@sfyr FALSE. Christ was crucified, risen on the third day, He appeared to those who followed Him & He has been appearing to those who believe ever since. I was spontaneously & radically converted 2 1/2 years ago and I testify that Christ is, in fact, alive & He does, in fact, SAVE. May your "Creator" & God, Jesus Christ, bless you wholesomely in truth. In Jesus' name.
"In a quiet revolution in thought and argument that hardly anybody could have foreseen only two decades ago, God is making a comeback. Most intriguingly, this is happening not among theologians or ordinary believers, but in the crisp intellectual circles of academic philosophers, where the consensus had long banished the Almighty from fruitful discourse."
“Modernizing the Case for God,” Time (7 April 1980), pp. 65-66
With the collapse of verificationism and advances in cosmology, we are now living in an era in which philosophical theism is notably in the ascendant.
"Naturalists passively watched as realist versions of theism began to sweep through the philosophical community, until today perhaps one-quarter or one-third of philosophy professors are theists." (Quentin Smith)
As Craig notes: "As vanguards of a new philosophical paradigm, theistic philosophers have freely issued various critiques of atheism."
You are an atheist (hence the anti-God remarks) who renders himself a "functional agnostic" by claiming that "negatives can't be proven" - ie. you are lobotomizing the propositional content of atheism via sophomoric epistemology.
This may seem an astoundingly stupid thing to do, given all the contradictions it creates. However it's nothing compared to some of the cosmic-scale stupidity I've personally had to endure from the dawkinsnet brigade.
@JCrownwell No my position is simple. As I said, agnosticism does not leave an open playing field where the probabilities for god's existence are 50:50. There is as much evidence for god as any fictitious thing, so it is hypocricy to believe in one and not t'other. The probabilities for any of these things are infinitely small as there is no evidence for any of them. You seem to keep dodging the question of the immaginary car or orbiting teapot. I suppose you have no answer.
"There is as much evidence for god as any fictitious thing"
This is a logical fallacy referred to as "begging the question." ie. the proposition you claim is true is assumed as part of the premise.
"You seem to keep dodging the question of the immaginary car or orbiting teapot"
Because they are irrelevant as epistemological, metaphysical or ontological analogies? Dawkinsisms such as the flying teapot and FSM don't earn you philosophical points. Sorry. :)
But does Millican qualify as a logical positivist? He claims he's a skeptic in the last bit of discussion. He's also never said anything to suggest that he's a verificationist.
Maybe I should do some background reading on the guy before jumping to conclusions.
I'm surprised William Craig didn't do more to undermine Dr Millican's position that causality, as applied to the entirety of the universe, commits the fallacy of composition.
There are many problems with this view which Dr Craig himself has addressed in his journal articles and in lectures, The most poignant of these is the problem that denying the causal principle at a macrocosmic level would be pervasively destructive of the field of cosomology.
Peter Millican was the toughest opponent that Craig faced in a long time and certainly the best debate in the whole tour. Craig pulled away later in the debate, but that was a very good debate as far as debates go and should be a model for thinking atheists to follow.
The theists here are actually grateful for an atheist to be able to offer cogent, philosophically literate arguments, somewhat of a rarity now, given performances by the likes of Hitchens, Harris, Law and others.
Many of the positive remarks about Millican are actually coming from theists here, even though he struggles to keep up against Craig towards the end of the event, and is taken apart in the face-to-face.
Inane Craig has been destroyed in every debate he's been in. All he does is answer every argument by saying stuff like 'just cos the holy scripture has talking snakes and talking bushes and denies evolution isn't a problem to me'.
Erm, it's a problem to rational people though, craig. Its very difficult to engage Inane Craig in intellectual debate when he's so sedulously impervious to logic.
Inane Craig barely says anything in the face to face as he got destroyed. Watch again please.
Oh really? Have you seen the comments about Craig's debates by philosophically trained atheists, no less? :)
Read the journal-level discussion regarding the Kalam argument and its sisters. It's fairly evident that professionally trained atheists don't consider these arguments to be formally invalid.
Indeed, if they were able to refute them easily, there would not be so much cogent professional discussion on these topics.
Inane Craig ust throws much shit out there in his debates that it becomes impossible to answer everything AND put forward your own arguments that he is always able to say. "mr X said NOTHING on my argument about blahblahblah and what he did say isn't a PROBLEM to me because God is really swell"
Meh, the only people who believe this babbling 'doctor' has any kind of intellectual credibility are the terminally credulous.
My spare time is spent devoting my life to a mythical stone age magic man in the sky who gives us free will but punishes us if we exercise it, who is all loving but created a world with unbelievable suffering and waited for 198,00 years before telling humans about him...then only some of us, he's to keep us on our toes you see.... oh, hang on! That's you!
You parrot a babbling idiots arguments and think you're educated. Bless you, you're simply adorable.
Funny, because I was thinking exactly the same about you. :)
Don't be discouraged though, you are doing sterling work. New atheists may fail at philosophy, science and basic reason, but they are VERY competent at accruing contrarian opinions through their general idiocy.
I should know - one of the reasons I'm a theist now, and not an atheist is because of listening to people like you. I have a lot to thank your personality type.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. So thanks. It isn't reciprocated though.
My 'personality type' made you ignore the sheer ridiculousness of the bible? All those inaccuracies and inconsistencies can be dismissed because of little old me?
Wow, I never realised I was so powerful.
On your way you credulous fool, I hear God wants you to murder your child to prove you love him, the insecure prick. Then you need to build a big ship cos he's going to flood the world.
I'm not confusing anything with anything. I have completed a simple syllogism. You are a Christian. You must believe the bible. Therefore you have ignored the sheer ridiculousness of the bible.
Simple as that. Please, you idiots have convinced yourselves for so long that Inane Craig poses a genuine challenge to the superior intellects of atheists that you now think merely repeating his half baked arguments makes *you* intelligent.
"I have completed a simple syllogism (sic). You are a Christian. You must believe the bible. Therefore you have ignored the sheer ridiculousness of the bible."
"you now think merely repeating his half baked arguments makes *you* intelligent."
Let me get this straight, you think the first comment is actually a formally valid deductive syllogism, and you have the metacognitive ineptitude to then challenge the intellect of others? Good job. :)
Let's look at your argument in a bit more detail: :)
1. Person A is a Christian.
2. Person A must believe the bible.
Therefore: Person A must have ignored the sheer ridiculousness of the bible.
Hmm.
Even if the premises actually qualified as premises (which they don't), it would actually be an inductive, not a deductive argument at best. That makes your "must have ignored" categorical conclusion look stupid.
i wasn't talking to you. Oh right, you've logged in under a different name so can thumb your dumb comments up.
Anyway, a premise doesn't have to be coherent to qualify as a premise.
It wouldn't be inductive btw as you can only be a follower of Christ if you believe everything in the bible, cherry picking would be against his wishes. Ergo to be a Christian you must have read the stupid story about Eve being made from Adam's rib and said:
"It wouldn't be inductive btw as you can only be a follower of Christ"
Where have I said that I was a believer of Christ? Straw man more, why don't you?
Moreover, haven't you heard the concept of hermeneutics? You are basically distorting the bible into an argument from absurdity, then challenging that anyone who doesn't agree with your ridiculous view of the bible is non-christian.
Perhaps you can explain how it is *your* comments that are thumbed up three times in a video which has little to no traffic? (I'm keeping an eye on the view count here) You're obviously projecting your own disingenuousness here.
What would be the point of thumbing up my own comments when you're doing a fine job of destroying your own arguments? :)
"I'll be honest, i kind of assumed you were a Christian."
Who's to say I'm not? I haven't stated my position either way.
Because i saw what you were doing and played you at your own game. Which is pretty immature but i didn't want you citing them as though they added force to your arguments.
At least i wasn't thick enough to actually write a comment when i was logged in under a different name.
Whether you're a Christian or not doesn't really matter. Sorry to break it to you.
