Can you debate William Lane Craig? Well my immediate response is whats the point? It’s quite easy to show that William Lane Craig essentially delivers exactly the same ‘debate’ almost by rote.
Popular debates favor style over substance, which is why the ‘debate’ is an irrelevance in the acquisition of knowledge. In areas of contention, you propose experiments capable of distinguishing the various proposed models. You then go and perform said experiments and the knowledge of mankind moves forwards. Notably Craig will NEVER makes any testable predictions, which is why his arguments never change and he never moves forward.
In this sense you might as well ‘debate’ a recording of William Lane Craig as William Lane Craig himself, as intellectually the physical presence of the man adds nothing to the forum. Incidentally, I can also tell you from personal experience that this is why watching William Lane Craig debates gets so terribly monotonous. It really is ‘pull the draw string’ and watch the man espouse the rigorous gold standards of the virtues of logic immediately prior to remorselessly and unproductively sodomizing them with a large, rusty and particularly unpleasant looking metal pipe.
Now none of that would actually be a problem if Craig was presenting some devastating argument that no one could address, but that’s simply not the case. Craig merely rattles off his ‘5 pillars’, conveniently forgetting to tell people that none of these arguments actually convinced him that god exists, they just form a conformational bias on his ‘personal interaction’ with god. In that sense the only argument that actually needs to be addressed is the one that convinced Craig, and boy how simple it is to address!
People all around the world have these personal interactions with different ‘Gods’.
- The ‘gods’ people people have personal relationships with seem to depend remarkably on where in the world you live!
Now Craig will be the first to stand up and say ‘but that doesn’t logically prove my God doesn’t exist’. Well yeah sure, but it does put Craigs personal relationship with ‘God’ into the exact same deeply unconvincing category that Craig puts everybody elses ‘God’s into. Bizarrely it is this exact deeply unconvincing argument that is the very foundation of Craigs belief in ‘God’, and it is upon these foundation of sand he builds his pillars of conformational bias.
Tags: craig, debate, doll, five, five ways, flawed, lane, logically, reasonable faith, religion, talking, thunderf00t, ways, william, william lane craig, wlc
Thunderf00t 
February 12, 2012 at 11:24 pm |
I totally agree with you, Thunderf00t! But I do not understand why the ‘defenders of the faith’ cling to what they believe in. I have a few theories, some or all of which may be true. But surely one of them cannot be stupidity, can it? I figure if you can walk and talk and live in today’s modern society then surely you are able to discern fact from fiction.
I think for evangelists and apologists in the public eye the primary reason has to be money and a blatant disregard for the truth since by admitting they are wrong and science is correct means that the easy money supply which comes from their gullible followers would be endangered and they would have to get a real job, perhaps even a useful one. For the average person however, the primary reason is fear. They are afraid to doubt or they will go to hell.
For a small minority, perhaps the reason is they have not yet been able to analyze the confusion of religions and so they choose to believe while researching the validity of their beliefs.
For various reasons too lengthy to get into here, I think that the main reason to cling to this unreasonable faith behavior is money for the leaders, and fear for the followers.
February 12, 2012 at 11:46 pm |
Brilliant map. I’ll be sure to link to this when next I discuss things with a non-Christian. Christians tend to be the most deluded of all as they will simply say that ‘pagans’ worship demons masquerading as gods. Madness.
February 13, 2012 at 12:55 am |
I wonder if the problem is that some people actually *need* an invisible loving sky daddy to help them face life and to punish them when they are bad just as they require an invisible evil uncle to blame their problems on when they transgress. I would argue that this is true, that some people require a belief system to cope with their own inadequacies and it is this that atheist are truly confronting. I would argue further that the authors of the bible are in agreement as they clearly allude to adherents as being sheep, members of the flock, where Jesus is the shepherd. Result? Trying to make believers see reason is equivalent to bailing the ocean out of a leaking boat. You are going to work hard to accomplish what is ultimately a futile task. This is what atheists realize but do not understand, but do recognize understandably so. YMMV, it’s just an opinion.
February 13, 2012 at 7:05 am |
Religious people will always seek out any confirmatory influence and react with hostility towards any contradictory ones. This is why they gather together in churches. This also explains why they vilify atheists but not those of other faiths. It is we atheists who shake their foundations to the core and that they cannot deal with.
February 14, 2012 at 3:47 am |
Thunderf00t I am still waiting for your answer
February 14, 2012 at 9:41 am |
Vyckro, I think you should take it as a sign from ‘God’ that you are stupid enough to say you want an ‘academic debate between men’ on a blog post about the academic irrelevance of such a forum.
Youtube is an open forum. What exactly is precluding you from addressing the arguments at hand? You know like I did with Craig? Oh yeah, that right I forgot, your arguments DO get the attention they deserve (almost none). No-one is interested in you or what you say Vyckro, that’s just the harsh reality of the situation. ‘Debating’ you would be about as well received as playing chess with a diseased pigeon.
Finally let me just say the level of personal spite in your harassment of ZOMGtscriss was frankly sickening.
