…and this is a 
Lawrence Krauss vs. William Lane Craig
by Lawrence Krauss
It sometimes surprises me, although it shouldn't, how religious devotees feel the need to regularly reinforce their own convictions in groups of like-minded individuals. I suppose this is the purpose of regular Sunday church services, for example, to reinforce the community of belief in between the rest of the week when the real world may show no evidence of God, goodness, fairness, or purpose.
Nevertheless I was not prepared for the self-congratulatory hype that I have seen spouted on the web, and have received in emails, including a typically disingenuous email from Wiliam Lane Craig to his followers regarding a debate I had with him in North Carolina last week. While carrying out the debate in the first place was something that broke my normal rules--as I said during the debate, I far prefer civil conversation and discourse as a way of illuminating knowledge and reality--I will break another rule and write this blog-like note on my own perspectives, in the hope that it may circulate and counter some of the nonsense that has propagated in the fundamentalist and religious blogs of late. Perhaps Craig will post this on his blog and send it out as well.
I believe that if I erred at all, it was in an effort to consider the sensibilities of the 1200 smiling young faces in the audience, who earnestly came out, mostly to hear Craig, and to whom I decided to show undue respect. As I stressed at the time, I did not come to debate the existence of God, but rather to debate about evidence for the existence of God. I also wanted to demonstrate the need for nuance, to explain how these issues are far more complex than Craig, in his simplistic view of the world, makes them out to be. For this reason, as I figured I would change few minds I decided also to try and illustrate for these young minds the nature of science, with the hope that what they saw might cause them to think. Unfortunately any effort I made to show nuance and actually explain facts was systematically distorted in Craig's continual effort to demonstrate how high school syllogisms apparently demonstrated definitive evidence for God.
Let me now comment, with the gloves off, on the disingenuous distortions, simplifications, and outright lies that I regard Craig as having spouted. I was very disappointed because I had heard that Craig was more of a philosopher than a proselytizer, but that was not evident the other evening.
Craig began with an attempt to demonstrate his scientific and mathematical credentials by writing a rather meaningless equation on this first slide, which he then argued would be the basis for his 'evidence'. The equation, in words said that if the probability, given the data, gave one a greater than 50% likelihood for God's existence, then this was evidence. He even presented this as a pseudo- Bayesian Argument.
The problem is that using mathematical probabilities in this fashion ONLY makes sense if you have a well defined probability measure, and if one can check that the conclusions one draws are not sensitive to one's priors. He did not explain this at all, nor do I think he understood it when I tried to explain it to him. For the rest of the evening Craig simply proceeded to spout his claimed evidence, and then proceeded to state that each gave him a greater than 50% belief in God. The whole purpose of the mathematical nonsense at the beginning was to give some kind of scientific credibility to a discussion which was anything but. It was disingenuous smoke and mirrors. (Moreover, as I tried to explain, in modern scientific experiments, merely finding an unexpected result, with say only a 20% chance of being wrong, is not sufficient to establish evidence. One needs to go to much higher levels of confidence, especially if the claim being made disagrees with all other evidence. It is hard to think of a grander claim than evidence for a divine being who creates the universe without apparent purpose, dominated by dark matter and dark energy and containing hundreds of billions of galaxies, lets it evolve untouched for billions of years, and then roughly a million years into human evolution decides to intervene at a time before Youtube or any other objective recording and archiving tool was available.)
Next, if one is going to frame the argument scientifically, as I argued is essential when discussing empirical evidence, which Craig later took great pains to disavow, one must point out that in science when one is trying to explain and predict data, one tries to explore all possible physical causes for some effect before resorting to the supernatural. Happily it is precisely this progress in our natural philosophy that ended such religious atrocities as the burning of witches. In each and every case the actual syllogism that one ended up with was:
Craig either doesn't understand how something could happen, or instead believes that events happened that confirmed his pre-existing belief system.
In the absence of understanding physical causes or exploring alternatives, this implies evidence for the existence of God.
Therefore there is evidence that God exists.
This is what I framed as the "God of the Gaps" argument and I continue to view, upon reflection, most of the claims of Craig as falling in this well-known theological trap.
Let me work backwards through his 5 "arguments":
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The resurrection of Jesus, and that fact that the followers of Jesus were willing to die for their beliefs provides evidence of God: I admit that this claim is so sloppy and fatuous that in an effort to demonstrate some margin of respect for Craig I tried to avoid it for as long as I could. Craig argued that most New Testament scholars believe in the resurrection. Even if this were true, though Craig provided no evidence of this, this of course is simply proof that New Testament scholars have an a priori faith that guides them. It is like claiming that most Islamic scholars may believe that Mohammed actually ascended to heaven on a horse. In the first place, there are no definitive eyewitness accounts of these events, and in the case of the claimed resurrection the scriptures were written decades after the claimed event, and the different accounts are not even consistent. Not only are there serious theologians who doubt the resurrection, there are historians who doubt the historical existence of Jesus himself. Whatever one's views in this regard, however, one must ask oneself the simple question: Is it more likely that all known physical laws were suspended so God could demonstrate divinity--and moreover demonstrate this in a hackneyed way that recreated previous resurrection myths, down to the number of days before being raised from the dead, of several previous, and now long-gone religious cults--or is it more likely that those who were preaching to convert fabricated a resurrection myth in order to convince those to whom they were preaching of Christ's divinity? Finally, the remarkable, and completely trite claim that the fact the Christians were willing to die for their beliefs demonstrates the validity of these beliefs would be laughable, if it weren't so pitiful. Especially, as I indicated during the event, in light of the fact that people were recently willing to fly planes into skyscrapers because of their beliefs in a religious framework that I know Craig has openly disavowed. Throughout history people have been willing to die for their beliefs, and it is often the beliefs one is willing to die for that are most suspect. Did Roman soldiers believe in Romulus and Remus. Did Viking warriers believe in Thor. Did Nazi soldiers believe in the superiority of the Aryan race. I found and still find Craig's statement not only facile, and not even worthy of a high school debater, but I find the claim offensive.
FineTuning: The appearance of design is one of the most subtle and confusing aspects of our Universe. Charles Darwin, with his Origin of Species, brilliantly and masterfully explained how the modern world, with its remarkable diversity of life forms may have the appearance of design without any design at all. It was one of the greatest and most striking scientific discoveries of all time, and it is the basis of modern biology and medicine, leading to countless other discoveries that have continued to save countless lives. Craig is aware, from his superficial reading of cosmology, of fine tuning problems in Cosmology, which he then immediately argued requires the existence of intelligent life, implying purpose to the universe. Not only does he fall prey to the same fallacy that those who, before Darwin enlightened us, ascribed design in biology fall prey to, he also continually misrepresented the nature of any apparent fine-tuning of quantities that we currently may not understand from first principles. I tried to explain to him that the current entropy of the universe is not fine tuned, nor need the initial entropy be fine tuned, because Inflation provides a mechanism to wipe out initial conditions and produce huge amounts of entropy, without God. I tried to explain to him that the Cosmological Constant, which is perhaps the most confusing finely tuned parameter we know of in the Universe, is fine tuned in a mathematical sense, compared to the naïve value we might expect on the basis of our current understanding of physical theory. While it is also true that if it were much larger, galaxies would not form, and therefore life forms that survive on solar power would not be likely to form with any significant abundance in the universe, I also explained that if the Cosmological Constant were in fact zero, which is what most theorists had predicted in advance, the conditions for life would be, if anything, more favorable, for the development and persistence of life in the cosmos. Finally, even if some parameters in our currently incomplete model of the universe do appear fine tuned for human life to be possible, (a) we have no idea if other values would allow other non-human-like intelligent life forms to evolve, since we have no understanding of the locus of all possible intelligent life forms. And, beyond this, just as bees are fine tuned to see the colors of flowers which they can pollinate as they go about their business does not indicate design, but rather natural selection, we currently have no idea if the conditions of our universe represent a kind of cosmic natural selection. If there are many universes, for example, as may be the case, and as are predicted in a variety of models, none of which were developed to address God issues, we would certainly expect to find ourselves only in those in which we can live. All of these are subtle and interesting issues worthy of discussion by knowledgeable and honest intellects. I found Craig to be lacking in both of the qualities during his discussion of this issue.
Absolute Morals: Craig argued that the existence of absolute morality gives evidence for God. Once again this is simple minded. Indeed in a meeting we convened at my Origins Project of distinguished philosophers and neuroscientists we debated the subtle issues of morality and human evolution, the possible variants of morality, and a host of other issues, without once ever resorting to God. As I tried to explain to Craig, paraphrasing fro Steven Pinker, if there were a God, either God would have the choice to determine what is right and wrong or not. But in this case, if God determined that raping and murdering 2 year-olds is morally acceptable would it be so? If not, as reason and experience suggests, then God really has to resort to other considerations, kindness, compassion, etc (except for the Old Testament God!), on which to base God's decisions. But if that is the case, why not just dispense with the middle-man? Lastly, if there is evidence that God provides absolute Morality, it is missing from the world of our experience, where different religious groups, all of whom claim divine inspiration, have incompatible moral views, often leading to horrendous and violent acts against women and children, for example. Indeed, the Old Testament is full of such acts.
Contingency: Frankly the argument that humans or the universe do not have to exist but they do as providing evidence for God is something I find unfounded, so I will not devote any more words here to this subject. Many 'contingent' phenomena occur by natural causes, from earthquakes to snowflakes and I do not have to invoke God's will to explain them. What applies to earthquakes and snowflakes applies to the Universe. Just because I cannot yet explain the origin of the Universe does not imply the existence of God...again God of the Gaps.
Our Universe had a beginning, therefore God must have created it: Actually the issue of the beginning of the Universe is the only truly interesting question worth discussing here. A host of scientific arguments need to be discussed here, and there is no doubt the question of chicken and egg is a vexing one for cosmologists as well as theologians. However, let me make a few points here: (1) All things that begin may have a cause, even if the cause is rather obscure and purposeless. However, what is important to note is that every known physical effect whose cause we understand has a physical cause. There is no reason therefore to assume the same will not be true of our universe itself. (2) There are no arguments that our universe need be unique and not derived from something pre-existing, or even eternal. Indeed, the Ekpyrotic Universe promoted by Turok and Steinhardt, which I don't find compelling, argues for potentially eternal periods of expansion and contraction. Craig doesn't understand the physics. (2) I continued to try and explain that quantum gravity may imply that space and time themselves are created at the moment of the big bang. This is a rather remarkable statement if true. But if it is true, in the absence of time itself, how one can ascribe arguments based on causality is unclear at best.
This last point illustrates what I tried hardest to explain. Classical human reason, defined in terms of common sense notions following from our own myopic experience of reality is not sufficient to discern the workings of the Universe. If time begins at the big bang, then we will have to re-explore what we mean by causality, just as the fact that electrons can be in two places at the same time doing two different things at the same time as long as we are not measuring them is completely nonsensical, but true, and has required rethinking what we mean by particles. Similar arguments by the way imply that we often need to rethink what we actually mean by 'nothing', from empty space, to the absence of space itself.
What I hoped I could convey to the truly open minded intellects in the audience, of which of course Craig was not one, was that the amazing effort to understand how the universe works reveals wonders far more remarkable than those presented by Bronze age myths, developed before we had any clear understanding of how the universe works. Simply arguing that one doesn't understand the results, or doesn't like the results and therefore one has to resort to supernatural explanations, which was the crux of Craig's rather monotonous repetition of his syllogisms, is indeed intellectually lazy, as I did say at the time.
I have taken great effort to describe our actual understanding of the Universe and its implications for understanding how it might be possible for something to come from nothing, i.e. non-existence, in my new book, which will come out in January of 2012.
Comments
Posted by: Steve LaBonne
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April 5, 2011 8:24 AM
Another example of the truism that nothing good comes of "debating" creationists.
Posted by: kieran
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April 5, 2011 8:25 AM
If someone chooses to lie to themselves to the point were they can reject evidence of simple scienctific fact, how can you hope that they will be honest in other things such as reporting how a debate went. While I've no doubt that you've the evidence on your side sometimes the snake oil salesman can win the audience.
This particular one is in a competitive field for the money of the simple, the deluded and the plain ignorant. As such has become highly adapted to his choosen environment with a selection of adaptations to ensure the continued success of his memes.
Posted by: debeuk
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April 5, 2011 8:25 AM
Dr. Craig seems to claim that any facts compatible with his claims count as evidence. This leads to absurdities such as the existence of humans being evidence that they were created by aliens last Tuesday.
Posted by: Antiochus Epiphanes
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April 5, 2011 8:27 AM
This debate was likely not distinguishable from watching Lawrence Krauss teach a card trick to a Labrador retriever. WLC is a dumbass of the first order, having obtained his clown shoes in the early 70s. FWIW, nice post, Dr. Krauss. I applaud your patience.
Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere
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April 5, 2011 8:36 AM
I really wish that instead of having public debates that there would just be written debates on the issue - take away the showmanship and focus on the substance.
Will listen to the debate once I get an MP3 of it. Though really, I'd prefer to see a book that dealt with the arguments than listening to short presentations. Given what topics are being talked about, a 90 minute discussion really doesn't do it justice. Is anyone walking away from such a debate with any better understanding of cosmology or what morality is?
Posted by: Wowbagger, Man-Hating Man of Pharyngula
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April 5, 2011 8:38 AM
Surprise, surprise; for all we're told there is value in listening to the so-called 'greatest minds' Christian philosophy (and all its alleged depth and 'nuanced understanding') has to offer, when push comes to shove all we have in front of us is yet another Liar for Jesus&trade and the same old shell-game.
Posted by: Darrell E
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April 5, 2011 8:42 AM
I feel for Dr. Krauss. Craig is a carny. He is incredibly ignorant, and smug about it. But he does have the carny act down plenty good enough to infatuate millions of gullible believers. His extreme ignorance, dishonesty and hypocrisy are actually to his advantage when addressing the typical god addict that holds him in high esteem.
Given his nature, I think the only way to debate someone like Craig is to focus on revealing just how ridiculous and dishonest he is. Don't debate him or his ideas, ridicule him. Craig certainly has no intentions of debating, so why should you?
Posted by: serendipitydawg
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April 5, 2011 8:44 AM
Kudos to Dr Krauss for making the effort but the result is the same old same old. Wowbagger sums it up nicely as a shell game and the bottom line is just the same: hearts and minds and wallets.
Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere
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April 5, 2011 8:50 AM
I think the difference in the case of William Lane Craig is that he's a master debater, so if one is going to engage him in debate format then it pays to know his arguments and know where the strengths and weaknesses lie.Besides, in principle we want people paying attention to our arguments and considering them properly. How many times have we come across a creationist who doesn't understand evolution and is not willing to even consider that they might have missed something fundamental? I think listening is the least we can do, and when we find points of confusion or concerns, be able to engage in a dialogue to help alleviate that. Not as a point of winning rhetorically, not as a point of being able to feel more confident in our position, but to be able to understand the issues at hand.
Don't get me wrong, I get as frustrated as anyone in the shell games. I really wish I could understand where theists are coming from, and it annoys me that actual understanding might be hidden beneath a layer or two of protective rhetoric. That makes me suspect its all bullshit, but it's bullshit that's sincerely and absolutely believed in.
Posted by: Audley Z. Darkheart OM, purveyor of candy and lies
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April 5, 2011 8:52 AM
It seems as though WLC could have saved himself some time by just stating "the universe exists, therefore God!"
Great rebuttle, Dr Krauss. Sadly, those who are mired in their mythology won't ever listen to the rational voices like yours.
Posted by: sorceror171
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April 5, 2011 8:53 AM
Is there actual historical evidence of the 'martyrdom of the Apostles'? From what I'd gathered, there are traditions about the deaths of the Apostles (for some of them, more than one tradition) but not a lot of actual documentation...
Posted by: Victor
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April 5, 2011 8:55 AM
Craig tactic (though I don't think it's on purpose) is to throw off the people he debate by claiming he is a "philosopher" of an "historian". True, he's had enough training to be either. But Craig is Ken Ham in a good suit. He is a young earth creationist that only sees the world through the lens of the Bible. He ha no respect for any evidence that does not back his Biblical world view (he admits this himself). He knows how to talk to other Biblicists, and will successfully win them over with cheap tricks and balloons.
Problem is, if anyone he debated adopted the same tactics Craig uses, they would be branded an angry petty scum bag. I don't know how Craig gets away with it, but he does.
Posted by: Tyro
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April 5, 2011 8:58 AM
I would love to have come out and listen to Lawrence talk but it simply isn't worth it to also listen to Craig drone on and on.
I hope that he goes on a proper book tour and doesn't invite apologists to share the stage.
Posted by: davecortesi
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April 5, 2011 8:59 AM
I saw a link to the stream of this debate but didn't have time to watch; now I'm glad I didn't. If Craig used his usual jack-hammer style of short sentences and quick "gotcha" pseudo-syllogisms, and if you, Lawrence, spoke with the same puffy, ponderous sentence structure you display here, then you were soundly beaten no matter the quality of your thoughts.
Lawrence, you ought to have read Luke Muehlhauser's post You aren't qualified to debate William Lane Craig and taken it to heart. Nobody every "wins" a debate on the beauty and subtlety of their logic. They "win" by scoring fast emotional hits. Craig is a master at this, and you very clearly are not.
Posted by: First Approximation, L'esprit de l'escalier
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April 5, 2011 8:59 AM
Oooh, I hope this summons consulscipio236
quicker than it takes a horse to go from Galilee to Corinth.Posted by: Victor
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April 5, 2011 9:06 AM
#11,
There is exactly zero evidence for the martyrdom of the Apostles. There are traditions stated in wild non-canonical stories, that even religious people don't accept as scripture. This is another thing that the religious play fast and loose with: it's not valid when someone points out how silly the story is, but it is valid when they want to point to evidence.
Posted by: debeuk
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April 5, 2011 9:08 AM
@Kel: You can download the debate here.
Posted by: DN King
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April 5, 2011 9:14 AM
Well!
Given how strongly you and Craig disagree, it is overwhelmingly obvious that the truth is somewhere in the middle. Breaking out my handy dandy slide rule, that means...
...huh.
The Raelians are correct. Prepare for the return of our alien creators.
Posted by: iknklast
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April 5, 2011 9:15 AM
I watched Craig debate Frank Zindler one time; it was painful. Zindler has written several erudite books on the topic, but he isn't a debater. He came across as painfully stammering, looking like the stereotypical view of the college math professor who doesn't get out much. Craig was suave, polished, and glib. The audience loved him. I even had to give the debate to Craig - though the evidence clearly went to Zindler.
I do prefer to see it in book form, where you can more easily spot the holes in his logic, because he can't just move past them quickly, they're on the page for everyone to see. His bait & switch techniques are much more evident in written works.
Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere
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April 5, 2011 9:16 AM
Thanks for that debeuk, downloading now.
I'm actually listening to a Craig debate now - him debating objective morality with Shelly Kagan. This is one debate where Craig's argument is really weak and Kagan makes a really good argument.
Posted by: Katherine Lorraine, Chaton de la Mort
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April 5, 2011 9:17 AM
Very good responses, it's stunning that WLC's arguments are the same exact form as the arguments I've heard from basically every other Christian apologist who's tried to argue.
1) Martyrs wouldn't die for a lie.
2) The universe appears designed for human life.
3) There's no morality without gawd.
4) A painting had a painter, so the universe had a universe...r.
Yea, sorry WLC - your arguments suck.
Posted by: greame
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April 5, 2011 9:19 AM
I was hoping that it would be pointed out how meaningless Craig’s probability equation was to the topic at hand. Krauss was at least honest in that he said right off the bat that he wasn't there to debate if gawd exists or not, but to debate the evidence, none of which I saw in Craig’s argument. How can you debate evidence when none is presented? Oh, right, actual physical evidence isn't nearly as strongly supported as personal revelation or hearsay.
Posted by: Katherine Lorraine, Chaton de la Mort
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April 5, 2011 9:20 AM
@iknklast:
That's the problem with debating people like WLC. They are fantastic orators usually, and if they can appear more 'together' than a person whose evidence is much more solid, then they can 'win' a debate like that easily.
Posted by: frustum.myopenid.com
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April 5, 2011 9:22 AM
Dr. Krauss, I look forward to your book. I watched your lecture on the same subject (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo) and found it fascinating.
It is funny to hear that many of the same tactics that the smart Jehovah's Witnesses or Seventh Day Adventists use on me are the same ones used by the heavyweights of the proselytizing circuit -- the arguments don't get any better.
As for the dumb Jehovah's Witnesses and Seventh Day Adventists, well, there is room downward for the arguments to get arbitrarily bad.
Posted by: Lyra
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April 5, 2011 9:27 AM
There were two things that I thought immediately upon watching the video.
1) It was clear that Dr. Craig has more experience debating people. He didn't check his notes as often as Dr. Krauss did, he his speech was less broken, his points were intuitively understandable, etc etc.
2) It was clear Dr. Craig was an idiot who was purposefully distorting the facts.
The thing that I don't like about debates is that people often take #1 as proof of "winning" and completely ignore #2. Debates aren't really about evidence, sound logic, and intellectual honesty. They're about bullshitting your way through, having good stage presence, and being tricky.
I really liked hearing Dr. Krauss speak, but Dr. Craig bored and frustrated me so much that I skipped what he had to say in most segments in favor of watching Dr. Krauss (who is one of my absolute all time favorite scientists). However, I must admit that my favorite Dr. Krauss video is "A Universe from Nothing." That talk was pure learning and none of this having to deal with an idiot's stupid fallacies.
Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere
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April 5, 2011 9:29 AM
One hypothetical to consider.
Imagine William Lane Craig and Lawrence Krauss were both asked to give a one-hour presentation on the origins of the universe. Each of these presentations was to be as best an explanation for the universe as it is understood by them, that is taking all we know from physics and philosophy and turning into a coherent narrative about the origin of the universe. As a viewer, which presentation would someone walk away from with the greater understanding of the universe?
My contention is that Craig's argument is empty because all the argument is trying to do is necessitate God. You don't necessitate God to have a greater understanding of reality, you do so because of moral and existential implications. Meanwhile Krauss's argument is about trying to understand how the universe got to be as it is, where the concern is making as successful a scientific model as possible. As a result, I think people would walk away from the two presentations having learned something meaningful about the nature of nature in only one of them.
Posted by: Crudely Wrott , Drinking Solo Since Death's Back On The Wagon
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April 5, 2011 9:30 AM
In a junior-high math class we spent a few delightful and challenging days discussing the notion that "The more you know, the more you know you don't know". Put another way, each new bit of knowledge, each new insight, illuminates relationships and possibilities that were not previously known. It is my good fortune that the lesson stuck.
There are, apparently, way too many people who were either never exposed to such a notion or just never absorbed it if they were. To them everything is linear, all lines having origins at some proposed moment of intent and purpose despite ever accumulating evidence that something quite different is happening.
Posted by: Kevin
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April 5, 2011 9:31 AM
As I said before this event, Craig is a master debater (a term that can indeed be shortened). He knows his audience -- but even more important, he knows his adversary. While you were in your lab and classroom, he was reading you, studying you, probing for the weaknesses. He found them where he usually finds them when debating scientists...in their uncertainty and caution.
I won't bother with the video. But I predicted that he would focus not on the evidence, but the places where evidence in science was lacking. And I predicted the outcome as well.
I'm surprised that he didn't resort to argument from personal experience, since he has in the past invoked this as a method to deflect any and all evidence. Still, the tricks he pulled out of his bag are shiny and smooth from continuous use.
1. The empty tomb. And your "proof" the tomb was empty is...? Myths that contradict one another? Where's the evidence there was a tomb to begin with? One can put Scarlet O'Hara in Atlanta while it burned just as easily.
2. Fine-tuning. Really? In a universe that is 13.7 billion years old and 40+ billion light years across, that required the death of not one but two stars -- one in a supernova -- where humans have appeared in the last 0.00004% of that time, the entire enterprise was built with US in mind? Unbelievable arrogant self-centered narcissism.
3. Gaps. Bleh. A scientist's caution equals a theist's certainty. Where in the world would we be if all of our endeavors to advance humanity stopped at a point where we got stuck at "I don't know yet". For sure, no further in describing the orbits of planets than Newton, who did exactly that, ascribing to god the calculus he couldn't work out. One would have thought that when Laplace solved the problem and famously rejected Newton's god hypothesis that this would have put an end to gap arguments once and for all. 200 years ago! But no. Because we're ignorant of science and history.
4. The Kalaam Cosmological Argument. Egad, this one's so old it's starting to be slightly deformed from use. The Kalaam is to Craig what the bent spoon is to Uri Geller. Indeed, every time a physicist comes forth to say "no, that's not how things work in the cosmos" he changes his terms. Now, things have to be "contingently" caused. He just keeps shifting the goalposts and redefines terms so that the argument ends up being a tightly defined tautology. Without any evidence to back up any of the assertions in the syllogism, nor any evidence that his conclusion could possibly be true.
I'm sorry you subjected yourself to Craig, Dr. Krauss. But the result was entirely predictable. You don't need Bayesian logic for that.
Posted by: Larry
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April 5, 2011 9:33 AM
However sound and correct Dr. Krauss' arguments were, there simply was no he was going to overcome the kung-fu grip zombie jebus has on the minds of the audience. They don't understand evidence and logic and they don't want to understand them. Craig told them what they wanted to hear and that is all they needed.
Its like that old Far Side cartoon, What Dogs Hear.
I suggest that, next time one of these "debates" are scheduled, they make them home-and-home. Let Craig throw his pitch in front of an auditorium of educated scientists and teachers and see if the results are different.
Posted by: StarScream
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April 5, 2011 9:40 AM
I use Craig's "cosmological argument" in my thesis as a prime example of how religious reasoning relies on psychological sleights of hand.
Example: Craig sneaks in "mind" and "transcendence" as addition to the cause of the universe. That's the conjunction fallacy, but since people are biased to reason that way, his arguments convince many. I just wonder if he really believes his own stuff.
Posted by: raven
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April 5, 2011 9:49 AM
Everything I've seen from Lane Craig has been a collection of lies and fallacies, designed to convince a rabid religious fanatic with the mind of a 10 year old that god exists.
It's pure dishonesty.
If maintaining your belief in the gods existence requires lies and twisted nonlogic, then they probably don't exist.
Never noticed that Craig was anything other than a well rehearsed Liar for jesus. He is an apologist for the fundie death cults, a defender with lies rather than one who values truth and honesty.
Josh McDowell, Strobel, and Plantinga are the same way.
Posted by: https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawkATm9bqrqTLjzttiDaA983kaMpFy985pk
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April 5, 2011 9:54 AM
Sorry, Larry, but this debate was a disaster. No one should debate Craig unless they are prepared for his tactics and know how to deal with them. Craig has done many of these debates, and he always says the same thing, so it's easy to be prepared with a short reply for each of his points. For instance, when he says, "Infinity minus infinity, what does that mean?" you can reply, "Zero divided by zero, what does that mean? So zero can't exist in reality. That should be a great comfort to all of you who thought you had no money in your pocket!"
You have to be willing to answer showmanship with showmanship. If you're not, just refuse to debate.
Posted by: raven
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April 5, 2011 10:01 AM
That people die for beliefs proves absolutely nothing. Krauss points out the World Trade Center event. Almost every day in the ME, some suicide bomber blows themselves up and kills a few dozen random strangers.
By body counts, these days fundie Islam is the truest of the True Religions. Nice going Lane Craig.
That most NT scholars believe in jesus' resurrection is irrelevant. To determine facts requires evidence and data, not beliefs. We don't on what reality is.
In fact though, many NT scholars don't believe in jesus' resurrection. An unbiased reading of the NT indicates that it is likely mostly fiction, myth overlaying a small core of real events in the distant past.
Posted by: likethemagician
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April 5, 2011 10:05 AM
That probabilistic nonsense sounds like the work of Alvin Plantinga at Notre Dame, who has mastered Bayesian analysis only so far as to convince himself that he has proved the existence of God. (Again -- he also invented the Modal Ontological Argument for God, which is as sound as the original Ontological Argument.)
Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/nLzNsvBzjcVWHqXNyEN1lcQmrB7cxEBb#3b6bf
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April 5, 2011 10:07 AM
Ooh let me play!
I have a die. I throw it once, and it comes up 6!
Using Craig's Patent Rules of Probability and Evidence, we see that:
a)Since the chance of this was less than 50%, it is strong evidence that all of the faces show 6.
b)There is no need to check the other faces to support this conclusion.
c)Since we don't know why it came up with that particular face on that particular throw GODDIDIT!
What's the Templeton Committee's number again?
ShaunOTD
Posted by: MrFire
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April 5, 2011 10:26 AM
Why are people like WLC seemingly satisfied with this tepid, tawdry, 50-or-some-fucking-mumble percent probability of God's existence? Even if it was meaningful, it's always seemed such an embarrassing argument to say that such a fundamentally important being can't seem to cough up more than a slight statistical bias in its favor - at best.
Posted by: Lotharloo
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April 5, 2011 10:30 AM
I have a lot of respect for Lawrence Krauss but I think he like many scientists, has a totally wrong view of debates. A debate is a chance to talk to an audience who normally does not listen to you.
In a debate, you cannot convince a devout believer, or even a skeptical believer that belief in God is silly. That would be like trying to cure a drug addict in an hour session. It is not possible. IMHO, the goal should be to create a small crack in their wall of delusions. My own conversion from "maybe there's a god but who knows" to "belief in god is fucking stupid" took more than a year even though I knew all the arguments for the existence of god were pure bullshit. These things take time. You cannot create a crack by hammering at all the locations and trying to refute all the arguments. There is no time in a debate to go deep into everything, but there is enough time to focus on one point.