"Oh right, you've logged in under a different name so can thumb your dumb comments up."
Thank you for admitting to sockpuppeting. Isn't projection wonderful?
You can *obviously* infer from context, idiosyncracies of grammar, use of smilies and general attitude that you're speaking to the same person, but on a different computer. What is the point of sockpuppeting if you make it so obvious?
"Anyway, a premise doesn't have to be coherent to qualify as a premise."
A premise needs to be a formally valid part of a syllogism. ie. the conclusion must deductively or inductively follow from the premises. That doesn't apply in your case.
In your example, premise one and premise two do not induce or deduce to your conclusion. Secondly, your conclusion is worded as a categorical statement.
In other words, you haven't the foggiest about propositional logic.
You need to give your premises the right propositional qualities so that they necessarily lead to your categorical conclusion.
Look at the basic form of your argument: Premise 2 in itself leads directly to an inductive form of the conclusion without the assistance of premise 1. Premise 1 is redundant and doesn't cooperate with premise 2 to lead to a deduction
@JCrownwell Peter Millican is claiming that causality and logic don't apply at the level of the universe using evolutionary or survivalist arguments. ie. The notion that we adapted to apply reasoning only to our "scale" of physical experience of the world.
"we adapted to apply reasoning only to our "scale" of physical experience of the world."
Why isn't this an example of special pleading though, or as Schopenhauer describes it - the taxi cab fallacy. That we can apply foundational, metaphysical axioms, such as the causal principle in a certain environment, then arbitrarily dismiss them in another environment without due justification?
@JCrownwell I'm not agreeing with his position. I just wonder if there are any esoterica I may have overlooked that provide a valid empirical basis to the claim that causality cannot be applied to the larger scale - similar to the logical paradoxes that occur at the quantum level.
"I just wonder if there are any esoterica I may have overlooked that provide a valid empirical basis to the claim that causality cannot be applied to the larger scale"
As far as I know, cosmology presupposes that causality applies to the macrocosmic level. Much of the field would be redundant without this axiomatic basis.
For example, the models of progression from the big bang singularity to an an expanding universe would be defunct without this foundation.
"similar to the logical paradoxes that occur at the quantum level."
Quantum paradoxes don't necessarily undermine the causal principle.
Quantum non-determinism may ask us to question the precepts of determinism, but it does not undermine the concept of probabilistic causation. Also, non-deterministic explanations are only part of a spectrum of empirically-derived explanations - none of which are actually known to be true.
The main problem is that the distributive law fails at the quantum level due to problems in the measurement of complementary variables. There have been attempts to address this through the implementation of "quantum logic."
I'm not certain about the epistemological status of the distributive law though, and whether or not its failure constitutes an axiomatic inconsistency.
Here's an article that may help clarify the issue. I can't seem to get hold of a free online copy so I might have to subscribe for it:
Putnam, H. “Is Logic Empirical?” Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. 5, eds. Robert S. Cohen and Marx W. Wartofsky (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1968), pp. 216-241. Repr. as “The Logic of Quantum Mechanics” in Mathematics, Matter and Method (1975), pp. 174-197
@JCrownwell wasn't much of Hilary Putnam's work refuted? I'm no logician but I do know that Putnam tried to introduce an empirically defined form of logic which was destroyed by his peers over the period of the next decade.
I've only read the abstract so far because I still have no full text access. From what I've read so far, it looks pretty weak. Putnam may just be a weak epistemologist, but I'll reserve my opinion until I read the full paper.
"The philosophical debate about quantum logic between the late 1960s and the early 1980s was generated mainly by Putnam's claims that quantum mechanics empirically motivates introducing a new form of logic, that such an empirically founded quantum logic is the `true' logic ... Most of that debate focussed on the latter claim, reaching the conclusion that it was mistaken."
@JCrownwell I'm very uneasy with the idea of referring to logic as "empirical" - even if you assume the Everett metatheory. The common knowledge is that logical axioms are considered 'self-evident' --- ie. they don't need a posteriori justification.
"[logical axioms] don't need a posteriori justification."
Classical logical axioms are apriori, but I'm uncertain about the epistemological status of the broader range of rules in logic/mathematics.
It may just be that theories of "empirical logic" represent mathematicians failing at epistemology, but I still need to go over the math myself. I'll have an opportunity to do so later today.
More embarrassing attempts at reasoning from a "new atheist", there's a surprise. :)
"You can't be a christian without believing christ's book. To believe christ's book you must believe the nonsense in it."
In other words, you're ignorant of the field of hermeneutics. Some christians take the Bible to be entirely figurative, or as historical mythical references, much like yourself.
Premise 1 contributes no propositional quality to expand upon that of premise 2.
You can criticize hermeneutics however much you like. It won't change the fact that the very existence of this field of study disqualifies your argument from being a deductive syllogism.
Do you have any further philosophically and/or theologically incompetent remarks to add to your atheist polemic?
"the very existence of this field of study disqualifies your argument "
Except it doesn't really. Becuase you could say that about anything. i.e someone believes in evolution means they believe we all came from the same source, this would be the only conclusion. Nobody thinks god created man but other animal evolved. If there were inconsistencies with the atheory (there aren't) andsomeobdy said "have you never heard of hermeneutics??" to get round this problem, what would you say?
@monitor301 My spare time is spent devoting my life to a mythical stone age magic man in the sky who gives us free will but punishes us if we exercise it, who is all loving but created a world with unbelievable suffering and waited for 198,00 years before telling humans about him...then only some of us, he's to keep us on our toes you see.... oh, hang on! That's you!
You parrot a babbling idiots arguments and think you're educated. Bless you, you're simply adorable.
The problem was that Peter took too long addressing each point so he never really got a chance to argue against,namely, the Teleological argument, nor did he really have time to make a positive argument for Atheism. Probably, the most common pro-Atheist argument is the Problem of Evil.
@ATLMastering There is no need for someone who does not believe in god, (which we call an atheist) to provide evidence for why there is no god. One cannot prove a negative. The burden of proof falls upon he who makes a claim. One cannot disprove that santa claus exists, or the great juju on the mountain. It is up to the person who claims that santa claus exists to prove this.
@Autumn6 Yes I can't understand why Craig's opponents don't just spend a few minutes explaining the illogicality of his arguments and then explain why they don't have to provide proof for god's non-existence. They are all intelligent enough to do so.
@monitor301 For example; in a court case. The accuser cannot claim that the defendant has stolen from him and when asked to provide evidence of which none there is, say 'well....you cannot disprove this happened.' The burden of proof falls upon the claimant(accuser) not the denier of the claim.
Existential disproofs are demonstrable, but even if they aren't, your reasoning is sloppy.
If you make the positive claim that "God does not exist" (atheism), yet claim that this position is unprovable, then YOU are the one behaving epistemologically incompetently.
The alternative is that you merely withhold belief in God (agnosticism). Your claim about existential disproof may then be epistemologically consistent, but you have no epistemic leverage to challenge theism.
@JCrownwell I feel as though I am talking to a wall. No one can disporve anything which is fictional.......because it is fictitious. But yes, in one respect you are correct (if you wish to be extremely anal retentive about language) - yes I am agnostic as I cannot disprove your immaginary friend. But neither can we disprove santa claus, the tooth fairy or any other fictitious thing.....but I don't suppose you believe in them, or do you?
If you are agnostic, you commit no truth value to either proposition ("God exists"; "God does not exist") .This means that you can ask for proof of God, and criticise it, but you cannot claim that God does not exist, because that requires a truth value commitment to the second proposition.
I don't mind reading through your Dawkinsisms, but please try not to confuse theology with theism.
@JCrownwell I tire of your stupidity. You are, by definition, agnostic towards santa claus, was the meaning of my statement. If I have to create an analogy to convey a simple message, then so be it: if a deluded car salesman sold you a fictitious car and asked you to pay for it with the excuse that it is not disprovable, you wouldn't accept it. Any fictitious thing is not disprovable. This does not render it impossible as it is not contradcitory, but extremely unlikely - like santa
Let me summarise exactly what you are doing, and why it fails:
1. You claim to be agnostic, but you contradict yourself by asserting the positive claim that "God does not exist". This, in fact, renders you an atheist and invokes a burden of proof.
