William Lane Craig and the Kalam Cosmological Argument

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by mal4mac

Why does logic have to be absolute?

---

Apparently, you don't understand what I mean when I say "logical absolutes", as they are something both sides generally accept. The following link should help you sort it out:

http://logical-critical-thinking.com...cal-absolutes/

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by mal4mac

If you are viewing love as 'a subjective feeling', then, OK, I don't expect pictures of that. So this is something that, I agree, that we can believe in but, also something we have no pictures. (We might see brain scans light up when we have the feeling, but that isn't a picture of the subjective feeling...)

---

Sigh... God, like the number two, isn't a physical phenomenon, so presuming one can take a picture of Him is absurd. Moreover, when someone makes a statement in a rational discussion, they make the assertion that the statement is true IN PRINCIPLE, which is to say in all cases. So to ask for a picture of God is to imply that criteria is somehow standard or reasonable in all cases, and this is obviously untrue. Thus the examples. Your "explanation" of how these examples are different doesn't matter.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by mal4mac

I didn't, and wouldn't, insist on that, see my comment above on love.

---

Of course, you wouldn't because you're prejudiced and seem not to understand how rational discussions are generally conducted.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by mal4mac

I've read Dawkins, and a few others, and never had this impression. What New Atheists has claimed that you must have empirical verification for all claims? I've never read a claim like this from Dawkins, or any other New Atheist of similar intellectual stature.

---

You should watch Dawkins's debate with George Coyne in which Dawkins flatly admits to a scientistic (NOT scientific) worldview. Of course, this was so embarrassing for Dawkins that the interview never aired, but it is still available on the internet.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by mal4mac

God, viewed as the cause the Big bang, is something I might reasonably expect to have some empirical evidence of, as the Big Bang is in the empirical domain.

---

That's because you either don't understand or are unwilling to understand what people mean when they say "God", Who is, by definition, immaterial, which makes empirical testing impossible. Any cause outside the universe, whether God or otherwise, is necessarily unable to adhere to empirical criteria, and science is suggesting precisely extra-material causation. That's the whole point: science has found its own constraints. So asking to extend empiricism or science beyond their own stated constraints is a little absurd.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YesNo

At some level nothing matters. Most people aren't going to be convinced by any proof that violates their beliefs anyway, whether atheist or theist. One can always posit a "God of the gaps" or a "Nothing of the gaps" to get out of being backed into a logical corner. Or, more easily, one can ignore the arguments.

Craig's use of the Kalam argument along with Krauss's A Universe from Nothing are parts of a culture war going on now between Christians (and indirectly all religious people) and atheists such as Krauss and Dawkins. Dawkins wrote the concluding chapter to Krauss's book and he wanted Hitchens to write an introduction, but Hitchens was dying at the time. Krauss's text is not so much about science as it is an anti-religious polemic.

So whether the issue ultimately matters or not, it will be interesting to many people.

The core problem is can atheism explain our universe, including space and time, without recourse to some cause beyond space and time? That our universe had a beginning is now part of the standard model of cosmology. The Kalam argument, which is quite simple and which Craig is popularizing with many of the debates he engages in, insists it cannot. Krauss seems to be arguing that we should just accept stuff coming out of nothing without a cause because he can't find one that suits his beliefs.

---

Tell me who started this "culture war." The atheists? The christians? How is science any less valid than religion?

And if scientists need something beyond space and time to account for the universe's creation then that thing is called a force. Its your choice if you want to call it god, you have the right to call it whatever you want. But when you hold as a conviction a theistic view of things, when you try to make faith into fact, you are essentially becoming a scientist.

Craig is a scientist. He's just not as good a one as Hawking is. Literalism of all sorts amounts to the death of imagination and soul. I have faith but proving it amounts to beating it with a broomstick.

Literalist interpretations of religious books are wrong and harmful and anti-faith.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Darcy88

And if scientists need something beyond space and time to account for the universe's creation then that thing is called a force. Its your choice if you want to call it god, you have the right to call it whatever you want. But when you hold as a conviction a theistic view of things, when you try to make faith into fact, you are essentially becoming a scientist.

---

This is not only wrong, but silly too. The Kalam (and that's what we're talking about, right?) suggests an extra-spatial, extra-temporal, supremely powerful, personal cause for the universe. To suggest that calling this cause "God" is simply some arbitrary rationalization of theists is, frankly, hilarious. First, personhood, immateriality and timelessness have never been strictly associated with "force", but they have, in fact, been strictly associated with "God". In fact, that's the entire definition of the Western monotheistic God.

And, in your last statement, you reveal your scientistic (not scientific) stripes. Never in the entire history of all humanity has science been the sole arbiter of fact. That's why we have departments of math, history and philosophy on every university campus, rather than one monolithic college of science. The only people who don't understand this are people adhering to a faulty worldview of scientism. Science has not been, is not now and will never be a sufficient arbiter of truth. To state a truth does not make one a scientist, nor has it ever.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Darcy88

Craig is a scientist. He's just not as good a one as Hawking is. Literalism of all sorts amounts to the death of imagination and soul. I have faith but proving it amounts to beating it with a broomstick.

Literalist interpretations of religious books are wrong and harmful and anti-faith.