February 14, 2012 at 5:06 pm |
The reality is simple this fool (Thunderf00t), made a series of scientific statements about concrete historical events as the “Dark Ages” and based on these statements he tried to predict how human society might have developed without Christianity (Columbus would have landed on the moon, and humanity would have colonized the universe).
On the “conflict thesis” Thunderf00t, built an entire straw man. Th.f00t wants to demonstrate that “religion must die” for the “science to live”.
His scientific statements on the history of religion and sociology are so ridiculous that exceed the funniest claims made by the most stupid creationists.
However, knowing the fact that the Christian religion built the modern society, and the modern science, and although his statements are ridiculous, there are on the same time extremely dangerous.
Thunderf00t uses this straw man to promote hatred and discrimination against the foundation of modern society.
Thunderf00t does these under the claim that “He promotes science”. What Thunderf00t makes is not science, and this is what my challenge, is all about.
I challenge the “scientist” to come and demonstrate his scientific claims, in a scientific open debate.
On the “ZOMGtscriss” she is the one that promotes hatred and discrimination, not me, she even has videos, in which she recognizes that she hates God and all christians.
I do not hate Thunderf00t & ZOMGtscriss but I hate the hate that consume their hearts.
February 14, 2012 at 6:00 pm |
Wow, Thunderf00t! Did you really speculate about how society would have developed without Christianity as said by VyckRo below? That’s amazing!
I recently came to the same thought myself. I said to my wife just the other day that if it were not for religion humanity would already be an interstellar traveling species and all that implies.
VyckRo’s statement (below) that the Christian religion built science is completely ridiculous and the exact opposite of reality. Modern science developed in spite of the terrible and relentless opposition by the Christian faith. Why is it that
February 14, 2012 at 6:03 pm |
…I am sorry but I accidentally posted my comment before finishing. I was going to ask why is it that poorly educated people like VyckRo cannot interpret the evidence and what really happened? I can only conclude that VyckRo is incapable of learning anything.
February 15, 2012 at 3:07 am |
@Vyck “On the “ZOMGtscriss” she is the one that promotes hatred and discrimination, not me, she even has videos, in which she recognizes that she hates God and all christians.”
BULLSHIT! All you have as evidence for that is a quotemine taken from her satirical video “God tells it like it is”.
You on the other hand make absolutely NO secret of the fact that you despise atheists and that you discriminate against them. Your channel and comments are filled with hate speech directed against ALL (not most, not some, no, ALL) atheists.
You have directly slandered both Thunderf00t and ZOMGitsCriss as promoters of Communist ideology and practices (such as forced egality at the expense of freedom, church demolishing and priest imprisonment etc.)
You have slandered ZOMGitsCriss for allegedly using “bots” to boost her subscription base. Hey genius, all big channels are targeted by spambots, just because they spam the comments section doesn’t mean they subscribe as well, and one person you claimed was a bot was in fact a REAL person. You produced NO evidence that all other bots were actually subscribed to ZOMGitsCriss.
And you have NEVER retracted any of the lies you said, NEVER made any concessions. I have already exposed your lies on the issue of atheism relation to communism.
That said, you did bring up some good points on the conflict thesis, so good luck getting Thunderf00t to debate you. I think he should debate you, just this once, and that’s coming from one of his subscribers.
All I can say is, don’t defend the EXTREME view that there is NO conflict because it takes just ONE valid conflict to disprove that. Just ONE.
Plus let’s not forget that, at least on a theoretical level, religion and science are diametrically opposed ways of acquiring knowledge. Religion is faith based and has no predictive capability (its claims are either proven false or if they are not proven false they are unfalsifiable), science is empirical evidence based or “tested predictive models of utility” as Thunderf00t might say.
So it’s inevitable at some point you’re going to reach different conclusions, look at creationists in USA evolution is just ONE of the things they oppose, they’re also against cosmology, chemistry, dating methods and anything that disagrees with their literal interpretation of the Bible. The only way the can co-exist peacefully is when religion deals entirely with the “supernatural” (basically the unknown) and doesn’t make wild claims like the Earth being fixed or the Universe being created in 6 literal days with the Earth as the first cosmic body and Sun created 1 day after plants. Or when theists just rationalize or ignore the contradictions.
And the persecution of Galileo WAS at least partially motivated by this dogmatic religious view that scripture is scripture and you can’t challenge it, or if you challenge it you must have a far more rigorous proof than usual, you want to deny that ENTIRELY to maintain this facade of no conflict when even one of the authors you mentioned (James Hannam) wouldn’t fully agree with you.
“This attitude might sound commendably moderate, but this would mistake Bellarmine’s meaning. As far as he was concerned, there was absolutely no chance that Copernicanism would be shown to be demonstrably true. Irrefutable proof in science is a rare enough thing and Bellarmine was insisting on complete certainty before he would reconsider what the Bible seemed to say. Clearly, science cannot operate in such an environment.