2. You then try and annul that burden of proof by claiming that negative existential propositions cannot be proven, apparently unaware that this also concurrently destroys your atheistic position.
1. If you claim to be agnostic, you can ask for and criticise any proof of God, but you cannot assert that God does not exist.
2. If you assert that God does not exist (atheism), then you cannot posit that negative existential propositions are impossible to prove.
3. Negative existential propositions CAN be proven (Lowder, 1998). The argument to the contrary is out-dated, attributable to the Russell/logical positivism era.
"I have always accepted that [agnostics cannot claim that God does not exist]"
No you haven't.
You've already alluded to God as a "fictitious thing", "imaginary friend" or made other similar remarks. These directly assert the non-existence of God, and are therefore atheistic statements that contradict:
1. Your claimed agnosticism.
2. Your belief that negative existential propositions cannot be proven.
@JCrownwell The prbabilities of god's existence are as low as those for existence of the orbiting teapot as there is no evidence for either of them. So why don't you believe in the orbiting teapot? You are inconsistent with your beliefs. I do not believe in an orbiting teapot due to its immense probability and consistency requires me to say that I would, and you would, be a hypocrite for therefore believing in god without evidence.
"you would be a hypocrite for therefore believing in god without evidence"
Empirico-deductive arguments are evidence, though you seem to lack the epistemological sophistication to appreciate this.
"agnosticism does not leave an open playing field"
Semantical sophistry. As an agnostic, by definition, you do not commit a truth value to either proposition: "God does not exist", "God exists". Agnostics are, by definition, unable to make a truth claim to either effect.
"If you think that logic has moved past Russell/Ayer/Hume"
1. Logical positivism is now a dead philosophy. It is an embarrassing relic of naive scientism, and the term is now reserved as a synonym for philosophical incompetence.
2. It's not difficult to refute the claim that negative existential propositions cannot be proven: The proposition "there are no proofs for negative existential propositions" is itself a negative existential proposition. Beautiful. :)
@IPFreely1021 `falied to understand a simple piece of formal logic after the third time of my explaining it.' sorry, but it looks like you're the one not getting the point. how are you coping by the way befcause i Have to say things are looking pretty grim for you from here. lol
"One last point before I think we should end this rather tiresome discussion. As for your appeal to the philosophical community, I think you will find if you do some research that there are emphatically few god-believing philosophers with respect to non-god believing philosophers."
A fallacy by argumentum ad populum.
You're pretty much argumentatively cornered, and your paranoia is telling (surely everyone who disagrees with you MUST be a sockpuppet, right? :) )
@JCrownwell Clearly we are getting nowhere, so we should end this discussion.
1) Instead of using adjectives to back up your claims, why not use some evidence. Quote some 'reasonable' philosophers. Philosophy has moved away from this because these philosophers along with Wittgenstein etc have rendered philosophy useless..cont
1. "Instead of using adjectives to back up your claims, why not use some evidence"
Hanfling, Oswald (2003). "Logical Positivism". Routledge History of Philosophy. Routledge. pp. 193
From the mouth of AJ Ayer himself. :)
2. "All I am saying is that if I say not Y and you say Y, this does not entail Y is correct"
More red herring analogies. This is not about disagreements of foundational belief or empiricism, but about proof of negative existential propositions.
@JCrownwell as most of its questions have either been diffused or left to the natural sciences. Philosophy maintains a purely analytical purpose. All those interested in the workings and manner of the universe nowadays are scientists, not philosophers. So those left as philosophers are generally people attempting to render philosophy useful again in terms of metaphysics and Wittgenstinian 'word games' and quibbles with language.
@JCrownwell 2) You are grappling with phantoms over this. All I am saying is that if I say not Y and you say Y, this does not entail Y is correct. As there is no evidence or necessity for Y, nor is Y falsyfiable or verifyable (in many theologians minds), we can conclude that the probabilities of Y existing in actuality is extremely low. If you are to maintain that Y does exist without any evidence, then you must also maintain that all other fictitious things which I immagine exist.
@JCrownwell One last point before I think we should end this rather tiresome discussion. As for your appeal to the philosophical community, I think you will find if you do some research that there are emphatically few god-believing philosophers with respect to non-god believing philosophers.
"All those interested in the workings and manner of the universe nowadays are scientists, not philosophers"
What a shame that without a metaphysical foundation formulated by and borrowed from philosophy, science, its methodological precepts and the aetiological rationale which undergirds it, would not exist.
Your positivistic leanings (with all its contingent defects) are palpable here, so I'm very glad you made your feelings known.
Your Dawkinsistic correlation between "a-santaclaus-ism" and "athe-ism" fails given that they have important etymological, epistemological and ontological distinctions.
Your following remarks are also amusingly ironic:
"I tire of your stupidity"
"I am agnostic (sic) as I cannot disprove (!) your immaginary friend"
"if we are both agnostic towards [santa claus/fairies], then the very word loses its meaning" (!)
@Appletree34 that's some very 'good' pop-psychoanalysis. Unfortunately just like your belief in a deity, there is no evidence that that was my implication. As you will have read, I went on to specify why i said what I stated. The reason for my 'tiring' of the person I was addressing is that he falied to understand a simple piece of formal logic after the third time of my explaining it.
@JCrownwell So if we are both agnostic towards those things, then the very word loses its meaning, and, as the meaning of a word is simply its use in the language, it is to be assserted that you and I have the same reasons to believe in the tooth fairy and santa claus as we do to believe in god. (As there is no evidence for any of these things yet we cannot disprove them)....but yes..if yours is merely a quibble with language then it can be granted.
@JCrownwell And this is, of course, excluding the inconsistencies and contradictions found in the bible which can give rise to such arguments as the problem of evil which would reveal contradictions which are such that we could conclude that god doesn't exist. x cannot = not x. However, biblical passages can always be 'reinterpreted' by the 'art' of theology, so these are often powerless against hypocrites...Anyway as I said it is not for anyone to disprove god (explained before)
the argument for the personhood of the creator Kalam cosmological argument is NOT an argument in favor of dualism... it ASSUMES DUALISM, and thus it is unsound
Millican does the right thing. He relies more on science. He doesn't do the WLC philosophical style, with which you can "prove" and "disprove" anything.
@balouthewatz Basicly that is not a problem of relying more or less by a thing on other thing, but a problem of when we must rely on science and when on non-science. And God is not a matter of and for science. So Millican may rely on science as well as dr. Craig on philosophy. Then the best is cooperation sometimes and duel other times. It depends. A last thing to tell: philosophy does not "prove" or "disprove" anything, like you said, it is more complex than that. You know this.
Now if "Dr." Craig wants to say that God is ultimately responsible for all of the matter and energy which exists he is free to do so, but this would merely be a baseless, speculative, and unverifiable assertion. The value of such an assertion would be no different than someone who said that an invisible dragon in the sky did it. If we have no way of testing either claim, and all that can be done is speculate, why should we believe in either? That is the question "Dr." Craig needs to answer.
"It's metaphysically absurd to think that things can pop into being out of non-being" Another thing Craig slyly does is that he equates the "universe" to "things." The universe is not a "thing" rather the universe is the set of all things which exist. The statement that "things" begin to exist is nonsensical since according to the first law of thermodynamics matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed.
"It's metaphysically absurd to think that things can pop into being out of non-being" Yet somehow we make a special case for God and say that he has the ability to make this "metaphysically absurd" event happen? I cannot believe that people actually take "Dr." Craig's "logical arguments" seriously LOL.
In addition, I think that Craig should be invited to a debate on Atheism vs Theism, because most Atheists are Agnostic in their beliefs, because, you can't say "God doesn't exist" with absolute certainty, you can only say it isn't likely.