The crack in my wall was reading about neuroscience, and understanding that religious concepts of soul and freewill are nonsense. So, instead of babbling about god, give them cool examples from science. Creationists and Godbots do not stick to the topic of the debate so why should you? Craig can froth at mouth talking about Jesus but he cannot compete with the coolness of physics, astrophysics, biology, and etc. Why not talk about cosmology, the evidence for big bang, neutrinos, and all the other cool things at length instead? I am sure even in a debate there is enough time to awe the audience about something in science. Einstein himself was a bible junkie until he discovered physics, he didn't suddenly stop and think that "oh, the arguments for god do not make sense so let me stop believing". If refutations of arguments cannot work on brilliant minds, why do you expect it work on laymen who do not even have scientific training?
Posted by: llewelly
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April 5, 2011 10:30 AM
When an intellectual debates a carny, the intellectual is lucky to escape with his dignity, much less anything resembling victory, even when the intellectual has the facts on his side.
I admit I'll listen to this debate at some point, but I expect it will confirm my pre-existing opinion that Krauss should not have agreed to it.
Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist
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April 5, 2011 10:55 AM
I always thought that going into this debate one should just learn and eschew all civility. Bring an air horn and sound it at every lie so you can interrupt to correct them.
Posted by: https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawmVT1LBhwmO9ej9LNg7a5e9d-AVJ8ezfmE
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April 5, 2011 11:05 AM
If you're in a debate and you're surprised that your opponent uses debater's tricks, then you don't belong in a debate. It's like bringing a banana to a gunfight against Monty Python's Flying Circus.
Posted by: Erulóra (formerly KOPD)
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April 5, 2011 11:14 AM
That one hurts my brain. I often wish I'd gone into astrophysics instead of computer science. Then I could be pondering the absence of space, instead of trying to improve somebody's Google ranking.Posted by: englemanknowledgebase
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April 5, 2011 11:18 AM
With an audience that size, I think at least one of the members will be having doubts about his/her faith. Regardless of who "won" the debate, if at least one mind was reached, I think Dr. Krauss did a worthwhile thing by debating that moron.
Melissa
Posted by: CJO
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April 5, 2011 11:41 AM
"Most New Testament scholars," if we're talking about nominally secular critical scholars of the text (still mostly Christian, but they try), do not, in fact, "believe in the resurrection" in the sense of a historical event in which the body of Jesus disappeared followed by physical appearances to his followers. They (being mostly Christian) believe in an "Easter experience" or some such bafflegab, as a result of which Jesus's followers came to understand that he had truly been the Messiah after all and was now "at the right hand of the father" or some other such bafflegab. Not that it matters either way; this is all essentially confessional and not determined by any evidence, but he's pulling a bait and switch even with his own religious tradition and the critical interpretation of it, which in theory should be the only subject in the debate where he had enough on Krauss to make a straightforward argument.
Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/3keQ6IJrhNWCqIgSXDyP_22.z43NZPnss4nvsIfDaTmoOI9i#32a72
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April 5, 2011 11:41 AM
After seeing that debate I have to agree with Mr. Krauss, you can't argue with a sick mind. I am a laymen bricklayer and I understood most (not all) of what Lawrence was saying in this debate. But it was clear that Mr. Craig was the one in close minded mode. It never ceases to amaze me how when there is a religious debate it is always the religious who claim that science is close minded. When in fact the opposite is true.
I am excited about Lawrences book. If it is half as challenging as one of Victor Stengers books it will be a great read.
Posted by: tsig0
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April 5, 2011 11:52 AM
Debating these guys is like an amateur taking on a professional golfer or standing in against a major league pitcher. Craig makes his living doing this.
Posted by: Lotharloo
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April 5, 2011 11:58 AM
@tsig0
I disagree. Have you seen Lawrence Krauss give a lecture? He is extremely funny, engaging, and charismatic. I think his biggest mistake is that he leaves his comfort zone to rebut the arguments instead of sticking to what he does best. That is why I believe most scientists lose; they try to rebut. They think a debate is a scientific symposium. It is not. This is why Christopher Hitchens always wins because he never leaves his comfort zone even if it means talking about a totally different topic or ignoring the idiotic ramblings of his opponent.
Posted by: Markita Lynda: Healthcare is a damn right
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April 5, 2011 12:02 PM
PZ, you're right that there's an emotional payoff for some proselytizing. If a person isn't sure they're right, but they can convert someone to their way of thinking, that reassures them. Eric Berne pointed out that, where Saving Souls is a Game, if everyone in a small community is converted, some will "backslide" and the group has the drama & satisfaction of herding them back into the sheepfold.
Of course, Right Thinking doesn't have to be religious.
A fold is where sheep spend the night in safety, so everyone who leaves the fold is a Sheep on the Run!11! .
Posted by: gearloose
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April 5, 2011 12:06 PM
Never argue with a creationist; you both get filthy and the pig enjoys it.
Posted by: sevandyk
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April 5, 2011 12:10 PM
Reading this makes me a little sad - it is so apparent that scientists have the monopoly on intelligence, reason, evidence and correctness and it is unfair when the creationist movement tries to position itself as playing in the same scientific league, so to speak, when they can't even find the ball.
Regarding argument #1, my evangelical Christian high school loved this argument, though few of the 15 year olds in my Bible class were convinced. Its stupidity astounds, and, if they had anything better to support their beliefs, I'm sure my former teachers would agree and drop it.
Posted by: sevandyk
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April 5, 2011 12:17 PM
Also, I heard Krauss speak once, and he is inspiring. To be honest, before I would even call myself an atheist, I stumbled across a youtube video of him talking on the universe. He is an amazing speaker, and damn convincing too. Anyone who hasn't heard him speak, should.
Posted by: MoonDog
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April 5, 2011 12:18 PM
I expected more from someone of Dr. Krauss' caliber. I liked hearing both Krauss and Craig in the debate; however, Krauss' ad hominem attacks, unsubstatiated assertions, and doing the Heisman on the reason and logic presented is unbecoming of a scientist. His words in the blog sound like sour grapes instead of the deeper analysis of the content that I expected. As Dr. Craig often says, arguments are not arrogant, people are--either Dr. Craig's primises are true or false, and his logic sound or not. The attitude and feelings have nothing to do with the information everyone was privey to listening to. Of course it is possible that there was misunderstooding; however, from one that listened as fairly and open-minded as one can, and read the blog--Dr Krauss appears to have greatly misunderstood some things. I would think professional writing and interaction would be much more preferred, and more condusive to the learning process. From the content of this blog, Dr. Krauss seems more like a poor-sport, taking emotional swipes at the entire Church and Dr. Craig's character, rather than a knowledgeable professional.
Posted by: sirdarkstar
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April 5, 2011 12:19 PM
I would MUCH rather see actual scientists doing point-by-point panel discussions about REAL scientific questions.
Unfortunately, the best panels seem to be kept secret from conferences and aren't generally made available for public viewing.
How can we fix that?
Posted by: CJO
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April 5, 2011 12:21 PM
Weak. Vague. What things?
Posted by: https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawkWFh2TqyynpQaV-ZDSDvWNoDKzlUThYIY
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April 5, 2011 12:28 PM
Prof. Krauss
I’m glad that you debated WLC and I think while it could have been a bit clearer it demonstrated the difference in thinking between scientist and theologians. And I also think it was a good combination to have a theoretical physicist against an apologist because “modern” apologetics try to use scientific findings in theoretical physics and cosmology to support their claims.
Some thoughts:
1) Your answer to the fine tuning could have better structured to make a greater impression.
2) Because of the arguing about the different kinds of “nothingness” the central point that even space-time can spontaneously emerge was a bit lost. It was also confusing that at that point you showed simulation of the quantum fluctuations in space-time.
3) WLC syllogisms are not themselves god-of-the-gap arguments, but he hides the god-of-the-gaps in the premises. And here it would have been nice to point more precisely where he did so.
Example: At the beginning WLC was arguing that the explanation of the universe is either abstract or a personal being. He discounted the notion of an abstract thing by saying that the number “7” for example has no causal relationship. I think here would have been a good place to point out that the claim of a personal being would require additional evidence while the notion of an abstract thing is exactly what scientists are working on.
I wonder whether the multiverse could be that “explanation of the universe” and that “first cause” that WLC was talking about. As I understand it the multiverse is or could at least be immaterial, nonphysical, nonspatial, eternal or at least timeless, not contingent but necessary. So it fulfills all the criteria.
P.S.: Thanks for posting here and I hope you read the comments.
Posted by: Lotharloo
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April 5, 2011 12:28 PM
Dr Krauss appears to have greatly misunderstood some things.
Yeah, I mirror CJO. Do pretty please tell us.
Posted by: Rey Fox, Bird Caller Guy
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April 5, 2011 12:28 PM
Most people don't know anything about statistics or probability.
Posted by: Brownian, Most Vicious & Petty of Pharyngulites
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April 5, 2011 12:32 PM
We're waiting, MoonDog.
Posted by: heyjudi
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April 5, 2011 12:33 PM
This post inspired me to write about the Cart-Before-Horse Syndrome in Christianity on my own blog. I made sure to include a little Monty Python for levity.
http://beinglumina.blogspot.com/2011/04/god-of-gaps.html
Posted by: DLC
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April 5, 2011 12:34 PM
What comes of 'debating' creationists is a headache from all the smoke they blow and sore eyes from the glare from all those mirrors they employ.
Craig has nothing new to offer, and is not really debating Krauss, he is merely playing to the crowd.
Regardless of the outcome, Krauss will spin it as a victory. I have yet to see a creationist cross to the other side of the podium and shake hands with his opponent and utter the words "I was wrong".
Posted by: nigelTheBold, Minister of Spankings
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April 5, 2011 12:40 PM
MoonDog:
They are false, and his logic is not sound.
Prof. Krauss pretty much summed up why Craig's arguments are false, and his logic unsound. They are based entirely on presuppositions as weak as a homeopathic infusion of water. If you are unable to grasp that "people were willing to die for their beliefs" is not a good argument for the truth of those beliefs, your mind might be open, but it's also empty.
Posted by: Glen Davidson
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April 5, 2011 12:40 PM
What appearance of design?
I realize that Darwin did accept the claim that life "appears designed," as do some biologists like Dawkins, but the ancients largely didn't see it that way. Life appears to be reproduced, and to have some sort of "vitalistic" component lacking in actually designed stuff. Indeed, many of the proponents of "looks designed" cling to notions of vitalism and of dualism, which suggests that even they don't really see any close correspondence between designed objects and life.
I just don't know why anyone grants to the IDiots the "life appears designed" nonsense as if it were meaningful. Life looks evolved, and that's just about it. True, there is some overlap between evolved things and designed things (how could it be otherwise, since both produce useful functions?), but it isn't really all that great.
Life is amazing in its abilities, of course, and yet it is highly constrained in its available materials, and even in the types of organic chemistry that it can effect. And all metazoa are quite obviously constrained by past history in a manner that even pathetic human designers are not.
Thus, only in the most superficial sense could anyone ever say that life "looks designed." Meaning that I don't deny that by poor analogy one could find oneself believing that life "looks designed," however it has always been noted to diverge from known design in many crucial ways, so that "objectively" one should always note that life looks at least as much undesigned (or at least designed in an unknown manner and for unknown purposes--same thing as appearing undesigned, in fact) as designed whenever "life looks designed" is claimed.
Glen Davidson
Posted by: Grahame
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April 5, 2011 1:01 PM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71ZhJL56bdQ
What do you know, I've been banned. What a surprise.
Posted by: Insightful Ape
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April 5, 2011 1:01 PM
I don't know if Dr Krauss is around, but I have a question.
In the most recent issue of the Scientific American, Paul Steinhardt argues that the Inflationary Theory may be fatally flawed; that the understanding of its framework has shifted over time due to our understanding of quantum mechanics. According to him, in the inflationary phase, certain area are going to be out of sync due to quantum fluctuations, and might go on inflating forever, in which case they would become the dominant regions.
I was wondering if Dr Krauss would care to discuss this.
Posted by: Dhorvath, OM
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April 5, 2011 1:06 PM
Insightful Ape,
I am not going to pretend to speak for the OP, but that seems to me a strength of inflationary theory. If the inflation field expands space faster than localized regions collapse out of inflation there is a mechanism in place that is constantly generating universes. Our universe ceases to be special, one of many much like our planet or star.
Posted by: mcb
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April 5, 2011 1:09 PM
@ Victor
"But Craig is Ken Ham in a good suit."
Oh snap!
Well done!
Posted by: bayesian
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April 5, 2011 1:13 PM
I was happy lurking this forum until now, but because of Craig's misuse of Bayesian reasoning, I felt I had to chime in (notice the username). In advance, sorry for the long message.
First off, probabilistic evidence is not information that brings the probability of a hypothesis up above 50%. Bayes formula combines prior probability with evidence probability. Different people may have different prior knowledge and hangups, so that definition would not work at all. Rather, the classic definition is that evidence is information that is more to be expected (more probable, better predicted) given one hypothesis than another. Good predictions makes a hypothesis more probable (using Bayes formula), but does not necessarily raise it to 50% or more. Extraordinary claims requires extraordinary evidence.
Secondly, since the increase in probability depends on prediction power, I want to know this: Since when did theologians start making more accurate predictions about the universe than scientists?
Posted by: Aratina Cage
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April 5, 2011 1:21 PM
I was able to watch the debate while it streamed live and enjoyed it. I was a bit worried in the beginning because it took Krauss a little bit of time to get warmed up, but once he became more comfortable (and ripped open his shirt!), he was able to make Craig become defensive and rattled Craig enough to make him rush to the wrong topic of God's existence (a feat that Craig often pulls on his opponents). I'm not sure how anyone can say that Craig won this debate except on form alone, and if good form is all it takes to win a debate then they aren't worth having.
Posted by: azumahazuki
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April 5, 2011 1:27 PM
The key thing about WLC (and all of his ilk, including people who listen to him) is this:
He is the Fox News of religious/philosophy debates. He's sharp, staccato, and has mastered the well-aimed snark sabot. He is there to perform. He is not interested in truth; he is interested in pushing a viewpoint, and soaking in the audience's adulation.
Next, if you examine this debate in particular, it's not "Does Yahweh as WLC Believes in Him Exist?" but "Is there any evidence for a God?" This is a very, very important distinction, and I will (again) lay bare the fundamental dishonesty of Craig and all those of his kidney:
He challenges you with metaphysical imponderables that could, in theory, be explained by a God in the generic. Then he shoves his genocidal Canaanite throwback into the Philosopher's-God-shaped hole in your epistemology. Do you see why this is a problem? It's because he's challenging you to prove a universal negative.
He also wins because he seizes the initiative, and slaves the flow of the debate to his own rhythm. His scattergun approach has been noted before; his tactic is to throw out a bunch of talking points that sounds plausible and scientific, and force the opponent to run around putting out a zillion little theological fires.
If you're going to take him on, there are three things you must do:
1) Don't let him pull the switcheroo noted above. Call him out on it, pre-emptively if possible.
2) Don't let him lead you around on a leash and drag you through his little theological brushfires. Maintain initiative.
3) Have stock answers for his stock bullshit arguments. Kalaam is one of the worst pieces of question-begging I have ever had the displeasure of running across, for example.
4) Turn the tables. Make him look foolish. See if you can get him to become an apologist for the atrocities of Numbers, Joshua, Judges, Kings, and Samuel. Bonus points if you can get him to give his take on Ezekiel 4:12.
Basically, go in there knowing he's a piece of shit, and play dirty, but don't lie.
Posted by: Owlmirror
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April 5, 2011 1:31 PM
bayesian @#66 -- Have you read the McGrews' "Bayesian" analysis of the resurrection? I am not sure to what extent (if any) it corresponds to WLC's, but I would be interested in seeing a critique.
I think they deliberately ignore some low-probability but nevertheless naturalistic scenarios, in order to focus on the probability of meaningless points (testimony of "the women"; testimony of the disciples; Pauls conversion). But I would be interested in seeing a statistician's comments.
http://commonsenseatheism.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Mcgrew-McGrew-The-Argument-from-Miracles.pdf
Alas, it's 70-odd pages long.
Posted by: mas528
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April 5, 2011 1:37 PM
Likely going to get slammed for this but:
@aratina cage #67
If you are over high school age, and you engage in a professional debate, you have already failed miserably.
This includes any college debate teams.
Facts do not change when someone wins a child's game.
I am embarrassed that Krauss participated in this playground, I really thought he was above that.
As well, for not taking WLC down when he showed he understood neither baysian probability nor logic. Everything that proceeded from this would only be correct by accident.
I do understand the there are "grand debates" like history and science, but these are *not* structured like children's games.
Posted by: Tumsup
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April 5, 2011 1:38 PM
Whenever I hear someone like Craig speak I get a kind spooky cognitive dissonance and my tinnitus starts the theme from Dr. Who.
Templeton, Templeton, Templeton, WOOooowhoOOoOOO....
Anyway, his standards of evidence are first rate. I now believe that Sherlock Holmes was a real person. After all, when Dr. Watson went to 22 Baker St., he found Holmes there!!! How would this be possible if Holmes wasn't real?
Slam dunk logic. Anyone want to debate me?
Posted by: cag
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April 5, 2011 1:57 PM
It is important to remember that WLC is a theologian and thus has spent a large part of his life learning how to convince the gullible to accept what he utters as "Truth". As well, the "flock" is accustomed to having their "thoughts" presented to them. Platitudes, to the flock, are vastly more palatable than evidence.
Posted by: bayesian
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April 5, 2011 2:08 PM
Owlmirror @69: Thanks for the tip. It was a bit long winded, so I must get back to it another time. If it's anything like Craig's "evidence", it's going to be a tough sell, though. A short skim reveals that they are trying to delve into predictions about what God would do. That's a fairly subjective game I would think, and one prone to data-prior feedback (one of the prime "sins" in Bayesian statistics). I'll reserve judgment for now, though. Still, it bugs me that the apologists are happily making predictions about God, saying one should expect God to have this and that quality and do this and that, when it suits their purposes. But when an atheist says "this supposed behavior of God doesn't make sense", then God is suddenly inscrutable.
Posted by: 5ecular4umanist
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April 5, 2011 2:34 PM
You can hear Lawrence Krauss discuss the origin of the universe with AC Grayling on a BBC World Service radio "Discovery" programme from December 2009 is available online.
Posted by: Insightful Ape
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April 5, 2011 2:37 PM
Dhorvath: you are quite right. Only one problem: with our observable universe being just one inflating field among many (the current understanding), the hypothesis makes no predictions. In other words it becomes unfalsifiable.
Posted by: llewelly
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April 5, 2011 2:40 PM
likethemagician | April 5, 2011 10:05 AM:
Step 1: The Ontological Argument for God.
Step 2: The Modal Ontological Argument for God.
Step 3: The Monad Ontological Argument for God.
Step 4: The Montauk Ontological Argument for God.
Step 5: ...
Step 6: Profit!!!
Posted by: llewelly
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April 5, 2011 2:46 PM
Tumsup | April 5, 2011 1:38 PM:
Er. Wait. What was Holmes, who lived at 221B Baker St. , doing at 22 Baker St. ?
Was he ... buying cocaine, mayhap?
Posted by: Fred The Hun
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April 5, 2011 4:59 PM
Antiochus Epiphanes @4,
No I disagree. Every dog that I have ever come across would at least give it's all, trying to learn something even if they were ultimately incapable of doing so... WLC and his ilk absolutely refuse to even try and then go on to pretend that they hold all the cards and have no need to learn anything at all.
Posted by: Diane G.
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April 5, 2011 5:07 PM
This approach set off red flags for me, as it reminds me of nothing so much as the tired theological claim that no one else understands the nuances of theology well enough to dispute them. Science may have a type of nuance but it's more characterized by facts, theories, experimentation, evidence--things that are nearly the antonym of nuance. Complexity is not the same thing a nuance.
FWIW, I concur with everyone who's posted that debates are worthless in that they rely on tricks of persuasion rather than having the best arguments.
Posted by: KG
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April 5, 2011 5:12 PM
Er. Wait. What was Holmes, who lived at 221B Baker St. , doing at 22 Baker St. ? - llewelly
If Tumsup has definite information that "221" was actually "21", that's exciting news! As is well known*, in Holmes' and Watson's day, the house numbers in Baker St. ended at 85, so there has been much speculation as to what the real number was. (Watson, of course, did not want Mrs. Hudson bothered by continual callers after Holmes and he had both left Baker St., so he could not give the correct number, but it would have been wrong to give one that belonged to someone else.)
*My source is W.S. Baring-Gould's biography of Holmes.
Posted by: Richard C
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April 5, 2011 5:18 PM
sorceror171 wrote:
The only "evidence" is a report from the Roman senator Tacitus about an event he witnessed in childhood: after the Great Fire of Rome in 70 AD burned down much of the city, several Christians "pled guilty" to starting the fire and were brutally and publicly executed by Nero. The arsons probably did it in retaliation for Rome destroying Jerusalem in 69 AD (along with its religious institutions), which Rome had done in retaliation for Jerusalem's attempted war of independence from Rome. Violent tit for tat.
(Another historian later reiterated it with the one line "Punishment was inflicted on the Christians, a class of men given to a new and mischievous superstition".)
Because this is the only documented evidence of "persecution" of Christians in the first century, this is the event that fans of the martyrdom stories point to (along with unfounded claims that Nero himself started the fire just so he could scapegoat those Christians). I've read several people claim this is probably where Peter was martyred without any evidence to back it up.
It's also possible that they confused "Christians" with the followers of "Chrestus", a Jewish troublemaker in Rome a decade earlier (written about by another Roman historian). Chrestus's followers might have been the arsons who started the Great Fire, as they had the motivation, the history causing problems in Rome, and the knowledge of the city.
But in either case, there is zero evidence for how the Apostles themselves died because there's no evidence of the Apostles themselves outside of the Bible. There's only the inference that, if Peter happened to be living in Rome at the time, he might have been included in the executions.
Posted by: CJO
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April 5, 2011 5:38 PM
The arsons probably did it in retaliation for Rome destroying Jerusalem in 69 AD (along with its religious institutions), which Rome had done in retaliation for Jerusalem's attempted war of independence from Rome. Violent tit for tat.
Of course, there's no actual evidence that the fire was deliberately set, and fires of greater or lesser severity were commonplace in Rome. Also, that the temple was burned "in retaliation" for the Jews' first revolt isn't true according to Josephus, our only source for the events in Jerusalem during the war. According to him, Vespasian and Titus after him were both adament that the temple should not be harmed if possible, and he portrays it as an accident attendent on the final assault on the upper city after more than a year of siege. Now, everything of this nature in Josephus is suspect since his patron was Vespasian himself and he had a clear interest in not making him or his son look bad, but I'm inclined to believe it. The temple as rebuilt by Herod was considered a wonder of the world at the time and burning down a building housing a potentially vast treasury certainly wasn't in the troops' interests. (And no amount of violence toward the notoriously unruly Judaeans would have made the Flavians look all that bad to their fellow Romans anyway. On the other hand, one could not expect Jews living at Rome to know the facts of what went on at Jerusalem, so they could well have perceived the destruction as an act of vengeance regardless.)
Fully agreed that there is no reliable evidence that Peter was ever at Rome.
Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM
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April 5, 2011 5:57 PM
Horst Wessel was a martyr for Nazism. There's even a song about him.
Posted by: Dhorvath, OM
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April 5, 2011 5:58 PM
Insightful Ape,
If another region drops out of inflation in reasonable proximity to ours there could actually be a signature left on the light of last scattering. This is a testable situation that could lend credence to the idea that eternal inflation is true. It is not entirely untestable.
Posted by: gould1865
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April 5, 2011 6:12 PM
Dear Lawrence Krauss,
You should know from Al Gore and Richard Nixon and Dan Quayle that prestige does not win debates. In addition, odds are that hardly a person in the audience you describe had read anything by you, so your prestige approached zero.
You are wrong to be surprised, which you admit. Now if it's wrong for your opponent to try to rehash the debate to a friendly audience, it's wrong for you too. You seem to say you lost. Then you did. But I don't think it's wrong for either of you to seek confirmation. Only next time, try to win the damn thing.
I refer you to Charles Francis Potter's The Preacher and I, the Paris news reports of Napoleon's lost battles, and all the kings and dukes in Shakespeare, all. All but Potter said they won. You should have known. Potter, who actually did win, could actually help you, in several ways, some of which I can see here.
You are beyond most help from others you know, as they do not want to be seen as condescending. And here you won't be able to tell the sycophants from sincere persons in agreement. And there's a tone patrol here, which may come to your aid--they think. If you think thru, you may decide otherwise.
Posted by: Richard C
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April 5, 2011 6:19 PM
CJO:
Great points about the Temple's destruction being likely accidental (and about Josephus's likely bias). I tried to be careful to say the destruction of Jerusalem rather than specifically its Temple. In any case, when catapults are lobbing rocks indiscriminately over walls and troops are burning down buildings to rout out rebels hiding inside, many innocent structures get destroyed. The destruction of something as holy as the Second Temple (even if accidental) could easily incite Jewish mobs in Rome to burn the city down.
The only evidence I can think of is Tacitus's statement that people did plead guilty to starting the fire:
But we're still down to one senator's memory of events he witnessed in his childhood.
Posted by: CJO
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April 5, 2011 6:32 PM
the fact that the followers of Jesus were willing to die for their beliefs provides evidence of God
This is really stupid for all kinds of reasons, but that it is such a popular and enduring line of apologetic is revealing. It's an ignorant and arrogant retrojection of the importance and popularity of their cult into antiquity, coupled with a complete failure to accept that religions are pretty much all the same. I think they have this impression that if somebody had had the sheer audacity to invent their favorite fairy tale out of whole cloth that this would have been such a momentous falsehood as to have rocked the foundations of the ancient world, and so, obviously, anybody who died for their belief in it would have been dying for something they knew for a fact was untrue.
It's a classic case of Christians trying to have it both ways: the martyrdom traditions give them this frisson of belonging to a righteous and despised minority, but they can't accept the corollary: nobody else in antiquity really gave a shit about them or their bizarre delusions.
Posted by: Evader
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April 5, 2011 6:40 PM
We luvz u Lawrence! xo
Professor Krauss is one of my favourite Scientists. His 'Universe From Nothing' speech really did change my perception of the realm we live in.
Regarding debates, it is clear that we will never reach them... The gulf that separates the oceans of reason and religion, is deep and dark and cold. And I think we should spend more time at the beach, making sandcastles.
Alright stupid analogy.
Thanks for trying Larry!
Posted by: CJO
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April 5, 2011 6:51 PM
Richard,
Disasters of whatever sort would have been understood as the wrath of the gods, and so a perceived "atheist" minority would have been a convenient scapegoat whether the fire was deliberately set or not. Confessions under torture (from slaves and non-citizens) were perfectly acceptable under Roman law (testimony from slaves was only valid under torture), and so I set little store by the account either way.
Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/shcTtM80mtGtMzHdMY0CRqckiGTuQ1c-#7d4e2
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April 5, 2011 7:36 PM
William Lane Craig's probability inequality is simply wrong. It is false that for any events H, E, and B, P(H|E&B) > P(H|B). For example, the inequality fails if H and E are disjoint or barely overlapping events. Put another way, if E represented evidence which, when showed, always implied the hypothesis is false, the probability P(H|E&B) of the hypothesis being true given the evidence is zero.
The statement is sort of a deepity. It has one obviously true yet trivial meaning: evidence for a hypothesis implies the hypothesis is more likely (just the definition of evidence for a hypothesis). And it has meaning as a mathematical statement that is flat out not true in general.
Never mind having a well defined probability measure and sensitivity on one's priors. This is just straight up mathematical illiteracy. William Lane Craig is wrong!
Posted by: https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawnVNnhuRbnzabA4lU5dKOhwOawtcNRPe-8
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April 5, 2011 7:55 PM
Your Nero timeline is wrong. The Great Fire was in 64 AD. He wasn't even alive in 70; he'd been dead for 2 years, and there were three emperors between 68 and 69, when the legions declared Vespasian emperor.
Posted by: ian.spedding
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April 5, 2011 8:02 PM
There was absolutely nothing wrong with what Professor Krauss had to say. The only mistake was assuming that these debates are something like reasoned discussions between academics whose only interest is in exploring the topics.
Public debates like this need to be understood as a spectator sport. They are a kind of duel that is won, not necessarily by the competitor who has the best case, but by the person who is perceived to have scored the most points against their opponent. It also helps to be entertaining.
Craig is a confident speaker who gives a polished and well-practiced performance. He appeals to general audiences because what he says sounds intelligent without being condescending, is accessible to anyone with average intelligence and, of course, he has the great advantage of advocating the religious beliefs that most of them hold.
His strategy is the well-tried one of choosing the grounds for the battle. By firing a barrage of criticisms of science, he forces his opponent on to the defensive as most will feel compelled to respond to the attacks point-by-point. He also trades on the fact that most opponents are reluctant to counter-attack against his religious positions.
He can be answered effectively but you have to stop thinking like a scientist to do it. From his point of view they are easy meat.
Posted by: scott.fanetti
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April 5, 2011 8:29 PM
Why the hell does a pantywaist - no offense - like Krauss try to "debate" guys like this? He should know better. He plays right into their hands - as though he were as ignorant of them as they are of him.