In March 1616, the Congregation of the Index of Forbidden Books made its decision on Copernicus: that to assert that the earth orbited the sun was scientifically ‘foolish and absurd’ as well as being contrary to scripture. Foscarini’s book was banned outright and Copernicus’s Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres suspended until corrected.15 As for Galileo, he was officially warned by Bellarmine that he could not defend, hold or teach the views of Copernicus.”
You’d also have to ignore the 1633 trial where the documents explicitly said teaching “contrary to scripture”. There is no way around it, if it’s true, there’s your conflict, the Catholic Church admitting that to them scripture > science.
If it’s false or partially false then that makes the Catholic Church guilty of perjury which does NOTHING to redeem its unjust pratices.
You have a no win scenario. :))
But no, I would not defend the extreme view that without Christianity or religion Columbus would have landed on the moon.
February 16, 2012 at 3:17 am |
“Youtube is an open forum. What exactly is precluding you from addressing the arguments at hand? You know like I did with Craig? Oh yeah, that right I forgot, your arguments DO get the attention they deserve (almost none). No-one is interested in you or what you say Vyckro, that’s just the harsh reality of the situation. ‘Debating’ you would be about as well received as playing chess with a diseased pigeon.”
Stellar reason not to debate someone? I think not. If you have enough time to dress up as Jesus and goof around in bookstores you have plenty of time to have a short debate with someone.
“Oh yeah, that right I forgot, your arguments DO get the attention they deserve (almost none). No-one is interested in you or what you say Vyckro, that’s just the harsh reality of the situation. ‘Debating’ you would be about as well received as playing chess with a diseased pigeon.”
Bitch please. You are really going to hide behind the numbers argument? Arguments do not rest on numbers, the people who claimed that the earth was not flat didnt have numbers on their side in the early days.People are sending you money for the upkeep of your channel, think about the chance you have now to confront Vycko. I reckon a lot of people would like to see it
February 15, 2012 at 9:16 am |
VyckRo, you do not even have the slightest inkling of what love is. If you did, you would not resort to such tawdry and ultimately self-defeating attempts to destroy Zomgitscriss` character (which usually end up increasing support and sympathy for her).
February 16, 2012 at 9:26 pm |
Hey Vick. I’ll debate you. I have a channel and everything. Whaddya say?
That’s what I thought…
February 14, 2012 at 6:16 am |
He says it best at the end.. “if in some historically contingent circumstances the evidence that i have available to me should turn against Christianity i don’t think that controverts the witness of the holy spirit”
My dad gives similar arguments… I was talking to him today about some things and the subject came up about the circular argument of the authority of the scriptures (in his case the king james bible)
It’s almost impossible to have a logical debate with someone who’s foundational beliefs rest on known circular proofs..
He recently started uploading his church sermons to youtube..
http://www.youtube.com/user/tnpreacher555
(IF you want to melt your head….)
February 14, 2012 at 5:39 pm |
Do you have a youtube channel.
February 15, 2012 at 4:20 am |
Yes, why? You want to send me annoying videos too?
February 14, 2012 at 9:30 pm |
dear John Vezina on “how society would have developed without Christianity”, if it was not for Christianity, people in the West, would have lived in wooden and adobe houses today.
It is a fact, and Thunderf00t! is the “poorly educated” in this situation, he should respect the rule he preached, the rule that he demands from Christians and Muslims namely, not to speak about scientific fields on which you do not have a training.
I will not have a great pleasure in humiliating this man, but is a job that one must do, this story whit Thunderf00t making scientific claims on:
– “history of science”
– “history of religion ”
– Sociology
– Anthropology
is going for some time now, and the man needs a lesson.
PS.
dear John Vezina, I leave you with a thought:
If the main argument is that Christianity was such a barrage in the way of “scientific development” then: who stopped the Chinese ( that already discovered paper, printing, gunpowder, compass before anyone else) to colonize the universe during the “Christian dark Ages”?
Who stopped the Maya? the Aztecs? the Indians, Arabs, the Aborigines of Australia or the native of the Amazon?
Why the progress in communist countries did not skyrocket it? immediately after the introduction of the “Gosateizm”, as it whas preached by Marx and Lenin?
Why the atheistic countries in the West (Europe) are experiencing an unprecedented birthrate crisis, that will make then in 50-80 years to become Islamic republics?
Why? Why? Why? If atheism is so great and it is the response for everything?
Why? John?
February 15, 2012 at 3:25 am |
The birth crisis has hit Romania as well and it’s far from being an atheistic country, in fact it’s HIGHLY religious (at least on paper, but that’s religious enough).
Ironic that the communist regime saw much higher birthrates.
If you want to stop Islam from taking over, religion is exactly what you don’t need, it’s more secularism and I’m not talking about wimpy “let’s cater to Islam” “secularism” I mean REAL secularism where religion has no voice in politics at all and is not given any special privilege.
No Sharia law (even voluntary courts’ decisions should be null and void).