This is less "Does God Exist" and more "Theism vs. Atheism". After all, Peter usually doesn't even try to answer "Does God Exist" with a yes or no answer.
Excellent debate. I'm a humanist and a Kantian, so my belief in God involves the conception on the basis of practical reason of an ultimate cause of nature who proportions happiness to virtue but remains distanced from the rather controversial descriptions of God in the Bible. I wasn't persuaded by Craig's arguments concerning animal suffering, natural evil, or the evidence for the resurrection, but he did better than Millican here. Christians should be proud!
@nyscholartist Thank you for your thoughtful comment. If you would like to read a Christian rebuttal of Kant's conception of morality as practical reason, or of religion within the limits of reason alone, I wish to suggest T.K. Seung's "Kant: a Guide to the Perplexed" and G.W.F. Hegel's "Faith and Knowledge."
@TheSeanWilson I see the glass as half full rather than half empty. It can only get better for atheists. Its good for once to have someone intelligent defending atheism
@ZEEECHET Nah I would concede that Craig "won" this debate. The debates in which the weakness of Craig's arguments were exposed were in his debates against Shelly Kagan, Arif Ahmed, Robert Price, and Sam Harris (Harris to a lesser extent). But Craig is a smooth talker so even when he gets demolished in a debate he has a way of making it sound as if though he still didn't really lose. He would have made a tremendous politician had he gone that route.
@ludogogo Romans 1:20 since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools ...
2:12:13 epic burn you alive nod
snoweyeball 5 days ago
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gerhitchman 1 week ago
38:00 Craig's first premise destroyed.
QuantumGh0st 3 weeks ago
A Creator exists.. but Christianity is false..
sfyr 3 weeks ago
@sfyr FALSE. Christ was crucified, risen on the third day, He appeared to those who followed Him & He has been appearing to those who believe ever since. I was spontaneously & radically converted 2 1/2 years ago and I testify that Christ is, in fact, alive & He does, in fact, SAVE. May your "Creator" & God, Jesus Christ, bless you wholesomely in truth. In Jesus' name.
brandonkeaton 2 weeks ago
@brandonkeaton
"Christ was crucified, risen on the third day.."!!!
That's called proof by assertion..
Evidence for a Creator = Cosmological/Contingency/etc arguments..
Evidence that Jesus is the Creator = ???
Where is the evidence???
PS: I'm not into Blind-Faith..
sfyr 1 week ago
"In a quiet revolution in thought and argument that hardly anybody could have foreseen only two decades ago, God is making a comeback. Most intriguingly, this is happening not among theologians or ordinary believers, but in the crisp intellectual circles of academic philosophers, where the consensus had long banished the Almighty from fruitful discourse."
“Modernizing the Case for God,” Time (7 April 1980), pp. 65-66
JCrownwell 1 month ago
@JCrownwell
Dont know who said that but he sounds like an awful prophet.
1878EFC2008 1 month ago
With the collapse of verificationism and advances in cosmology, we are now living in an era in which philosophical theism is notably in the ascendant.
"Naturalists passively watched as realist versions of theism began to sweep through the philosophical community, until today perhaps one-quarter or one-third of philosophy professors are theists." (Quentin Smith)
As Craig notes: "As vanguards of a new philosophical paradigm, theistic philosophers have freely issued various critiques of atheism."
JCrownwell 1 month ago
How can you debate god into existence?
sidlentz777 1 month ago
@IPFreely1021
You are an atheist (hence the anti-God remarks) who renders himself a "functional agnostic" by claiming that "negatives can't be proven" - ie. you are lobotomizing the propositional content of atheism via sophomoric epistemology.
This may seem an astoundingly stupid thing to do, given all the contradictions it creates. However it's nothing compared to some of the cosmic-scale stupidity I've personally had to endure from the dawkinsnet brigade.
JCrownwell 1 month ago
@JCrownwell No my position is simple. As I said, agnosticism does not leave an open playing field where the probabilities for god's existence are 50:50. There is as much evidence for god as any fictitious thing, so it is hypocricy to believe in one and not t'other. The probabilities for any of these things are infinitely small as there is no evidence for any of them. You seem to keep dodging the question of the immaginary car or orbiting teapot. I suppose you have no answer.
IPFreely1021 1 month ago
@IPFreely1021
"There is as much evidence for god as any fictitious thing"
This is a logical fallacy referred to as "begging the question." ie. the proposition you claim is true is assumed as part of the premise.
"You seem to keep dodging the question of the immaginary car or orbiting teapot"
Because they are irrelevant as epistemological, metaphysical or ontological analogies? Dawkinsisms such as the flying teapot and FSM don't earn you philosophical points. Sorry. :)
JCrownwell 1 month ago
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JCrownwell 1 month ago
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JCrownwell 1 month ago
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JCrownwell 1 month ago
@IPFreely1021 There might be no good evidence for God's non-existence because maybe....just maybe (whisper) God's non-existence might be false.
Autumn6 1 month ago
@Autumn6 ummmm......what?
IPFreely1021 1 month ago
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JCrownwell 1 month ago
But does Millican qualify as a logical positivist? He claims he's a skeptic in the last bit of discussion. He's also never said anything to suggest that he's a verificationist.
Maybe I should do some background reading on the guy before jumping to conclusions.
Calenfeyn41 1 month ago
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I'm surprised William Craig didn't do more to undermine Dr Millican's position that causality, as applied to the entirety of the universe, commits the fallacy of composition.
There are many problems with this view which Dr Craig himself has addressed in his journal articles and in lectures, The most poignant of these is the problem that denying the causal principle at a macrocosmic level would be pervasively destructive of the field of cosomology.
JCrownwell 1 month ago
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JCrownwell 1 month ago
Peter Millican was the toughest opponent that Craig faced in a long time and certainly the best debate in the whole tour. Craig pulled away later in the debate, but that was a very good debate as far as debates go and should be a model for thinking atheists to follow.
babystinky 1 month ago
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@babystinky
"but that was a very good debate as far as debates go and should be a model for thinking atheists to follow."
Aside from the logical positivism - that will get you laughed out of philosophical seminars.
monitor301 1 month ago
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Crownw3 1 month ago
does anyone have the most recent atkins debate where he refutes himself? i hear it's pretty funny
Appletree34 1 month ago
All the Craig fanboys have ignored this video with the right to comment available to everyone lol.
That drcraigvideos bans freedom of speech. Cowardice? I think so.
1878EFC2008 1 month ago
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monitor301 1 month ago 3
@monitor301
kagan did as well as millican, though commonsenseatheism believe that Craig won that too.
Appletree34 1 month ago
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monitor301 1 month ago
@1878EFC2008
"Craig fanboys have ignored this video"
Not really.
The theists here are actually grateful for an atheist to be able to offer cogent, philosophically literate arguments, somewhat of a rarity now, given performances by the likes of Hitchens, Harris, Law and others.
Many of the positive remarks about Millican are actually coming from theists here, even though he struggles to keep up against Craig towards the end of the event, and is taken apart in the face-to-face.
monitor301 1 month ago
@monitor301
Inane Craig has been destroyed in every debate he's been in. All he does is answer every argument by saying stuff like 'just cos the holy scripture has talking snakes and talking bushes and denies evolution isn't a problem to me'.
Erm, it's a problem to rational people though, craig. Its very difficult to engage Inane Craig in intellectual debate when he's so sedulously impervious to logic.
Inane Craig barely says anything in the face to face as he got destroyed. Watch again please.
1878EFC2008 1 month ago
@1878EFC2008
"Craig has been destroyed in every debate"
Oh really? Have you seen the comments about Craig's debates by philosophically trained atheists, no less? :)
Read the journal-level discussion regarding the Kalam argument and its sisters. It's fairly evident that professionally trained atheists don't consider these arguments to be formally invalid.