WTF Larry?!
I think you are cool and all - but WTF?!
Posted by: digital.decadence
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April 5, 2011 8:36 PM
I think this article has lost you a lot of credibility. I was quite appalled at it's tone. The arguments presented from both sides stand and fall on their own grounds, and yet you come here and post this childish little tantrum, and undermine the sincerity and openness with which the debate was conducted.
To the people who are trying to discredit WLC as not a scientist, 'just' a debater - really? He is a PHD philosopher, specialising in the study of theology and time. He spent over 13 years studying the nature of time alone. He has authored and edited over 30 books and has participated in open discussion and debate of his ideas regularly and without hesitation. He authored the Kalam Cosmological Argument and the defence of the KCA. I don't know if Dr Krauss put in effort and tried to prepare for the debate, but it didn't seem so. WLC uses the same arguments each time, with small variations in focus depending on the debate. 4 of WLC's arguments are religiously neutral and logically deductive arguments, which are falsifiable, all one needed to do to refute them was prove one of the premises false. The last would have been trickier if knowledge of the Biblical texts and ancient traditions is not a strength of the opponent debater, but you do not need to address all the points. WLC is also not a Creationist in the YEC sense, all his beliefs are in line with mainstream science. So let's stop this chirade please. The only people you are trying to convince are yourselves.
Dr Krauss, there is no shame in not doing as well as you had hoped, but there is shame in coming to a private corner of the internet, and throwing a childish rant accusing your opponent of being intellectually dishonest and defaming his character. The very idea of a debate is a public exchange of ideas, where BOTH people can comment and discuss them. Not attacking someone from the dark corner of the internet. You didn't say any of this there at the debate in front of the audience or to WLC's face in person, instead you stood up at the end of the debate, shook WLC's hand and departed in good standing.
I have nothing more to say, I'm saddened and dismayed at this behaviour, I hope in future WLC has the chance to debate more honest and credible opponents.
Posted by: Richard C
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April 5, 2011 8:39 PM
CJO:
Of course your points could be right, but what evidence do you have for them? Tacitus's account doesn't mention coercion under torture or anyone blaming the fire on the wrath of the Gods. (And if they had blamed it on the gods, it would be nonsensical to accuse a group of arson!)
Also, "an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty," if translated accurately, implies they claimed responsibility first *then* were arrested. Then their interrogation led to the further arrests of people who didn't set fire to the city but harbored a similar "hatred towards mankind".
Could Tacitus have gotten it wrong? Of course. But then we have nothing to base our theories on other than speculation as to which parts Tacitus got wrong.
By the way, are you claiming that the group of "Chrestians" killed by Nero were really atheists?
Posted by: Dhorvath, OM
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April 5, 2011 8:41 PM
Nothing you just said indicates that Dr Craig is a scientist. Private corner? This site sees a lot of traffic, if private is a concern this is not the place to hide.Posted by: MikeTheInfidel
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April 5, 2011 8:44 PM
I took a few swipes at WLC myself in a recent post on my blog - interestingly enough, on the argument Lawrence covered least, the idea of 'contingent' vs 'necessary'. I called it "Not necessarily necessary."
Posted by: Richard C
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April 5, 2011 8:46 PM
#91:
Oops! My timeline was off by 6 years. Shows me to write from memory without double-checking dates. Thanks for correcting me.
In any case, the rest of my answer to the original poster about "evidence" should still be accurate: Tacitus's account of Christians (or Chrestians) being killed by Nero in retaliation for allegedly starting the Great Fire is the only evidence for possible martyrdom.
Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere
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April 5, 2011 8:51 PM
digital.decadence, did you see the note Craig left after the debate?
Also, how is Craig's view in line with mainstream science? He rejects evolution, and claims to do so for scientific reasons.
Posted by: consciousness razor
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April 5, 2011 9:00 PM
digital.decadence:
This blog is a less private (and "dark"?) corner of the intertubes than the location of Craig's Facebook comments. I haven't seen what they are, since that would require me to have a Facebook profile and login just to view whatever they may be.
Posted by: Wowbagger, Man-Hating Man of Pharyngula
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April 5, 2011 9:03 PM
The likes of Craig do not seek to change the minds of unbelievers; their entire shtick is about giving the faithful something they can point to to make themselves believe they've got good, rational argument for the woo they hold for purely emotional reasons.
He's the intellectual equivalent of someone wandering the streets wearing a sandwich board with 'Will alleviate cognitive dissonance for food' written on it.
Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist
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April 5, 2011 9:04 PM
None of those shames provide testiment to his ability as a scientist. In fact they point to quackery.
Fun fact when scientists say they're published they don't mean by Scholastic.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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April 5, 2011 9:06 PM
digital.decadence, philosopher (sophist mental masturbater) is not a scientist. Note the utter and total lack of scientific evidence WLC presented. Nothing but arguments from presupposition. Which are always false, BTW. So your hero is tarnished, with holes in his sagging sword and shield, and totally incapable of a reasoned and evidenced argument for your imaginary deity. And you fall into the same delusion he does. Your deity exists only between your ears. Nowhere else, and it isn't needed to explain anything other than both your delusional states...
Posted by: consciousness razor
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April 5, 2011 9:06 PM
Personally I'd love it if Craig came here and started spouting his nonsense, although he wouldn't be much of an improvement over the standard trolls who pass through these dark tunnels on their way back to the internet oblivion from which they came.
Posted by: Eric
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April 5, 2011 9:34 PM
Krauss's intentionally insulting comments (motivated, no doubt, by the overwhelming judgment that he did rather poorly in the debate) are very disappointing, but not as disappointing as his apparent lack of concern with the actual content and nature of Craig's arguments. I'm not here to defend Craig's arguments; I'm here to show that Krauss hasn't bothered to try to understand them. So if you want to debate the soundness of Craig's arguments, look elsewhere.
For example, Krauss says that "Craig argued that most New Testament scholars believe in the resurrection." Now I fail to see how anyone who has either listened to or read a word that Craig has said about the resurrection could possibly say this. Craig's argument for the resurrection follows from certain historical data that he claims are best explained by positing the resurrection. Krauss then misconstrues Craig's use of the claim that Jesus' followers were willing to die for their belief. Craig doesn't argue that this proves the resurrection or the existence of god; rather, he argues that this shows that Jesus' followers sincerely believed what they were claiming (which thus supports a key premise in his argument for the resurrection concerning Jesus' followers beliefs). Further, Krauss confuses this premise with the conclusion! It's not the premise that provides evidence for god, but the conclusion the premise supports -- viz. Jesus was resurrected from the dead -- that provides evidence for the existence of god. Finally, Krauss simplistically parrots Hume's argument against miracles in blithe unawareness of the fact that it has been subjected to very serious -- some would say damning -- criticism. Note, I'm not here defending Craig's argument for the resurrection, so I won't be drawn into a debate about its merits. Rather, I'm pointing out the obvious fact that Krauss's attempted refutation of it is simply embarrassing, since he hasn't even attempted to understand what the argument is.
When dealing with the moral argument, Krauss trots out the Euthyphro dilemma (misattributing it to Pinker!), again as if it has never been addressed. In fact, it has been known to be a false dilemma since at least Aquinas, and Craig's solution accords with Aquinas's. Krauss then confuses metaphysics with epistemology by claiming that a diversity of moral judgment precludes a divine source for morality. Again, this embarrassing.
Krauss's discussion of the contingency argument is baffling: "What applies to earthquakes and snowflakes applies to the Universe." Huh? The notion that the premise, "many contingent phenomena occur by natural causes" supports the conclusion, "the set of all contingent phenomena occurs by a natural cause" is a patent non sequitur. And the claim that Craig's Leibnizian argument from contingency is an instance of the 'god-of-the-gaps' argument provides further support for the conclusion that Krauss simply does not understand the argument.
(Krauss of course does better with the Kalam and fine-tuning arguments, but even here he makes some fundamental mistakes due to ignorance, e.g. his physical conception of causality, his inability to grasp the distinction between a clearly formulated argument in analytic philosophy and a "high school syllogism," his cluelessness about just what a god-of-the-gaps argument looks like, his self defeating repudiation of the intuitions he and every other scientist relies upon each day, etc.)
Again, I'm not here to defend Craig's arguments. I'm here to respond to Krauss's arrogant and either uninformed or intellectually dishonest response.
Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/shcTtM80mtGtMzHdMY0CRqckiGTuQ1c-#7d4e2
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April 5, 2011 9:37 PM
digital.decadence, I don't think Krauss came here to have a childish tantrum about some debate he lost. Krauss is a dedicated science educator. He wrote the blog to point out the serious intellectual mistakes that William Lane Craig made during the debate and thereby educate people about the problems with such approaches to thinking. The mistakes Craig made provide an opportunity to educate people about reason and science. Moreover, Craig is spreading ignorance and it is highly appropriate for Krauss to blog in order to combat it. I praise Krauss' efforts.
As for the tone, to be blunt William Lane Craig is promoting and spreading ignorance. He is spreading horrible misinformation about mathematics, science, reason, and even philosophy. What tone do you honestly expect in response to this?
Posted by: Owlmirror
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April 5, 2011 9:47 PM
Ah. He studies an invisible person with magical superpowers.
And time, too. Of course, he does no experiments. He just... thinks about it a lot, right?
Real sciencey...
Ah. His deep study of time ... lead to him discovering how to travel in time?
LOL
You mean, religiously presuppositional.
An argument by fiat is not "deductive".
Obviously not, since he rejects the principle of parsimony.
Too bad.
Since WLC is neither honest nor credible, that should not be hard.
Posted by: consciousness razor
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April 5, 2011 9:52 PM
Aaaahhhh, that's much better.
HA! I guess it doesn't matter that Craig's and Aquinas' "solutions" are complete garbage. But no, you're not here to debate the merits of them, only to assert that the dilemma has been adequately solved as a false one.
How is it not? The universe's supposed "contingency" is based on an absence of knowledge, and in said absence is inserted Yahweh/Spirit/Jesus, Allah, the Demiurge, Brahman, Zeus, Quetzalcoatl, etc. ad nauseum.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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April 5, 2011 9:54 PM
This from you, presuppositionalist sophist philosopher? Better known as a well meaning fool, who's opinion is about 180 degrees from reality. So Krause actually did quite well then...Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist
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April 5, 2011 9:55 PM
What's the answer then. I have let to see a decent answer including Aquinas. All Ive seen are dodges/
Seriously, I hate this "Ah but you see it's embarrassing to you to bring up that point...because a intellectual retard named Aquinas said something asinine that was taken as wise! Therefor the man who believes in fairy shit is smart!"
Posted by: raven
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April 5, 2011 10:36 PM
I see we have a religious kook driving by.
This is the common fallacy, Argument by appeal to authority.
It's also stupid. Many of us are real Ph.D.'s and MD's in fields a lot more rigorous and difficult than theology. Theology is just words strung together, a lot of conclusions based on mythology, hearsay, and lies.
So after 13 years of studying the nature of time, what did WL Craig discover about time? Must be nothing much, I read modern physics and they have never once mentioned him.
Big deal. I've read some of what Craig wrote. It's just god babble, lies, and logical fallacies strung together, very routine. I can pick it apart in a few minutes as can any reasonably well educated adult. BTW, he didn't author the Kalam argument. This is an ancient idea from the Moslems. It also doesn't prove anything, it is just a word game.
Posted by: raven
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April 5, 2011 10:38 PM
Religious freaks never come up with anything new. Drop a few millennia old logical fallacies off. Then lie.
Craig is a creationist. His creationist beliefs are in no way in line with mainstream science. You are simply, flat out....LYING.
Posted by: raven
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April 5, 2011 10:43 PM
Craig would have a very hard time finding scientists as dishonest and crazy as he is.
He is a professional liar and has been for decades. And a defender of a toxic perversion of xianity, the fundie death cults.
If Craig wasn't so pathetic and banal, he might have been able to rise to the level of.....evil.
Posted by: raven
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April 5, 2011 10:49 PM
There isn't any historical data whatsoever that would support the resurrection of a dead man.
There is the bible, a work that is mostly or entirely fiction.
Craig knows this. He just doesn't care if he lies.
If works of fiction prove anything, then Darth Vader really was Luke Skywalker's father.
Craig knows this. He just doesn't care if he lies.
Posted by: The other Tim
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April 5, 2011 10:51 PM
In my opinion, the most vulnerable of WLC's arguments is the "Empty Tomb" argument. I believe that anyone who debates him should concentrate on debunking the Gospels.
Craig cannot sidestep this issue. If the Gospels are unreliable as historical documents, then Christianity fails utterly. There is virtually nothing outside Matthew, Mark, Luke and John to validate Christianity.
Objective historians all agree that the Gospels were written decades after the death of Jesus (assuming he actually existed), and that they are not eyewitness accounts. Although these accounts are ascribed to four names, the writers were truly anonymous. None of them described their sources, nor did they bother to identify themselves.
WLC, time and again, quotes from these sources as though they were universally accepted as undeniably true. Indeed, the English expression "The Gospel truth" seems to lend credibility to this view. Craig, for example, will talk at length about Joseph of Arimathea as though he were a real person, yet nowhere can the existence of such a person be established historically unless we accept the four Gospels as true.
In any debate with WLC, I would hammer this point home at every opportunity. He cannot dodge the issue without appearing to abandon his Evangelical Christian beliefs.
Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere
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April 5, 2011 11:00 PM
The everyday intuitions scientists rely on (for the most part) are great for everyday things. But when they are applied beyond the every day, time and time again it's been shown that human intuitions don't work. This is fact. What we can rely on is very limited in scope, and methodologies and technologies are able to complement that.The question of recognising a face (incredibly intuitive) and the question of the origin of the universe are very different things. The key? We've evolved to recognise faces, not understand the origins of the universe.
Posted by: Eric
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April 5, 2011 11:13 PM
"But when they are applied beyond the every day, time and time again it's been shown that human intuitions don't work. This is fact."
Kel, suppose I said that I think that they work all the time and that they don't work any of the time. You'd reject this as nonsense, right? Why? Because you can just apprehend the fact that both claims cannot be true at the same time and in the same respect. This is the sort of basic intuition I'm referring to. I'm not saying that, for example, the 'intuition' that heavier objects should fall faster than light ones is reliable. Indeed, I'd deny that this sort of claim is an intuition at all. And it seems to me that when you refer to the application of our 'intuitions' beyond the everyday, you're taking me to be referring to claims like this one, which is not at all what I'm referring to.
Now I know that some people try to distinguish basic metaphysical intuitions, which they take to be unreliable, from heuristic intuitions, but I think that heuristic intuitions are reducible to metaphysical intuitions -- indeed, that they cannot be made sense of if you reject basic metaphysical intuitions. Now that's a topic that's obviously beyond the scope of this post; I'm just referring to it to point out that things aren't as simple as Krauss makes them out to be.
Posted by: https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawkUL-U9MUY8KYyNdOz0mVLJQIOQ81UEVm8
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April 5, 2011 11:14 PM
I'm a Christian scholar (last book: The Truth Behind the New Atheism -- a rebuttal of Dawkins et al) who watched and enjoyed the debate. In my own on-line community, I defended Krauss against criticism from an atheist philosopher who thought he did poorly -- though agreeing that he lost the debate. I appreciated his (and Craig's) respectful attitude (for the most part) and enjoyed his more off-the-cuff forays into science. "I'd enjoy taking a class from this guy," I noted.
This sounds a bit like sour grapes, though. No one is forced to participate in a debate. A little post mortem spin is understandable, but there seems to be quite a bit of unnecessary bile in these comments, and sweeping dismissals that, frankly, diminish Dr. Krauss' profile a bit.
One other comment: Krauss should drop the "We atheists just believe one less God" line. (2 hours in.) I'm a scholar of religions, and find that argument betrays considerable ignorance both of Christianity, and of religions in general. Here's my off-the-cuff rebuttal:
http://christthetao.blogspot.com/2011/04/yes-you-are-stamp-collector-why.html
Posted by: raven
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April 5, 2011 11:25 PM
Very little of modern physics is intuitive.
Intuitively, the earth is flat and the sun orbits it. Neither of which is true.
Why should light always travel at 3 X 10exp8 m/sec, even when the emitter is moving itself?
Why does time slow down when objects move faster than others?
Why can't anything go faster than the speed of light?
Quantum mechanics is so counterintuitive that Richard Feynman once said that anyone that thinks they understand it is probably wrong.
Why is most of the universe dark matter and dark energy, things that even today we have no idea what they are.
Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere
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April 5, 2011 11:30 PM
Eric, isn't that a fallacy of composition? Surely when it comes to the planets, what our intuitions are simply don't matter - it's the conformity of prediction to observation.
Posted by: consciousness razor
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April 5, 2011 11:38 PM
googlemess, #118:
I can't be sure exactly how many gods some Christians believe in, and frankly I don't care. I'll say this much: none of those "gods" can be intelligible terms in an existential proposition. Now it's your turn to demonstrate otherwise.
Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere
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April 5, 2011 11:40 PM
I've got to say it's amazing how many more works there have been refuting the 'new atheists' than what the 'new atheists' have published. I wonder what that signifies...
Posted by: Wowbagger, Man-Hating Man of Pharyngula
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April 5, 2011 11:40 PM
Googleperson #118 wrote:
It's nothing to do with ignorance, of Christianity or any other religion; you're missing the point of the expression.
It's about prompting you to think about why you don't believe in Vishnu (almost entirely because he's not the deity favourted by the culture you were raised in), not asking you to find a way to dodge the issue by claiming, in a roundabout way, that you do.
Posted by: Eric
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April 5, 2011 11:43 PM
"Surely when it comes to the planets, what our intuitions are simply don't matter - it's the conformity of prediction to observation."
Kel, that's not what I'm talking about. Now I don't want to get sidetracked into a discussion of intuitions, so let me ask this: what intuitions does the very notion, "it's the conformity of predictions to observation" depend upon? Take each element -- conformity, prediction, observation -- and analyze them to see if you can come up with a way of understanding them that doesn't rely on any metaphysical/heuristic intuitions. Then take the conjunction of the three, and see if any intuitions are required. You will get to the point somewhere in your analysis where you must say, "P because I can just apprehend that P." But this means that even the notion that intuitions don't matter because what's important is the conformity of our predictions with observations *itself* relies on basic intuitions -- which of course means that the idea is self defeating.
Posted by: Eric
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April 5, 2011 11:45 PM
Kel, btw I just realized that I lost track of our discussion of consciousness at DC. My apologies.
Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere
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April 5, 2011 11:56 PM
It's okay, I thought you just gave up in the futility of me 'not getting it'. I'm pretty stubborn and don't know what I'm talking about mostt of the time, so I just figured that this was one of those cases.
Posted by: consciousness razor
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April 5, 2011 11:57 PM
Why would it matter if Kel can or cannot do that? So that you can equivocate on the word "intuition"?
Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere
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April 6, 2011 12:04 AM
Eric, in what I'm advocating those intuitions only have to work on one level, so to speak, the level of everyday conscious experience. What I'm suggesting is that any model has to conform to these intuitions in that it has to make sense as we see it, but that doesn't need grounding in our intuitions - just needs to fit our intuitions at the level which we see it.
Posted by: Balstrome
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April 6, 2011 12:12 AM
I am thinking of making some T-Shirts for sale, with the letters WLCISANASS on the front. And the "NASS" letters can be changed to whatever flavour is required.
Posted by: arensb
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April 6, 2011 12:26 AM
I just listened to the first hour of the debate (I couldn't bear to listen to the second half just yet). I note that on the net, a lot of apologists are claiming that Krauss thinks that 2+2=5.
For the record, they're omitting the second line of the T-shirt, which says "for extremely large values of 2".
In fairness to the net.apologists, they're probably just parroting Craig, who later said that Krauss thinks that 2+2=5. I'm guessing that that bit of math humor just sailed over his head, and have to agree with Krauss's article above that Craig just doesn't understand a lot of what he's talking about.
Posted by: CJO
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April 6, 2011 12:53 AM
Richard,
Of course your points could be right, but what evidence do you have for them? Tacitus's account doesn't mention coercion under torture or anyone blaming the fire on the wrath of the Gods. (And if they had blamed it on the gods, it would be nonsensical to accuse a group of arson!)
Tacitus isn't writing a procedural so he'd hardly mention coercion or torture. That's just how confessions were obtained, unless the accused was a citizen. I doubt anyone "claimed responsibility" in the manner of a modern terrorist group. It would not have been incoherent to blame the setting of the fire on a group but still perceive in the scope of the resulting disaster the hand of fate, the powers, or what have you. Tacitus doesn't say this, I realize, but that momentous events were in some way decreed from on high was just the metaphysical air he and his contemporaries breathed.
By the way, are you claiming that the group of "Chrestians" killed by Nero were really atheists?
I put the word in scare quotes because they weren't atheist in the way that you and I understand the term. It was a common charge against Christians (and to a lesser extent, for interesting reasons, Jews) in pagan late antiquity. Religion for most was about uniformity of practice and diversity of belief. Joining in with the community and participating in cultic activities on feast days was "worshiping the gods,"* and so refusal to participate was to reject the gods. Bad voodoo. Tacitus's "hatred for humanity" amounts to the same charge, or at least the two were interchangeable expressions of outrage.
*That was, in a sense, what you could do for the gods. Your private beliefs and prayers was what you wanted the gods to do for you.
Posted by: CJO
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April 6, 2011 1:09 AM
Craig, for example, will talk at length about Joseph of Arimathea as though he were a real person, yet nowhere can the existence of such a person be established historically unless we accept the four Gospels as true.
Person, hell. There was no such place as Arimathea as far as is known. There is not a single reference to it outside the gospels and its derivative legends, and attempts to link the name etymologically with known places have been strained at best. The town, its native son, Joe, and his lucrative line in rock hewn tombs are fictions.
Posted by: Owlmirror
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April 6, 2011 1:12 AM
Do you think them unworthy of defense, or just obviously valid?
Because magic is obviously real?
Because Aquinas' logical fallacies are not logical fallacies?
Because if an invisible person with magical superpowers existed, and decided what was and was not moral, it would do its best to hide this from mortals?
And this hiding of morality would itself be moral?
This sentence no verb.
Because unnatural causes are hiding somewhere? Maybe up WLC's sleeve?
Because non-physical causality has been reported in some peer-reviewed journal... perhaps the Journal of Irreproducible Results?
Gosh, you're so right. My intuition is that WLC is full of shit, so of course, my intuition must be correct.
Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere
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April 6, 2011 1:16 AM
I wonder if I have this correct...
If intuitively we have a sense that nature is a certain way, then that intuition underlies all observations. for example, if we have an intuitive sense of time, then any observation presupposes such a notion of time in order to be recognised. In a nutshell, all science is underwritten by our intuitions.
Posted by: Wowbagger, Man-Hating Man of Pharyngula
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April 6, 2011 1:25 AM
Another for googleperson #118, who wrote this:
If, as you imply, that - deep down - all religions worship the same being, why the bloody hell didn't that one being provide something in the way of a consistent message for his creation?
That Christianity alone has a metric fuck-ton of sects that can't agree on which colour socks Jesus preferred (or something equally inane) is bad enough; to try and add to that inconsistent chaos the idea that all the other gods from all the other religions across history are in fact aspects of the same being is so nonsensical it doesn't bear thinking about.
A hypothetical I came up with to demonstrate the uselessness of such a position: in a nonspecific country, you come across two people, each from a different tribe; they are arguing over a pig.
One says, 'I must kill this pig in accordance with my religion. If I do not, I am offending my god.'
But the other says, 'You must not kill this pig, because according to my religion, pigs are sacred and killing them is offensive to my god.'
If all religions are equally true, how do we proceed? Kill the pig or not kill the pig?
Posted by: Kronos
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April 6, 2011 1:33 AM
"He is a PHD philosopher, specialising in the study of theology and time. He spent over 13 years studying the nature of time alone."
So he's been studying me? Shit now I have to search my house for bugs.
Kronos
Posted by: Owlmirror
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April 6, 2011 1:38 AM
Pfft.
Silly atheist. The real invisible person with magical superpowers isn't so ... so ... plebian as to talk in human language, with phonemes and vowels and grammar and all that. Why, you'd almost expect it to flap its nonexistent meat parts together in order to make vibrations in the air. Hahahaha!
No, the real invisible person with magical superpowers is so much more special and sophistimacated than that. And only very very special and sophistimacated people can magically know what the invisible person with magical superpowers is saying.
Very special and sophistimacated people like us.
/sophistimacated thelology.
Posted by: Menyambal: Making sambal (it isn't dragon magic).
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April 6, 2011 1:49 AM
Googleperp #118, there aren't many types of gods out there. Just because a whole lot of religions default to a big manly father-figure with mystic powers living off that-a-way somewhere, doesn't mean the big guy exists, or even that they all worship the same mythman.
Face it, gods are either male or female, or sexless ghosts. There isn't much else. If male, they are generally manly--wise, powerful, protective and a bit of a jerk--large and in charge.
To express wonder that the same general idea keeps popping up in the god box is to show a profound lack of thought on the issue. And to assume that humans, when hearing of a similar manly god, would claim that their god is the same god if--and only if--he were the same and did exist, is again a failure.
The same brainfart that leads humans to invent gods could well lead them to consolidate gods.
Posted by: consciousness razor
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April 6, 2011 1:52 AM
Well, even I can't answer that. On the one hand, there's bacon (and other pork like prosciutto!), and on the other there's vegetarianism. On the gripping hand, bacon itself could be a god in the way Jesus is a cracker.
Posted by: Menyambal: Making sambal (it isn't dragon magic).
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April 6, 2011 1:54 AM
I imagine he was quite alone.
And what did he discover about the nature of time?
Posted by: elronxenu
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April 6, 2011 1:54 AM
And he concluded that GODDIDIT!
Posted by: consciousness razor
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April 6, 2011 1:56 AM
Nonexistent meat parts? BLASPHEMER! HERETIC! INFIDEL!
Posted by: First Approximation, L'esprit de l'escalier
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April 6, 2011 2:09 AM
Please look up the words 'credibility' and 'tone'.
Um, that doesn't make him a scientist.
Quality trumps quantity.
Ideally yes. In practice it's all about valuing rhetoric over reason and using constraints of the debate (e.g, time limits, inability to verify their sources on the spot, etc.) to your advantage to 'win'. Also, strawmanning your opponent is great tactic. There's just too much incentive to be dishonest. There's a reason why science is done mostly in journals and not in public debates.
The resurrection of Christ isn't in line with mainstream science.
Why should his opponents be honest or credible? WLC isn't.Posted by: Wowbagger, Man-Hating Man of Pharyngula
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April 6, 2011 2:12 AM
Which [fap fap fap] is a euphemism [fap fap fap] if I've ever heard one [fapfapfap].
Oh, yeah...
Posted by: First Approximation, L'esprit de l'escalier
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April 6, 2011 2:17 AM
Einstein studied the nature of time.
WLC wasted just wasted his on his unicorn husbandry (aka, theology).
Posted by: consciousness razor
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April 6, 2011 2:38 AM
Yeah, but Craig knows better. His deeply penetrating years-long study of the nature of time, valiantly defending the A-theory, has led him to conclude that there's an absolute frame of reference, which apparently does nothing and is undetectable. Can't have that "relativity" stuff mucking up the works, tempting children to get hooked on the marijuana (unless they accept Jesus in their hearts).
Posted by: Matt
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April 6, 2011 2:41 AM
Lawrence Krauss was thoroughly owned by Craig, which is why he had a temper tantrum and wrote this screed against him.
Posted by: themactak1
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April 6, 2011 2:43 AM
I thought Krauss was rational, did a good job & tried to be fair (polite) to Craig. But Craigs cronies at 'DrCraigs' youtube site saw it very differently. The mere mention of Krauss being okay had me banned from posting any more comments. So much for the free exchange of honest views!
Posted by: Matt
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April 6, 2011 2:44 AM
Man, some of you people are stupid.
"has led him to conclude that there's an absolute frame of reference, which apparently does nothing and is undetectable."
Wut...
You do realize that when scientists say the universe is more or less 13.7 billion years old that they're referring to this idea of absolute time?
Posted by: First Approximation, L'esprit de l'escalier
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April 6, 2011 2:46 AM
Yeah, WLC definitely wasted his time on time:
Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere
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April 6, 2011 2:58 AM
Craig seems to come to that conclusion a lot. for example, he finds that the origin of the universe is caused by God - which answers the observations of fine-tuning too. Just think of all that wasted money on the LHC and the Perimeter Institute. and all those theoretical physicists at universities who take government money who are just wasting their time. The Bible clearly says 'In the beginning, God created' not that 'vacuum fluctuations created'. If only they had just consulted theologians, then we wouldn't have wasted billions of dollars!
Posted by: Matt
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April 6, 2011 2:59 AM
It seems like the comment section for this blog entry is flooded with pseudo-intellectual basement dwelling high school drop outs who vicariously live through Krauss. This explains the numerous hostile and irrational reactions to the news that Craig whooped Krauss in their debate.
Posted by: First Approximation, L'esprit de l'escalier
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April 6, 2011 3:06 AM
WLC is a crank about evolution as well (no surprise):
Huh? Einstein was successful at getting a general principle of relativity and it became part of general relativity (hence the name).
And "conclusions far beyond the evidence"? This from the guy who bases the divinity and resurrection of Christ from some fucking document.
