It has been marvelously funny reading the comments defending ‘Two Citations’ Craig on my latest vid. The superficial nature of these comments can maybe best highlighted by this hypothetical.
IF I had put up a video as ‘a professional scientist’ saying how Craig MIGHT be a good philosopher, but is merely a layman when it comes to science, and that as a professional scientist I find his arguments very unsophisticated and frankly embarrassing. (all in an insipidly smug patronizing tone)
Who seriously believes that these exact same people would have NOT gone absolutely ballistic highlighting the exact same problems with the vacuous nature of these arguments that I did. Damn, I’m almost tempted to do it, yknow as one of those ‘Double-Check and Mate, sucker’ type moves.
Anyways, it clearly got under the skin of these people to have it highlighted that their ‘leading academic’ has a pathetic citaion record. Nothing bites like the truth eh boys!.. Which leads to the obvious question:
Tags: 5 pillars, academic, apologetics, apologist, argument, comic, cosmological, craig, funny, god, jesus, joke, kalam, lane, laugh, moral, philosopher, philosophy, poor, professional, religion, science, two citations. richard dawkins, willaim lane craig, william, wlc
Thunderf00t 
January 8, 2012 at 5:17 pm |
Willy Two-Cite
January 8, 2012 at 6:18 pm |
two-inch willy
January 8, 2012 at 5:39 pm |
smug lying wanker.
Or
craig the cunt
January 23, 2012 at 9:28 pm |
Hey, don’t insult people who wanks, get your own hobby.
January 8, 2012 at 6:28 pm |
I liked your video. The measure of an academic is not how much s/he writes, but how much their work is considered useful by others in the same field after the fact. His record speaks for itself in that regard.
January 8, 2012 at 6:37 pm |
Great video. Ignorance is bliss and Graig seems to be very blissful.
January 8, 2012 at 7:38 pm |
I usually like your videos, but I do believe there is some miss representation here. The absolute number of citations is not a good measure of ones scientific work, as some field have much lower citations rates than others. For example top computer science journals have JCI ratings just over 2. As this is the field I am trying to succeed myself, if I were to become one of the top researchers in my field, I could only hope for around 3 citations per article on average. This would put me in the same position for which you are chastising dr. Craig here. I felt like you were comparing apples and oranges, without actually explaining what the numbers really tell us. Would you please do a follow up video, correctly addressing this issue.
I do apologize my first comment on your videos was a negative one. I do enjoy the content you provide. Thank you for you efforts.
January 13, 2012 at 1:15 am |
I think the big problem with his only having 2 citations is not the actual number, but rather the fields in which he tries to get published. Like you said, certain fields only expect a few citations. I myself study English, which can have professionally published, peer reviewed, literature that only has one citation. Where Craig tries to refute fields of science that demand more referencing and citation due to the vastness of the field and the multitude of different arguments and theories.
You do bring up a good point though that TF should have gone into more detail on the importance of the citation rate for the fields that Craig is writing in.
I also want to point out that I’m not trying to chastise you or anything, just point out my opinion on the matter.
January 9, 2012 at 6:23 am |
I think this is a relevant issue only in so much as Craig touts his credentials as an academic and how much this means to his fans. Other than that, it’s what the man says and the ideas he promotes and the arguments he uses to back them up, that counts.
The thing that struck me most about this video, however, was his blatant hypocrisy. You did a stellar job in pointing that out.
TF, thanks for your efforts, and I applaud you for going after the bigger fish in this, I almost type “debate”, scam.
January 9, 2012 at 7:45 am |
Here’s an idea. Read Craig’s publications and write a critique or rebuttal, and try to get it published in the same journals he publishes in. Make him defend himself in the arenas where he things he gets his credibility from.
January 10, 2012 at 6:41 am |
I like that idea of Prelude610. Introduce peer review in religious studies! 🙂 I’d like it best if the gods would did it by themselves, Wotan and Zeus judging the design efforts of Jaweh. Would be much fun reading!
January 10, 2012 at 2:01 am |
Well, “Two Bill Craig” obviously beats Janus. Seems he has the same number of faces as average citations. The 0.3? That’s what you hear him say off-mike.
Look, I’ve read a majority of his books now (and no, I wasn’t quote mining, I was trying to understand his “arguments”), and the one thing you can say for him is that he’s consistent. Well, within the paradigm of being caught red-handed on any number of occasions defending the indefensible (Dover v Kitzmiller, anyone?).
Until I’d read a number of books on logic and argument, I couldn’t understand why his written works felt…flat. Queer. Like cold boiled water, the words themselves were arranged in reasonable ways, but there was nothing beneath them.
That’s when I decided to learn about the various bogus types of arguments (ad hominem, ex-post-facto, ad vericundiam, and so on), and whaddayaknow? Two Bill uses all of these fallacious arguments, especially the one TF is talking about here – ad vericundiam, or appealing to authority.