No Halal meat – You either stun the animal or you don’t kill it, NO exceptions
No blasphemy laws
Strict immigration policies
Deportation of foreign nationals with theocratic or anti-social agendas
February 14, 2012 at 10:00 pm |
@VyckRo: I do not understand your question. Are you making assumptions about the ebb and flow of scientific and technical thought throughout history? All peoples and cultures were religious to some extent and by far the most common inhibitor to scientific progress was religious dogma simply because it challenged the status quo of those who held religious (and thus political) power over the common person. For example, Galileo was not censored by the church because he put forth modern and correct scientific ideas. He was censored because those correct ideas would have (and eventually did) undermine the strict authoritarian rule and infallibility of the religious leaders of the time. And, as has been pointed out by not only Thunderf00t, but also by Richard Dawkins and others, there is a strong correlation between the dark ages and the introduction of religious political power. The Arabs, as you pointed out, were extremely adept at science and made much progress until the dawn of the Islamic faith when freedom of inquiry was quashed.
However I am certain that religion was not the only inhibitor to scientific progress. I am certain that strictly political issues were also responsible for sabotaging scientific thought, although I can not give you an example nor state the degree to which this occurred.
The Maya, and other civilizations also had a belief in various Gods but to the best of my knowledge (which I admit is limited) they did not repress freedom of thought and ideas.
Atheism is not, as you write “so great”. Atheist is merely a name which is applied to those who recognize that not only is there absolutely no evidence for the existence of a God as defined by common religion, but that there is no need to even postulate such an explanation for the Universe. And even if it were postulated, it would be a meaningless postulate without any value nor practical application at all. I would not be at all surprised if we were someday to meet an alien being or race which was so far advanced scientifically that they seem to have God-like powers, but they would still be merely animals like us who evolved and were not created by some mysterious non-corporeal entity beyond space and time.
I thank you for your reply and I hope that you continue to think about these things.
February 14, 2012 at 10:52 pm |
@VyckRo Other than the spinning jenny and the printing press technology hadn’t advanced much in the thousand years preceding the 20th century. The Dark Ages in Europe are so called for good reason, the Christian church quashed all science that contradicted the Bible (all science in other words).
Look at how fast science and technology advanced following the enlightenment. If you simply remove the theocratic suppression of science you can advance the age of science, reason and technology into that thousand year gap.
We’d have had a cure for cancer 800 years ago. Remember that fact the next time you mourn a friend or family member who dies from it.
February 15, 2012 at 12:02 am |
I think the biggest problem with people like Craig is that their debate tactics work in their head. What I mean is that if a rational thinker debates someone like him and either gives up or runs into a roadblock that can’t be argued against, then they take that as a sign that they are the superior debater and that the subject is so strong that it can’t be disproven. I tend to like the method that thunderf00t is using, destroy the argument style to prove that anything the person says cannot be debated in a rational way.
February 15, 2012 at 7:49 pm |
@Dogma’s Demise
Stop to be a troll, You said so many misleading things that would get me ten pages to answer them.
Basically all you have are some quotation taken out of contest ( for example, me responding to some hater where I paraphrased him), or some video of my reinterpreted by you.
It is really amazing in terms of cognitive thinking, as you atheists do not see, when an entire activity of a person as ZOMGtscriss or Thunderf00t, is based on one thing and one thing alone, and that is to present all religious people as: retarded, psychopaths and dangerous people that can not be believed or trustid under any circumstances.
To present religion as an infection which must be destroyed and the people already infected that can not be cured, that they have to be… ( ZOMGtscriss, Thunderf00t, DprJones and the rest, does not make it very clear what to do with these infected sick patients but they suggests it quite clearly, by the words “religion must die”).
From what I was saying, It is really amazing in terms of cognitive thinking, when an atheist, do not seen the hate promoted by dozens of atheist channels but they see me responding.
These is as 20 guys will jump to beat one and hit him for half an hour, and when the poor guy, finally succeeds to hit one of the attackers in the nose, a moralist, from the crowd of spectators begins to boo that he did not come to see something like this.
Here we must understand why, you atheist only attack Christians, and this is because they alone, are considered they will not respond. And that is why you the “defenders of free speech” you have a so great shock to my channel.
-about Galileo, Giordano Bruno and Copernicus I would really like that Thunderf00t will give them as examples for the conflict (Especially knowing the fact that T.F00t is a diligent reader of wikipedia).
February 16, 2012 at 12:34 am |
@Vyck
I’m not a troll, you started a channel to attack atheists, this is my response.
I didn’t take any quote out of context. There was this atheist woman called Diana that made a video about her atheism. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTa-UlVFYuI She was relatively calm and didn’t promote any hatred of Christians. You chose to bash her video with a comment about how you’re a “militant anti-atheist who discriminates against them”. If this was some attempt to be funny it didn’t really work out. And don’t say I have low sense of humor, South Park had a humorous anti-atheist episode. Your comment was simply out of place.
“These is as 20 guys will jump to beat one and hit him for half an hour, and when the poor guy, finally succeeds to hit one of the attackers in the nose, a moralist, from the crowd of spectators begins to boo that he did not come to see something like this.”