Indeed, if they were able to refute them easily, there would not be so much cogent professional discussion on these topics.
monitor301 1 month ago
@monitor301
Inane Craig ust throws much shit out there in his debates that it becomes impossible to answer everything AND put forward your own arguments that he is always able to say. "mr X said NOTHING on my argument about blahblahblah and what he did say isn't a PROBLEM to me because God is really swell"
Meh, the only people who believe this babbling 'doctor' has any kind of intellectual credibility are the terminally credulous.
1878EFC2008 1 month ago
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monitor301 1 month ago
@monitor301
My spare time is spent devoting my life to a mythical stone age magic man in the sky who gives us free will but punishes us if we exercise it, who is all loving but created a world with unbelievable suffering and waited for 198,00 years before telling humans about him...then only some of us, he's to keep us on our toes you see.... oh, hang on! That's you!
You parrot a babbling idiots arguments and think you're educated. Bless you, you're simply adorable.
1878EFC2008 1 month ago
@1878EFC2008
"Bless you, you're simply adorable."
Funny, because I was thinking exactly the same about you. :)
Don't be discouraged though, you are doing sterling work. New atheists may fail at philosophy, science and basic reason, but they are VERY competent at accruing contrarian opinions through their general idiocy.
I should know - one of the reasons I'm a theist now, and not an atheist is because of listening to people like you. I have a lot to thank your personality type.
monitor301 1 month ago
@monitor301
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. So thanks. It isn't reciprocated though.
My 'personality type' made you ignore the sheer ridiculousness of the bible? All those inaccuracies and inconsistencies can be dismissed because of little old me?
Wow, I never realised I was so powerful.
On your way you credulous fool, I hear God wants you to murder your child to prove you love him, the insecure prick. Then you need to build a big ship cos he's going to flood the world.
1878EFC2008 1 month ago
@1878EFC2008
"My 'personality type' made you ignore the sheer ridiculousness of the bible?"
Who is confusing theology with theism? Surprise surprise, it's your epistemologically inept new atheist. :)
"On your way you credulous fool"
Aw, no need to get defensive. I am actually genuinely grateful.
monitor301 1 month ago
@monitor301
I'm not confusing anything with anything. I have completed a simple syllogism. You are a Christian. You must believe the bible. Therefore you have ignored the sheer ridiculousness of the bible.
Simple as that. Please, you idiots have convinced yourselves for so long that Inane Craig poses a genuine challenge to the superior intellects of atheists that you now think merely repeating his half baked arguments makes *you* intelligent.
1878EFC2008 1 month ago
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@1878EFC2008
"I have completed a simple syllogism (sic). You are a Christian. You must believe the bible. Therefore you have ignored the sheer ridiculousness of the bible."
"you now think merely repeating his half baked arguments makes *you* intelligent."
Let me get this straight, you think the first comment is actually a formally valid deductive syllogism, and you have the metacognitive ineptitude to then challenge the intellect of others? Good job. :)
JCrownwell 1 month ago
@1878EFC2008
Let's look at your argument in a bit more detail: :)
1. Person A is a Christian.
2. Person A must believe the bible.
Therefore: Person A must have ignored the sheer ridiculousness of the bible.
Hmm.
Even if the premises actually qualified as premises (which they don't), it would actually be an inductive, not a deductive argument at best. That makes your "must have ignored" categorical conclusion look stupid.
JCrownwell 1 month ago
@JCrownwell
i wasn't talking to you. Oh right, you've logged in under a different name so can thumb your dumb comments up.
Anyway, a premise doesn't have to be coherent to qualify as a premise.
It wouldn't be inductive btw as you can only be a follower of Christ if you believe everything in the bible, cherry picking would be against his wishes. Ergo to be a Christian you must have read the stupid story about Eve being made from Adam's rib and said:
"yep, that sounds good to me".
QED.
1878EFC2008 1 month ago
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JCrownwell 1 month ago
@1878EFC2008
"It wouldn't be inductive btw as you can only be a follower of Christ"
Where have I said that I was a believer of Christ? Straw man more, why don't you?
Moreover, haven't you heard the concept of hermeneutics? You are basically distorting the bible into an argument from absurdity, then challenging that anyone who doesn't agree with your ridiculous view of the bible is non-christian.
Get real.
JCrownwell 1 month ago
@JCrownwell
I'll be honest, i kind of assumed you were a Christian. If you're not then accept my apologies. It also means we're singing from the same hymn sheet.
Why is my view of the bible ridiculous? I've presented reasons why I think the bible is ridiculous. What have I distorted?
You think Jesus would be happy with people some of his teachings?
Now get back to logging in under different names so you can feel good about getting thumbs up. From yourself! LOOOLLL
1878EFC2008 1 month ago
@1878EFC2008
Perhaps you can explain how it is *your* comments that are thumbed up three times in a video which has little to no traffic? (I'm keeping an eye on the view count here) You're obviously projecting your own disingenuousness here.
What would be the point of thumbing up my own comments when you're doing a fine job of destroying your own arguments? :)
"I'll be honest, i kind of assumed you were a Christian."
Who's to say I'm not? I haven't stated my position either way.
JCrownwell 1 month ago
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@JCrownwell
Because i saw what you were doing and played you at your own game. Which is pretty immature but i didn't want you citing them as though they added force to your arguments.
At least i wasn't thick enough to actually write a comment when i was logged in under a different name.
Whether you're a Christian or not doesn't really matter. Sorry to break it to you.
1878EFC2008 1 month ago
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JCrownwell 1 month ago
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@1878EFC2008
"Oh right, you've logged in under a different name so can thumb your dumb comments up."
Thank you for admitting to sockpuppeting. Isn't projection wonderful?
You can *obviously* infer from context, idiosyncracies of grammar, use of smilies and general attitude that you're speaking to the same person, but on a different computer. What is the point of sockpuppeting if you make it so obvious?
JCrownwell 1 month ago
@1878EFC2008
"Anyway, a premise doesn't have to be coherent to qualify as a premise."
A premise needs to be a formally valid part of a syllogism. ie. the conclusion must deductively or inductively follow from the premises. That doesn't apply in your case.
In your example, premise one and premise two do not induce or deduce to your conclusion. Secondly, your conclusion is worded as a categorical statement.
JCrownwell 1 month ago
@JCrownwell
Explain what's wrong with my premises. Invoking shaky first year philosophical arguments doesn't mean anything if you can't back it up.
If they are correct (they are) then my conclusion is the only conclusion you can draw.
1878EFC2008 1 month ago
@1878EFC2008
A conclusion must be formally valid.
ie. Taken together, they must lead deductively or inductively to the conclusion.
In your syllogism, neither premises have the propositional qualities to be identified as premises that would logically lead to the conclusion.
A more apt example would be:
1. Person A is biblical literalist.
2. The Bible states that Moses parted the Red Sea.
Therefore: Person A believes that Moses literally parted the Red Sea.
JCrownwell 1 month ago
@JCrownwell
Providing another valid argument doesn't invalidate mine.
1878EFC2008 1 month ago
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JCrownwell 1 month ago
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JCrownwell 1 month ago
@1878EFC2008
"Explain what's wrong with my premises"
In other words, you haven't the foggiest about propositional logic.
You need to give your premises the right propositional qualities so that they necessarily lead to your categorical conclusion.
Look at the basic form of your argument: Premise 2 in itself leads directly to an inductive form of the conclusion without the assistance of premise 1. Premise 1 is redundant and doesn't cooperate with premise 2 to lead to a deduction
JCrownwell 1 month ago
@JCrownwell Peter Millican is claiming that causality and logic don't apply at the level of the universe using evolutionary or survivalist arguments. ie. The notion that we adapted to apply reasoning only to our "scale" of physical experience of the world.
Calenfeyn41 1 month ago
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@Calenfeyn41
"we adapted to apply reasoning only to our "scale" of physical experience of the world."