He goes on:
Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere
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April 6, 2011 3:16 AM
You caught us out there Matt. Pseudo-intellectual basement dwellers is right, because it couldn't be that Craig is defending the indefensible through a very tenuous (yet superficially compelling) argument - why it's just obvious to assume that the universe was created by an immaterial timeless unchanging personal being, the fine-tuning is the dead giveaway! And how else to you explain the empty tomb except to say that Jesus is Lord?
This is why Craig's arguments are having a profound impact in theoretical physics, in moral philosophy, and in history. Us pseudointellectual basement dwellers just don't recognise the contributions Craig has made to the multiple fields his arguments impact on!
Posted by: First Approximation, L'esprit de l'escalier
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April 6, 2011 3:24 AM
The thing is, many theologians are stuck in the times of Aquinas. They mostly use medieval logic to look at the world. WLC gets as far as the early 20th century with his aether interpretation of special relativity. As WLC shows, these theologians don't have clue of how to work with 'evidence'. The entire field is just trying to find semi-plausible sounding "arguments" for the idea they were taught from childhood. Science isn't to be learned; it's to be abused for that purpose.
It reminds of Feynman describing a conversation he had with some Orthodox Jewish children. They were asking him if electricity was fire so they could know whether it was okay to take the elevator on the Sabbath. Feynman just thought of what waste this was. These children had access to the marvels of science and they were only interested in it when it related to an ancient book.
Posted by: Matt
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April 6, 2011 3:31 AM
It seems like the comment section for this blog entry is mostly flooded with pseudo-intellectual basement dwelling high school drop outs who vicariously live through Krauss (and through other atheists who at least earned a high school diploma). This explains the numerous hostile and irrational reactions to the news that Craig whooped Krauss in their debate.
Just look at all of these anonymous internet losers scrambling to try to discredit Craig by criticizing his credentials and by misconstruing his writings, and then responding to them in the most idiotic of ways. Good job, morons. Good job. And some people wonder why most don't take new atheism and its advocates seriously.
If Dr. Craig's arguments are so weak, illogical, etc., then why has he demolished 95%-100% of the atheists he has faced in debate? Or do you chalk up his wins as him being a great debater and nothing more? How convenient. Obviously, a debate doesn't necessarily determine the truth of any proposition, but since Craig has been systematically owning prominent atheists one after the other, one has to wonder, is this because Craig is facing stupid atheists, or is it because there are no good arguments for atheism? You guys tell me.
Posted by: Matt
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April 6, 2011 3:35 AM
Oh, I guess I forgot to entertain the idea that some of you may actually think Craig has lost most of his debates... /facepalm
Posted by: John Morales
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April 6, 2011 3:38 AM
Matt, your pleadings are noted but rejected as unworthy of my time.
Posted by: consciousness razor
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April 6, 2011 3:43 AM
Matt:
Your trolling has given me little to chew on. Frankly, it's pathetic, and I don't mean that merely as an insult.
How about this? You offer a coherent definition of your favorite deity and provide evidence that it exists. If there is no better explanation for the evidence, I will then concede that the deity could possibly exist. If it wants my attention or needs me to do it a favor, I expect that it knows where it can find me.
Posted by: Matt
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April 6, 2011 3:51 AM
Why would you ask an alleged troll to engage in debate? Make up your mind.
Posted by: raven
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April 6, 2011 3:52 AM
You are wasting your time with Matt the troll.
IIRC, he is a banned troll who is noteworthy only for never having had a coherent thought.
Posted by: Matt
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April 6, 2011 3:54 AM
It seems like the comment section for this blog entry is mostly flooded with pseudo-intellectual basement dwelling high school drop outs who vicariously live through Krauss (and through other atheists who at least earned a high school diploma). This explains the numerous hostile and irrational reactions to the news that Craig whooped Krauss in their debate.
Just look at all of these anonymous internet losers scrambling to try to discredit Craig by criticizing his credentials and by misconstruing his writings, and then responding to them in the most idiotic of ways. Good job, morons. Good job. And some people wonder why most don't take new atheism and its advocates seriously.
If Dr. Craig's arguments are so weak, illogical, etc., then why has he demolished 95%-100% of the atheists he has faced in debate? Or do you chalk up his wins as him being a great debater and nothing more? How convenient. Obviously, a debate doesn't necessarily determine the truth of any proposition, but since Craig has been systematically owning prominent atheists one after the other, one has to wonder, is this because Craig is facing stupid atheists, or is it because there are no good arguments for atheism? You guys tell me.
Posted by: raven
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April 6, 2011 3:59 AM
You heard wrong then. Craig is one of the lowest of the low of the Liars for jesus.
He just strings together lies and logical fallacies, some of which are so old they predate xianity itself.
One of the minor reasons why I left xianity: If it was true, xians wouldn't have to lie all the time. All they have are lies and as many murders of dissenters and thinkers as it takes to keep the religion going. And now that they can't kill apostates and heretics any time they want, the religion is dying.
Posted by: Matt
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April 6, 2011 4:01 AM
I'd take raven's (ooh, mysterious) advice. I'd just embarrass you in front of your basement dwelling Internet friends.
For instance,
"You offer a coherent definition of your favorite deity and provide evidence that it exists."
You first have to define what you mean by evidence. Are you a verificationist?
"If there is no better explanation for the evidence, I will then concede that the deity could possibly exist."
Epistemically possible? Or logically possible? Because God is already epistemically and logically possible, so I guess I've already won the debate.
Posted by: Forbidden Snowflake
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April 6, 2011 4:02 AM
Could you copy-paste your screed a few more times, Matt? I didn't get it the first three times.
And you just went from "alleged troll" to "self-described troll". It's good for getting a few contemptuous comments out of the regulars, but you'd have to be a much more suble and sophisticated troll to incite the kind of flamefest that would sate your hunger for attention for more than a few minutes.
*sigh*
It's like they don't teach anything in troll school nowadays. Or did you drop out?
Posted by: First Approximation, L'esprit de l'escalier
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April 6, 2011 4:03 AM
This attitude about "winning"* rather than focusing on what's correct is exactly what's wrong with public debates. It has more to do with tribalism than rationality. There's a reason why scientists don't use them to determine the validity of theories.
* Is there a Charlie Sheen emoticon?
Are theists required to take an Hypocritical Oath?
Posted by: Matt
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April 6, 2011 4:09 AM
Another thing I don't get is why some of you take Craig so seriously given that you think he's a snake, liar, stupid, etc. Why are people here wetting their panties over Krauss' debate with Craig? Did you guys cry just as much when Kent Hovind debated people? Rofl.
Posted by: Matt
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April 6, 2011 4:12 AM
Forbidden Snowflake? raven?
Have I been transported inside a bad anime?
Btw, I hope you two are chicks, because those are some faggy names.
Posted by: Forbidden Snowflake
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April 6, 2011 4:12 AM
You don't get to claim that until you've defined your deity. Which, I might add, you've already been asked to do and avoided the question, so I won't be holding my breath.Posted by: First Approximation, L'esprit de l'escalier
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April 6, 2011 4:15 AM
Homophobe. What a surprise.
Posted by: 朴競花/박경화 (Gyeong Hwa)
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April 6, 2011 4:15 AM
Oh look, an asshat who knows nothing about gender and sexuality.
Posted by: Matt
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April 6, 2011 4:16 AM
See, I'm a troll, and so it is my duty to make things as difficult as possible.
If you need the definition of God, then go look it up in a dictionary. I recommend using a dictionary of philosophy.
Posted by: consciousness razor
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April 6, 2011 4:17 AM
Well, Matt definitely has stupidity and insipidity down to an artform, but I'd give him only about a 1.5-2.0 on the slagging and wanking scales. That, and I'm only measuring 0.2 Timecubes and 0.8 on the irony meter, so there's clearly room for improvement.
Posted by: Matt
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April 6, 2011 4:20 AM
I'm not afraid of gays, and I don't hate them, but I do find their behavior rather disturbing. Plus, even if I were a homophobe, why is that wrong?
Shouldn't you be manufacturing some shoes, 박경화?
Posted by: 朴競花/박경화 (Gyeong Hwa)
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April 6, 2011 4:21 AM
Add racist. I bet you he thinks I am Chinese.
Posted by: Matt
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April 6, 2011 4:22 AM
According to my research into your background, consciousness razor, you don't even have a college degree. Why not?
Posted by: consciousness razor
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April 6, 2011 4:26 AM
Wait, you mean "God," like a creator deity? I know just the one you're talking about. Its name is Nanbozho, and here's a picture of it on a rock. Wow, real evidence for God! Awesome!
Posted by: Matt
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April 6, 2011 4:26 AM
"Oh look, an asshat who knows nothing about gender and sexuality."
I know that your momma likes her asshole tongued.
Posted by: Forbidden Snowflake
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April 6, 2011 4:27 AM
I think the problem is not the academic rigor at troll school, but rather the fact that the field is overriden by dilettantes. It probably is unavoidable, given that one of the hallmark of an expert troll is the ability to make trolling seem to come easily and naturally. No wonder the FUCKING AMATEURS!!! come to believe they can do it just as well.
Posted by: Forbidden Snowflake
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April 6, 2011 4:31 AM
Sophisticated theology, ladies and gentlemen!Posted by: 朴競花/박경화 (Gyeong Hwa)
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April 6, 2011 4:33 AM
Dude, this troll totally failed the trolling exam. He is making "your momma" insults. That's like 7th grade level trolling and obvious. What ever happened to the professional ones like Heddle?
Posted by: Matt
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April 6, 2011 4:34 AM
Hahaha. Forbidden Snowflake (oooh, cool and mysterious) misspelled overridden. He's a smart guy.
Posted by: First Approximation, L'esprit de l'escalier
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April 6, 2011 4:35 AM
This blog deserves a better class of troll.
(I also thought WLC fans were racist, homophobic morons. Nice to have some evidence.)
Posted by: SQB (fuck death)
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April 6, 2011 4:37 AM
Mental note to self and note to all others: do NOT click on tiny urls, especially the one given by Matt, which leads to a (probably virus and mallware infested) crackz site.
Posted by: Numad
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April 6, 2011 4:37 AM
Heddle mastered the most advanced trolling technique that exists: The Flounce.
Maybe that means that trolls who reach a certain level of competence graduate into normal human beings.
Posted by: Matt
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April 6, 2011 4:37 AM
Guys, you're doing it wrong.
Taking time to tell a troll that he's a bad troll is self-referentially incoherent.
Posted by: Matt
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April 6, 2011 4:39 AM
Why is being homophobic wrong?
Posted by: Cosmic Teapot
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April 6, 2011 4:43 AM
Is that the best you have, ad hominem and straw men?
Checks rest of comments. No, I see you have avoiding questions and word games too.
Come on, give us real arguments, or else I go back to earning some money.
Posted by: 朴競花/박경화 (Gyeong Hwa)
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April 6, 2011 4:43 AM
Yup. Most other trolls would have came back, thereby proving the regulars right (about our assumptions on trolls). Heddle proved himself a master troll by leaving for good and proving us wrong. (At the end it's a win win for the regulars.)
Posted by: Forbidden Snowflake
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April 6, 2011 4:48 AM
SerialCrackZ.com? Funny, I was expecting something more along the lines of 2G1C.
Oh, well, kids will be kids.
Posted by: First Approximation, L'esprit de l'escalier
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April 6, 2011 4:50 AM
Shaker's Law:
Posted by: Matt
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April 6, 2011 4:50 AM
Forbidden, are you a woman? And if so.. would you like to arrange a meeting in real life to have some casual-no-strings-attached sex?
Posted by: 朴競花/박경화 (Gyeong Hwa)
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April 6, 2011 4:51 AM
What do you say, you pharyngulistas? Shall I answer this, or is this (most likely) a waste of my time?
Posted by: First Approximation, L'esprit de l'escalier
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April 6, 2011 4:55 AM
Meh, waste of time. He'll probably be banned for childish trolling when PZ get up.
Posted by: Forbidden Snowflake
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April 6, 2011 4:59 AM
GHP, that is a complex question requiring the answerer to make the call between the two competing philosophies of "don't feed the trolls" and "feed the trolls 'till they explode".
I would have to say this one is a waste of time. It's so starved for attention that not feeding it might cause to explode more quickly than feeding it.
Posted by: 朴競花/박경화 (Gyeong Hwa)
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April 6, 2011 5:01 AM
Assuming he doesn't leave beforehand. He might be one of those night trolls who comes when the admin is asleep.
Perhaps he could stick around. My teeth are dull from being in lurkdom.
Posted by: SQB (fuck death)
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April 6, 2011 5:06 AM
Tub girl would've been funnier too, though that's probably evidence against the god described in the Bible; if that god did exist, we'd all be tub girls and boys. He's just that kind of a sick sadistic fuck.
Posted by: 朴競花/박경화 (Gyeong Hwa)
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April 6, 2011 5:11 AM
Man, you people are good. I thought changing myslef to 박경화 would throw my identity off.
Posted by: Forbidden Snowflake
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April 6, 2011 5:15 AM
Well, if you change the nym but don't change the linky in the nym...
Posted by: 朴競花/박경화 (Gyeong Hwa)
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April 6, 2011 5:24 AM
Oh I just assume no one actually click on the link.
Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere
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April 6, 2011 5:32 AM
When you know someone is really clutching at straws to affirm their beliefs...Posted by: Rutee, Shrieking Harpy of Dooooom
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April 6, 2011 5:38 AM
"And I'm going to give it to them"?Matt can't even make me angry, and I run on rage, and have spent the last 5 hours failing badly in a frustrating way, watching my skill at a particular game I like slip through my fingers as I continued to do progressively worse. That's just pathetic.
It turns out trolls aren't immune to getting angry themselves, and all it took to make that particular one go away was to work to create a feminist safe space. Now we have one, and we have one less troll! And that one was actually good at what he did! It's so awesome watching people go nuclear over the 'PC Police'~Posted by: Wowbagger, Man-Hating Man of Pharyngula
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April 6, 2011 5:40 AM
Pissant troll wrote:
I have one that comes in roll form; I buy them in twelve-packs from the the grocery store.
Posted by: Cosmic Teapot
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April 6, 2011 5:48 AM
I clicked your first link, that was enough. Stop avoiding questions, present your arguments (presuming you actually have any), or I go back to work.
Posted by: hotshoe
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April 6, 2011 6:01 AM
That's the Philip Johnson who screams that HIV doesn't cause AIDS. The heinous genocide-approving WL Craig gets his evolutionary insights from that decrepit scam artist Johnson ?The pair of them deserve each other.
Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere
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April 6, 2011 7:28 AM
A piece I wrote on the problem of only considering "natural" explanations.
Do people seriously consider that if we only accepted that magic beings fiddled in life that evolution would be cast aside? Seriously? Even if there were supernatural causation involved in the process of life, it's detection would be the same as if an intelligent natural being doing the same. In other words, the hallmarks of design would be there. If someone wants to argue that there's one more more intelligent designers operating in nature, then they need to come up with a way of making hypothesises about the kinds of patterns we should expect.
But the exercise isn't about that, it's about necessitating a designer being involved because the whole enterprise is about affirming an existential and moral position. In any case, the lack of consideration of "supernatural" causes shouldn't stop anyone from being able to come up with a scientific theory of design that's testable and falsifiable. Instead, like Craig's cosmology, it's not about finding out how the universe came about, but necessitating God's role in the process.
Posted by: Mr Ashy
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April 6, 2011 7:37 AM
Debating Craig is essentially pointless, unless you prepare in advance for his dishonesty and willingness to throw out statements without anything to back them up.
He will do his own version of the Gish Gallop, and unless you have answers for some of these points ready to hand and are willing to say outright that his other points are no better, it will appear as if he has made valid statements.
Posted by: toadslick
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April 6, 2011 8:54 AM
Dr. Krauss,
I was the very first person in line to get into the debate. My friend and I drove through four hours (each way) of awful weather to see you speak, and we consider the time well spent.
I think you would be surprised to know that there were many more secular and rational people in the audience than you give credit for. Many young students and scientists (including a large group of physics majors) left inspired by your presentation that night. A few Christians that I spoke to also found your arguments compelling, and at least one of them left with a desire to learn more about cosmology.
Thanks for engaging the audience and for wielding your trademark sense of humor. I hope you would not consider than night a waste of your time.
Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist
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April 6, 2011 10:26 AM
My response My response My response My response Is Is Is Is : : : Fuck Fuck fuck fuck Off off off off.
You know if you actually stepped out of PLato's cave you wouldn't get that echo of stupid.
Don't click on the link. It links to a dangerous site and just sent my virus protection off.
How charming to do the net equivalent of punching someone in the face.
PZ desperate clean up needed.
Posted by: Aratina Cage
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April 6, 2011 11:02 AM
Dear Dr. Craig,
With such strong arguments like that in favor of theism from your children, it is clear that science is doomed!
...
OK, we are done babysitting Matt for the night. Please come get him right away. Thanks.
Sincerely,
Pharyngucare
P.S. Please hurry. We are out of babies and getting hungry.
Posted by: Owlmirror
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April 6, 2011 11:18 AM
NB:
If you change "tinyurl.com" to "preview.tinyurl.com", you can see what the site being tinyurl'ed to is before actually going there.
Also, I want to contest the notion that heddle is, or ever was, a troll.
heddle is/was willing to sincerely discuss aspects of his belief, and I think the conflict between his belief and his rationality did and does bother him. The fact that this led to him dropping out of serious conversations seems more like classic avoidance behavior rather than any sort of deliberate malice on his part.
Posted by: neel bee
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April 6, 2011 11:41 AM
The sad thing to me is, the debate is low quality overall. First, because it was framed in classic science versus "religion" tropes. Religion is a received belief system and brings all sorts of baggage going beyond the basic task of challenging existential givenness and that certain perspective. It makes it too easy for the religionist's challenger. Better to have an uncommitted but non-rejectionist "philosopher" take on the idea. That's not as "fun" a debate as obvious opposites, but brings up the issues better and keeps Krauss on his toes for real instead of being more like a straw man. (Compare learning more from a political centrist than stark conservative v. liberal.) Second, following up from that: there are more sophisticated abstract ways to probe the questions involved. WLC didn't do a very good job, but Krauss isn't aware of the best way to frame the real issues. He also makes mistakes of hypocrisy about "evidence" as do many in that camp.
First, we shouldn't start with a false dichotomy that either "this (or with other universes) is just here" versus a figure "God" as in religions made it happen. If the universe/s are contingent, that leaves the question more wide open. For example, some ground of being that is greater (less specifically bound like a particular universe with particular laws), maybe like the plenum of Plotinus or Hegel's Absolute, is an alternative if need be. In tune with the approach of that better debate candidate I described, I don't start with "God" or any received ideas but rather basic questions about existence at an abstract level. One should be, "why does this possible world exist and not others?" It may be appealing, but saying "there is some fundamental logical reason" does not work. Logic and math literally don't have the tools to add the extra zing we call "existing" to model worlds, as philosophers like David Lewis appreciated. If the did, it would be like the number 23 having special existence as brass numerals over and above what math can tell us about it being a prime number etc. That applies to properties of "the universe." There won't be a "scientific explanation" for the laws themselves because there is no way to get such a handle on comparing the possible ones that can be written.
If such special existential preferred status does not make sense (it doesn't, how could the preference be logically justified), then do 'all possible worlds' exist as in modal realism? Modal realists and proponents of the grand multiverse or ultimate ensemble like Max Tegmark get this point (I really got a kick out of MT's Scientific American article on the subject.) That undercuts the whole idea of "natural explanation" of the universe itself. No, comparing explaining things using laws to explaining the laws themselves is a false analogy. The things that happen "because of the laws" are in effect expressions of the laws themselves. The laws and their associated results need logical justification in the sense of principle of sufficient reason and selection from the logical ensemble. It's like the difference between the rules of geometry of a hexagon deriving from the shape, versus "why is a hexagon here and not a pentagon" etc?
Now, one could say "sure, so there's all that possible stuff really out there." But there's no evidence for it (I didn't say can't ever be), and so it is - irony! - like a theological argument in that sense. But that doesn't stop people like Krauss from using an unproven notion about other worlds as an element in an argument against someone else who is relying on other unproven notions. BTW the genuine large ensemble has little to do with variations in some fundamental laws giving rise to some other variations and in a contiguous space-time.) So there is hypocrisy there in such attempts to avoid being surprised at fine-tuning for life (and I'm not saying there can't be such worlds, just decrying the hypocrisy. I call our cosmos "Thisiverse" just to emphasize we have no right to *assume* it is singular, any more than to assume it is not.) A related problem is that once we get to fundamentals, we're arguing about what best conclusions to draw *from what we already know* - to interpret existing evidence in a final conclusion, not to necessarily be able to find evidence for a specific thing in itself.
A major observational problem in the ensemble is, how come we live in an orderly universe if all possible world descriptions "exist" on an equal footing? Being a PW does not imply orderliness. After all we can write up a description of irregular laws and disorderly behavior. which is just as mathematically real (however ugly) as any "pretty" construct such as this is mostly seen to be. Furthermore, if we can number all these worlds in discrete terms, there should be more of the disorderly ones than orderly ones. We should have more expectation, in Bayesian terms (commenter by that name, weigh in), of being in a universe with little deviations or that would not continue to be orderly, than of being in a world like this. Lewis realize that and rather swept it under the rug as a Bayesian expectation issue by saying: well if we imagine continuous variation, we're trying to compare infinite sets. Technically he has a point but I consider it a flabby one. It doesn't really satisfy, since we are left with no particular expectation at all. Furthermore, we are left with a mess out there: ironically full of heavens and hells in effects, Gods (all of them presumably), worlds where miracles happen, etc. And why not something greatest in like vein to set of all sets ... oh sorry, I should have said class of all sets ;-)
So to me the best supposition, which I admit is such and defend indulging since we just can't be sure, is that some grander necessary being or Ground exists which is more, greater, in some sense that any particular universe. How much like "God" that is, is as debatable as how real it is. So I don't know if "God" exists but I don't think it's reasonable to figure this universe is not contingent. Finally, if we can't know then why even bother? I'd say, many people just want to puzzle over the ultimate why, the "why is there something instead of nothing and why is it like this" etc., and we might as well do the best with what little we have.
Posted by: PZ Myers
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April 6, 2011 11:42 AM
I am really terribly amused that Craig's most ardent defender here is a blatant homophobe and racist. Way to take the moral high ground, guy!
I am not amused, however, that Matt is also a malicious turd who is dropping links to malware sites. And for that, he is banned.
Posted by: Iain Walker
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April 6, 2011 11:43 AM
Eric (#105):
Since I lack a computer that has both audio and internet access, I haven't listened to the debate. So what follows will relate to points as raised in this thread, whether or not they have any bearing on actual arguments raised in the debate itself:
Based on what Krauss writes in his original post here, his line of criticism still holds, because as far as I can see, he takes the inference from "willing to die for" to "sincerely believes" as read, as being trivial. Even if he is committing the error you attribute to him, adding the inference does not undermine the general tenor of his objection. That people sincerely belief that X does not help you determine whether or not X is true.
There's also an additional point - I can be willing to die for an ideology without necessarily accepting that every last one of the claims of that ideology are true. Now while religious ideologies tend to be fairly total, demanding assent to the entire caboodle of claims, the argument:
(i) People were willing to die for Ideology A
(ii) Ideology A includes Belief B
Therefore: (iii) People were willing to die for Belief B
is not valid. It is sometimes, perhaps even often, a reasonable rule-of-thumb inference, but it is not watertight.
And for many of those willingly martyred for their adherence to Christianity in the early days, their actual, personal motivation for doing so remains unrecorded. Their (probable) belief in the resurrection/empty tomb may or may not have been particularly high up that list. We just don't know. So Craig's argument depends on a lot of supposition about the actual motives of early Christian martyrs.
As a student of philosophy (both formally and informally so) over many years, this claim strikes me as completely false. All the attempts I've seen to resolve the dilemma seem to boil down to an assertion that "goodness" is part of God's "nature", but on closer analysis, this either founders in incoherence or reduces to one or other of the horns of the dilemma.
So if you have an example of an argument that does in fact resolve the Euthyphro, let's hear it.
That's a misrepresentation of what Krauss said here, which was that:
"Lastly, if there is evidence that God provides absolute Morality, it is missing from the world of our experience, where different religious groups, all of whom claim divine inspiration, have incompatible moral views, often leading to horrendous and violent acts against women and children"
"the evidence is missing for" != "precludes"
In other words, the evidence of experience is not best explained by the existence of a deity which upholds (and communicates) any kind of absolute morality. Since it's hard to see how the existence of absolute moral standards and a god which upholds them predicts the disparity of moral views amongst believers and the appalling acts they have committed throughout history, Krauss seems to have the right of it.
Posted by: PZ Myers
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April 6, 2011 11:48 AM
By the way, I wouldn't do this if he were just another stupid bigot, but by actively going beyond the bounds of decency and trying to lure people into harm with bad links, I am justified, as my warning on the left sidebar states, in posting what contact information I have.
Commenter name: Matt
Commenter email address: matthew.young1128@gmail.com
Commenter URL:
Commenter IP address: 71.234.119.12
Nasty piece of work, that guy.
Posted by: nigelTheBold, Minister of Spankings
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April 6, 2011 11:59 AM
neel bee:
This is only relavent if all unproven notions are of equal worth. In fact, your entire argument assumes equality between all unproven propositions. This is simply poor epistemology, and even worse basic logic.
For instance, a quantum interpretation of the inflationary model of the universe results in an infinity of universes. This model does not rely on an external entity, it is far more parsimonious than any proposition involving an intentional entity. While both are unproven, one is far more unproven than the other.
(As an aside: throw away your notion of "proof." It does not belong in a discussion of science, and what we "know." All we have is contingent knowledge. Some is just more contingent than the rest.)
Pretty much all "subtle" or "sophisticated" theological thought relies on this sophistry, this conflation of what we know to be possible, and what is merely fantastic and whimsical speculation. Labeling both as "unproven" as a means of legitimizing the fantasy is disingenuous, and borders on outright falsehood.
Posted by: neel bee
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April 6, 2011 12:39 PM
NigelTheBold, I think you misunderstand both the hypocrisy issue and the equivalence issue. Believing in "other universes" goes beyond empirical evidence, and violates any posture that one is committed to empiricism "in principle." It's like a conservative who says he's a strict constructionist, being OK with violated a Constitutional principle. There being some other reason to do that anyway, doesn't solve the self contradiction. Furthermore, the modal realisim issue about possible *worlds* is not about all unproven propositions being equivalently credible. Of course they are not, and that's why it's such rubbish to see people here e.g. lump together all "entities for which there is no evidence" like "God" and leprechauns, etc.
The problem with possible worlds and multiplicity goes way beyond applying given rules and seeing what results we would expect. You must not appreciate the radical critique in e.g. modal realism, as to why even some set of rules like our specific "quantum mechanics" more deserves to be blessed with special existence than other ways to be. And "parsimony" always cracks me up. From what derives that confidence that it is a reliable guide? Did we really find this out, is there a survey somewhere showing that simple ideas are more often right than complex explanations? There is also so much sloppiness, the conflating of simple and conventionally known, the inability AFAIK to make a rigorous definition, etc. Maybe often so, but it is not a true fundamental principle like logical syllogism, avoidance of direct fallacies, etc.
No, my argument is not conflation of what we know to be possible with the "fantastic." More bubbles made from the same soap have basically the same ultimate problem in the abstract, why this PW or PW scheme and not others etc. or why existence as "real" and not just Platonic conceptuality (or is it?) That's just not an argument or explanation *at all*, rather than being a more "reasonable" alternative.
As far as "proof" - sure, I'm just arguing, and that's all you're doing too. Saying what we ought or ought not to do about thinking is still philosophy, as are all the rebuttals to these kinds of points (which I appreciate you didn't confuse with noting false empirical claims as per geological history etc.)
I also deny that all our knowledge is contingent, as a sensationalist or British empiricist might say. Agree or not, the very existence of intelligible (to me at least) arguments like that of the modal realists and Tegmark (you forgot, he is a physicist) show that the human mind is capable of such foundational abstract thinking. Even thinking of "infinite sets" requires going beyond direct experience.
BTW, AFAICT that Matt link was resources for hackers (SW "crackz", like to get into a licensed program for free) instead of producing of harm to the visitor. The former is bad enough, but the initial critic shouldn't have misrepresent that as a matter of principle.
Posted by: Rich in GA
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April 6, 2011 12:42 PM
I heard Dr. Krauss state in the debate that the empirical evidence for a Multiverse is about the same as the empirical evidence for God. I am paraphrasing but Dr. Krauss said, "Dr. Craig explains the universe existence / fine tuning as evidence for God, I say it's evidence for a Multiverse." By that statement I believe Dr. Krauss is admitting that yes there is a possibility that there is a God, he just doesn't believe it so.
Dr. Craig in his statements is just mentioning only a few of the scientific arguments for God. Read the works of Guillermo Gonzalez, Michael Behe. Their works go beyond just the beginning of the universe or fine tuning. Craig is only pointing out one aspect. Look at it from a high level view. Could the universe create it's self, uncaused? Could that universe be fine tuned? Could all the many variables explained by Gonzalez come together uncaused? Could life spring forth from inorganic substance -- Explain the creation of the first cell? Show us the fossil evidence that explains the explosion of life we find in the Cambrian period?
This isn't "God in the Gaps" reasoning, but more like this. If you were walking along a trail and you saw a stick in the ground sticking straight up. You could reason that the stick fell in a windstorm and landed that way. As you progress, you find another stick sticking straight up, then another and another, then you notice that all the sticks are not only in the same position, but are 100 yards apart. Now did they happen by random chance, or did someone purposely place them?