In fact, that’s all any of the religious apologists CAN use to argue their case. Once people start to realise that, maybe things will start to change, and these guys will be seen for what they really are – deluded, self-aggrandising fantasists with a morbid fear of death.
I also realise (unlike some weirdo posters on the YT channel) that the argument TF is making is also an ad verecundiam argument; but this is an appeal to authority on BOTH sides of the argument.
My main concern with TF’s argument is that I’d like to know which peers actually cited Two Bill’s papers? Are they counting entities like the Christian Science Monitor, the whacko jesusian universities, and so on? Because if that’s so, then that’s not what I would class a solid peer review or citation count.
Ironically, it’s quite possible that Craig’s papers were cited by atheists. How delicious!
January 13, 2012 at 1:38 am |
You seemed to have studied the subject of argument. I have recently taken an interest in philosophy (reading the republic). I believe that you can not know anything (nothing is self-justified) but only reason it through philosophy.
The problem isnt god, after all god doesnt say anything. I have actually discovered the “philosophical god” zeus which has completely different foundations to what I call “cult gods”
you see zeus does not have any definitive texts that describe exactly what he is, the hellenes used analogous literature to descibe some aspects of zeus through folklore. But these were never literal!
The greeks believed the most important god of each location was their name for zeus so the eqyption god amon in the first centuary was called jupiter-zeus-amon. This “our god but different understanding” is very different to the cult gods which just massacre the competition because your god is not their god.
So in my opinion, the philosophical Zeus-type which is not dependant on artefacts or authority encouraged philosophy and understanding where as yahweh (Cult-type) is a monster which can only survive by preventing it.
With cultism comes cognitive dissonance – you would rather be the hero of your own reality than admit you are a villain in the real world. The responsibility that you have been partly responsible for something quite evil is too much to bare. This is why Islamists for example often strengthen their beliefs when they come in contact with the west.
Zeus doesnt say anything, so it’s good to reconsider your judgements thats how you discover the truth. Indeed you do a great service to Zeus when admitting when you’re wrong.
Wow that was a sidetrack… I just wanted to point out god isnt the problem but cultism is, its based on a fallacy which is the belief in a human account of god (and therefore NOT the beleif in god) and making that account self-justified which means you disable your ability to accept wrong doing and find truth.
anyway my question I wanted to ask you before I rambled… did you find any good books on the foundations of arguments that help us identify fallacies?
January 11, 2012 at 8:54 am |
Unfortunately there’s no link to Thunderf00t’s h-index results and therefore the comparison is unsubstantiated and lacking the necessary evidence.
February 17, 2012 at 2:05 am |
It appears you have to be an academic at a subscribed institution to access that kind of database.
Web of Science [owned by Thompson Reuters] requires access from a recognized IP [institution].
SciVerse Scopus will allow lay-people to preview only in a very basic form an authors publication history & their overall citation score [h-index]. Further detail such as graphs document titles requires an institutional subscription.
January 11, 2012 at 2:58 pm |
Dr. Two Little
January 12, 2012 at 4:13 am |
William Too Lame
January 12, 2012 at 6:44 am |
You exclaim: “Anyways, it clearly got under the skin of these people to have it highlighted that their ‘leading academic’ has a pathetic citaion record. Nothing bites like the truth eh boys!.. ”
Au contraire! You have highlighted that you are unwilling to provide the EVIDENCE. Personally I have asked Thunderf00t on five occasions for the evidence and am yet to see any. So I will ask once more here in the hope of some small reply. Please Thunderf00t can we have the links to the h-index calculator you used so we can see this ourselves instead of having to take your word for it? The problem for you is I can already prove one aspect of your search was wrong. There are also other problems which are going to be exposed soon enough as well.
January 12, 2012 at 7:17 am |
You should be able to find them yourself, the same way TF found Craigs’s. If it wasn’t mentioned in TF’s video then I think Concordance, in a very recent video, mentioned two sites where you can check exactly these things. But once you do find that info, see how it stacks up against how TF portrays himself, rather than how his critics may see him. I don’t think TF has made a big deal of his role as a scientist or teacher, and I think I actually recall him saying he deliberately kept those facts out of the picture so that people would take what he has been saying on its merits rather than on his academic credentials. In Craig’s case, he is pitching himself as a professional philosopher and an academic, and making a pretty big deal about it, so I think TF’s point that Craig’s publication record does not measure up is valid. (I personally would like to see what people who cited Craigs work said about it.) TF speaks very little about himself in his videos and instead uses his opponents own words, their own Bible, or well established science, to make his point.
BTW, I don’t mean to be speaking for TF, or defending him per se, but I think I catch your bigger meaning and wanted to help with that.
January 12, 2012 at 7:42 am |
Try the “Web of Knowledge” web site. You might need to access it from a campus computer or subscribe yourself. (Found it by googling phrases shown in TF’s video. Easy. Just too a few minutes.)