ROFL, you do realize that the “poor guy” in this situation is the atheist, not the theist. Both USA and Romania have a very hostile climate towards atheists, there was even some study that showed atheists were trusted LESS than homosexuals or any other minorities in the USA. This is all evidently fueled by scripture that says not to be “yoked with unbelievers” or that “the fool has said in his heart there’s no God, they’re corrupt they do no good blah blah blah”.
I personally can testify that I was taught to distrust atheists as a young Christian.
And I KNOW there are countless teen-agers and even adults who are closet atheists or agnostics because they fear peer pressure. Not ONE person in Romania is a closet Christian, unless maybe it’s in the Muslim community in Romania since that’s the only place where it can be so.
Let’s not forget the many Islamic countries where apostasy = death. So it’s not just atheists, it’s Christian converts as well that will have a problem there. When I militantly defend secularism I defend them as well you ungrateful person you.
Now let’s contrast this with:
1. ZOMGitsCriss who married a CHRISTIAN (would YOU marry an atheist or agnostic, VyckRo? I don’t think so.) and who believes people should ultimately be free to believe what they want and government should be impartial to religion and who explicitly said she opposes the communist persecution of Christians.
2. Thunderf00t who believes what you do in the privacy of your own mind/home is none of our business.
Yeah the intolerance and discrimination is overwhelming isn’t it?
Militant atheism that people like Dawkins, ZOMG, TF, Pat Condell etc. promote is really defensive secularism.
And about religion and rationality, I don’t see how belief in ANY religion is a rational position considering the lack of a compelling case that can be made for them and most theists will admit it’s all about faith. So don’t talk to me about rationality, over the years I have went over the arguments of multiple apologetics, they have all failed to convince me.
Theists can certainly be rational people, but they seem to suspend rationality when it comes to religious opinions. Either that or they intentionally use the same misleading arguments for money (WLC certainly isn’t a poor guy, I wouldn’t be surprised if he was a closet atheist or agnostic.)
February 16, 2012 at 9:50 am |
“If this was some attempt to be funny it didn’t really work out”
was sarcazm, considering the degree of intelligence that one must have to make a video simply because that is fashionable in U.S & UK, considering that the educational system in Romania was destroyed on the principle: “Let’s do this, …because this is how they do it in US or Uk” (See what that video was a response too).
Furthermore, it was a response to those people style: “hi I am an atheist” Considering that atheism it started to become a militant anti-theist movement that discriminates against theist. ( yap! see the light bulb above your head?)
“ROFL, you do realize that the “poor guy” in this situation is the atheist,”
No, Considering that Romania, with the remaining communist states, has recently undergone what some call gosateizm
see
The Genocide of the Souls
“When the victim was a theology student or a person with a certain religious feeling, he was made to genuflect to the bare bottom of one of the ‘re-educated’, to call that bottom an icon and to kiss it. He would have to label the Holy Virgin ‘the great whore’ and Jesus Christ ‘the great idiot crucified on the cross’.”
http://www.thegenocideofthesouls.org/public/english/the-last-witnesses/
“ZOMGitsCriss who married a CHRISTIAN ”
– apparently this story has ended Considering that she no longer wears wedding ring on her finger, and the same whit the Coptic cross, from her neck.
“and who explicitly said she opposes the communist persecution of Christians.”
I think you mean that she promote the persecution of Christians, considering that according to her, we are all infected with a deadly virus that most be destroyed “for the science to survive”
It is true that she never said in public that she would kill Christians, but I have no doubt that’s exactly what she is thinking.
What would you do with an infection? I personally have not heard her saying that she opposes the communist persecution of Christians, she does not even recognize that there was a persecution.
“Thunderf00t who believes what you do in the privacy of your own mind/home is none of our business.”
That is after this idiot, I should hide? live in a cave? the arrogance “privacy of your own mind/home” ohhho what extraordinary privileges give me Mr. “free speech”
Why he did not give an example to all and keep his atheism in the “privacy of his own mind/home” why you do not do that?
“over the years I have went over the arguments of multiple apologetics, they have all failed to convince me.”
Try an atheist argument:
“To show that an argument is invalid or unsound is not to show that the conclusion of the argument is false . . . all the proofs of God’s existence may fail, but it still may be the case that God exists”
Kai Nielsen
February 16, 2012 at 12:07 pm |
Wow! You’ve seem to have been playing Zomgits’ some close attention. . . . You must really like her. Eh?
February 16, 2012 at 6:35 pm |
Wow Vyck, you really make me wonder why you are so fucked up regarding we atheists. Why would you think Zomgitscriss would ever consider any harm to any human being? What kind of morality lurks in your brain? Why do you knee jerk assume that because we think religious believers are misguided and living in a fantasy world that we would want to harm them in any way?
You are living proof that the morality of atheists far exceeds the barbaric moral standards exhibited and demonstrated by the Christian god.
I can without embarrassment confidently state that my morals stem from the choices I make and certainly not from any ridiculous standards written in religious texts. True, I have the same choices everyone else has regardless of beliefs. True, part of my morality stems from cultural indoctrination. Yet I make choices which sometimes conflict with my upbringing; I preserve and protect freedom of choice, liberty and equal rights for all, and I make these choices consciously because I have decided they are right.