The scientific evidence that is used for God, each one on their own explains only a possibility -- as Dr. Krauss admits -- to the existence of God. Collectively however can you explain them all by sheer random chance? What are the odds? Will you bet your life on it?
Dr. Krauss avoids arguing the resurrection proof with Dr. Craig, and saves his argument for his closing -- a very cowardly thing to do. I don't accept his argument, as if his argument were valid you would think that at least one disciple would not be willing to propagate the lie, yet all 11, plus Paul, Mark, Luke, Steven and a slew of others believed this so strongly that they themselves died for this belief. Don't confuse their martyrdom to be the same as an Islamic terrorist. Terrorists such as those on 9/11, they died in the process and hope of killing others. The Christians who died for their belief in God such as Paul were not trying to kill, but to save. In their minds without Jesus they would spend an eternity in hell.
Posted by: Rich in GA
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April 6, 2011 12:45 PM
I heard Dr. Krauss state in the debate that the empirical evidence for a Multiverse is about the same as the empirical evidence for God. I am paraphrasing but Dr. Krauss said, "Dr. Craig explains the universe existence / fine tuning as evidence for God, I say it's evidence for a Multiverse." By that statement I believe Dr. Krauss is admitting that yes there is a possibility that there is a God, he just doesn't believe it so.
Dr. Craig in his statements is just mentioning only a few of the scientific arguments for God. Read the works of Guillermo Gonzalez, Michael Behe. Their works go beyond just the beginning of the universe or fine tuning. Craig is only pointing out one aspect. Look at it from a high level view. Could the universe create it's self, uncaused? Could that universe be fine tuned? Could all the many variables explained by Gonzalez come together uncaused? Could life spring forth from inorganic substance -- Explain the creation of the first cell? Show us the fossil evidence that explains the explosion of life we find in the Cambrian period?
This isn't "God in the Gaps" reasoning, but more like this. If you were walking along a trail and you saw a stick in the ground sticking straight up. You could reason that the stick fell in a windstorm and landed that way. As you progress, you find another stick sticking straight up, then another and another, then you notice that all the sticks are not only in the same position, but are 100 yards apart. Now did they happen by random chance, or did someone purposely place them?
The scientific evidence that is used for God, each one on their own explains only a possibility -- as Dr. Krauss admits -- to the existence of God. Collectively however can you explain them all by sheer random chance? What are the odds? Will you bet your life on it?
Dr. Krauss avoids arguing the resurrection proof with Dr. Craig, and saves his argument for his closing -- a very cowardly thing to do. I don't accept his argument, as if his argument were valid you would think that at least one disciple would not be willing to propagate the lie, yet all 11, plus Paul, Mark, Luke, Steven and a slew of others believed this so strongly that they themselves died for this belief. Don't confuse their martyrdom to be the same as an Islamic terrorist. Terrorists such as those on 9/11, they died in the process and hope of killing others. The Christians who died for their belief in God such as Paul were not trying to kill, but to save. In their minds without Jesus they would spend an eternity in hell.
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp
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April 6, 2011 12:46 PM
Avon Connecticut.
on Comcast
Oh, and a map of an approx location.
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp
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April 6, 2011 12:50 PM
Except what you are calling scientific evidence, isn't.
Did you just go all Pascal's Wager on us?
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp
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April 6, 2011 12:54 PM
And fail miserably.
Irreducible complexity? Hilarious.
Did you happen to catch Behe's testimony at the Dover trial? He single handedly managed to destroy any credibility the ID movement had at that point, though as fragile as it was that wasn't a difficult task.
Posted by: azumahazuki
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April 6, 2011 1:05 PM
Does it ever occur to anyone that Craig (and presuppositional apologetics in general) seem to be capitalizing on the ability to cause a mental BSoD in more intellectually-honest opponents?
They seem to use the scientists' caution as a weapon against them, being dishonest themselves and willing to assert anything sight unseen if it confirms their beliefs.
Also, as has been asked several times up top, what is the solution to Euthyphro's Dilemma? Craig himself said on Tekton Ministries (IIRC) that morality and goodness are part of God's nature, but all this does is step the dilemma back one notch: is what is good good because it is of God, or is it of God because it is good?
Posted by: neel bee
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April 6, 2011 1:06 PM
Another irony I note in Krauss' argument about laws: he's saying, that since we can explain phenomena by laws, it is a "gap" fallacy to think the universe itself can't be explained in like manner. First, that is an example of the fallacy of composition: every "thing" or separate event can be explained by laws, so the whole universe itself of things can be. Well, no. As I said, the laws and their results (what is "explained" by them, but as Hume note that is just a way in effect of talking about what they are are a unit, needing some other kind of explanation. That is the first order of the actual question. It is, why the laws/actions of that sort, and not pretending to decouple the laws and the actions defining them for later extension beyond themselves. (Again, none of this pertains to issues about what could have happened in the universe. Could life form on it's own? Well that depends on what kind of universe you're in.)
Note that I'm mostly saying, we have to believe either:
1. There is the existential absurdity of a universe of a specific type "just existing" even though we can describe other laws etc. It's like the number 137 (inside joke) just given a sort of "soul" beyond mathematics but without any logical properties or justification thereof.
2. "Everything exists" (not well defined, but so be it) as an alternative to the existential absurdity of #1. That could be, but it has plenty of problems as I noted.
3. There is a fundamental level or ground of being, however to interpret, which somehow wraps that up. Note that in this way of proceeding, #3 is not taken for given or from first principles to start with. It is more a consequence of doubting the other two, an argument by elimination. That is an acceptable way to try if little else is available.
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp
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April 6, 2011 1:07 PM
That's a pretty good description of he Gisp Gallop or the Hovind Hop.
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp
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April 6, 2011 1:10 PM
Gish....
Posted by: Owlmirror
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April 6, 2011 1:13 PM
Gah. You still don't understand parsimony.
Is it necessary to posit an invisible person with magical superpowers to explain anything at all about the universe?
No.
Parsimony.
Posted by: azumahazuki
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April 6, 2011 1:14 PM
Expanding on that, Craig's God has a lot to answer for. I think the weak point of all apologetics for an omnimax God is that they have to reconcile this world with a God that is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good.
The problem with that is that there is plenty of gratuitous suffering. The "Problem of Evil" never swayed me much; what got me was what you might call the "Problem of Designs and Situations That Make You Go 'What the Fuck Were You Thinking?'"
And here is where the weak spot is: it's very easy to argue an all-knowing and all-powerful being, because you can go "well it's obviously beyond you." But it's a lot harder to do this morally, because if a being's morals are too far beyond us, that being's morals cease to have any meaning for us.
So, somehow, everyone from Bahnsen to van Til (may he rest in pieces, and good riddance--what a psychopath) has to argue that, yes, every single instance of what appears to be gratuitous evil is absolutely necessary to God's grand plan.
All the misaimed tsunamis, all the senseless wars, all the torture inflicted on and by Christians, all the billions of years of predation and prey, every single animal trapped by disaster through no fault of its own--all necessary. Every single bit of it.
And the vice icing on the vomitous cake? The God that is directly responsible for this (remember, all-powerful AND all-knowing; it did NOT have to be this way, Plantinga be damned) will thrust the great mass of humanity into infinitely worse torment for infinite time! And he'll only spare the ones who don't have a problem with any of this!
We saw a small example of this when Craig was dragooned into being an apologist for the Old Testament genocides. I think people attempting to deal with presuppers need to hammer on this and the above points. At the very worst you can reduce them to fideism in public :)
Posted by: neel bee
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April 6, 2011 1:21 PM
But Owlmirror, you're just claiming "it isn't necessary to posit [you said invisible person for straw man effect, I said "something else"} to explain anything at all about the universe" as if that were a fact or clearly knowable by logical argument. But the whole discussion, is to investigate whether that's really true. I'm saying the laws themselves can't be explained by themselves or more of the same, that's just a turtle stack.
If you think it isn't necessary for something logically external (BTW a broad logical category) and "different" to explain the laws, then you can explain them yourself, right? ... chirp. See, it isn't like someone saying "we can't explain lighting" and then you really do have the goods on electric charges and all that. No, I want the inverse square law, the fine structure constant, the three dimensions of space, etc. You aren't even considering that, you just take what should be a *conclusion* you have to fight for, and dump it as a given. That's an epic fail as a "debater" on your part.
Posted by: azumahazuki
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April 6, 2011 1:24 PM
@229:
Quit whacking off, will you? There could very well be a God or gods that made all this. It could also be an extremely sophisticated simulation (pixel pitch 10e-61m, clock tick 10e-43s). Or it could be an illusion. Or we may be a dream of a higher being. Or possibly the only real being in existence is John the Ripper and we're all his imagination.
Prove to me that we are NOT a simulation. Then we'll talk.
Posted by: nigelTheBold, Minister of Spankings
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April 6, 2011 1:24 PM
neel bee:
I do not misunderstand the hypocrisy issue at all. You are attempting to issue equal credibility to two propositions, one that is based on current knowledge (though is still speculative), and one that is based on wishful thinking and magical pixie dust.
Yes, all the many-worlds hypotheses go beyond the empirical evidence we have today. Every new proposition lacks empirical evidence. The distinction between a scientific proposition and a non-scientific one, is that the scientific proposition makes specific predictions about future empirical findings.
In science (aside from pure math, the only epistemology that has proven effective), a specific hypothesis makes specific predictions about the empirical evidence we will find in the future. This is the primary distinction between something like a MW hypothesis (such as that which results from a quantum interpretation of the inflationary hypothesis) and a proposition that is not based on empiricism, such as every God-proposition.
As an example of the specific predictions made by inflationary theory (and, should the model prove correct, an infinite number of universes), we expect to find a specific pattern in cosmic background radiation. If this pattern is found, there is yet more support for inflationary theory, and by extension, an infinite number of universes.
Modal realism and possible worlds in philosophy is quite a bit different from the "many worlds" posited by Krauss and others.
In any case, neither you, nor Craig, nor anyone else has presented a coherent definition of a god, let alone presented a reasonable case for the potential existence of a god. All the subtle and sophisticated arguments used to justify belief in a god are merely gilding a fantasy.
You find it silly that we compare a god proposition to a leprechaun proposition, but find it hypocritical that we find it silly to give equal weight to a god proposition over a naturalistic proposition?
That's … interesting.
So you're saying a cow is essentially the same as an amoeba, because they are branches in the same chemical reaction that started 2.5 billion years ago?
Strangely enough, your statement here is almost correct, but for utterly the wrong reasons. The "bubbles" made by the same "soap" would intrinsically be quite different due to quantum variation during the initial inflationary periods. However, it can be argued that an infinite number of different universes explains everything, and so explains nothing. (This is an interesting point made in the most recent issue of Scientific American, coincidentally.)
However, a purely-naturalistic non-explanation is far more likely than one that posits some pre-existing, complex, intentional entity. Further, arguing for the prior is far more rational than arguing for the latter.
Posted by: CJO
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April 6, 2011 1:24 PM
I don't accept his argument, as if his argument were valid you would think that at least one disciple would not be willing to propagate the lie, yet all 11, plus Paul, Mark, Luke, Steven and a slew of others believed this so strongly that they themselves died for this belief.
What is the martyr tradition for Mark? Who is that, anyway? John Mark? An obscure bishop of Alexandria? You don't really know anything about this stuff, do you? For Luke? How about Thaddeus? Jude of James? (Oh, wait, the gospels don't agree on those last two, do they?) I mean, the martyrdom traditions and pretty much the whole of the Apostolic tradition are based on lurid 2nd and 3rd century or even later fabrications, but you're just adding names without even a tenuous connection to any literary work. You're making shit up.
Don't confuse their martyrdom to be the same as an Islamic terrorist. Terrorists such as those on 9/11, they died in the process and hope of killing others.
Completely beside the point. They believed in an ideology enough to die for it. Does that make it true? If not, then you see what a ridiculous argument you're making. If so, then why don't you convert to Islam?
Posted by: neel bee
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April 6, 2011 1:26 PM
Azumahazuki: perfectly good point. That's why I don't believe in something like that, although to true anti-beleivers that's like a liberal pleading to a teabagger that he's not really a socialist. Note that we don't have to choose between whether there is such a Deity, or whether there's just "all this stuff here, period." There can easily be something most fundamental, which is just not omnipotent. Why should it have to be? It's really silly, for some arguers to imply that their opponents are wrong about whether X exists, but must be right about what X would have to be like if it did.
Posted by: azumahazuki
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April 6, 2011 1:33 PM
Neel Bee, you forgot #4:
"Our minds are finite and limited, and we evolved mostly to find fruit and toss poo. We may not be able to understand much more than we do now."
Everyone from Bahnsen to van Til ALSO makes the unspoken assumption that we can. You all place FAR too much trust in your senses and minds.
It's a kind of idolatry :) As if we didn't know you're all narcissistic crybabies to begin with.
Posted by: neel bee
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April 6, 2011 1:39 PM
Nigel ..., Azumahazuki: Bubble universes, simulations: you're still not trying to get behind it all in the most abstract possible way. The BU generator as you describe, still have laws plucked out from who knows what. A simulation: done by what? What rules there? It's just another something about which we can ask the same foundational questions in the abstract, a pointless alternative. I'm saying, no specific construct you can put up is good enough or avoids the problems of independent realities. I know, you have only so much time (and don't gripe about me arguing this, if you don't care then just don't bother, OK?) but I outlined specific problems with alternatives, not just pushing the one idea in a vacuum, so to speak.
Re Tegmark: read more carefully, his Mathematical Universe Hypothesis (that all "mathematical structures are equivalently real") is the same as modal realism. Do you understand what "all MS's" really means? It is way beyond some extrapolation of our own physics into mere variations on a theme (controlled by basically the same laws as a guiding point, which have the same existential preference issue.) It's about *explaining the natural order*, not how that order even in broader terms produces variations in itself.
And I stand by it being OK to try and get a handle on that by "thinking." Of course it isn't science, science has it's own job to do, so what?
Posted by: nigelTheBold, Minister of Spankings
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April 6, 2011 1:40 PM
neel bee:
Oh, you mean something like causal dynamical triangulation?
You're still arguing the god of the gaps. "We don't understand it fully, so there must be something else." Why must there be something else?
So we don't yet understand everything there is to understand about the universe. Big fuckin' deal. Invoking "here be magic" as some sort of whitewash is intellectually lazy at best, and complete dishonesty at worst.
Y'know what? We may never understand everything about the universe. And I'm alright with that. I enjoy discovering new things. Once we understand everything there is to understand about the universe, what then? Do we try to find a way to jump from inhospitable universe to inhospitable universe, trying to figure out what their laws are?
It's arguments such as those you present that have convinced me that philosophy is, in the hands of most people, nothing but wankery. It gives us nothing useful, it always ends in a sticky mess, and the only one to gain any enjoyment is you.
Posted by: azumahazuki
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April 6, 2011 1:44 PM
@Neel Bee
You and yours are idolators, plain and simple. Yes, there may well be such laws. Yes, we may wonder what they are. Will we ever know? CAN we ever know? It's possible not.
But you implicitly insist we can. You, and Craig, and everyone else in the business. I pity you and your kind, because just like us, you're looking for answers...but you would accept a wrong answer over the prospect of uncertainty.
You collectively have made an idol of the human mind. Worse, you then make idols of the answers that you find comforting.
Posted by: Brownian, Most Vicious & Petty of Pharyngulites
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April 6, 2011 1:46 PM
Oh fuck, one of these.
"I believe in god."
"Define god."
"It's whatever the universe turns out to be. But more, uh, spiritual."
"That's dumb."
"Since you don't believe in god, how can you tell me what god has to be like? Who says god can't be dumb? Maybe god is dumb. Ha-ha! I win. Also, scientists don't understand philosophy. Only philosophy undergrads do."
Posted by: Owlmirror
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April 6, 2011 1:46 PM
No.
I said "invisible person with magical superpowers" as a minimal definition of anything like a personal God as worshipped by human beings.
If you want to posit "something else" that is not a person, then you're making an atheistic conjecture.
Just like any other atheist cosmologist or philosopher.
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp
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April 6, 2011 1:47 PM
Can a God of the Gaps person name one thing that cramming a supernatural explanation into a scientific endeavor has lead to a successful answer to the original question?
One?
Can you name all the successful ones that have relied on observed natural explanations?
Posted by: Owlmirror
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April 6, 2011 1:50 PM
Turtle stack or brute fact?
Reality is what it is. Why would you even conjecture that it isn't?
Posted by: neel bee
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April 6, 2011 1:50 PM
Azumahazuki, again you make a good point about whether we can be sure of our ultimate reasoning. Maybe you forget, that limitation might apply to all the airy rebuttals about parsimony etc? I mean, sauce ... I didn't say I was sure anyway. This is your infantile piss in the pool moment: a debate is going on, we're all just *arguing* silly. But you don't like how it's going or are irritated that you can't play the usual teenage punks beating up on children game. So, to hell with the whole idea we can even play ball here! What a cop out - no, not because it isn't a good point per se to encourage humbleness, but because you're falsely implying arrogance and non equivalence of the players.
"As if we didn't know you're all narcissistic crybabies to begin with." What do you mean, "philosophers"? I already said I don't accept any religious tradition, and didn't you see my previous reply to you? Are you trying just that odious trash talk I note as political analogy, the right-wing freeper hack who calls all liberal debaters "communists"? For shame, really. My arguments aren't "theology" any more than yours are. That even something as innocuous as a tentative, eliminative argument about our universe's existence or condition would be straw-manned into the whole religion wrangle just goes to show, it's a wingnut thing for many here.
Posted by: raven
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April 6, 2011 1:53 PM
We have. Behe and Gonzalez are crackpots with no credibility in the scientific community. Behe's own department has a disclaimer on their website stating exactly that.
Fallacies of Argument from authority and Argument from crackpottery.
BTW, what's with the Dr. Craig title. Craig has a Ph.D. in make believe, lies, and bafflegab. At least Dr. Raven has a real, earned professional degree in something difficult and useful as do many of the other commenters.
It's Paley's watch for Cthulhu's sake. Fallacy of argument from personal ignorance and incredulity. It's just the design argument and proves nothing.
Oh gee, quoting a book known to be largely or completely fiction to prove something.
There isn't even any historical evidence that any of these disciples even existed. And none that they were killed for their beliefs except in early xian propaganda. This isn't even mythology, it is legends made up long after the fact.
The bible isn't a historical source. It is a work of fiction and propaganda.
I suppose next you will quote Lord of the Rings to prove that Frodo lives and Mordor is destroyed.
And BTW, humans routinely die by the millions for what they believe in. In Guyana, 900 people committed suicide for the Reverend Jim Jones and their People's Temple. This must mean the People's Temple was the Truthiest of True Religions. Hardly a day goes by that a Moslem suicide bomber kills themselves defending Islam and Allah, often killing a few dozen random strangers as well. But your and Craigs criterium, you have just proved that Islam is the Truer of the large modern religions.
Rich, you are dealing with normal, educated adults. We've seen your mindless nonarguments a zillion times and they were nonsense the first time. If this is the best you can do, go back and play with your toys in your sandbox.
Posted by: azumahazuki
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April 6, 2011 1:54 PM
I think I mistook you for one of Craig's frothing fanboys, sorry. My anger is directed at people who swallow his amoral bullshit hook line and sinker, not plain skeptics.
As it is, I rarely if ever participate in the kind of echo-chamber "burn the heretic!" attacks many posters here do; in fact, in PZ's older thread about pacifism I basically told him (and most of the blog) to their virtual faces that they were full of shit.
It's the "full of shit" that gets me, especially when it's the kind of worldview that has the huge brass balls to call a God that would throw a single one of its creations into Hell for eternity good.
You have my apologies for mistaking you for one of them and acting as such.
Posted by: nigelTheBold, Minister of Spankings
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April 6, 2011 1:55 PM
neel bee:
Sorry -- I thought your original point was about the hypocrisy of demanding empiricism for a god proposition while simultaneously offering a proposition that itself had no current empirical evidence.
Tegmark's proposition is ad-hoc, and is essentially the reification of mathematics (a logical fallacy). While fun to think about, it has little to offer in terms of furthering our knowledge.
The danger isn't in thinking about it. The danger is in assuming it's true.
Posted by: Rich in GA
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April 6, 2011 1:57 PM
Dr. Krauss is talking out his rear end when it comes to the resurrection. He gages the validity of the resurrection eyewitness accounts based on 20th / 21st century standards. Today when one makes a discovery, or wants to express their ideas or knowledge of a given topic -- they write it down, publish it in some form. In their day it was just the reverse! They didn't have publishers in those days! Oral testimony -- not written -- was the accepted means. John didn't write his gospel account of Jesus until 90 AD, and that is a long time, however don't forget that he spent 40 years orally teaching the things he wrote down.
Yes people die for what they believe in, but in this case the belief for the disciples was Judaism. It's a perfectly good religion, steeped in tradition. It was not only their religion, but their identity. Even today a person can be both Jewish and Atheist at the same time, because being Jewish is a part of their identity. What is the motive for Christianity if there was no Jesus, or if this Jesus didn't do miracles, or if this Jesus didn't rise from the dead? What did anyone have to gain from the propagation of this if it were a lie.
This is the opposite of Islam who propagated their religion as a form of control. Example of this is the Taliban. Is Christianity free of this? No. Christians are guilty of this as well, but not at it's outset. The disciples and other followers of Jesus were persecuted for 280 years after the death of Jesus.
Posted by: Mr Ashy
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April 6, 2011 2:00 PM
It would e simpler to just say "The bible says it therefore it is true" rather than hiding that behind some pretend logicPosted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp
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April 6, 2011 2:01 PM
Oh please follow this load of crap up with CS Lewis' trilemma. They'll go so well together.
Posted by: raven
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April 6, 2011 2:03 PM
Rich you are an idiot. Our explanation for the universe and it's properties has nothing to do with random chance. That is just a dog whistle word used by uneducated religious kooks.
What we use as an expanation are material causes. Science assumes that there is an objective reality and we are capable of understanding it. That is all there is to it.
Science is the greatest achievement of humankind, lifting us from the Dark Ages to the space and computer ages. It is the basis of modern western civilization and responsible for US leadership in the world. It is wildly successful, so much so that dishonest creeps like Craig attempt to wrap their lies in its mantle.
What has your fundie xian death cult superstition done for us? Other than support US xian terrorism and assassinate a few MD's, nothing good. It's just baggage being dragged along by our society.
Posted by: azumahazuki
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April 6, 2011 2:07 PM
Rich, believe it or not, this is irrelevant.
Even if we grant that the resurrection did take place, think about what it implies. It means there is an evil or, at best, incompetent God.
It means this God purposefully created being that would sin, knowing they would sin, and decided that the best way to remedy this would be to sacrifice himself to himself. Instead of simply forgiving the sin or making it so we don't sin.
Furthermore, he did it in a way that left almost no trace, with a body that had no better morals than the high-thinking men of the day, and in such manner as to look like every other god-man that came before.
Before this body died, he had it prophesy that the end of all things would happen before his disciples finished going through Israel (Matthew 10:23). It has been over 1950 years since. In all this time, the religion has changed in so many ways as to render it almost unrecognizable. God never came to rectify the abuse done in his name either. The majority of his believers are credulous fools and moral retards.
We have explanations for all of these that do not rely on a God who is remote and inscrutable to the point of arguable evil. If you want to keep yours, you need to accept that your God is basically an Elder Thing. We don't.
Posted by: nigelTheBold, Minister of Spankings
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April 6, 2011 2:08 PM
Rich:
What was the motive for Tolkien writing The Lord of the Rings? What is the motive of all those Mormons who were so persecuted, they fled to Utah? What was the motive of L. Ron Hubbard to found his own religion?
What is the motive of all those folks who belong to the Church of Elvis?
Wait! You're judging Islam by 20th / 21st century standards. You do know the Taliban is a recent thing, right? And if you don't think the Catholic Church doesn't exercise control over more people than the Taliban, you are sadly mistaken.
The Koran was written down within a few years of Mohammed's death, by people who knew him. The Bible was written down many years after the alleged death of Jesus (assuming Jesus even existed as an individual), by people who only heard the stories second- or third-hand. Which is more likely to be true to the original source?
Your arguments are weak.
Posted by: neel bee
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April 6, 2011 2:08 PM
Owlmirror: "Person" - I already said that whatever is "behind" things does not have to be like a "person". OTOH, that does not preclude "intentionality" of some sort as a instigation behind why things are as they are (already, many scientists note what seems to be an expression of mathematical beauty etc. in the universe.) In that sense then I'm not a committed "theist." Also, I'm using "philosophy" and not "religion" so you somewhat have a point. But most others thinking in that way stick more closely to specific knowns, and try not to get into "purposes" which I am regarding more abstractly. To me the latter aren't thoughts like in a specific brain, more like Platonic concepts but still find expression. There's been plenty of thought along those lines, and many scientists come "perilously" close to such thoughts, even if substitute "beauty" for e.g. life-friendliness as a reason to exist.
As for turtles: I accept the facts, that isn't the point - their explanation is. Again you fail here by pretending there's some matter of fact I don't accept. No, there isn't. I'm saying we need more as to the "why" of that. There is nothing I fail to accept, that I should.
Rev BDC: You're right, there isn't. So what. Neither has MUH or Modal Realism, or the whole (*large* ensemble multiverse, something you and similar here don't like as comparison.) That's an apple/orange category mistake. That isn't the point of it, it's a different question. You don't have to care, but don't pretend I fail at one game if I'm playing another.
Posted by: raven
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April 6, 2011 2:11 PM
Cthulhu, we need better trolls. This is stupid gibberish.
What is the motive for Buddhism if there was no Buddha.
What is the motive for Scientology if there was no Xenu the Galactic Overlord.
What is the motive for the Moonies if there was no Reverend Sun Myung Moon.
The fact that people believe something doesn't make it true. There are thousands of religions and thousands of gods and they can't all be right. Xians say all but one is Real, atheists say none are Real.
In point of fact, much of religion is a cover for the pervasive human drives for money, power, sex, and security.
We see that easily with the fundie xian cultists in the USA. They are after money and power most of the time and sex some of the time. Hardly a week goes by that some priest or pastor isn't caught stalking little kids for sex or getting caught with a gay hooker or something similar.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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April 6, 2011 2:12 PM
Yawn, still not citing any hard evidence for the ressurection RiGA. Still apologizing for the lack of evidence, and the need for theological bullshit. Why not just show conclusive physical evidence for your imaginary deity, evidence that will pass muster with scientists, magicians, and professional debunkers, as being of divine, and not natural (scientifically explained), origin? Like say an eternally burning bush. Until you can do that, all you have is presupposition and handwaving. Nothing solid.
Posted by: Dhorvath, OM
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April 6, 2011 2:15 PM
Rich,
Here is what we can say with any degree of accuracy: Judaea was a Roman province around when Jesus was purported to have lived. Many people living in Judaea belonged to the Jewish religion at that time. There were sects within that religion forming on a regular basis. One of those sects took off and eventually subborned the Roman Empire.
These are things that are not in dispute. But to say that because people believed in Jesus in the era of the formation of his church is to forget about the other sects that were contemporary and also featured fanatical adherents, but that didn't end up propogating throughout the region in subsequent centuries. You are basically arguing that is true because it succeeded and it succeeded because it is true. Circular reasoning doesn't hold much water.
Posted by: Rich in GA
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April 6, 2011 2:17 PM
I've seen a lot of arguments -- some even calling me a moron, but I've seen not one -- not one explanation to the spread of Christianity given the 280 year persecution, nor the motive behind it. Jewish converts in the first century were shunned by the very community that cradled their upbringing. Why?
Posted by: CJO
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April 6, 2011 2:17 PM
John didn't write his gospel account of Jesus until 90 AD, and that is a long time, however don't forget that he spent 40 years orally teaching the things he wrote down.
Incoherent nonsense. He waited 20 years after the putative date of the crucifixion to begin orally teaching, and forty years after that he decided to write it down, at the age of 90?! Never mind that there is no evidence any such person ever existed or taught anything orally. That's just an assertion, a necessary assumption for those who want to pretend the gospels relate in any way to actual facts about the actual life of an actual apocalyptic prophet named Jesus.
You have no idea what you're talking about. The gospel of John evinces several layers of revision and redaction. Single authorship is highly unlikely on stylistic grounds. Chapter 21, for instance, is clearly a later addition. 90 CE is probably the earliest the first version was written. It was likely not in its final form until the second century, 120 or so. And if it was written by the disciple John, why does the account conflict in so many ways with Matthew, also supposedly written by a disciple. After all this oral teaching for which there is absolutely no evidence, they still couldn't get the story straight?
Posted by: azumahazuki
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April 6, 2011 2:18 PM
Not to mention we have more evidence for Apollonius of Tyana, including actual letters of his, than we do for Jesus. Sure, he came later, and a lot of his miracles sound suspiciously like...gee, just about every other godman of the last 500 years, but still...
Posted by: Dhorvath, OM
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April 6, 2011 2:18 PM
Oh my, that sentence got away from me:
A second try.
Posted by: Rich in GA
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April 6, 2011 2:19 PM
I've seen a lot of arguments -- some even calling me a moron, but I've seen not one -- not one explanation to the spread of Christianity given the 280 year persecution, nor the motive behind it. Jewish converts in the first century were shunned by the very community that cradled their upbringing. For a man who was killed by the leaders of that community? That makes no sense at all -- unless Jesus was who he said he was. Please just don't say, "Your an idiot." Give explanations tell me why, give examples.