Why isn't this an example of special pleading though, or as Schopenhauer describes it - the taxi cab fallacy. That we can apply foundational, metaphysical axioms, such as the causal principle in a certain environment, then arbitrarily dismiss them in another environment without due justification?
JCrownwell 1 month ago
@JCrownwell I'm not agreeing with his position. I just wonder if there are any esoterica I may have overlooked that provide a valid empirical basis to the claim that causality cannot be applied to the larger scale - similar to the logical paradoxes that occur at the quantum level.
Calenfeyn41 1 month ago
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@Calenfeyn41
"I just wonder if there are any esoterica I may have overlooked that provide a valid empirical basis to the claim that causality cannot be applied to the larger scale"
As far as I know, cosmology presupposes that causality applies to the macrocosmic level. Much of the field would be redundant without this axiomatic basis.
For example, the models of progression from the big bang singularity to an an expanding universe would be defunct without this foundation.
JCrownwell 1 month ago
@Calenfeyn41
"similar to the logical paradoxes that occur at the quantum level."
Quantum paradoxes don't necessarily undermine the causal principle.
Quantum non-determinism may ask us to question the precepts of determinism, but it does not undermine the concept of probabilistic causation. Also, non-deterministic explanations are only part of a spectrum of empirically-derived explanations - none of which are actually known to be true.
JCrownwell 1 month ago
@JCrownwell 'Quantum paradoxes don't necessarily undermine the causal principle.' What about logic?
Calenfeyn41 1 month ago
@Calenfeyn41
"What about logic?"
The main problem is that the distributive law fails at the quantum level due to problems in the measurement of complementary variables. There have been attempts to address this through the implementation of "quantum logic."
I'm not certain about the epistemological status of the distributive law though, and whether or not its failure constitutes an axiomatic inconsistency.
JCrownwell 1 month ago
@Calenfeyn41
Here's an article that may help clarify the issue. I can't seem to get hold of a free online copy so I might have to subscribe for it:
Putnam, H. “Is Logic Empirical?” Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. 5, eds. Robert S. Cohen and Marx W. Wartofsky (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1968), pp. 216-241. Repr. as “The Logic of Quantum Mechanics” in Mathematics, Matter and Method (1975), pp. 174-197
JCrownwell 1 month ago
@JCrownwell wasn't much of Hilary Putnam's work refuted? I'm no logician but I do know that Putnam tried to introduce an empirically defined form of logic which was destroyed by his peers over the period of the next decade.
Calenfeyn41 1 month ago
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JCrownwell 1 month ago
@Calenfeyn41
"wasn't much of Hilary Putnam's work refuted?"
I've only read the abstract so far because I still have no full text access. From what I've read so far, it looks pretty weak. Putnam may just be a weak epistemologist, but I'll reserve my opinion until I read the full paper.
JCrownwell 1 month ago
@Calenfeyn41
Looks like you may be right:
"The philosophical debate about quantum logic between the late 1960s and the early 1980s was generated mainly by Putnam's claims that quantum mechanics empirically motivates introducing a new form of logic, that such an empirically founded quantum logic is the `true' logic ... Most of that debate focussed on the latter claim, reaching the conclusion that it was mistaken."
(G Bacciagaluppi, 2007)
JCrownwell 1 month ago
@JCrownwell I'm very uneasy with the idea of referring to logic as "empirical" - even if you assume the Everett metatheory. The common knowledge is that logical axioms are considered 'self-evident' --- ie. they don't need a posteriori justification.
Calenfeyn41 1 month ago
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JCrownwell 1 month ago
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JCrownwell 1 month ago
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@Calenfeyn41
"[logical axioms] don't need a posteriori justification."
Classical logical axioms are apriori, but I'm uncertain about the epistemological status of the broader range of rules in logic/mathematics.
It may just be that theories of "empirical logic" represent mathematicians failing at epistemology, but I still need to go over the math myself. I'll have an opportunity to do so later today.
JCrownwell 1 month ago
@JCrownwell
Using words of more than one syllable might impress your high school chums but they don't impress me.
Don't tell my premises don't have the right propositional qualities, tell me why they don't.
You can't be a christian without believing christ's book. To believe christ's book you must believe the nonsense in it.
Premise 2 requires Premise 1. I only know someone believes the bible if they're a christian.
You tried to do that tricksy bullshit that inane craig does but u failed.
1878EFC2008 1 month ago
@1878EFC2008
More embarrassing attempts at reasoning from a "new atheist", there's a surprise. :)
"You can't be a christian without believing christ's book. To believe christ's book you must believe the nonsense in it."
In other words, you're ignorant of the field of hermeneutics. Some christians take the Bible to be entirely figurative, or as historical mythical references, much like yourself.
Premise 1 contributes no propositional quality to expand upon that of premise 2.
JCrownwell 1 month ago
@JCrownwell
Hermeneutics = cherry picking.
if you don't believe everything in the bible then you must christ is not infallible and therefore not the son of god
which negates the entire concept of christianity
Like i say Inane Craig is a dishonest intellectually limited numpty, but at least he's quite good at being dishonest.
You're just an intellectually limited numpty.
1878EFC2008 1 month ago
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JCrownwell 1 month ago
@1878EFC2008
"negates the entire concept of christianity"
You can criticize hermeneutics however much you like. It won't change the fact that the very existence of this field of study disqualifies your argument from being a deductive syllogism.
Do you have any further philosophically and/or theologically incompetent remarks to add to your atheist polemic?
JCrownwell 1 month ago
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@JCrownwell
"the very existence of this field of study disqualifies your argument "
Except it doesn't really. Becuase you could say that about anything. i.e someone believes in evolution means they believe we all came from the same source, this would be the only conclusion. Nobody thinks god created man but other animal evolved. If there were inconsistencies with the atheory (there aren't) andsomeobdy said "have you never heard of hermeneutics??" to get round this problem, what would you say?
1878EFC2008 1 month ago
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@1878EFC2008 "My 'personality type'"
personality disorder, more like
Appletree34 1 month ago
@1878EFC2008
"Inane Craig ust throws much s*** out there in his debates"
If you want to do something constructive, as opposed to demonstrating how "competent" new atheists are at reasoning and critical analysis:
1. Read any entry level textbook on philosophy and epistemology.
2. Look up the term "Dunning-Kruger effect" and teach yourself to not be such an obvious example of this phenomenon.
monitor301 1 month ago
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@monitor301 My spare time is spent devoting my life to a mythical stone age magic man in the sky who gives us free will but punishes us if we exercise it, who is all loving but created a world with unbelievable suffering and waited for 198,00 years before telling humans about him...then only some of us, he's to keep us on our toes you see.... oh, hang on! That's you!
You parrot a babbling idiots arguments and think you're educated. Bless you, you're simply adorable.
1878EFC2008 1 month ago 2
The problem was that Peter took too long addressing each point so he never really got a chance to argue against,namely, the Teleological argument, nor did he really have time to make a positive argument for Atheism. Probably, the most common pro-Atheist argument is the Problem of Evil.
ATLMastering 1 month ago
@ATLMastering There is no need for someone who does not believe in god, (which we call an atheist) to provide evidence for why there is no god. One cannot prove a negative. The burden of proof falls upon he who makes a claim. One cannot disprove that santa claus exists, or the great juju on the mountain. It is up to the person who claims that santa claus exists to prove this.
IPFreely1021 1 month ago
@IPFreely1021 Problem is is that Millican should have addressed all the arguments. For some reason, Millican didn't.
Autumn6 1 month ago
@Autumn6 Yes I can't understand why Craig's opponents don't just spend a few minutes explaining the illogicality of his arguments and then explain why they don't have to provide proof for god's non-existence. They are all intelligent enough to do so.
IPFreely1021 1 month ago
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monitor301 1 month ago
@IPFreely1021
"There is no need for someone who does not believe in god, (which we call an atheist) to provide evidence for why there is no god."
Atheism is disbelief in the existence of God. Epistemologically, it is a truth value commitment in the belief that God does not exist.