I have empathy towards other human beings and all beings for that matter. I have empathy because I am the product of the evolution of intelligence and because empathy is an absolute requirement for the survival of an intelligent species. Thunderf00t, Zomgitscriss, me, and many others do not require someone else to dictate to us how we should react to and treat other human beings.
The persecution of religious and non-religious people has in the past more often stemmed from other religious peoples and not from atheists. Atheists are far from perfect and have done many bad things as well, but most of us display a far superior sense of morality than any religious entity ever has.
If we have to rely on a morality that comes from anyone else, then we are not to be trusted and we are dangerously unstable.
If you think your morality needs to be dictated by texts written by senseless barbarians, then you really need to re-examine them.
February 16, 2012 at 6:21 pm |
@Vyck “apparently this story has ended Considering that she no longer wears wedding ring on her finger, and the same whit the Coptic cross, from her neck”
LOL! I think you’re probably the only person to notice that, you’re really obsessed with this girl aren’t you?
“No, Considering that Romania, with the remaining communist states, has recently undergone what some call gosateizm”
Yeah, and they were wrong, you know what they say, two wrongs don’t make a right.
So stop using the pre-89 communist regime to justify hate against people who have nothing to do with communism. The main problem with communism was centralizing all the power into the state and taking away private property (which effectively meant the people’s very survival was dependent on the state). You seem to only see what you want to see, that they were atheists, so somehow atheism was the cause of communism.
And be honest here, communism is NOT the only reason some theists are hostile towards atheists. It’s scripture based prejudice against non-believers, or have you forgotten the “do not be yoked with unbelievers” or “the fool has said in his heart there’s no God, they are corrupt, none do good”?
Plus the fact that unbelief seems to be an instant disqualifier for Heaven (at least for most Christians). And the notion that if you’re not WITH God then you must be with Satan (also scripture based) or that you must hate him because you want to do immoral things.
“all the proofs of God’s existence may fail, but it still may be the case that God exists”
Which God? I could make a compelling case that the God of the Bible is as impossible as square circles and I could prove some of the pagan gods don’t exist because they don’t actually control any phenomena, it’s all explained by natural or social science making them entirely obsolete. Any religion that makes certain predictions can be shown to be wrong.
If you mean I can’t disprove a generic undetectable creator god that put the Big Bang in motion, well yeah and you could make the same case for solipsism or Star Wars actually being real in a distant galaxy (after all you would probably say it’s a “genetic fallacy” to say Star Wars is fake just because we know about it from a movie made up by George Lucas) and other far fetched unfalsifiable ideas. Remember your little debate on dprjones’ show.
But considering this hide-and-seek game that god (any god) evidently plays if he exist and the natural predisposition of humans to see agency where there is none and to invent religions, I’m more inclined to take an atheist stance rather than an agnostic one. There’s no reason why a god who wants anything to do with us would hide himself, that’s not how communication works and I’d expect a super powerful creator god to have a flawless notion of human psychology, but apparently he doesn’t even know that a communication is established two-way, not one-way. Either that or he doesn’t care about human affairs. Which is it?
February 16, 2012 at 10:46 pm |
Tfoot,
You complain that Craig constructed an argument for the existence of God (namely the Kalam argument) which did not convince him that his God exists. First of all, I’m not sure that’s true. Craig talks about lying awake at night (as a teenager I think) thinking about how it seems like the universe had a cause in the form of God. Certainly he has developed the argument a lot more since those sleepless nights, but nevertheless it wouldn’t be fair to say that it played no role in his conversion.
But more than that, it simply wouldn’t matter even if it were true. It wouldn’t tell us anything about the soundness of the argument, or warrant for its premises, etc. It wouldn’t even tell us about its persuasive power. If the Kalam argument is cogent with acceptable premises, then if we want to be rational we should believe in God. This fact is totally independent of whether it convinced Craig personally.
If you want to engage Craig’s argument, then you had better show why you think its premises aren’t acceptable or that the inferences aren’t valid/cogent. But talking about whether it convinced Craig himself is just irrelevant.
Next you mention geography of belief. Even though you agree that it does not follow from your geographical observations that Craig’s God does not exist, you seem to think it has some bearing on what we should believe. But how exactly? Do you think it undermines the Kalam argument, or some other argument presented by Craig? I don’t see how, and you don’t explain.
If you think it’s easy to debunk Craig’s arguments, then I suggest you either do so, or cite somebody you think already has. But this business of talking about geography of belief and sources for personal conviction isn’t helpful.
–Ben
February 16, 2012 at 11:52 pm |
“If you want to engage Craig’s argument, then you had better show why you think its premises aren’t acceptable or that the inferences aren’t valid/cogent. But talking about whether it convinced Craig himself is just irrelevant.”
He did that in the WDPLC 37 video, and his point was that the premises are not certain.
So Thunderf00t doesn’t believe that “everything that begins to exist has a cause” is universally valid or that the “Universe had a beginning”.
