William Lane Craig vs Peter Atkins (HQ) 5/11

This is the 1998 debate between Dr. William Lane Craig and Dr. Peter W. Atkins in high quality.

.....................................THE DEBATE.....................................
WHAT IS THE EVIDENCE FOR/AGAINST THE EXISTENCE OF GOD?

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People & Blogs

Tags:

• William
• Lane
• Craig
• Peter
• Atkins
• F.
• Buckley
• Atheism
• Theism

[KoBred1]

Did u notice how Craig calls Atkins view as."radical" while atkins keeps referencing Craig's belief in God is "stupid", "lazy", "elementery"...and more..

[MrLinkinparkrules]

@greekmanos Haha at least he makes it easy for us to understand.

[greekmanos]

@Theophilus823543 See I've tried to have a serious look at Craig's line of arguments, however I just see pseudo-science instead of science and demagogy instead of rhetoric. He uses pseudo-science all the time. Most of the times the science he cites (with confidence I must admit) to give a reasonable foundation in his viewpoint, is obsolete, debunked etc. Pretty much most of the studies of the discovery institute are pseudo-science. Can a farmer see the difference? probably not...

[greekmanos]

@Theophilus823543 space-time is pretty different from energy or light. I like thinking of it as the frame of the picture, which is pretty much definition dependent as well. Although 3-d space may be straightforward to conceive, 11-d space isn't. And time, modern theories have discarded the notion of "beginning of time". Space-time cannot enter the debate of something-nothing. While you can send me a certain amount of energy, light, force etc, you can't deliver me 2 kilos of space or time :-)

[Theophilus823543]

@greekmanos I never said space-time behaves like a ball or a ruler. But it BEHAVES, and "nothing" cannot behave at all. Vacuum, light, energy, force, electric and magnetic fields, gravity, space, time, all these do not have mass. Therefore, by your defintion, they do not exist either. If this is what our discussion has come to, then I believe we must accept our mutually exclusive axioms and call it a day. You may have the last word. May you be guided in your search for Truth.

[Theophilus823543]

@greekmanos You hit the nail on the head. Craig's "nothing" is FAR from how someone like you sees nothing. He approaches from a supernaturalist philosopher's standpoint, and never claims to use science as a major support for his argument. Atkins, who believes science can account for everything, does indeed abuse science hard, pulling data out of the realm of science and attempting to use it in the realm of philosophy and rhetoric.

[greekmanos]

@Theophilus823543 I don't remember Atkins pointing to any study dealing with "nothing". Obviously another issue is that Craig's nothing may be far away from how science sees nothing. Therefore I don't understand how someone can quote and abuse science so hard. Well according to your statement it may be true that in this universe nothing is created out of nothing, and then if we are in a universe created out of nothing that this intuitive axiom is untrue. This could be our universe though :-)

[greekmanos]

@Theophilus823543 you just might be able to understand that expansion of time is not the same as expansion of a ball. Bending of time might not be the same as bending a ruler. In science we use models, far too simplistic to capture what is really happening in nature. The vacuum has no mass my dear friend. Yet we observe photons popping out of it. Observing it as a continuous or a discrete phenomenon has nothing to do with the reality of it.

[Theophilus823543]

@greekmanos It is not the quantization that makes it something. It is by virtue of being space-time. Do you find it laughable that space-time changes, contracts, and expands in the presence of mass as described in general relativity theory? It is contradictory to say that "nothing" can bend around large masses or that "nothing" can have any kind of geometry at all. Again, calling it the "best nothing" or the "only nothing" is meaningless, because it is something. Good day, my friend.

[Theophilus823543]

@greekmanos If "nothing" has been binned by science, then Dr. Atkins and you have no reason to use them in the context of a scientific discussion at all. Of course, non-Euclidean geometry is based upon that one intuitive axiom. However, that axiom is intuitive AND correct, in the context of planar geometry, which does not invalidate the axiom. If one was working on an ellipse or hyperbola, one would see "evidently" that that axiom would not apply in those settings.