Posted by: neel bee
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April 6, 2011 2:21 PM
Azumahazuki: apology accepted, and that's a great move since so many think it's weak etc.
Nigel ..., re
Sorry -- I thought your original point was about the hypocrisy of demanding empiricism for a god proposition while simultaneously offering a proposition that itself had no current empirical evidence.
Uh, that is exactly my original complaint and it's relevant. MU's (of various kinds) are just that latter issue. And don't just say that reifying math "is a fallacy" without understanding the issues, wow if that isn't a case of assuming something. Defining (and worse, justifying the selection) "material existence" in strictly logical terms is not the easy thing you think, in fact it can't be done without circular reasoning or appeal to human experience as being something itself "special" - read Lewis. All that stuff you think you can logically say about all this, could be expressed in terms of model worlds too.
This observation is basically true, but curious to think I need it so much: "The danger isn't in thinking about it. The danger is in assuming it's true." Sure, I don't want to assume it is true or assume it is not true either (and tricks for implying the latter is so unlikely it might as well be, count.) First, I didn't "assume" - I made an argument that uses lots of modern philosophy and contradicts no matter of fact. Second, I am not "sure" in some stuffed up sense. Sure, I think it's a good and somewhat plausible argument, given the intrinsic limitations of the subject matter, but I am no more "sure" of myself (and likely rather less) than you and your colleagues are.
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp
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April 6, 2011 2:23 PM
Well I wasn't specifically addressing you, but if you want to speak up for God of the gaps as a reasonable approach to solving problems / answering questions ok. If not, you can ignore.
My point is that continuing to insert "God" (or whatever esoteric agent you choose) when we don't yet have an explanation for something hasn't, to this point, ever provided us any reliable or even remotely accurate way to tackle answering any scientific question. Why should we assume on a level that is often asserted here that we should still consider this as a viable approach? Could it be in the future? I don't know. We have no positive results to work with to make any predictions.
Until we get any results from it it seems ridiculous to keep making the suggestion that it's even close to being on a level with empiricism.
Posted by: KingUber
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April 6, 2011 2:24 PM
You listed 2 twice
Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist
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April 6, 2011 2:27 PM
It fucking amazes me that people will stand in a fucking megachurch and honestly ask this question.
Posted by: azumahazuki
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April 6, 2011 2:27 PM
260:
I am not an expert in this, but I will weigh in:
Do you know how much friction there was between Paul and the Twelve? (Or Eleven, possibly)? Do you know what the major difference was?
Paul went to the gentiles. The Jesus story succeeded so well among the gentiles because it looked and sounded so much like the pagan godmen. In fact, when challenged on this a few centuries hence, Eusebius has nothing to say except "The Devil saw Jesus coming and made all these near-identical fakes!"
Christianity as we know it is the result of Messianic expectations going badly wrong, and then being hijacked by Platonism. The Jews of the region were already rather heavily Hellenized, especially the Pharisees (as in "beware the leaven of?")
It is NOT an impossible faith. It isn't even all that unlikely. If anything, it was historically inevitable (and for the record, yes, I believe there was at least one person who corresponds to the "historical Jesus.")
And still, still, this doesn't answer the moral problems above. Answer those, if you can. If your beliefs are true, we are living in a universe created by an evil God. You can piss yourself in abject terror now.
Posted by: Dhorvath, OM
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April 6, 2011 2:28 PM
You know, because no other religion has every survived through persecution. Because they belonged to a sect with different values and additional myths. How many Mormon converts from Catholicism do you think are on good terms with their priests?Christianity spread because it was open to people through conversion, it was actively evangelical, and it was seductive to the weak and downtrodden.
Posted by: nigelTheBold, Minister of Spankings
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April 6, 2011 2:29 PM
neel bee:
I should add that I've used a lesser form of Tegmark when dismissing cosmological arguments. As one argument against the various cosmological arguments, I note that the universe (and all potential universes) may be constrained by mathematics. If you have one discrete thing, and put it in a bag with another discrete thing, you will always end up with two discrete things. It is entirely possible (if not probable) that the universe works as it does because all the various things that we consider "free variables" must mathematically result in universes that are more-or-less hospitable to life.
The difference is, I offer mathematics as a constraint. Tegmark offers it as a foundation. Unfortunately, there'd be no possible way to distinguish which (if either) is the metaphysical reality.
And I'm not sure it makes a practical difference. If the evidence we gather over the next several years supports the inflationary model of the universe, there is a larger possibility that the quantum interpretation of the inflationary model is true, and we'd have an infinite number of universes, each expressing mathematics in a different way (due to quantum fluctuation). From a practical standpoint, but the constraint and the foundational propositions would be "true" to a degree.
The end result, as I see it, is that Tegmark is just like every other non-empirical philosophical postulation. It gets us no closer to the "truth of why" you seem to be seeking. In fact, it merely adds yet one more possible metaphysical truth to the pile.
And as a personal note, I'm not sure Tegmark is doing anyone any philosophical favors by resurrecting the ghost of Plato's ideal forms.
Posted by: Rich in GA
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April 6, 2011 2:30 PM
You have no idea what you're talking about. The gospel of John evinces several layers of revision and redaction. Single authorship is highly unlikely on stylistic grounds. Chapter 21, for instance, is clearly a later addition. 90 CE is probably the earliest the first version was written. It was likely not in its final form until the second century, 120 or so. And if it was written by the disciple John, why does the account conflict in so many ways with Matthew, also supposedly written by a disciple. After all this oral teaching for which there is absolutely no evidence, they still couldn't get the story straight?
My bible clearly states that Chapter 21 may have been added in later, and may not be the work of John. They didn't have a publisher to neatly compile their works as we do today. Take ch 21 out, and it doesn't change the message of the Gospel, which agrees with the rest of the Gospels. We know from the writings of Tacitus -- a Roman senator / historian -- who wrote about the deaths of Peter and Paul in 66 and 68 AD. Peter and Paul's testimony agree with John's. But again, you do not supply a motive for why someone would lie about the Resurrection of Jesus.
Posted by: neel bee
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April 6, 2011 2:30 PM
Brownian: not one of those, because that's not what we can easily get to. I don't define "God" on purpose, since I'm not sure "what else" is responsible for the universe (if such need it requires.) It's funny, many here will complain because someone seems so sure about God and what It is or must be like when there's "nothing to go on", but complain if someone is vague about the issue. Well, the vagueness is in response to the eliminative argument not providing that, don't try to complain both ways. And not, "It" is not the universe itself either. Basically, I just can't accept a given "system" like ours as being for granted, for deep logical reasons. That just doesn't tell us much about the alternative, tough.
Posted by: Iain Walker
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April 6, 2011 2:32 PM
Rich in GA (#218 and #219):
Possibly he does believe this. But Krauss could also consistently argue that God is an incoherent hypothesis, so your imagined admission doesn't actually follow from what he said. Assuming that you have reported the gist of what he said accurately.
Oh, please. These guys have already been debunked enough, on this blog alone.
Self-caused and uncaused are not the same thing. In fact, they are mutually exclusive.
Huh. Low-tech Paley.
Notice the assumptions and background knowledge that you need in order to arrive at the conclusion that they were placed there deliberately - firstly, that there are agents which are known to do things like place objects at regular intervals, and secondly, that there are no known natural (non-agent) processes that produce the same phenomena. In other words, you can't infer design in the absense of knowledge of designers and of how to distinguish their products from those non-designers. Without that knowledge, you wouldn't be able to infer design even as a possible explanation.
So, if you can show that there are agents who design living organisms or universes, and that living organisms and universes tend not to arise without the aid of designers, then you can reasonably infer that living organisms or universes are designed. Until then, you have no case.
Oh, and "random chance" vs "purpose" is a false dilemma. Non-random, regular patterns happen all the time in nature without any agency being involved.
Setting aside any questions over the historical accuracy of this, I don't recall anyone arguing that the early Christian martyrs believed the resurrection to be a lie. People are very good at convincing themselves of all sorts of falsehoods.
Irrelevant, since the point of comparison was "willingness to die for what they believed" and what (if anything) this implies for the truth of their beliefs, and nothing more.
Posted by: Rutee, Shrieking Harpy of Dooooom
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April 6, 2011 2:40 PM
Wow, Azuma was serious about this being an echo chamber, and he bases this opinion on the highly contentious comments section where quite a number of regulars disagreed with PZ. What a fucking idiot. I'm going to killfile him now, he has run out of useful things to say.
Another historical illiterate.It's because Constantine thought Christianity would be a good moral glue to keep the Empire together; he saw the writing on the wall, and the way the East and West were squabbling and in threat of dissipating. He thought Christianity would be able to keep the empire together, so he gathered the bishops and told them "Make a coherent single religion, or else" at swordpoint. Prior to this, there was a number of Christianity variants; we have the gospels that some of them used, among other things.
This shit isn't unknown. In 400 years, if Scientology is huge, is that proof it's real? What about Buddhism? Buddhism was thrown out of its home land. Mohammed, going by the myth, was kicked out of his home town of Mecca for teachings that the locals didn't like. Etc. Explain that! Oh wait, don't, I know the explanations, and they're thoroughly naturalistic. Just like the reasoning behind Christianity's spread.
Posted by: azumahazuki
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April 6, 2011 2:42 PM
@271
Not that you can see this, but I'm a woman. A nasty, 6'-tall, very very gay one, but a woman nonetheless. And it IS an echo chamber. Doesn't always make it wrong (in fact, usually it's absolutely correct), but the tendency is there.
Sorry I offended your delicate sensibilities, you fragile little cupcake.
Posted by: raven
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April 6, 2011 2:42 PM
This is still stupid. It's the same with the spread of Islam, Buddhism, Paganism, Hinduism, or any other religion.
The persecution by the Romans was very sporadic and greatly exaggerated by the Catholic church.
And part of the spread of xianity is known. After Constantine, when they became the stronger religion, they persecuted the Pagans and occasionally killed them for many centuries afterwards.
Xianity has always used murder, genocide and threats of violence to maintain control. And now that it has lost the power of the gun, noose, and pile of firewood, it is dying. A few centuries ago, being an atheist would get you killed.
So what. Being an atheist up until a few centuries ago would get you killed. Even today, in parts of the USA they are hated and discriminated against. 7 states prohibit atheists from holding public office.
That doesn't stop people from leaving the xian religion. Most of us here are ex-xians, including myself. Around 1 million people a year drop US xianity, a dying religion.
Whether jesus even existed is a controversial subject. Quoting the bible, known to be largely or completely a work of fiction proves nothing.
The founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith was killed by a mob. Does that make Mormonism true? No, of course not. It means he was a creepy guy who ticked off his neighbors.
.We have. You are not reading bothering to read the replies. You are just a babbling loon and a waste of time.
Really, it's time for your mom to put away your toys and give you your psychiatric medication.
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp
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April 6, 2011 2:45 PM
Why would the Heaven's Gate cult all kill themselves if they weren't going to be transported to the space ship following the Hale-Bopp comet and enter the Next Level?
Posted by: neel bee
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April 6, 2011 2:45 PM
NigelTheBold, thanks for some decent commentary here. Well: I brought up Tegmark first to challenge the idea of empiricist consistency among scientists and "scientific philosophers", but second as a foil. I don't agree with it, I am saying that they are partially right in that *we can't justify* the particularity of "the universe" in logical terms (a better way to put it.) I reject "unique Thisiverse" and that sort of "modal realism" for different respective reasons best summarized in first comment. But I don't think our world or even worlds are plausible as a "self-contained" (logically or as such) entity or family of such, for specific reasons given above.
I don't think quantum fluctuations explain potential variability in physical laws either. Nothing of what we know about them involves changes in laws, and changes driven thereby would just add a turtle of another set of laws defining how the direct ones change. I'm trying to "get behind it all, period."
No, I think something outside all the rest and with no "features" like that, a plenum of ideas or something, has to be behind all that. Again, I don't know or pretend to know, but say that shouldn't make it wrong to think so.
Posted by: Brownian, Most Vicious & Petty of Pharyngulites
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April 6, 2011 2:47 PM
Rich, you're not just an idiot, you're offensively dense and ignorant. Nonetheless, I'll give you some examples, if only because I hope that you'll think hard enough on them to cause you a very painful crisis of faith. I'd rather the rod not be spared, lest you be permanently spoiled.
First of all, I invite you to read the history of Mormonism. Mormons were hounded, persecuted, and even killed by Christians in the early part of the Church's history. Missouri Executive Order 44 made legal their extermination from the state, by fatal force if necessary. To use your idiot's logic, why would the Mormons persist despite being shunned, killed, and otherwise driven from their communities? That makes no sense at all—unless Joseph Smith was who he said he was.
What about the practitioners of Falun Gong? They're being tortured and killed in China right now. Why don't they just renounce? That makes no sense at all—unless Li Hongzhi was right. (Here's a picture of a Falun Gong practitioner tortured for her beliefs. You can pin it on your wall next to your collection of stories of saints and martyrs.) What about Rastafaris? Does the fact that they were killed for their beliefs (and still are, according to some) make no sense at all—unless Haile Selassie I was indeed Almighty God? Is Zoroastrian persistence in the face of persecution evidence of the existence of Ahura Mazda? Is the faith of Bahá'ís evidence that Siyyid Mírzá `Alí-Muhammad was the Mahdi?
Finally, what about us? We constantly endure threats of death, both in life and in the imagined afterlife, by your compatriots in Christ, among others. And yet we still refuse to admit that 2+2=5. Does that make sense unless you accept as true that there are no gods, including Christ?
*Yes, I understand that there are a lot of really hard words in this post, but I assure you you'll have a much easier time if you crack a fucking book once in awhile, you ignoramus.
Posted by: nigelTheBold, Minister of Spankings
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April 6, 2011 2:54 PM
No, they're not. As I have repeatedly shown, the MU that is derived from a quantum interpretation of the inflationary model is derived from empirical evidence. The inflationary model itself has plenty of empirical evidence. The quantum interpretation that results in the infinite universes is itself a relatively-recent interpretation, but one that seems inevitable. While it has no empirical evidence itself, it is based on empirically-supported models. This raises it above fantasy and into the realm of possibility.
At the very least, there is evidential support for the theoretical model from which it is derived.
If you don't grasp this distinction, and understand why that makes it far superior to propositions that are fabricated whole-clothe out nothing, then I imagine we'll never come to accord one this.
Why not? That's pretty much just what Tegmark admits. The instant you claim you have no empirical evidence, but propose mathematics is the foundation of reality, you are reifying math. That is a fallacy, pure and simple. (That doesn't make it wrong. It just makes the argument fallacious.)
As soon as Tegmark comes up with some actual testable predictions, then we can talk about removing the reification qualifier. Until that day, it's no more substantial, and no less fallacious, than mind/brain dualism.
You're flirting with solipsism here. And whether or not it can be expressed in model worlds is irrelevant. The question is one of discernability, of epistemology. Tegmark's reification of mathematics doesn't result in a usable epistemology. The assumption of material existence does. That in-and-of-itself is an argument in support of material existence.
Posted by: raven
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April 6, 2011 2:55 PM
More idiocy.
All religions are made up.
Jesus isn't even the first dying and resurrecting god in that part of the world.
Dionysius and Osiris died and were resurrected centuries before them. So was Mithras.
So what is the motive for the Dionysius, Osiris, or Mithras resurrection stories? According to you, no one would just make them up. Or would they?
The xian dying and reborn god story is so similar to the older accounts that the early xians were frequently accused of stealing their myths. They didn't have a good answer. They probably did exactly that.
What is the motive for the Book of Mormon, Scientology, the Moonies, the Koran, Zeus, Odin, or countless other gods?
Posted by: Iain Walker
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April 6, 2011 2:58 PM
Rich in GA (#218 and #219):
Untrue. Tacitus mentions neither of them. He just talks generally of the persecution of Christians under Nero.
Posted by: Rutee, Shrieking Harpy of Dooooom
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April 6, 2011 2:58 PM
'kay. Still an idiot, but now I know the correct gender. Apologies for my mistake there. Only if the word has taken on a brand new meaning that refers to contentious spaces wherein people fight over nearly every point except that there is no God.Fuck, you used the phrase in a post where at least a full third of the commenters disagreed wth PZ outright, and where even more felt the need to qualify things; How does that not tell you that you're fucking wrong?
I'm sorry, is the little philosophy major who can't handle being disagreed with so much that she has to call a place an echo chamber calling someone else a cupcake? No, I just have limited tolerance for stupidity. Buzz off, fly.Posted by: azumahazuki
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April 6, 2011 2:58 PM
Raven:
In fairness, what likely happened was that there was a Yeshua bar Yousef who had all that crap grafted onto him later, since who in the gentile world would believe he was son of God if he couldn't out-supernatural Hercules?
Still, you're basically right: as mentioned above, Eusebius himself has nothing more to say on that score than "Well...well...um, the Devil knew Jesus was coming and he made up all those fake gods!"
Posted by: azumahazuki
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April 6, 2011 3:01 PM
No, Rutee, you have me confused with someone else. Azuma Hazuki, Marissa van Eck. I'm a geologist by training, an amateur atheologian and historian in my free time, and a Linux sysadmin (one of the few women in the field) for a job.
Posted by: Iain Walker
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April 6, 2011 3:05 PM
Dammit. My #279 was a reply to Rich's #268.
Posted by: Dhorvath, OM
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April 6, 2011 3:08 PM
I don't think quantum fluctuations explain potential variability in physical laws either. Nothing of what we know about them involves changes in laws
Nothing we know about them explains their current formulation. That they might vary is necessary to consider because we don't know that they are fixed. If they vary, we do have some theoretical reasons in place which suggest how they would do so, but that remains a theoretical game until we can explore the idea through examining reality.
Is there something underneath what we know so far? Almost certainly there is some other basic idea that we don't know yet or haven't explored well enough to conclude it's significance. What understanding is brought to the table is now our only guiding principle in considering deeper theories because of our lack of data to work with.
Posted by: Carlie of the lacy, gently wafting adjectives
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April 6, 2011 3:09 PM
Interesting. No matter what the topic is, I find it hard to care about anything that's written by a rape apologist. Funny that.
Posted by: Dhorvath, OM
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April 6, 2011 3:10 PM
Editing is not my strength today.
Nothing we know about them explains their current formulation. That they might vary is necessary to consider because we don't know that they are fixed. If they vary, we do have some theoretical reasons in place which suggest how they would do so, but that remains a theoretical game until we can explore the idea through examining reality.
Is there something underneath what we know so far? Almost certainly there is some other basic idea that we don't know yet or haven't explored well enough to conclude it's significance. What understanding is brought to the table is now our only guiding principle in considering deeper theories because of our lack of data to work with.
Posted by: nigelTheBold, Minister of Spankings
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April 6, 2011 3:14 PM
neel bee:
This has to do with quantum fluctuation of potential energy within the early inflationary universe. Quantum fluctuation in our current universe doesn't change much (other than randomizing certain events, or causing virtual particle pairs to pop in and out of existence).
There's a small but vocal group of cosmologists who have demonstrated that even slight variations in an inflationary universe would cause specific "rogue" areas to inflate more rapidly, or to continue inflating after other areas have slowed or stopped. This would cause fragmentation into "island universes," each with slightly different properties.
I'd heard of this before, but the write-up in the new issue of Scientific American is really quite accessible. I highly recommend it.
Fair enough.
I've enjoyed this discussion. I often find philosophy alternately masturbatory and incestuous -- ideas discussed as ideals with limited or no reference to observable reality tend to go off in directions that are nebulous to the point of woo.
My problem with all philosophical speculation is simply this: once you depart from what we can observe, you enter a realm where anything you imagine is possible. The only thing keeping you in check is your own sense of reality, your own grasp of logic. And while logic is a dandy tool, the tiniest variations in your presuppositions can result in wildly varying conclusions.
Thanks for the conversation. While I might come across as impenetrably smug, I really did learn some.
Posted by: azumahazuki
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April 6, 2011 3:14 PM
We're all missing the point here:
There may be a God or gods. I for one have no problem with that.
Craig isn't really arguing that. Not really. He's arguing for his Bronze-age moral monster Christ-thulhu and I wish people would call him out on that. There was nothing to debate.
I'd have handled it like this:
"Dr. Craig? Yes, there may be a God. Or gods. No one contests this. Trying to prove a universal negative is fruitless. Why are we here again? Now if we want to talk about YOUR God specifically, we can."
Posted by: neel bee
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April 6, 2011 3:17 PM
NigelTheBold, again you have a point but it misses the Point. Sure, no testable predictions, I get that. The whole point as I understand, is what to think about just those very things about which we can't get those TPs ... And I don't care the "weak minded" (his mother) Hume had to day in dismissal, I think about whatever I please.
I'm not sure about this "discernability" except as gasp, an issue of human consciousness. The idea of "existence" does not result in any specific epistemology or explanation of why this and not other. That's the big problem, why either selection of worlds, or why not a mess if "all of them exist." This complaint around here about "pixie dust": sorry to say, but without some sort of pixie dust there's just no way to pick out PW's, to make them real. It's like a ghost or soul inside some numbers and not others, beyond math. I can accept something "else" doing that, but can you?
BTW, re WLC's debates: what have debate referees decided? I know, that wouldn't prove who is right, just askin' ...
Posted by: Rutee, Shrieking Harpy of Dooooom
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April 6, 2011 3:18 PM
I hear that, Carlie.
Posted by: azumahazuki
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April 6, 2011 3:25 PM
You had better not be referring to me with that "rape apologist" bit.
Posted by: Dhorvath, OM
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April 6, 2011 3:27 PM
Azuma,
Check the new posts in the sidebar. Krauss went and supported someone who did something pretty piss poor.
Posted by: Iain Walker
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April 6, 2011 3:28 PM
Rich in GA (#246):
Of course he does. He's basing his evaluation on prior probability, the availability (or lack thereof) of independent corroborating accounts, our modern knowledge of the reliability of eyewitness testimony (and human psychology in general), the history of the sources, etc etc. In other words, he's basing his judgement on exactly the same criteria than ancient historians use when evaluating ancient texts. What the hell is wrong with that?
You're confusing modes of transmission with standards of evaluation. Whether people's claims are written down or passed on orally does not, in itself, have any bearing on the validity of those claims (although oral transmission has a greater chance of being mangled and embellished in the retelling and by faulty memory).
But even if people in the past had a lower standard of evidence than we do today, so what? That just makes them more credulous, not right.
Are you really incapable of grasping the notion that "is true" and "is a lie" are not mutually exhaustive options?
Posted by: nigelTheBold, Minister of Spankings
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April 6, 2011 3:39 PM
neel bee:
I apologize for missing the Point. I'm still not quite sure what it is, I reckon. It seems you are taking one extreme of empiricism, either that empiricism is no more useful than any other tool; or that without empirical evidence, all propositions are equal. I gather this because of the original charge of hypocrisy.
I certainly do not wish to constrain what you think about. Hell, sometimes I find myself thinking about the way bedbugs procreate (it ain't pretty), and what that means for humanity. Sometimes I think all our accomplishments mean absolutely nothing at that we should commit species suicide by not procreating ourselves.
Sometimes I think the universe is a giant quantum computing happily computing its next state.
I had a banana for breakfast today. I wonder why I had that particular banana, and not some other?
"Pixie dust" is anything that doesn't have some sort of support in reality. In Tegmark's metaphysics, the pixie dust is the reification of mathematics. In a Christian worldview, pixie dust is the magic of god. In the infinite universes resulting from quantum fluctuations in an inflationary universe, the pixie dust is quantum variations fragmenting inflation and resulting in island universes.
I can accept whatever evidence and logic dictates as the most likely model of reality. I can even accept that we'll never know exactly what that is. Even further, I can accept that there is nothing more than what we observe.
If it turns out that Tegmark is correct in his reification of mathematics, or that the universe is a quantum computer as described by Seth Lloyd, or that we're a simulation in some unknowable computer, I'll accept that. It doesn't matter to me, as long as we arrive at that conclusion through evidence and logic and the pixie dust of predictive testability.
(Okay, it does matter. Some potential realities are way cooler than others.)
Posted by: CJO
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April 6, 2011 3:57 PM
you do not supply a motive for why someone would lie about the Resurrection of Jesus.
Maybe you can help us out. What's your motive for lying about what Tacitus wrote? Or maybe you've never read Tacitus, but just believes some other liar about what he wrote? In which case, you still might be able to help us out. What's your motive for regurgitating lies on subjects you clearly know nothing about? It all amounts to the same thing. People adopt erroneous beliefs either out of malice, stupidity, or sincere misapprehension (which they do nothing to correct), and spread them around.
Posted by: azumahazuki
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April 6, 2011 3:59 PM
As to motive for lying, has no one ever heard of the sunk costs fallacy?
"This was the guy we believed was the Messiah! He CAN'T be dead! No, something supernatural is at work here..."
Posted by: CJO
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April 6, 2011 4:38 PM
Fuck you, Matt.
Posted by: Dhorvath, OM
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April 6, 2011 4:41 PM
Ellie,
It makes me chuckle that you posted the wrong link to proofs for a deity. Life is good some times.
Posted by: CJO
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April 6, 2011 4:53 PM
"Ellie" did not make a mistake. "Ellie" is that asshole Matt spamming the thread again with links to malware sites, like the petulant fucking shitstain he is.
Posted by: First Approximation, L'esprit de l'escalier
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April 6, 2011 7:37 PM
The Rev.,
QFT.
Posted by: neel bee
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April 6, 2011 7:40 PM
NigelTheBold, thanks for a fair repartee and your fair assessment of limitations of philosophy as such. You don't come across any more smug than me, and you're welcome re learning something. A few parting shots: bananas, well that's a matter of picking from among ones that exist. Existential "picking" is a different matter (Platonic versus "real"), but there's not a lot to prove about it one way or the other.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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April 6, 2011 7:50 PM
neel bee, something about your inane sophistry smells familiar. Used to post here with a ♪ in your moniker?
Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere
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April 6, 2011 9:16 PM
When I was reading WLC's response to the Euthyphro Dilemma, I had the same reaction as Iain Walker. It doesn't actually solve the dilemma, just puts it one step back.
You could understand, perhaps, if the notion of God's nature was an expression of our own nature - but what we find good or bad in our nature is determined by evolution and cultural influences - two central aspects the God concept is missing.
In any case, it's confusing that anyone would find WLC's answer satisfactory. It doesn't actually solve the problem, it's just a metaphysical throw rug that hides it from view.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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April 6, 2011 9:19 PM
Welcome to religious apologetics from delusional fools for $100 Alex...Posted by: https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawkUL-U9MUY8KYyNdOz0mVLJQIOQ81UEVm8
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April 6, 2011 10:27 PM
Wowbagger: Sorry for not responding earlier; this is a new format for me, and I got a bit lost in the endless series of comments.
"It's nothing to do with ignorance, of Christianity or any other religion; you're missing the point of the expression.
"It's about prompting you to think about why you don't believe in Vishnu (almost entirely because he's not the deity favoured by the culture you were raised in), not asking you to find a way to dodge the issue by claiming, in a roundabout way, that you do."
But the expression DOES betray gross ignorance both of Christianity, and of other religions. The fact is, God is not limitted to Judeo-Christian tradition, as Krauss was assuming, and as people who use this line always seem to assume -- and as you assume here, too.
Vishnu can be understood in two ways: (a) as a particular Hindu deity, or (b) as one manifestation of the only God. (This is very common in Hinduism.) In the latter sense, it may be that Christians DO believe in him, though what we believe is rather different.
Also, the cultural transcendence of God is, I argue, a reason to believe he is ontologically real, not just a human invention.
I'm not going to try to hunt down your second comment -- there's just too much here. If you would like to pursue the issue, please respond on the "christthetao" blog, after my "You are too a stamp collector" arguments -- which you might like to read, first.
Posted by: Eric
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April 6, 2011 10:33 PM
"Based on what Krauss writes in his original post here, his line of criticism still holds, because as far as I can see, he takes the inference from "willing to die for" to "sincerely believes" as read, as being trivial. Even if he is committing the error you attribute to him, adding the inference does not undermine the general tenor of his objection. That people sincerely belief that X does not help you determine whether or not X is true."
Krauss most certainly commits that error.
Krauss: "Finally, the remarkable, and completely trite claim that the fact the Christians were willing to die for their beliefs *demonstrates the validity of these beliefs* would be laughable, if it weren't so pitiful."
What's pitiful is Krauss's misrepresentation of Craig's argument. I challenge anyone to show me where Craig has argued from "willingness to die for a belief" to "the belief is true." What Craig argues is that willingness to die for a belief is strong evidence that a belief is held sincerely. This move does some work in a couple of areas of Craig's resurrection argument. First, it knocks down, or at least severely weakens, certain possible objections, such as the one Krauss himself raises, i.e. "that those who were preaching to convert fabricated a resurrection myth in order to convince those to whom they were preaching of Christ's divinity." (Of course, this also affects other possible moves, e.g. the empty tomb, supposing you accept that it was empty, is explained by Jesus' followers stealing the body, etc.) Second, it supports a part of the fourth piece of data that Craig uses in his abductive argument, viz. Jesus' followers came to believe sincerely that he was resurrected, despite their predispositions not to believe.
Again, I'm not here to defend the argument. I'm here to show that Krauss doesn't understand the first thing about the argument.
"There's also an additional point - I can be willing to die for an ideology without necessarily accepting that every last one of the claims of that ideology are true."