Note the etymology of the word: atheos ("denial of the gods") -ism. It is "athe-ism" not "a-theism" (the epistemic absence of theism).
watch?v=AHIIjfxr4o0 for an highly amusing clarification of this issue.
monitor301 1 month ago
@monitor301 For example; in a court case. The accuser cannot claim that the defendant has stolen from him and when asked to provide evidence of which none there is, say 'well....you cannot disprove this happened.' The burden of proof falls upon the claimant(accuser) not the denier of the claim.
IPFreely1021 1 month ago
@IPFree
Existential disproofs are demonstrable, but even if they aren't, your reasoning is sloppy.
If you make the positive claim that "God does not exist" (atheism), yet claim that this position is unprovable, then YOU are the one behaving epistemologically incompetently.
The alternative is that you merely withhold belief in God (agnosticism). Your claim about existential disproof may then be epistemologically consistent, but you have no epistemic leverage to challenge theism.
JCrownwell 1 month ago
@JCrownwell I feel as though I am talking to a wall. No one can disporve anything which is fictional.......because it is fictitious. But yes, in one respect you are correct (if you wish to be extremely anal retentive about language) - yes I am agnostic as I cannot disprove your immaginary friend. But neither can we disprove santa claus, the tooth fairy or any other fictitious thing.....but I don't suppose you believe in them, or do you?
IPFreely1021 1 month ago
@IPFreely1021
"if we are both agnostic towards those things"
Who said I was agnostic?
If you are agnostic, you commit no truth value to either proposition ("God exists"; "God does not exist") .This means that you can ask for proof of God, and criticise it, but you cannot claim that God does not exist, because that requires a truth value commitment to the second proposition.
I don't mind reading through your Dawkinsisms, but please try not to confuse theology with theism.
JCrownwell 1 month ago
@JCrownwell I tire of your stupidity. You are, by definition, agnostic towards santa claus, was the meaning of my statement. If I have to create an analogy to convey a simple message, then so be it: if a deluded car salesman sold you a fictitious car and asked you to pay for it with the excuse that it is not disprovable, you wouldn't accept it. Any fictitious thing is not disprovable. This does not render it impossible as it is not contradcitory, but extremely unlikely - like santa
IPFreely1021 1 month ago
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JCrownwell 1 month ago
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JCrownwell 1 month ago
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@IPFreely1021
Let me summarise exactly what you are doing, and why it fails:
1. You claim to be agnostic, but you contradict yourself by asserting the positive claim that "God does not exist". This, in fact, renders you an atheist and invokes a burden of proof.
2. You then try and annul that burden of proof by claiming that negative existential propositions cannot be proven, apparently unaware that this also concurrently destroys your atheistic position.
Good going.
JCrownwell 1 month ago
@IPFreely1021
Let me try and explain once more:
1. If you claim to be agnostic, you can ask for and criticise any proof of God, but you cannot assert that God does not exist.
2. If you assert that God does not exist (atheism), then you cannot posit that negative existential propositions are impossible to prove.
3. Negative existential propositions CAN be proven (Lowder, 1998). The argument to the contrary is out-dated, attributable to the Russell/logical positivism era.
JCrownwell 1 month ago
@JCrownwell so if you are to accept god, in order to be consistent, you must accept the existence of all other immaginary or fictitious beings.
3) If you think that logic has moved past Russell/Ayer/Hume etc, no more needs to be said.
IPFreely1021 1 month ago
@IPFreely1021
"I have always accepted that [agnostics cannot claim that God does not exist]"
No you haven't.
You've already alluded to God as a "fictitious thing", "imaginary friend" or made other similar remarks. These directly assert the non-existence of God, and are therefore atheistic statements that contradict:
1. Your claimed agnosticism.
2. Your belief that negative existential propositions cannot be proven.
JCrownwell 1 month ago
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@JCrownwell The prbabilities of god's existence are as low as those for existence of the orbiting teapot as there is no evidence for either of them. So why don't you believe in the orbiting teapot? You are inconsistent with your beliefs. I do not believe in an orbiting teapot due to its immense probability and consistency requires me to say that I would, and you would, be a hypocrite for therefore believing in god without evidence.
IPFreely1021 1 month ago
@IPFreely1021
"you would be a hypocrite for therefore believing in god without evidence"
Empirico-deductive arguments are evidence, though you seem to lack the epistemological sophistication to appreciate this.
"agnosticism does not leave an open playing field"
Semantical sophistry. As an agnostic, by definition, you do not commit a truth value to either proposition: "God does not exist", "God exists". Agnostics are, by definition, unable to make a truth claim to either effect.
JCrownwell 1 month ago
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JCrownwell 1 month ago
@IPFreely1021
"If you think that logic has moved past Russell/Ayer/Hume"
1. Logical positivism is now a dead philosophy. It is an embarrassing relic of naive scientism, and the term is now reserved as a synonym for philosophical incompetence.
2. It's not difficult to refute the claim that negative existential propositions cannot be proven: The proposition "there are no proofs for negative existential propositions" is itself a negative existential proposition. Beautiful. :)
JCrownwell 1 month ago
@IPFreely1021 `falied to understand a simple piece of formal logic after the third time of my explaining it.' sorry, but it looks like you're the one not getting the point. how are you coping by the way befcause i Have to say things are looking pretty grim for you from here. lol
Appletree34 1 month ago
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@Appletree34 thank you commentator. Or is this just Mr Cronwell's secondary account to make it look as though he has any support?
IPFreely1021 1 month ago
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@IPFreely1021
"One last point before I think we should end this rather tiresome discussion. As for your appeal to the philosophical community, I think you will find if you do some research that there are emphatically few god-believing philosophers with respect to non-god believing philosophers."
A fallacy by argumentum ad populum.
You're pretty much argumentatively cornered, and your paranoia is telling (surely everyone who disagrees with you MUST be a sockpuppet, right? :) )
JCrownwell 1 month ago
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@JCrownwell Clearly we are getting nowhere, so we should end this discussion.
1) Instead of using adjectives to back up your claims, why not use some evidence. Quote some 'reasonable' philosophers. Philosophy has moved away from this because these philosophers along with Wittgenstein etc have rendered philosophy useless..cont
IPFreely1021 1 month ago
@IPFreely1021
1. "Instead of using adjectives to back up your claims, why not use some evidence"
Hanfling, Oswald (2003). "Logical Positivism". Routledge History of Philosophy. Routledge. pp. 193
From the mouth of AJ Ayer himself. :)
2. "All I am saying is that if I say not Y and you say Y, this does not entail Y is correct"
More red herring analogies. This is not about disagreements of foundational belief or empiricism, but about proof of negative existential propositions.
JCrownwell 1 month ago
@JCrownwell as most of its questions have either been diffused or left to the natural sciences. Philosophy maintains a purely analytical purpose. All those interested in the workings and manner of the universe nowadays are scientists, not philosophers. So those left as philosophers are generally people attempting to render philosophy useful again in terms of metaphysics and Wittgenstinian 'word games' and quibbles with language.
IPFreely1021 1 month ago
@JCrownwell 2) You are grappling with phantoms over this. All I am saying is that if I say not Y and you say Y, this does not entail Y is correct. As there is no evidence or necessity for Y, nor is Y falsyfiable or verifyable (in many theologians minds), we can conclude that the probabilities of Y existing in actuality is extremely low. If you are to maintain that Y does exist without any evidence, then you must also maintain that all other fictitious things which I immagine exist.
IPFreely1021 1 month ago
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Appletree34 1 month ago
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Appletree34 1 month ago
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@JCrownwell One last point before I think we should end this rather tiresome discussion. As for your appeal to the philosophical community, I think you will find if you do some research that there are emphatically few god-believing philosophers with respect to non-god believing philosophers.
IPFreely1021 1 month ago
@IPFreely1021
"All those interested in the workings and manner of the universe nowadays are scientists, not philosophers"
What a shame that without a metaphysical foundation formulated by and borrowed from philosophy, science, its methodological precepts and the aetiological rationale which undergirds it, would not exist.
