agent, since the material universe as a whole couldn’t have been created by a material agent.
WL Craig’s main scholarly approach is the usual fundie xian one.
He just lies a lot without a care in the world if everyone knows. Which they do.
If the fundie god were real, they wouldn’t have to lie all the time.
That much is true.
That is a complete and utter non-sequitur. Oh, and define “spiritual.” djfav and I are materialists in the monism sense: There’s no reason to arbitrarily draw lines in the sand.
If it exists, and has observable effects, that makes it material to me. It’s just a question of how unfamiliar that material is.
“…was caused to exist by a transcendent spiritual agent…”
My point is, that’s quite a leap. It’s the same with all theistic arguments.
existence beginnings cannot help but claim that Matter/Nature is eternal and hence uncaused
no, dolt.
eternal/=uncaused
fail.
It is creationist wack-a-mole. mixed in with a little Gish gallop.
It also doesn’t work. Thanks to liars like Craig, Myron, and Eric, US xianity is losing 1-2 million members a years and dying out. The fundies were why I left.
a) proposing a whole new category of objects outside of material is not a good idea
b) You admit his argument means nothing.
raven: See, that’s why I can get up the morning.
The larger point is being missed here: historical studies, text criticism, and archaeology render Craig’s entire spiel moot. Carrier and Avalos, among others, have done enough to KO the Abrahamic religions. There may be a God, but it’s not Yahweh.
And here we go again with Craig conflating the “Philosophers’ God” with Yahweh. If I had a nickel for every time some fundie fuck did that I’d be loaded. The MOST his arguments can prove is that it is not completely incoherent to suggest that there was a creator, i.e., Deism…but we ALREADY know that, since you can’t disprove that there is anyway.
Where he falls flat is historical knowledge. I would like to see Carrier take him on in that arena (and smash him flat).
Or to go back to a previous comment, either the dragon is invisible or the backyard is empty.
Fucking air tight, Myron.
Nothing can cause anything to begin to exist which is eternal in the sense that it has always existed (and that all of its existence is temporal existence).
Spontaneous == uncaused. WLC is claiming uncaused == ex-nihilo but has no argument as to why this should be accepted, except that it suits his arguments.
Cthulhu, this is babbling and doesn’t make any sense. Just words strung together.
It’s time for Myron to take his medication or see a psychiatrist. Looks like schizophrenia to me. Crazy is boring.
I think Myron’s AI bullshit generator has hit it’s limit.
Also suspect Myron is taking us for a ride.
Myron==Moron?
And just to clarify, no, I see no solid reason to believe the assertion that all beginnings must be caused. Because I believe that uncaused beginnings are a possibility, I am not forced to assume that the universe is eternal. It could very well have started with some uncaused quantum event.
In principle, I’d argue that there might be as yet unknown causes to the various weirdness, but until such a hypothesis is validated, it’s just a little induction based on all the caused stuff mixed with wishful thinking for elegant models of causation.
djfav says:
“…was caused to exist by a transcendent spiritual agent…”
“My point is, that’s quite a leap. It’s the same with all theistic arguments.”
You’re wrong. If the physical universe as a whole has a beginning and a cause, then its transcendent cause must be a spiritual agent, since abstract objects are nonagents by definition due to their lack of causal powers. There is no third category of possible transcendent things!
Sure there is. Exoversial Materialistic Causeless Agents.
It’s a category of phenomena that are non-causal, exist outside of the universe, have always existed, but are material in nature.
lol wut?
The funniest part of all of this is that Craig assumes this is something we can understand. It’s the same narcissistic bilgewater we’ve been having reality forcibly wean us off since the telescope was invented.
Assuming there IS a creator, Craig and his ilk should be very, very, very frightened. Because if there is, it is fucking with us on a scale nearly beyond comprehension. Craig is a creationist, but the evidence for evolution is so powerful that it’s perverse to reject the hypothesis…and that implies some unsavory things about an all-powerful, all-knowing creator. Ditto the complete neglect and utter indifference to the pains of its creations. If there is a God, it is trying its damndest to look like it doesn’t exist.
@Difav
Well it makes sense doesn’t it?
Such phenomena can perform the same function as a spiritual (whatever the fuck that means) object, but are material in nature. They just have always existed and exist outside of the universe.
It fits the argument just as well as spiritual. Myron/Craig’s lack of imagination isn’t a valid reason to limit their scope to a dichotomy.
Also, seriously? You complain about no non-causal events to use as examples to show it’s possible and then drop the spiritual turd?
Give me an example of a spiritual cause.
Myron:
Therefore, ‘God’ (assuming that something real to which that term is a referent exists) must be uncaused — which belies the original claim that nothing is uncaused.
‘But wait!’, you will no doubt foolishly think, ‘Craig spoke about contingent events, not about non-contingent ones’.
(Go ahead, make that objection.
(Make my day))
I have consulted my diary and can confirm Mr Dawkins is not expected to be appearing at my place in Queensland Australia on the night in question. I do however have a spare chair if required
The non-contingent thing is (as has been endlessly pointed out) a special pleading. It’s creating a definitional band-aid that attempts to work around a obvious logical contradiction that applies to exactly ONE hypothesized thing according to the argument.
Dragon’s are invisible.
What does “transcendent” mean in this context?
What does “spiritual” mean in this context?
What does “abstract” mean in this context?
As far as I can tell, they’re nonsense words paranormalists, newagers, and apologists use to get around self-contradictions. They invent a rule out of nowhere and then allow themselves to define their own exception to those rules. They pretend this act is “deep” and “profound.”
How did they discover this property, Myron? As far as I can tell, they just made it up on the spot, like children fighting imaginary battles, dreaming up impenetrable double-self-repairing sheilds and triple shield-cracking
Ing,
Looks like word salad to me.
Dang touchpad cut me off. But you get the idea: One kid dreams up a defense, another comes up with an attack, when the other reveals his defense has a countermeasure he didn’t mention, and the attacker as a counter-countermeasure, and so on.
That’s what “spiritual” means to me.