Of course, but Craig doesn't use this point to support every detail of Christian doctrine. He uses it to support the claim that Jesus' followers sincerely believed that he had been resurrected.
"And for many of those willingly martyred for their adherence to Christianity in the early days, their actual, personal motivation for doing so remains unrecorded."
We know that belief in the resurrection was central to Christianity from the beginning. Now sure, no one is saying that followers of Jesus were asked to deny the resurrection before they were martyred. But the reason they refused, as Polycarp did, to claim that Caesar is lord, is because they thought that Jesus was lord, and they believed this primarily because they believed in the resurrection.
"As a student of philosophy (both formally and informally so) over many years, this claim strikes me as completely false. All the attempts I've seen to resolve the dilemma seem to boil down to an assertion that "goodness" is part of God's "nature", but on closer analysis, this either founders in incoherence or reduces to one or other of the horns of the dilemma.
So if you have an example of an argument that does in fact resolve the Euthyphro, let's hear it."
Whenever I hear this, I *know* that the person I'm talking to is completely unfamiliar with classical theism, and is still thinking about god in a personalist theistic sense. I grant that the latter conception of god is more widespread among Christians in the pews, but it's classical theism that dominates the Western philosophic tradition.
Here's a quick explanation: the notion of divine simplicity (which entails a grasp of the convertibility of the transcendentals), which is fundamental to the classical tradition, is key to resolving the Euthyphro dilemma. (Divine simplicity follows from a number of other arguments and conceptual analyses, especially concerning those that lead to the conclusion that god is pure act, so it's not merely "asserted" as part of the definition of god, as someone is almost certain to assume.) As Stump, one of the world's top Aquinas scholars, puts it, "The doctrine of divine simplicity entails a third alternative which provides what neither [horn of the Euthyphro dilemma] is capable of. Because god is simple, he is goodness; that is, the divine nature itself is perfect goodness." Or, as Feser puts it, "if god just is perfect goodness which just is the divine will which just is immutable and necessary being, then there can be no question either of god willing in accordance with some standard of goodness independent of him or of his will being arbitrary." Now sure, it requires a lot of argument to get us to the conclusion that god is pure act, and from that to divine simplicity, and from that to the convertibility of the transcendentals, and from that to the third alternative to the dilemma. But the arguments are there, and the third alternative does not in any way rest on some mere "assertion," and it certainly does not "founder in incoherence or reduce to one or other of the horns of the dilemma." Rather, when skeptics take the time to work their way through the arguments, they usually respond by asking how to square such a god with the god of the Bible. That's another issue (and one which Aquinas addresses extensively, relying heavily on his empiricist epistemology), of course; But the point is that from a purely *philosophical* view there is a viable third alternative, and it happens to be a fact that this alternative rests on the conception of god that dominates the classical Western philosophical tradition.
"In other words, the evidence of experience is not best explained by the existence of a deity which upholds (and communicates) any kind of absolute morality. Since it's hard to see how the existence of absolute moral standards and a god which upholds them predicts the disparity of moral views amongst believers and the appalling acts they have committed throughout history, Krauss seems to have the right of it."
I grant your criticism of my response, at least as I formulated it. I phrased it poorly. Let me rephrase it.
Krauss: "if there is evidence that God provides absolute Morality, it is missing from the world of our experience, where different religious groups, all of whom claim divine inspiration, have incompatible moral views"
Krauss is claiming that the fact of moral disagreement counts against the truth of the claim that god is the source of objective moral values. But it is precisely here that he confuses epistemology with metaphysics. The ontological question of what (if anything) grounds objective moral values (if there are any) is quite distinct from the epistemological question of how we come to know those objective moral values, and thus of whether we agree or disagree about them. Craig's moral argument is not at all affected by the diversity of moral judgment since it's only concerned with the ontological issue.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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April 6, 2011 10:39 PM
Yawn, apparently Eric still hasn't figured out you can't prove his imaginary deity through sophistry, but keeps trying anyway. There is a reasons science, and not philosophy, are helping mankind progress. Has to do with real evidence, not just words, to back up ideas. And all theologians have at the end of the day is false words...
Posted by: Dhorvath, OM
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April 6, 2011 10:42 PM
CJO,
Thanks. It still tickles me even if it's not true.
Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere
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April 6, 2011 11:01 PM
No there isn't, that doesn't actually solve the problem, it just hides it.Posted by: Eric
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April 6, 2011 11:11 PM
Kel, nonsense. Reread the Feser quote:
"if god just is perfect goodness which just is the divine will which just is immutable and necessary being, then there can be no question either of god willing in accordance with some standard of goodness independent of him or of his will being arbitrary."
It most certainly does not "hide" the "problem." As Feser explains, divine simplicity obliterates the problem by showing that the horns of the dilemma only make sense when applied to a very different conception of god. Now you may of course take issue with divine simplicity, but it's rather obviously the case that *if* divine simplicity can be defended, then the Euthyphro dilemma is worthless. (I emphasized the "if" not because I don't think it can be defended, but to stress the point that given divine simplicity, the dilemma disappears.) So the claim that the problem is somehow 'hidden' with an appeal to divine simplicity is unwarranted.
Posted by: raven
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April 6, 2011 11:21 PM
So what? People die today by the millions for sincerely held beliefs. It's an extremely common human practice and we see it almost everyday.
Recently the B'hais in Iran were persecuted by the Moslems. They executed the entire leadership. The B'hais appointed a new leadership and sent the list of names to the Moslems and dared them to kill them again. They didn't do it.
By your criterium and Craig's, the B'hais must be the truthiest of the true religions.
Heaven's gate, Rev. Jim Jones Peoples Temple, Moslems hijacking jets and crashing them into sky scrapers, any soldier in any war raging now anywhere in the world, falun gong, the list is endless.
It proves absolutely nothing about the truth of those beliefs.
Of course, this also affects other possible moves, e.g. the empty tomb, supposing you accept that it was empty, is explained by Jesus' followers stealing the body, etc.)
That is a myth from a book of fiction. Proves nothing. It is controversial whether jesus even existed.
Second, it supports a part of the fourth piece of data that Craig uses in his abductive argument, viz. Jesus' followers came to believe sincerely that he was resurrected, despite their predispositions not to believe.
This is incorrect. You and Craig are lying here. Dead and resurrected gods were dime a dozen at that time and that place. Dionysius, Hercules, Osiris, Mithras among others. It was a common religious mythology. The writers of the NT were Hellenized Jews or Hellenes themselves. The NT itself is written in Greek, not Aramaic or Hebrew.
The writers of the NT had to be familiar with those religions and those myths. Chances are they just stole them to explain why the teacher named jesus was executed by the Romans, assuming anything like that even happened. "Look, jesus is god and him been crucified is all part of his plan. Don't look too hard behind that curtain and it all makes sense."
IIRC, Eric has been here before and can spend days stringing together faulty reasoning and lies. Whatever, but it gets too boring to bother with quickly.
Craig, Strobel, and Plantinga are the same way. It's trivial to pick apart their lame apologetics, which has the same relationship to philosophy that finger painting has to the Old Masters.
Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere
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April 6, 2011 11:26 PM
It's hidden in the sense that nothing in there seeks to answer the question of what 'good' is. I've read the Feser quote three times now and I cannot see how that solves the issue at all. We're still left with no grounds for a non-arbitrary standard of 'good' as all that's saying is that God IS the grounding of what's good. What about God's nature makes murder evil, or being charitable good? I just don't see how that solves the issue - just pushes the issue one step back.
Posted by: feralboy12, der Ken-Puppe Sie außerhalb in 1983 verlassen
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April 6, 2011 11:29 PM
Eric, please be careful at the next zebra crossing.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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April 6, 2011 11:30 PM
And Eric continues with sophistry and bullshit, without concrete physical evidence anywhere in sight. Some folks never learn...
Posted by: raven
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April 6, 2011 11:30 PM
I'll add one more for the road.
What Craig does is just string together lies and faulty reasoning and then claim it proves jesus existed and is god.
Anyone can do the same thing and prove Invisible Pink Unicorns exist, Mohammed was right, or Xenu the Galactic Overlord dumped a few billion Thetan ghosts on earth 70 million years ago. That is in fact, what all religions do.
It only works for those who already believe though, which is the intended audience. And not even all that often. 1 million people leave xianity every year in the USA.
If Eric and Craig had any ability to think whatsoever, they might wonder why the xian belief system requires endless repetition, endless threats, endless lies, a huge amount of money and government support, and lifelong brainwashing to sustain itself. Might just be because it is a fairy tale like all the other religions.
Posted by: Aratina Cage
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April 6, 2011 11:31 PM
Holy Handwaving Batman! That is the understatement of the thread!Posted by: John Morales
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April 6, 2011 11:38 PM
Eric:
What you see as its disappearance via an indefensible (incoherent, really) proposition is the very hiding which you're supposedly denying occurs.
Heh.
Posted by: raven
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April 6, 2011 11:40 PM
Quite a few ancient dying and resurrecting gods and goddesses running around.
A few more won't hurt. Jesus has already been added but I do believe Saint Reagan is scheduled to return from the dead about now.
Posted by: Wowbagger, Man-Hating Man of Pharyngula
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April 6, 2011 11:41 PM
Is there an expression that goes something like 'philosophy is to thinking what masturbating is to sex'? Because that's what (pardon the pun) comes to mind as I read Eric's comments.
When your arguments hinge entirely on how some words (like 'good') can be definitionally flexible, you should really stop bothering.
Posted by: Eric
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April 6, 2011 11:47 PM
"By your criterium and Craig's, the B'hais must be the truthiest of the true religions."
Criterium?
How cute of you to call me clueless in a post in which you claim my "criterium" is precisely what I claimed Craig denies!
And anyone who puts Strobel and Plantinga in the same category is obviously not worth talking to. You almost certainly haven't read a word of Plantinga, and certainly wouldn't be capable of understanding a word of him if you tried (look how badly you botched your reading of my little blog post!).
Thank goodness there are smart Pharyngula regulars like Kel and Iain to offset morons like this Raven fellow. I just wish you guys would call clowns like this on their stupidity, and not ignore nonsense when 'your side' spews it.
Posted by: John Morales
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April 6, 2011 11:53 PM
Eric:
Raven is a respected regular, and everyone gets called out.
Seriously, you're defending how a claim beginning with "if god just is perfect goodness evades the horns of the dilemma, and expect to be taken seriously?
Bah.
Posted by: Eric
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April 6, 2011 11:53 PM
"What you see as its disappearance via an indefensible (incoherent, really) proposition is the very hiding which you're supposedly denying occurs."
John, in order for you to call it "incoherent" you must be familiar with the arguments. Kindly explain these arguments to me, and point out precisely what you take to be incoherent. I have to say, I sincerely doubt your reading in this area goes beyond blog posts and wiki entries. I've literally read volumes on these issues, so please, show me what I've missed. I know of difficulties, but I've yet to find any incoherence. Surely, you understand that to claim that something is incoherent is a very strong claim; I'd love to see you attempt to defend it. So explain divine simplicity to me, preferably with more sophistication than one can find in a wiki entry, and show me precisely where and why it's incoherent.
Posted by: John Morales
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April 7, 2011 12:00 AM
Eric:
Sure.
God just simply is whatever it needs to be to suit one's argument.
Goodness is an abstraction; if God is goodness, then God must be an abstraction.
Posted by: hotshoe
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April 7, 2011 12:04 AM
Ahh, but god is a very special kind of abstraction which can hear your prayers and which wants to supervise your sex life.
Oh, and a really really special kind of abstraction which could get itself born as a human body which looked and felt like real flesh when people poked it ... or so they say :)
Posted by: hotshoe
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April 7, 2011 12:10 AM
I hadn't ever thought of it exactly that way, but now that you mention it, that's what gets me about little Willy Craig when I see him. He gives the impression that he's always got a mental hand down his mental pants.
I don't see how anyone can watch Willy Craig in person and not be creeped out enough to have to leave. I mean, masturbating's all fine and well, but there's a reason we teach our children not to do it in public.
Posted by: Mattir-ritated
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April 7, 2011 12:14 AM
Oh, where to start... Did eric really just ask Pharyngula for a sophisticated discussion of the simplicity of an imaginary friend? Sometimes mockery just writes itself.
Posted by: feralboy12, der Ken-Puppe Sie außerhalb in 1983 verlassen
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April 7, 2011 12:15 AM
This is some sort of app that generates Courtier's replies, isn't it?
Posted by: Owlmirror
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April 7, 2011 12:16 AM
Not only is goodness an abstraction; it's an abstraction that has different definitions, including those depending on contingent circumstance, and the subjective and/or intersubjective assessment of actual, real-world effects of something on real people.
As I recall, Aquinas -- and by implication, all of the sophistimacated philolsophers who followed him, including Stump, Feser, Craig, and presumably Eric -- used a definition of "goodness" in his arguments that had nothing whatsoever to do with the consequences of some action upon human beings, or any other beings, and thus, in claiming that this sense of "goodness" refutes the Euthyphro dilemma, he and his followers commit the logical fallacy of equivocation, among many other logical fallacies.
Posted by: First Approximation, L'esprit de l'escalier
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April 7, 2011 12:17 AM
Sigh, I actually feel a bit sorry for Eric. He's not dumb (like many of the theists we get here), but he has wasted whatever intelligence he has on theology.
It's like seeing a bright biologist retreat into a library and spend his days and nights on unicorn husbandry, griffin mating patterns and leprechaun anatomy. He creates these intricate drawings and writes detailed books. They may be interesting and complex, but they have nothing to do with reality. When you try to criticize his studies he hits back "I've literally read volumes on these issues, so please, show me what I've missed."
Posted by: Wowbagger, Man-Hating Man of Pharyngula
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April 7, 2011 12:23 AM
Eric wrote:
[cough] Courtier's Reply! [cough]
Posted by: Owlmirror
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April 7, 2011 12:27 AM
Ah, it's coming back to me now. Fucking privative concept of evil.
Aquinas argued that something "good" was that which best conformed to its essence. Since he had previously argued that God is the essence of existence blah blah blah, and God was essentially simple, then God did indeed conform perfectly to its essence blah blah blah, therefore, God is perfectly "good" blah blah blah.
It's all fucking stupid word games that wouldn't fool anyone with half a functioning brain -- unless, of course, they had brainwashed themselves into thinking that it wasn't foolishness, but was rather secretly "wise". Because Aquinas spent all that time and effort writing all those damn words, so, hey, he couldn't have been completely full of shit, right?
Fucking sophistimacted theolology.
Posted by: First Approximation, L'esprit de l'escalier
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April 7, 2011 12:47 AM
Owlmirror,
I don't think I've ever seen a better description of theology.
Posted by: Wowbagger, Man-Hating Man of Pharyngula
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April 7, 2011 12:49 AM
Every one of Eric's arguments hinge on that very powerful word, 'if'. 'If' goodness can be described a certain way then his god can avoid the Euthryphro dilemma' and so forth.
But that's the thing about 'if'. It doesn't mean anything without having something concrete to back it up. So, since he doesn't have anything concrete to back up his claims about what his god isn't or isn't, it's not unreasoanble to respond using the words my always-charming father would use when I asked him an 'if' question:
'If your auntie had balls, she'd be your uncle.'
Posted by: myarchive50
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April 7, 2011 12:59 AM
Scientists need to learn how to debate. It was a huge mistake for Krauss to say that "logic" is often wrong when he meant intuition is often wrong.
Posted by: First Approximation, L'esprit de l'escalier
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April 7, 2011 1:06 AM
Looking at the other thread, it seems Krauss has given the theists a tiny victory (even if this debate wasn't one).
I can see them now: atheist debater defends pedophile! And he invoked science while doing so!
Agreed.
Posted by: jenga
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April 7, 2011 5:48 AM
A mark of preparation in rebutting an opponent is the ability to first get the opponent's claims right, and ONLY then reply. Krauss didn't do this. Those familiar with Craig's work ought to notice that straightaway.
Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere
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April 7, 2011 7:16 AM
Over at Debunking Christianity, I've been arguing for a form of moral realism. What I find interesting about my position is that it offers a perfectly acceptable way to reconcile objective morality, yet some are fixated in trying to make God necessary in the process. Not really sure what God adds (and no-one has yet come up with a satisfactory answer), but I do find it fascinating that people try to make God a necessary component when the view I'm advocating sits just as comfortably in a theist framework as an atheist one.
Posted by: Tim Beazley
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April 7, 2011 7:22 AM
What a pleasant surprise to find David Marshall (#118) flogging his latest book of evangelical drivel here. Not!
In case you haven't noticed, Marshall is a relentless self-promoter. Just look at him pretentiously awarding himself the title "scholar," like Napoleon grabbing the crown and placing it on his own head. Marshall pompously also posts reviews of his own books in the Amazon forums, giving them the highest possible rating, five stars. Wow, they must be good books; even the author loved them! LOL
But judging from the one-star reviews of Marshall's "The Truth Behind the New Atheism," his "scholarship" is just the typical drivel put out by the evangelical crowd. Many of Marshall's arguments are in the "Dawkins is a Nazi" category, others rely on the classic creationist tactic of quoting out of context, and there are at least two cases that look a lot like plagiarism. So much for Marshall's scholarship.
But what's most interesting for an author who titled his book "The Truth ..." is that many of Marshall's arguments are simply and obviously falsehoods. To give just a few examples:
1. Marshall indicates that the Bible was written in the Stone Age. (114) The Stone Age! LOL
2. Marshall complained that Dawkins doesn't cite any actual Christians in "The God Delusion" (16), but Dawkins' book is full -- repeat, full! -- of citations to very prominent Christians.
3. Marshall claims, "Harris blames America's high rates of abortion, teen pregnancy, and sexually transmitted disease on Christianity" (204). In reality, Harris explicitly -- repeat, explicitly! -- disavows the causal link that Marshall attributes to him.
4. On page 62, Marshall uses a partial quote from Darwin which implies that Darwin thought evolution faced virtually insurmountable objections, but Darwin's full statement actually says the exact opposite of what Marshall's partial quote implies.
5. Marshall indicates that mainstream science confirms the order of the appearance of life reported in Genesis (61). Really? Genesis, Ch. 2, indicates that humans were the first animal life form on Earth. I doubt that mainstream science confirms that!
6. Marshall quotes Dawkins' allegedly nonsensical definition of faith, "believing what you know isn't true" (24); but not only does Marshall not provide a reference for that alleged quote in his book, he angrily refused to provide one when challenged later. That indicates deliberate dishonesty.
BTW, Marshall angrily refused to provide references when challenged on the above quote and also on several other obviously dubious quotes and factual claims. That's highly suspicious, since Marshall frequently and quite pompously boasted about the quality of his references. (You know, he **is** a scholar, don't you? He even said so himself!)
7. Marshall is a huge Behe-worshipper and once said that it seemed to him that one of Behe's most important points in "Edge of Evolution" was seldom challenged, but in reality Behe's views on that point were frequently and vigorously challenged. In fact, at the very time that Marshall made his ridiculous complaint, he was actively engaged in a discussion with someone who was challenging the very point that Marshall said was seldom challenged!
8. Marshall later commented on yet another specific challenge to Behe's "Edge of Evolution." This particular challenge came from Abbie Smith (a.k.a. "ERV"), and it was so noteworthy that Behe himself responded. According to Marshall, Behe ably defended himself by pointing out that Smith's challenge didn't relate to the proper time-frame, but in reality, Behe never said any such thing. And when challenged to provide a supporting reference, Marshall, as usual, refused, which indicates deliberate dishonesty.
9. When Sean Carroll panned "Edge of Evolution," Marshall accused Carroll of presenting a description of the Huxley-Wilberforce debate as "historical fact." In reality, Carroll did no such thing. But when that fact was pointed out to Marshall, he not only refused to acknowledge his original mistake, he actually repeated the same falsehood in a second comment. That indicates deliberate dishonesty.
10. Marshall further misrepresented Carroll's position by falsely implying that a key argument about multiple mutations referred to simultaneous mutations instead. Marshall also repeated that falsehood, even after being corrected.
In short, Marshall's dishonesty is both frequent and obvious. He really does appear to be a pathological liar, and his book about the new atheism, not surprisingly, is a complete joke, riddled with literally hundreds of errors.
MANY more examples of Marshall's lack of intelligence and lack of integrity can be found on the Amazon forums here:
http://www.amazon.com/Truth-Behind-New-Atheism-Christianity/product-reviews/0736922121/ref=cm_cr_pr_hist_1?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&filterBy=addOneStar
Posted by: nigelTheBold, Minister of Spankings
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April 7, 2011 9:59 AM
raven:
I just saw Elvis down at the local 7-Eleven. He was buying a Coke and a peanut-butter and 'nana sandwich. I let the local chapter of the Church of Elvis know, but he was gone before they arrived.
They blessed me anyway, and wanted to touch my pompadour, as it had been near The One.
Posted by: Iain Walker
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April 7, 2011 10:07 AM
Eric (#306):
Without being able to listen to the debate itself, I'm finding it harder to evaluate Krauss's abbreviated arguments in the original post without possibly reading into them more than is warranted. Suffice to say that as they stand, several of your points in #105 were fair comment. So most of what follows in this and any subsequent posts in this thread will be more a matter of improving on Krauss's arguments rather than defending them.
It's not unknown for people to come to believe their own fabrications, especially if they have some strong motivation for doing so. Fabrications are not always entirely intentional, and people can sometimes work very hard to convince themselves of what they want to be true. "Sincere avowal" and "deliberate lie" aren't either-or categories - rather, they're opposite ends of a spectrum, and a person's position on that spectrum with respect to a given assertion can drift over time.
Ahem. Their reported predispositions not to believe, as reported by the same sources that report the resurrection itself. It's fairly common for conversion narratives to exaggerate initial disbelief in order to make eventual acceptance all the more striking. That the disciples took some convincing in the gospel accounts is easily explained as a variation on the same literary device.
I notice you've just shifted the terminology from absolute moral values to objective ones. I agree that Craig and Krauss were probably talking about objective values, and I was kind of assuming that this was what "absolute" meant in this context, but I do dislike this kind of slipperiness in an argument. (I'm not criticising you, btw. It's just a general observation, and the blame lies more with Krauss and/or Craig.)
It is, however, reasonable to ask what epistemological grounds we might have for a particular ontological position. One way of interpreting Krauss would be as saying that if there is a god who wants us to adhere to certain objective moral values, then he would have done a better job in communicating them, or in making them less unobvious to discern. Moral disagreement amongst believers, and indeed the epistemological problem that you highlight, then counts against this hypothesis. It's not about how we know right from wrong, but about how we know that there are objective standards of right and wrong that depend on a particular source, and how our actual ability to know right from wrong relates to this.
Is this a strong objection to Craig's position? Not particularly, because it depends on additional assumptions that Craig is unlikely to grant. But if I'm right about what Krauss is trying to say, then he doesn't make the error that you claim.
To be honest, in Krauss's position, I'd have gone after the claim that there were any objective moral values at all (or at least moral values that could be meaningfully treated as objective outside a context created by the interaction of self-aware social agents). X can't be evidence for God if there is no such thing as X, nor can it be evidence for God if it is something that we give rise to ourselves.
Posted by: azumahazuki
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April 7, 2011 12:24 PM
Holy. Shit.
I just came to look at this thread again and saw that bit of blithering idiocy that is "divine simplicity."
Bullshit, Eric. You're doing nothing more than equating your God with absolute goodness. That, sorry to say, reduces down to the same problem that presuppositionalist ("personalist" as you put it) apologetics do:
That being, the God whom you call absolute goodness is still responsible for genocides, approves of slavery (sexual and otherwise), said not a word against torture, and all the other problems the "personalist" approach has.
In fact, it's worse now. At least the personalist view somewhat makes a distinction between God and the mind of God; yours does not. A divinely-simple God is His own mind. In the most literal sense, this God is what He does, pure and simple. And He does hideous evil.
I cannot believe you actually buy this. If I was ever worried about reverting again, this has killed it. Take your stale, worthless Thomist "logic" and shove it so far up your ass you choke on it. Not like the oxygen deprivation will harm your brain any further.
Posted by: https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawml4uPOzxjT-xgxl54t21SmgvOFSW202hU
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April 7, 2011 12:45 PM
Please...Krauss's feelings were hurt because he had 2 hours to debunk and part of Craig's argument and couldn't do it because he wanted to argue the authority of scripture or the existence of GOd and not the evidence for God's existence as was the debate.
Craig mastered him and Krauss had every opportunity to debunk the science, after all he's a scientist. What did he think he was gonna get jumped for presenting any kind of real evidence?...Please...now he cries and whimpers "foul"...OK. Still a great scientist but his worldview was exposed as not the best choice.
Posted by: nigelTheBold, Minister of Spankings
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April 7, 2011 12:50 PM
Googlemess:
Uhm … what science? Craig didn't offer anything as science. Evidence is science, and Craig offered none.
The best he could do was argue that the early believers were sincere in their beliefs. That's not science. It's not even logic. That's rationalizing your own beliefs.
Oh, reeeeallly? How was it exposed as "not the best choice?"
Posted by: azumahazuki
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April 7, 2011 12:56 PM
Googlemess has a point though:
Scientists should not argue science except in small pieces with Craig. Luther was right that reason is a whore...and her pimps and johns are the apologists.
The science is incidental to this stuff and Craig knows it. People who debate him need to admit to themselves what a dishonest sack of shit he is, and put his balls to the wall about the moral problems of his worldview.
This has been done. Kagan, by most accounts, kicked his ass around the room. He has been forced to come out in public as an apologist for genocide before.
FUCK playing nice; force him to defend his bullshit.
Posted by: Iain Walker
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April 7, 2011 1:39 PM
Eric (#306):
Last time you played the "classical theism" card, I seem to recall pointing out that Craig's God is not one of classical theism. The jump from "cause of the universe" to "God" in the KCA depends entirely on the notion of personal choice. And amongst modern defenders of theism, Craig isn't alone - both Plantinga and Swinburne from their various perspectives defend a personalist deity. But setting that aside ...
That's a summary of a position, not an argument for it. Granted that there's a lot of complex ideas involved, but I was hoping that you might have an actual argument, even in outline, that I hadn't seen before.
I've tackled you before on this misleading usage of the word "act" in this context. IIRC, what you mean is that God is fully actual, with no unrealised potential states or properties. Otherwise, this conclusion is a category error, since God is (presumably) not an instance of behaviour of some agent or other.
If one accepts the basic notion of divine simplicity (which obviously I don't), then given that God is simple, God is identical with his attributes. Whether it follows that God is goodness depends on whether goodness is one of his attributes. But how are we to make this judgement? Let God be identical with attribute X, such that it is God being X in virtue of which God's moral commandments issue forth. Now we can define X as being goodness from the outset, but then we're on the divine command theory prong of the dilemma - what makes God's commands good is that they issue from God's nature, whatever that nature is. Or we can say that by some independent standard of goodness, we judge goodness to be one of God's attributes (i.e., that the attribute X is goodness), such that we can conclude that his commandments will be good.
So the dilemma appears to be intact, even given divine simplicity.
Regarding the arbitrariness of God's will, one might argue that if God's commands flow from his immutable nature, then they will be non-arbitrary. But all that follows from this is that God's commands will be non-arbitrary in the sense of being consistent (and incapable of being otherwise). It would still be possible for there to be a God whose commands were quite different, flowing from a different immutable nature. Thus, on the divine command prong of the dilemma, it remains arbitrary as to whether rape or genocide are wrong.
(I've got an idea or two as to how you'd probably respond to this, but I'll avoid second-guessing your reply. I am, after all, trying to get an argument out of you.)
Posted by: nigelTheBold, Minister of Spankings
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April 7, 2011 3:04 PM
Iain Walker:
Maybe it's non-arbitrary in that God simply follows the dictates of a natural world. While being non-arbitrary, God would then be indistinguishable from a natural world, but still exist.
Wow! I think I just proved God. I'm only missing a couple of steps, but I'm sure y'all can figure those out on your own.
Posted by: Matt1002
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April 7, 2011 7:16 PM
Dr. Krauss,
It is depressing to me to find that someone who holds a Phd is just simply not following a train of thought or argumentation.
I am honestly deeply saddened on reading your blog post here that it seems the majority of the thinking in the debate quite literally passed you by, and honestly, the best explaination I can see is that you were just not listening.
First, how much study have you done of Craig's published work prior to this debate? Had you read "Philosophical foundations of a Christian Worldview"? Or even the more populist work "Reasonable Faith"? Frankly, you say things about Craig's viewpoints which just smack of not being familiar with the material.
Surely, that's kind of bad manners in academic circles? If you're going to debate someone, you surely owe it to be well-read on the their material?
Yet, it seems clear to me that you are just not familiar with the material, as you fall into so many obvious misunderstandings and misquotations of Craig's position.
Understand this: I'm not critisisng you disagreeing with Craig. I'm critising you misunderstanding what it is Craig is saying in the first place.
Lets take one as an example: The Resurrection of Christ. First, let me say, I quite agree with you, that I don't think this is a very good argument (in stand-alone) for evidence of the existence of God.
However, you fall into some classic mistakes which betray you simply are not familiar with the academic material you are attempting to comment on. What you say has the tone of someone who was "Half listening" and caught a mis-heard version.
To quote you: "Craig argued that most New Testament scholars believe in the resurrection."
Err. No Dr. Krauss. Craig claimed nothing of the sort, and never has in written work or debates.