Personally, I would just stick with saying premise 2 is not certain. Intuition is proven to fail when you delve deeper into the unknown, I don’t see how someone could claim to know for a fact what was or was not before the Big Bang, we’re talking about a very unique condition where a lot of our predictive models don’t apply, just like Newtonian physics isn’t a good approximation when you’re talking about the relativistic speeds.
And I’m not this buying this idea that there’s no infinite regression. Again it’s something derived entirely from intuition which can be useful in day to day life, but at a cosmic scale it’s known to go wrong.
February 17, 2012 at 12:17 am |
Dogma’s Demise,
I went ahead and watched the video, and it seems like Tfoot’s point is NOT that we cannot be certain of the premises (and a good thing, too, since that would not be an effective criticism), but rather that the beginning of the universe is a special case and that we have reason (???) to think it an exception to the causal principle. He did not engage any of Craig’s arguments for the Kalam premises, or even dispute that the universe began to exist.
I guess I’m a little peeved that people think they can deal with a qualified philosopher’s major professional project by 10 minutes of mocking on youtube. Craig is quoted in Tfoot’s video as saying that he’s amazed by all the “sophomoric” criticisms he finds on the net. Well, Tfoot’s video is one such example.
–B
February 17, 2012 at 3:12 am |
Well that actually is an effective criticism, if the premises are wrong (or at least not known to be true) the rest of the argument crumbles like a house on a weak foundation. And Thunderf00t has questioned whether or not “beginning” of the Universe is the correct term to use.
Even if I grant you both premises it doesn’t logically follow that a “timeless spaceless immaterial personal god” is that explanation, all it shows is that the Universe had a cause, which could be something completely natural. You have absolutely NO WAY of knowing what the “outside” of the Universe is like, if that is even a correct term to use, for example the Universe could be cyclic, there could be multiple Universes. The mechanism by which that singularity in the Big Bang was formed is simply not known. Countless speculations can be made over it. To say a monotheistic god is the only plausible explanation is to commit the same mistake that ancient people did when they wondered at thunder and lightning and concluded it must be the wrath of a deity or when they assumed the sun is God. After all how does all that fire KNOW to arrange itself in a sphere and why does it seem to move or care enough to warm us and give us light? :))) Maybe this argument would have worked on primitive people with no scientific knowledge at all, just their limited thinking and intuition:
P1: Lifeless objects do not move on their own.
P2: The Sun moves on its own.
C: Therefore the Sun is not a lifeless object.
And the best explanation is that it is a personal, loving, deity that shuns touching your private parts and wants you to sacrifice your young one every few years. :))
February 16, 2012 at 11:27 pm |
@Vyck About TF
““Thunderf00t who believes what you do in the privacy of your own mind/home is none of our business.”
That is after this idiot, I should hide? live in a cave? the arrogance “privacy of your own mind/home” ohhho what extraordinary privileges give me Mr. “free speech”
Why he did not give an example to all and keep his atheism in the “privacy of his own mind/home” why you do not do that?”
And this is the kind of attitude that is really pissing me off, guy says something reasonable and you twist it around and blow it out of proportion worse than a Fox News reporter.
First of all the quote from Thunderf00t was in response to Ray Comfort asking TF if he “stomps on Christians?” (presumably asking how aggressive he is or not when arguing with Christians).
What more do you want? It’s not atheists infringing on your liberties, gosateizm is long gone in Europe, it’s YOU (or people like you) who is trying to infringe on others’ liberties and theists have been doing that (including against other theists of the same religion) for LONG before the short period of communism. You’ve been given ample examples on how fundamentalists undermine secularism so I don’t see how can you continue to deny that it’s a problem.
Gosateizm is not something that is going to happen in the context of democracy and market economy (which most atheists in Europe and USA do NOT want gone, in fact we understand the importance of the two), it’s only going to happen in the context of your paranoid mind (which is to say it’s not going to happen), there are certain barriers in place that prevent that kind of arbitrary abuse by the state, for one thing you have a much better separation of powers (executive, legislative and judicial), you have concepts such as due process so arbitrary arrests are a no-no, private property is guaranteed so nationalizations are very hard to occur and if you own the land there’s pretty much no way to get it demolished against your will.
I expected better from you Mr. historian/political expert. I guess that religious hatred is clouding your judgement again.
February 17, 2012 at 8:00 am |
I want to hug you for this post
February 17, 2012 at 12:11 pm |
Dogma’s Demise,
I didn’t find any of those criticisms in Tfoot’s video, which consisted mostly of mocking and non-argument. The only thing even vaguely resembling an argument which I detected was his undefended assertion that the beginning of the universe is a special exception to what we normally take to be the case—presumably referring to the causal principle.
As for your own criticisms here, you seem to be treating the syllogism as if it were the long and short of the argument. But I hope you are aware that Craig does not simply state the premises and leave it at that. He has three arguments to support the first premise, and four arguments to support the second premise. He then has three more arguments to show that the cause of the universe must be a conscious mind, and another argument to show that this mind must be spaceless and timeless.