Also, I hope you mean what you say here — “I don’t have comment pending but there are rules. Anyone who is clearly more concerned with personal attack rather than healthy debate will have their comment deleted. Anyone who persists in it will be blocked. The latter will also happen to people who are clearly only interested in stirring ad hominem controversy rather than intellectual debate.”
February 17, 2012 at 4:46 am |
Prelude610 has already given you one source ‘Web of Science’ (WoS), another is ‘Scopus’ and ‘Google Scholar’ (GS). Note you may come across ‘ISI Citation Indexes’, this will take you to WoS. ‘Web of Knowledge’ will also re-direct you to WoS.
WoS & Scopus require subscriber access either via a recognized subscribed institutional IP address or subscribed institutional login.
Scopus will allow preview access to the author database to non-subscribed users, but the information is limited to the last document title published [which I used to identify the WL Craig in question] & a summary of all docs published, references, citations, h-index & co-authorships. Graphs & full document title listings require subscription access.
You would do well to read the paper “Which h-index? – A comparison of WoS, Scopus and Google Scholar” [15 pages] before taking what GS has to offer as thorough, organized & informative.
Because I don’t have access to WoS .. I’ll take advantage of Scopus.
My Scopus search for ‘William Lane Craig’ for example produced four separate authors – all different people. The WL Craig in question was identified by matching the last publication title provide by Scopus to a simple Google search.
Scopus identified our WL Craig in question as having published 29 documents, 355 references, 37 citations, a h-index of 3 & no co-authored publications.
My Scopus search for PE Mason [thunderf00t] produced, 44 documents, 1266 references, 655 citations, a h-index of 17 & co-authored 70 other papers/documents.
Again to gauge the accuracy of these results read the article above “Which h-index?…”
Finally, your inability to use Google/Yahoo/ASK/Bing [or whatever search engine you prefer] does not constitute a failure of compliance by Thunderf00t to your request to make your life easier. The universe, time & evolution gave you a mass between your ears to think with, learn how to use it [though admittedly your god would prefer you not use it at all, only blindly comply with his edicts].
===========================
This service was provided by an unapologetic humanist atheist who didn’t need the fear of god to make him do a positive deed [however big or small] – rationalism made me do it. Oh .. and please remember:
WE are the Universe manifest conscious – the Cosmos getting to know itself. Cogito ergo sum.
January 12, 2012 at 5:30 pm |
@Prelude
No need to get so defensive. And you want us to extend a special context to the data do you? You want us to look at the statistics with other considerations in mind? Sounds like you want us to bias our findings to me. BTW – saying you are a professional philosopher when you are one is not a grandiose claim! It’s also not the same as claiming one is an h-index elite philosopher now is it? I mean that’s pretty obvious. Did TF consider that before his overly popularist and naive comparison? Who knows? There are problems accessing the WofK website as you yourself note. This is the problem. Other h-index calculators find very different results. And yes I meant what I said on my YT profile. However, those who wish to stir ad hominem controversy ought not to complain when the same controversy gets levelled against them should they now? If TF is happy to attempt to try to discredit WLC on the basis of ad hominems then how on earth is he going to complain if some respond in kind? If, instead of his popularist, ad hominem attack he had actually made some sustained argument about the arguments then the response would be in kind to that as well. TF has been on the receiving end of some unfair and childish behaviour from what he says in his own videos – how sad he can only do the same to others.
January 13, 2012 at 1:55 am |
It seems that you did not mean what you said on your youtube page.
January 13, 2012 at 2:07 am |
How so? Please be precise.
January 13, 2012 at 7:14 am |
How about just Crazy Craig? short sweet to the point… it can be yelled incoherently
January 13, 2012 at 11:52 pm |
Kalamity Craig
Kalamity Bill
Kalam Al-Kabloowi
January 14, 2012 at 12:51 am |
William the Citeless
January 18, 2012 at 7:41 pm |
William Lame Vage?
January 25, 2012 at 12:36 am |
T’Foot. How can I donate to the Take Down WLC Legal Fund. EMails to my unlisted private account. No kidding.
January 29, 2012 at 8:41 pm |
Thunderf00t: Just a note about a typo in the blog post you might want to fix: In the sentence, “Anyways, it clearly got under the skin of these people to have it highlighted that their ‘leading academic’ has a pathetic citaion record.” — “citaion” should read “citation.”
(I do realise that that you are intentionally writing in a rather off-the-cuff manner, but still…)
February 4, 2012 at 7:39 pm |
Professor Eats Cocks A Lot
February 7, 2012 at 2:57 am |
The Thunderf00t academic integrity is challenged.
November 11, 2015 at 8:12 pm |
[…] 2 July 2013) 15. Richard Dawkins Meets Dr. Craig (Reasonable Faith; 16 January 2011) ✔ 16. I dub thee ‘Two Citations Craig’? (Thunderf00t; 8 January 2012) ✔ 17. Citation (Wikipedia; 31 October 2015) ✔ 18. Larry Moran. […]
October 23, 2019 at 5:56 am |
delete this post