He claimed that most new Testament scholars attest to historicity of the central points of facts 1. The death by Crucifixion of Jesus 2. The empty tomb 3. The post mortem Appearances 4. The Early church's believe in the resurrection
Craig (rightly) claims that most New Testament historians attest that these four events are factual. He THEN inductively asserts that the Resurrection is the best explaination of these facts. He never claims that a majority of New Testament scholars would agree with this..because that would NOT be true! (
Moving away from the Resurrection, to consider another point of the debate, the Moral argument:
In your blog post, you say you "paraphrase Steven Pinker", and then go on to give a rather garbled paraphrase of the Euthyphro Dilemma! This, I'm afraid, is not original with Pinker, but somewhat older..in fact it comes from Plato!
The Euthyphro dilemma is literally thousands of years old. It has been pretty well thrashed out in the field of philosophy and not held to be a sound refutation of the moral argument. There are numerous "outs" from the apparent paradox it creates. Craig made brief reference in the debate to "Divine Command Theory" as one example. For goodness sake, it's in Plato..this has been in Philosophy 101 for the last two thousand plus years!
The fact you quote it as being "Pinker" as if its somehow at the cutting edge of philosophical thought, would be parallel to touting high-school Newtonian Physics as a refutation of quantum Mechanics. It just makes you look so far behind the 8-ball in the relevant academic field you would be embarrassed if you knew enough philosophy to know how just how sophmoric it looked.
For you to say that you "Tried to explain" the Euthyphro dilemma (highschool textbook philosophy..literally!) as if it were some [i]de novo[/i] argument to Craig (a man with a Phd in philosophy) is amusing to say the least...or just really really really depressing.
Posted by: CJO
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April 7, 2011 7:34 PM
#347,
Craig (rightly) claims that most New Testament historians attest that these four events are factual.
Obviously one point of contention here is going to be just who qualifies as, in your words, a "New Testament historian," and so just what is meant by "most of" the members of this class. But, having read a great deal of textual criticism of the Synoptic Gospels in particular, and being more than passingly familiar with the relevant views of many scholars whose works I have not read in depth, I would take issue with your assertion that points 2. and 3. enjoy consensus among scholars of the texts as probably historical.
Especially problematic would be 3. but again it depends what you mean by "post mortem Appearances." You're wrong if you think most New Testament scholars assert that there is any evidence that anyone actually saw an animated corpse. Visionary experiences are another matter of course, but your wording makes me think that's not what you mean.
Posted by: raven
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April 7, 2011 8:01 PM
I see the banned troll is back babbling like a loon again.
WARNING. MATT IS A CRAZED BANNED TROLL WHO MALICIOUSLY PROVIDES LINKS TO MALWARE SITES. DON'T CLICK ON HIS LINKS!!!! Can't say it any plainer.
This is bafflegab. When you see that, you can be sure someone is trying to fool you at best or just outright lie.
In point of fact, many or most NT scholars outside the fundie death cult swamp would not agree with any of those so called facts. It's been known for almost 2 millennia that the NT bible is mostly or all fiction.
This is commonly taught in most nonfundie seminaries and college courses.
A partial list would be Ehrman, Price, Mack, Crossans, Spong, Borg, Wells, Funk and the jesus seminar, and many more.
So Matt, what's scheduled for the malware and virus links today?
Posted by: Eric
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April 7, 2011 8:05 PM
Matt1002, you're making many of the very same points I made in post #105. It's good to see that someone else posting here has independently come to the very same conclusions regarding Krauss's understanding of Craig's arguments that I did. Perhaps this fact will lead others to rethink their assessment of Krauss's response.
Posted by: Eric
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April 7, 2011 8:10 PM
Is Matt1002 the same Matt who linked to malware earlier in this thread? The recent post by Matt1002 is nothing like the previous posts, so I'm dubious. But if he is the same Matt, then he's an asshole -- but an asshole who happened to get quite a few things right in his last post.
Posted by: Wowbagger, Man-Hating Man of Pharyngula
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April 7, 2011 8:17 PM
I think it's a different Matt.
Posted by: First Approximation, L'esprit de l'escalier
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April 7, 2011 8:27 PM
Craig needs citations for 2 and 3.
Even if 2 and 3 are true (the only evidence for this is a document saying it happened) it's still not the best explanation for the facts. Somebody taking the body and followers seeing what to see (almost nobody takes Elvis sightings seriously) is a much better explanation.
(I realize you called said "I don't think this is a very good argument"; it's actually a HORRIBLE, AWFUL argument.)
Posted by: First Approximation, L'esprit de l'escalier
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April 7, 2011 8:29 PM
seeing what to see --> seeing what they want to see
you called said --> you said
Proofread. Must remember to proofread.
Posted by: raven
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April 7, 2011 8:31 PM
Maybe, maybe not. It would be quite a coincidence for two crazies to show up in the same thread, both named Matt.
Doesn't matter. Just don't click on any links and you won't have to debug a crashed computer.
Posted by: Wowbagger, Man-Hating Man of Pharyngula
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April 7, 2011 8:38 PM
Raven wrote:
It's a pretty common name, though. Especially as a web-nym for a Jesus freak who thinks the apostles are 'cool'.
I only click on shortened links if they're from regulars I know and trust.
Anyway, the long and short of it is this: yes, Krauss should have known that someone famous for being a Liar for Jesus™ was, in fact, going to lie for Jesus and prepared accordingly.
However, his mistake doesn't make those lies true, or Craig's claims anything other 10lb of unsubstantiated woo in a 5lb bag.
Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere
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April 7, 2011 8:50 PM
What's the problem with Euthyphro dilemma? It's still used by professional philosophers. Is the problem that ihe cited a psychologist instead of a Ph.D philosopher?
Posted by: raven
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April 7, 2011 8:53 PM
I'll add here that the fundie NT "scholars" are all Presuppositionalists. They are biblical inerrantists and/or literalists.
The bible is all the inerrant, literal word of god and it is by definition all true.
When you start from that point, you can't be objective. You can't think outside that box.
What you can do is go around in circles proving that the True Book is the True Book, often by quoting the bible as saying that the bible is true.
And the reality is that it is just kludgy old book written by a few middle eastern tribalists. So all the apologists without fail end being Liars for jesus.
This is one of the first things that drove me out of xianity. Xians are no better than anyone else. The fundies are noticeably worse than anyone else. I originally thought that the Liars for jesus would kill the religion. And they might, but it was already dying anyway.
Posted by: Eric
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April 8, 2011 4:32 AM
"What's the problem with Euthyphro dilemma? It's still used by professional philosophers."
Kel, the Euthyphro dilemma is used in two basic ways by professional philosophers. First, it's used pedagogically (much like Descartes is used), for it does establish a classic dilemma that gets students thinking. Second, it's used as a genuine dilemma against anyone with a strongly theistic personalist conception of god. But it's simply not employed against classical theists because it's manifestly inapplicable to such a conception of god.
Krauss's citing Pinker, and his suggestion that he "tried to explain" the dilemma to Craig, merely serve as ancillary evidence that Krauss was way out of his depth as far as the moral argument is concerned.
Posted by: John Morales
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April 8, 2011 5:00 AM
Eric:
By dint of your infamous abduction technique, I presume; I find no such implication therein.
Care to show your reasoning?
Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere
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April 8, 2011 5:19 AM
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong put the dilemma forward to Craig in their written debate, so even if Krauss was out of his depth, it's still a valid point. As Iain has argued above (I tried too but I'm way out of my depth as well) the dilemma isn't really solved in a satisfactory way, and I think that's why moral philosophers still use it today.Posted by: First Approximation, L'esprit de l'escalier
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April 8, 2011 5:30 AM
Well, now you know how people in the sciences feel when they hear WLC talk about cosmology, his aether interpretation of special relativity or evolution.
Please explain why.
Then he was just following WLC's lead. I mean, come on, his actual argument was (and I'm quoting his slide):
Both premises are extremely faulty, to say the least.
At least Krauss has the excuse of not having expertise in philosophy. Do you really think the above is worthy of someone with a Ph.D in philosophy?
Posted by: Wowbagger, Man-Hating Man of Pharyngula
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April 8, 2011 5:36 AM
Eric wrote:
Well, there's the special pleading. Anyone got bingo?
Sorry, Eric. Tapdance around the issue all you like, but we're not going to let you have your cake and eat it, too; either your god isn't good, isn't omnipotent, or doesn't exist. None of which bodes especially well for you.
Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere
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April 8, 2011 5:39 AM
Again, I'm not really sure of what a classic conception of God is. How can an abstract be a person? How can an abstract design? How can an abstract have free will?
Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere
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April 8, 2011 5:45 AM
How can an abstract be a mind? How can an abstract have thoughts? How can an abstract interact in time? How can an abstract have desires or love? How can an abstract reward or punish us? How can an abstract grant eternal life?
How is describing God in the classic theist sense anything other than an intellectual shield for a traditional theist view?
Posted by: John Morales
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April 8, 2011 5:51 AM
Eric did state
You think you have?
--
Kel,
It's the ground of personhood; the ground of being, the ground of free will.
Simplicity itself.
Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere
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April 8, 2011 5:59 AM
I still have no freaking clue. Not sure how Eric can describe me as one of the smart ones, I don't get it at all!Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere
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April 8, 2011 6:03 AM
Okay, new question. How can the ground of personhood create the universe?Posted by: Wowbagger, Man-Hating Man of Pharyngula
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April 8, 2011 6:03 AM
Eric seems to have put his feet on what seems to be the standard theological argument: argue for the existence of a philosophically possible god while avoiding the fact that this god-concept bears little to no resemblance to the actual god Christians (or any other ideology other than Deism) believe in.
It's kind of like applying for a job using the resume of someone else.
"But it's obvious that Bob Jones is the most qualified person for this position!"
"Yes, Bob Jones is the most qualified; however, we can't help but notice that your name is Wesley Von Lichtenstein. Get out."
Posted by: John Morales
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April 8, 2011 6:26 AM
Kel,
Well, how else could the universe come to be, if not from the ground of being?
Remember, god is simple (ie not a collection of parts (eg humans are matter, form and spirit)), so don't make the elementary mistake of confusing personhood and being. ;)
</theology>
Posted by: consciousness razor
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April 8, 2011 6:33 AM
Couldn't it have been dropped into place by the skyhook of being?
Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere
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April 8, 2011 6:36 AM
I'm still lost. I'll try to retackle the issue after more wine.Posted by: Stephen Wells
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April 8, 2011 7:16 AM
Watching theists trying to dismiss things like the Euthyphro dilemma reminds me of Jim Carrey's character in Liar, Liar.
"Your honour, I object!" - "Why?" - "Because it's devastating to my case!"
Posted by: Iain Walker
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April 8, 2011 8:48 AM
Matt1002 (#347):
Divine command theory isn't really an "out" from the Euthyphro. It's a decision to embrace the "X is good because God commands it" horn of the dilemma, with all its implications (which in Craig's case includes arguing that there can be nothing wrong with God commanding genocide, because God is not subject to any independent moral duties or standards). Less sociopathic apologists generally prefer not to go down this route, and either allow that moral judgements are independent of God, or that some are and some aren't.
Also, notice that DCT actually defeats the argument that the existence of objective moral values is evidence for the existence of God, because the existence of God is a logical prerequisite of there being objective moral values in the first place. By DCT, showing that there are objective moral values is the same as showing that there is a God who commands certain things. But for the existence of objective moral values to count as evidence for God, you would have to be able to establish them independently, so that you can then reason abductively back to God. With DCT, you can't do this, because DCT pins down what constitutes a moral value solely in terms of what God's commands.
So while the Euthyphro does not in itself refute (as opposed to challenge) the argument from morality to God, DCT effectively abandons that argument. You can argue from objective moral values to God, OR you can embrace DCT. You can't do both.
Posted by: Cosmic Teapot
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April 8, 2011 9:15 AM
Great tip, thanks. Not having a hard disk means I am safe from any shenanigans like Matt tried, but when I replace it, I'll keep this in mind.
Posted by: Aratina Cage
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April 8, 2011 10:21 AM
I think it was the debate with Stenger where Craig compared God to a number. Yep: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgbeRYJaFIw#at1m8s
How can a number do anything? John Loftus has a transcript of Stenger's opening statement and responses: http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2008/01/william-lane-craig-debates-victor.html
Posted by: Aratina Cage
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April 8, 2011 10:23 AM
The first link in #376 should be: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgbeRYJaFIw#at=1m8s
Posted by: Iain Walker
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April 8, 2011 10:31 AM
Eric (#359):
There are a couple of ways in which the God of classical theism can avoid the Euthyphro, but not necessarily ways that are particularly comforting for theists.
The Euthyphro depends on the initial assumption that God commands certain things (or as in the original, that the gods love certain things). But commanding and loving are things that can only be meaningfully ascribed to agents, and (I'd argue) the God of classical theism is incompatible with agency. So the God of classical theism cannot be meaningfully said to command anything, let alone moral conduct. In which case, the dilemma is irrelevant - the initial problem of what makes God's commands good cannot arise.
Classical theism also typically holds that God's attributes are predicated analogically, i.e., that when we say God is X we don't mean this in the same sense that a human being or any other created thing is X (univocal predication), but nor do we mean it in some totally different sense (equivocal predication). Rather, we mean it in some distinct but related sense. A common illustrative example is that we call both human beings and food "healthy", although we don't mean the same thing in each case. Rather, food is called "healthy" to the extent that eating it causes human beings to be healthy. So although the two senses are not the same, they are nevertheless related.
Based on this analogy, God's goodness is not the same as goodness as it is predicated of people or anything else in the created order, but is appropriately labelled "goodness" nevertheless, in that it is what gives rise to goodness in the created order. Of course, by this reasoning it is also appropriate to speak of God's evilness, edibility and triangularity, since it is God that ultimately gives rise to evil, edibility and triangularity in the created order.
But setting that aside, it seems clear enough that even though "goodness" is predicated of God and creation in related senses, there is still a significant gap between those two senses, such that God's "goodness" is entirely compatible with God not being good at all in the normal, human sense. After all, it is not the case that like can only cause like, so whatever it is in virtue of which God brings about goodness in the created order, it does not entail that God possesses any moral virtues, intentions or values.
Getting back to the Euthyphro, it also depends on the assumption that what God commands is good (since the question it poses is "In virtue of what do we say that God's commands are good?"). Well, it looks like a classical theistic conception of God can avoid the dilemma by again by-passing the assumption on which the dilemma depends. It can simply deny that God's commands express any moral imperatives at all (so that they do not qualify as being either good or bad) - while at the same time asserting God's goodness.
I can't really see either of these lines of argument being appealing to any more than a tiny minority of theists, but they do seem to be available. What's less obvious is that classical theism can accept the assumptions on which the Euthyphro depends and still find a satisfactory third alternative.
Posted by: Forbidden Snowflake
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April 8, 2011 10:53 AM
Tim Beazley:
The quote "Faith is believing what you know ain't so" is widely attributed to Mark Twain. I do seem to recall Dawkins quoting it in TGD, but I can't find it by the index, so I may have seen it elsewhere and misremembered.
Anyway, I'm pretty sure that if Dawkins did quote it, it was with attribution.
Posted by: azumahazuki
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April 8, 2011 3:51 PM
The "divine simplicity" stuff is still bullshit, sorry.
When you need to go "God is good, but a different kind of good than we think. So Euthyphro doesn't apply because the ground of goodness is different from commands of morality," you're so far mired in dishonesty you should be drowning.
Its a desperate, last-ditch attempt to shield your God from criticism. It's no different from, and indeed equates or reduces to, "God's ways are mysterious."
And it's presuppositionalism. Again. By admitting that it's not intuitive or even usual to arrive at, you are admitting that fideism is the only way this works. Given what we know of neuroscience, I would be very wary of making my mind such an idol if I were you.
Posted by: Iain Walker
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April 9, 2011 8:29 AM
azumahazuki (#380):
To be fair (and I'm straining my lumbar vertebrae as I say this), the doctrine of divine simplicity isn't entirely arbitrary. It's supposed to follow from God's perfection and status as a necessary being. See the Stanford Encyclopedia article for details ( I personally find the article highly problematic and not as clear as it could be, but it at least gives some idea of where the doctrine comes from).
It's still a case of theism creating conceptual problems for itself, but the motivation has more to do with trying to follow the implications of the hypothesis than with raising ad hoc defences against criticisms like the Euthyphro.
I wonder if Eric's coming back. He does seem to have a habit of bailing just when the discussion is getting meaty, which is kind of annoying because I do rather enjoy our discussions - while they last, anyway.
Posted by: consciousness razor
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April 9, 2011 9:33 AM
I wouldn't call it arbitrary, so much as precisely and exceedingly nonsensical. For those unfamiliar with the doctrine, perhaps the most obvious absurdity is that an "attribute" which is identical to "God" must also be identical to all the other "attributes" (keeping in mind that "they" are only one "attribute" which is the "identity" of this imaginary being). Each is incoherent in its own right, but then to identify them all with one another really takes the taco. It's beyond absurd. Absurd squared, raised to infinity, plus infinity, and then some.
Posted by: nigelTheBold, Minister of Spankings
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April 9, 2011 10:15 AM
THere is an "attribute" of my mind identical to "fuzzy" which renders the doctrine of divine simplicity "muddled" and somewhat "ridiculous."
I mean, you've got to be at the end of your theological chain to reify attributes. (Or am I completely incorrect, and these attributes don't really exist, yet they still somehow give rise to a god?) Hell, it seems you'd have to be off the chain.
But maybe that's just because my plebeian mind is unable to grasp the subtle complexities of this higher-order concept.
Posted by: consciousness razor
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April 9, 2011 10:37 AM
Just remember, for the really barking mad, God is the necessary ground of all being, and is a perfectly cromulent word, and is his own properties, and omnipotence is omnibenevolence, which is to say: Jesus, who watches you masturbate, and we're all made in his image.
Posted by: Iain Walker
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April 9, 2011 10:48 AM
consciousness razor (#382):
It certainly looks like nonsense on stilts, since the attributes ascribed to God are not logically equivalent by any stretch of the imagination, not without a healthy dose of equivocation (and I'd argue that so-called analogical predication with respect to God in fact constitutes equivocation in the majority of cases).
And if one does allow that God's analogical "God version" of these attributes are all identical, then what this boils down to is that God only has one real attribute - that of being God. But this leaches away the cognitive content of the concept of God to dangerously low levels. It means that there's bugger all you can actually say about God, other than how God is related to his creation. But even then you have problems. If we say that God created the world, how are we to understand this? If we say that the world is ontologically dependent on God, how are we to understand this? In virtue of what are these relations supposed to hold between God and his supposed creation? In virtue of God's God-ness, it seems.
The choice seems to be between incoherence and vacuousness.
Posted by: https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawkUL-U9MUY8KYyNdOz0mVLJQIOQ81UEVm8
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April 9, 2011 1:59 PM
I see Tim Beazley has copied and pasted his usual obsessive-neurotic attacks on me here. (He's posted more than a dozen "reviews" of my last book on Amazon -- some have been removed, others are under aliases.) I'm not going to read, let alone respond, to his comments -- having refused to do over some 4 years of attacks, first on others, then on myself, on Amazon, why start now?
I notice he ascribes the emotion of "anger" to me, though. No, not anger, disgust. I'm happy to respond to any honest person who offers any real challenges I can take seriously.
Those who know Beazley, will know what I'm talking about. Those who do not, blessed be you.
Posted by: Tim Beazley
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April 9, 2011 3:36 PM
I see that David Marshall has responded in his usual fashion: name-calling and evasions. I guess in the world of evangelical Christianity, that's what qualifies as "scholarship."
Well, anyone can call someone else names. The problem for Marshall is that it's very easy for me to provide specific references documenting both his dishonesty and his inanity -- the Bible was written in the Stone Age??? -- but the only way for Marshall to demonstrate that he's not just one more liar for Jesus is for him to cough up some references for his obviously dubious factual claims. (Modern science supports the sequence of the appearance of life described in Genesis? Really? Including the sequence in Genesis 2, where humans appear before any other animal life form?)
If Marshall doesn't want to be made to look like an evangelical fool for pompously proclaiming himself to be a "Christian scholar," then he ought to support challenged factual claims by providing approprite references. Real scholars know that genuine scholarship means documenting one's claims, not merely making them. Calling people "neurotic" when they ask for references for dubious factual claims does not seem very scholarly to me. But maybe evangelical liars for Jesus like Marshall have a different view of scholarship.
Posted by: David Marjanović
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April 9, 2011 7:14 PM
This is the biggest point here.
It is not possible to answer questions about reality by just thinking about them.
Philosophy can only tell you whether an idea is logically coherent. If it is logically coherent, philosophy is completely incapable of figuring out whether the idea is wrong.
If you want to learn about reality, you must observe reality and compare your ideas to these observations; if you fail to do that, you are stuck in each and every one of your mistakes, and your disciples will still be stuck in your mistakes 2500 years later!
Well, no. Instead, scientists do not hold panel discussions. They write scientific papers instead, with no time pressure, with as many cited sources as they want, and so on – with no possibility of a Gish gallop or any other rhetorical trick. The Internet adds the option to simply link to sources.
Debates are what lawyers use. They're for showing that you're right. Science, on the other hand? "You don't use science to show that you're right, you use science to become right."
That theory is called eternal inflation.
Voxel, not pixel. And with tetrahedral voxels, not cubic ones.
Mathematical beauty is just a synonym for parsimony.
Then why are the Pirahã happily godless?
But, as comment 369 points out, Craig is a Christian, not a classical theist.
(Besides, as comment 376 points out, classical theism is utterly useless.)
So... why did you bring up classical theism at all? Why did you change the topic?
:-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D
Near the top left corner of this page, there's a search engine. Write "Plantinga" in there, and then hit Enter or click Search. Have a nice day!
If you're in academic circles, you usually aren't going to debate anyone, and probably you've never done so in your entire life. See the top of this comment.
Posted by: pelamun
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April 10, 2011 1:26 AM
Pirahã alert, LOL... If you haven't already, I'd recommend reading Dan Everett's book "Don't sleep there are snakes". There he discusses the empiricism based on the immediacy of their experiences the Pirahã live by. Dan Everett failed in his proselytisation efforts because they rejected all talk about God or Jesus due to the fact that there was no-one alive who had ever seen them.
However, they do acknowledge the existence of spirits, as long as they can see them. And dreaming also counts as real experience. So, they might not believe in a creator god but they do believe in spirits...
Posted by: David Marjanović
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April 10, 2011 12:18 PM
Indeed, they deconverted him.
...if everyone can see them.
Imagine all of Christianity reduced to Fatima (...the town in Portugal, not Muhammad's daughter).
Posted by: pelamun
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April 10, 2011 2:04 PM
Yes, this is a famous story in linguistics, I should have put it more clearly. Dan Everett originally went to Brazil under the auspices of SIL, the Summer Institute of Linguistics, a missionary organisation whose role within the field I regard very critically, but this is a topic for another thread...
Posted by: ratione.sola
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April 11, 2011 8:39 PM
If anyone is interested in an analysis of how Craig 'set up' the debate so that it would be a foregone conclusion in his favour, see this post: William Craig debates the undebatable
Posted by: Zachary Comer
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May 25, 2011 1:43 AM
Dr. Krauss seems to have not understood much of what Dr. Craig argued for, seeing as he has misrepresented much of what Craig presented in his speeches for the debate.
First, the "meaningless equation" Craig presented in his opening speech does not suggest, as Krauss has said, that "if the probability, given the data, gave one a greater than 50% likelihood for God's existence, then this was evidence." As Craig has repeated several times over, what the equation is saying is that if a hypothesis H is more probable given the existence of a fact F than if F did not exist, F counts as evidence for H. Given this equation, it is simply not true that Craig needs to assess the prior probability of H due to the fact that he is not assessing the actual probability of H; he is only suggesting that the probability of H is higher given the existence of F than if F did not exist. This is completely compatible with the probability of H being very low.
As Craig has said on his website, this equation gives Krauss two ways to dispute his points in the debate. Krauss could either (i) argue that the “facts” Craig presented are not really facts at all and so do not support H, or (ii) Krauss could accept the facts as Craig presents them but argue that they do not raise the probability of H.
Second, Krauss again has misrepresented the logic behind Craig’ arguments. Krauss seems to think that the following syllogism is the core of Craig’s reasoning:
1.Craig either doesn't understand how something could happen, or instead believes that events happened that confirmed his pre-existing belief system.
2.In the absence of understanding physical causes or exploring alternatives, this implies evidence for the existence of God.
3.Therefore there is evidence that God exists.
The problem is that Craig never argued in such a manner. Craig has always argued from statements about how reality is to conclusions based on those statements, and never once was one of those statements “I don’t understand something, and if I don’t understand something, it is evidence for God’s existence.” Perhaps Craig is mistaken in one or more of his premises, but that mistake does not mean Craig is arguing from his ignorance to evidence for God.
What is even worse is that when you look at Krauss’s reconstruction of each of Craig’s arguments, he hardly represents them right! Consider Craig’s argument for the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Krauss says, “The resurrection of Jesus, and that fact that the followers of Jesus were willing to die for their beliefs provides evidence of God.... Craig argued that most New Testament scholars believe in the resurrection.” It is simply not true that Craig argued that most New Testament scholars believe in the resurrection. Craig argued for the historical reliability of three facts and then argued that they are best explained by the resurrection of Jesus. Krauss only mentioned one of these three facts in his reconstruction of the argument. Of course, the facts or statements may not be historically accurate. But the issue here is Krauss’s poor representation of Craig’s argument. Similar problems can be found in Krauss’s renditions of Craig’s other arguments.
Krauss is a smart individual. It would be interesting to see him interact with more accurate constructions of Craig’s arguments.
Posted by: Aratina Cage
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May 25, 2011 1:52 AM
Zachary Comer #393
That is a trap for fools. Anyone can make up a bullshit story, and under Craig's equation that bullshit story would count as "evidence". So what exactly was the bullshit story supposed to be evidence of? Why, God, of course! An invisible humongous massless fairy floating around somewhere outside the universe. The minute you look past Craig's bullshit evidence, you encounter this monster of a problem that there is currently no getting around for any theist out there, not even "Master Debater" Craig.
Posted by: Zachary Comer
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May 25, 2011 11:21 PM
Aratina Cage #394,
You will notice that in my post (#393) I did not argue for the criteria of evidence that Dr. Craig gave in the debate. My only point was that Dr. Krauss seems to have misunderstood the equation Craig gave.
You also seem to misunderstand the equation Craig has given. You seem to think that, assuming this equation, if you can come up with any story that supports your hypothesis, even, as you put it, a "bullshit story," then that story counts as evidence for your hypothesis. But this is incorrect. Remember that a "story" or "fact" counts as evidence for a hypothesis if its presence makes the hypothesis more probable. But if a fact is not actually present, if a story really is bull crap, then, under the equation, it will not count as evidence for a hypothesis; for only facts which are actually present can count as evidence.
Of course, nothing I have said gives reason to think the equation true. I am only pointing out that some have not fully understood what the equation is saying.
Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/zxY6UHsRyfyf_or9d8USjhyVs1ePvGRcL3991feR9no1Cko1ba.A.g--#4dfc2
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May 31, 2011 12:04 PM
Check out William Lane Craig's Response:
http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=8853
Posted by: matt
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June 3, 2011 12:39 PM
We all know that Dr Craig destroyed Krauss. I watched the debate many times over and the lack of response from Krauss was amazing. Krauss didnt understand the arguments and what was most embarrassing is that Dr Craig exposed Krauss's lack of understanding in the exact field in which he is meant to be an expert. And by the way, atheists that call Dr Craig a "creationist" are just showing how dumb they really are. Dr Craig has NEVER argued for creationism and I shouldnt be surprised at this attack, atheists are very inattentive :) very!
Posted by: Dhorvath, OM
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June 3, 2011 12:46 PM
Matt,
What part of arguing for a creator marks Craig as not arguing for creationism?
Posted by: KG
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June 3, 2011 1:17 PM
matt,
Why should we pay attention to a semi-literate making unsupported assertions? Especially when they lie. Craig is a fellow of the creationist "Discovery Institute", and says himself that he is inclined toward some drivel called "progressive creationism".
Now fuck off, liar.
Posted by: Siya
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June 6, 2011 8:54 PM
Craig responds and has this to say:
"Prof. Krauss once again shows himself to be inattentive to my argument. I did not assert that “most New Testament scholars believe in the resurrection.” I have no idea whether that is true. Rather I said that most New Testament scholars accept the historicity of the three facts I mentioned concerning the fate of Jesus: (i) the discovery of his empty tomb, (ii) the post-mortem appearances of Jesus, and (iii) his disciples’ coming to believe that God had raised him from the dead. These three facts are multiply and independently attested in very early sources and are consistent in their core. That’s why most historical scholars accept them on historical grounds, not out of theological conviction.
Can someone please, please explain what the DIFFERENCE is between "believing in the resurrection," and accepting the "historicity...of the post-mortem appearance of Jesus"
Posted by: https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawmjetgJU288Sfg2TWKtDE180268SXpNxuQ
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January 26, 2012 6:49 AM
Do you want proof of God? It`s really simple. Try infinite surrender, ultimately God WILL teach you.
Posted by: Owlmirror
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January 26, 2012 12:24 PM
So, if I turn off my critical reasoning and let any nonsense wash in, I'll be able to start believing that an invisible person with magical superpowers exists and is talking to me.
No, thanks!
Posted by: David Marjanović
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January 26, 2012 1:27 PM
Translation: in order to believe that God exists, you first need to believe that God exists.
You're insulting your own intelligence.