Your positivistic leanings (with all its contingent defects) are palpable here, so I'm very glad you made your feelings known.
Enjoy your weekend. :)
JCrownwell 1 month ago
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@IPFreely1021
Your Dawkinsistic correlation between "a-santaclaus-ism" and "athe-ism" fails given that they have important etymological, epistemological and ontological distinctions.
Your following remarks are also amusingly ironic:
"I tire of your stupidity"
"I am agnostic (sic) as I cannot disprove (!) your immaginary friend"
"if we are both agnostic towards [santa claus/fairies], then the very word loses its meaning" (!)
"Any fictitious (sic) thing is not disprovable."
JCrownwell 1 month ago
@IPFreely1021 "I tire of your stupidity"
translated: "you're more clever than me so by attacking your intelligence I can mask how stupid I'm making myself look in this discussion"
Appletree34 1 month ago
@Appletree34 that's some very 'good' pop-psychoanalysis. Unfortunately just like your belief in a deity, there is no evidence that that was my implication. As you will have read, I went on to specify why i said what I stated. The reason for my 'tiring' of the person I was addressing is that he falied to understand a simple piece of formal logic after the third time of my explaining it.
IPFreely1021 1 month ago
@JCrownwell So if we are both agnostic towards those things, then the very word loses its meaning, and, as the meaning of a word is simply its use in the language, it is to be assserted that you and I have the same reasons to believe in the tooth fairy and santa claus as we do to believe in god. (As there is no evidence for any of these things yet we cannot disprove them)....but yes..if yours is merely a quibble with language then it can be granted.
IPFreely1021 1 month ago
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JCrownwell 1 month ago
@JCrownwell And this is, of course, excluding the inconsistencies and contradictions found in the bible which can give rise to such arguments as the problem of evil which would reveal contradictions which are such that we could conclude that god doesn't exist. x cannot = not x. However, biblical passages can always be 'reinterpreted' by the 'art' of theology, so these are often powerless against hypocrites...Anyway as I said it is not for anyone to disprove god (explained before)
IPFreely1021 1 month ago
Peter Milican wasn't as prepared for this one as I would have liked.
ATLMastering 1 month ago
the argument for the personhood of the creator Kalam cosmological argument is NOT an argument in favor of dualism... it ASSUMES DUALISM, and thus it is unsound
94jmcorrea 2 months ago
1:15:30-1:15:37 Millican defeats himself.
dannywizz 2 months ago
@dannywizz
no
1878EFC2008 1 month ago
Millican does the right thing. He relies more on science. He doesn't do the WLC philosophical style, with which you can "prove" and "disprove" anything.
balouthewatz 2 months ago
@balouthewatz Basicly that is not a problem of relying more or less by a thing on other thing, but a problem of when we must rely on science and when on non-science. And God is not a matter of and for science. So Millican may rely on science as well as dr. Craig on philosophy. Then the best is cooperation sometimes and duel other times. It depends. A last thing to tell: philosophy does not "prove" or "disprove" anything, like you said, it is more complex than that. You know this.
rudybdes 1 month ago
Now if "Dr." Craig wants to say that God is ultimately responsible for all of the matter and energy which exists he is free to do so, but this would merely be a baseless, speculative, and unverifiable assertion. The value of such an assertion would be no different than someone who said that an invisible dragon in the sky did it. If we have no way of testing either claim, and all that can be done is speculate, why should we believe in either? That is the question "Dr." Craig needs to answer.
spammyadvertising 2 months ago
"It's metaphysically absurd to think that things can pop into being out of non-being" Another thing Craig slyly does is that he equates the "universe" to "things." The universe is not a "thing" rather the universe is the set of all things which exist. The statement that "things" begin to exist is nonsensical since according to the first law of thermodynamics matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed.
spammyadvertising 2 months ago
"It's metaphysically absurd to think that things can pop into being out of non-being" Yet somehow we make a special case for God and say that he has the ability to make this "metaphysically absurd" event happen? I cannot believe that people actually take "Dr." Craig's "logical arguments" seriously LOL.
spammyadvertising 2 months ago
The absence of evidence is not *proof* of absence but it is evidence for absence.
spammyadvertising 2 months ago
Why does WLC keep using the same arguments at every debate even after they're shown to be logically invalid?
stickybug0 2 months ago
In addition, I think that Craig should be invited to a debate on Atheism vs Theism, because most Atheists are Agnostic in their beliefs, because, you can't say "God doesn't exist" with absolute certainty, you can only say it isn't likely.
WhyteMagez 2 months ago
This is less "Does God Exist" and more "Theism vs. Atheism". After all, Peter usually doesn't even try to answer "Does God Exist" with a yes or no answer.
WhyteMagez 2 months ago
@WhyteMagez Because the question cannot be answered.
ludogogo 1 month ago
Excellent debate. I'm a humanist and a Kantian, so my belief in God involves the conception on the basis of practical reason of an ultimate cause of nature who proportions happiness to virtue but remains distanced from the rather controversial descriptions of God in the Bible. I wasn't persuaded by Craig's arguments concerning animal suffering, natural evil, or the evidence for the resurrection, but he did better than Millican here. Christians should be proud!
nyscholartist 2 months ago
@nyscholartist Thank you for your thoughtful comment. If you would like to read a Christian rebuttal of Kant's conception of morality as practical reason, or of religion within the limits of reason alone, I wish to suggest T.K. Seung's "Kant: a Guide to the Perplexed" and G.W.F. Hegel's "Faith and Knowledge."
IamthePopeRome 2 months ago
Please, post the debates with Stephen Law and Peter Atkins!
andrephilosophie 2 months ago
The best way to argue against the Kalam Cosmological Argument is to argue for the b-theory of time. its just that noone told the atheists.
schopenhauer3334 2 months ago
peter millican was definately the best opponent william lane craig has ever had
ZEEECHET 2 months ago 12
@ZEEECHET Though that's not a very high bar.
TheSeanWilson 2 months ago
@TheSeanWilson I see the glass as half full rather than half empty. It can only get better for atheists. Its good for once to have someone intelligent defending atheism
ZEEECHET 2 months ago
@ZEEECHET Nah I would concede that Craig "won" this debate. The debates in which the weakness of Craig's arguments were exposed were in his debates against Shelly Kagan, Arif Ahmed, Robert Price, and Sam Harris (Harris to a lesser extent). But Craig is a smooth talker so even when he gets demolished in a debate he has a way of making it sound as if though he still didn't really lose. He would have made a tremendous politician had he gone that route.
spammyadvertising 2 months ago
@ZEEECHET
Yes, Millican was really good. But Shelly Kagan debated WLC equally good as well. IMO, they both defeated WLC.
hansquad 2 months ago
@ZEEECHET Carl Chinn was definately the best chairman aswell. ;)
tomdenman 1 month ago
Thanks for uploading this, its a great debate!
lukehase 2 months ago
Wonderful debate! Thank you for sharing!
PedroVrma 2 months ago
thanks for posting!
thrik 2 months ago
superb! I am looking forward in watching the debate with Atkins as well!
graceteam 2 months ago 8
@graceteam Do you know where the second Atkins debate is? I can't find it anywhere.
robtul12 2 months ago
@robtul12 I myself have been trying to find it as well! Darn...I heard Craig swiftly destroyed Atkins once again tho..!
graceteam 2 months ago
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METASEARCHUS 2 months ago
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Christopher Hitchens now know God exist ....
METASEARCHUS 2 months ago
@METASEARCHUS You're a fool.
ludogogo 1 month ago
@ludogogo Romans 1:20 since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools ...
METASEARCHUS 1 month ago
@METASEARCHUS Thank you for proving my point.
ludogogo 1 month ago
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METASEARCHUS 2 months ago
Great debate! Well done to the Philosophy Society!
sellyoak2 2 months ago