I haven’t seen anyone here engage even a single one of those arguments. Instead, you claim that we do not know whether the premises are true, and do not know what properties the alleged cause must have. Well maybe *you* don’t know, but Craig has rational arguments. If you disagree with those arguments, let’s hear why. But it won’t do to simply ignore them.
–B
February 17, 2012 at 1:13 pm |
WLC does no such thing.
He simply makes blind assertions that we are supposed to accept. He appeals to ignorance by claiming that the “creator” must be outside space and time, not to mention conscious.
February 17, 2012 at 1:32 pm |
Winston Jen,
If you are not aware of Craig’s arguments, then you’re probably not in a good position to criticize them.
Try listening to any of his existence-of-God debates. Or better yet, pick up a copy of the Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology and read his Kalam argument found there. (Or if you don’t have access to that one, you can try the watered-down version in On Guard.)
–B
February 17, 2012 at 1:39 pm |
So you have nothing to say to my rejoinder?
February 17, 2012 at 1:45 pm |
If your god can exist without a cause, why can’t the universe also be uncaused?
February 17, 2012 at 3:02 pm |
Winston Jen,
You ask why God can exist without cause but not the universe. Craig argues that everything that begins to exist had a cause. Since God does not begin to exist, he is exempt from this causal principle.
–B
February 17, 2012 at 3:00 pm |
Winston Jen,
Perhaps you missed my reply above, where I pointed you to the arguments which you deny exist.
–B
February 17, 2012 at 3:05 pm |
Craig’s done nothing to prove that the universe is not eternal, or that his god is.
February 18, 2012 at 7:22 am |
wallyben
I agree that god doesn’t begin to exist. But to create the universe he would need to exist at all. And wlllie two cites smug lying cunt, whom has stated on video that he doesn’t care what the evidence is, has never provided any evidence that god does exist.
February 17, 2012 at 3:30 pm |
Winston Jen,
I have pointed you to where you can find Craig’s arguments that the universe began to exist. Have you checked them out yet? If so, why don’t you think they are compelling?
If on the other hand you haven’t yet checked them out, then that’s a problem you have to fix yourself. The resources are at your fingertips. You just have to do some reading.
–B
February 20, 2012 at 4:10 pm |
For the benefit of us not directly involved in this discussion, and not inclined to make WLC our study, could you provide a bullet-text list of WLC’s main points as to the Universe beginning to exist?
Thanks.
February 20, 2012 at 5:49 pm |
Sure.
He gives two philosophical arguments and two scientific arguments:
(1) (philosophical) An actual infinite cannot exist, but if the universe did not begin to exist then the collection of past moments would form an actual infinite.
(2) (philosophical) An beginningless past implies that we have formed an actual infinite through successive addition, which is impossible.
(3) (scientific) The expansion of the universe leaves no room for a viable scientific model of the universe which avoid assigning it a beginning.
(4) (scientific) The second law of thermodynamics is inconsistent with the universe having no beginning.
–B
February 20, 2012 at 8:52 pm |
Interesting, and a bit of a let down.
1) I always saw infinity as a concept, but not an actual number. Even so, why is infinity impossible?
2) I’d agree, but only if proof of the impossibility is given. Even so, I don’t think cosmology is not arguing for no beginning. I mean, they place the big bang and some point in the past, and between inflation and all, science is not fixated on the idea of an infinite future. Besides, our own sun is going to cook us before we get anywhere close to infinity.
3) Obviously. If the universe is going somewhere, then it most likely came from somewhere. If.
4) It would be interesting to think of the Universe as a closed system. Hmm, is it?
None of this seems at all remarkable, and certainly not novel.
I’d think a WLC debate that spent time on these points would put people to sleep, except the bumpkins that are impressed by fancy words and his academic posturing.
But isn’t the main criticism of WLC his insistence that the “cause” for this beginning was a God? Does WLC anywhere provide bullet-textable items for proof of a god? If not, anyone could make up anything to fill the “first cause” gap and it would be just as valid. For instance, Prophet Bobby Henderson invented the FSM.
And per the clips TF had in his video, it sounds more like WLC’s god is a product of his own ego, and I don’t mean “ego” in a bad way, just that it is a product of his mind and an aspect of his personality.
And isn’t this Kalam argument something out of 9th century Islam? Back then Christian, Muslim, and Jewish folks were attempting to apply Greek reason to the question of God, and if I recall correctly, they all later retreated to more mystical versions of the story, saying that rationalism essentially made God an object, or at least a being. I figure that what really happened was that rationalism was not getting them the results they wanted or else they would have stuck with it. And now it sounds a bit like Craig is trying to have it both ways by arguing that a mystical God created a rational universe.
Funny how this faith versus reason conflict has been going on for nearly 2000 years, probably longer, and how the reason side has been making pretty good progress.
March 30, 2012 at 2:24 am |
Ya, only because the faithful no longer have the power to kill anyone that goes against their word, though.
February 19, 2012 at 7:53 am |
Anybody curious can see my debate/discussion with religious shit-for-brains M. Cat on Amazon.com, starting at the bottom of this page:
March 30, 2012 at 2:21 am |
October 23, 2019 at 5:57 am |
so bogus