---

Again, this is patently false and entirely ridiculous. Craig is a philosopher, and there's absolutely no doubt about this. It is obviously true that Hawking is a better scientist than Craig, but it is also obviously true that Craig knows more about science than Hawking knows about philosophy. Yet Hawking understands the implications of his work, and that's why he's been so feverishly trying to find alternatives. The problem is that Craig is capable of drawing reasonable conclusions from scientific data, and most of the atheistic participants in this public debate aren't capable of discerning what constitutes a reasonable conclusion within the confines of the discussion. That is to say scientists are incredibly good at collecting data and drawing conclusions about it within the scope of their own field, but they are rank amateurs when it comes to drawing extra-scientific conclusions, which, unfortunately, happens all the time.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by stuntpickle

This is not only wrong, but silly too. The Kalam (and that's what we're talking about, right?) suggests an extra-spatial, extra-temporal, supremely powerful, personal cause for the universe. To suggest that calling this cause "God" is simply some arbitrary rationalization of theists is, frankly, hilarious. First, personhood, immateriality and timelessness have never been strictly associated with "force", but they have, in fact, been strictly associated with "God". In fact, that's the entire definition of the Western monotheistic God.

And, in your last statement, you reveal your scientistic (not scientific) stripes. Never in the entire history of all humanity has science been the sole arbiter of fact. That's why we have departments of math, history and philosophy on every university campus, rather than one monolithic college of science. The only people who don't understand this are people adhering to a faulty worldview of scientism. Science has not been, is not now and will never be a sufficient arbiter of truth. To state a truth does not make one a scientist, nor has it ever.




Again, this is patently false and entirely ridiculous. Craig is a philosopher, and there's absolutely no doubt about this. It is obviously true that Hawking is a better scientist than Craig, but it is also obviously true that Craig knows more about science than Hawking knows about philosophy. Yet Hawking understands the implications of his work, and that's why he's been so feverishly trying to find alternatives. The problem is that Craig is capable of drawing reasonable conclusions from scientific data, and most of the atheistic participants in this public debate aren't capable of discerning what constitutes a reasonable conclusion within the confines of the discussion. That is to say scientists are incredibly good at collecting data and drawing conclusions about it within the scope of their own field, but they are rank amateurs when it comes to drawing extra-scientific conclusions, which, unfortunately, happens all the time.

---

I won't discuss this with you if you can't speak with decency and respect.

Cheers SP.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Darcy88

I won't discuss this with you if you can't speak with decency and respect.

Cheers SP.

---

I haven't treated you otherwise. To say your point is silly isn't the same as saying you, yourself, are. To suggest that that Craig is a scientist and science is the arbiter of fact is as bizarre as to suggest that Craig is a baker and baking is the arbiter of fact.

This has been my experience in discussing this issue with atheists. I never get to have the actual discussion, but, instead, have to spend my time informing my interlocutor why, for instance, uncertain premises do not infringe upon an argument's validity, or why science isn't the arbiter of fact, or why metaphysics isn't tantamount to voodoo, or why this or that absurd assertion isn't admissible in any reasonable discussion--all while the atheist pretends that he has some special claim on truth, and theists are dolts who believe in fables. Of course, all my efforts are generally for naught since my interlocutor will then take his toys home under the pretense that I'm not respecting him.

Always, the atheists assume the mantle of reason and then immediately start to tell theists why it isn't reliable. If science is the arbiter of all facts, truths and things in general, then this discussion is impossible since it is not a scientific experiment.

Sometimes saying something is silly isn't an insult, but an accurate description.

Ok Pip, this is the last song and dance, I really don't wanna debate the politics of this argument as I said before ... Anyways, this is my last salvo ... I hope we can have more meaningful discussions in the future ... sometime

Quote:

---

So, in summary:
Signature in the Cell was published by a popular press for mass market and not by an academic publisher, and this publisher sings the praise of its product in its descriptions.

---

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_C._Meyer
In March, 2002, Meyer announced a "teach the controversy" strategy, which alleges that the theory of evolution is controversial within scientific circles, following a presentation to the Ohio State Board of Education. The presentation included submission of an annotated bibliography of 44 peer-reviewed scientific articles that were said to raise significant challenges to key tenets of what was referred to as "Darwinian evolution". In response to this claim the National Center for Science Education, an organisation that works in collaboration with National Academy of Sciences, the National Association of Biology Teachers, and the National Science Teachers Association that support the teaching of evolution in public schools, contacted the authors of the papers listed and twenty-six scientists, representing thirty-four of the papers, responded. None of the authors considered that their research provided evidence against evolution.

Sounds like to me, evolutionists or darwinists if you prefer ... aren't to big on publishing material that ... "raise significant challenges to key tenets" ... that being "something that had to happen before the process of biological evolution could begin" ... The Ohio State Board of Education, 44 peer-reviewed scientific articles, the National Center for Science Education and multiple other sub-organizations closely tied to education contacted 26 of the scientific authors, representing 34 of the 44 scientific peer-reviewed papers, which were needed to constitute the thesis ... none of which "considered that their research provided evidence against evolution." ... But more than that actually confirms through those scientific methods that previous presumptions of evolutionary theory in the light of the "Biological Abacus" for the lack of a better word are inheritantly wrong and misleading ... this is nothing but a double standard and a scientific ponze scheme ... [but both party's if you wanna call it that are to blame]

Quote:

---

It was reviewed favourably in an irrelevant magazine with a highly pretentious name.

---

So was Global Warming ... the University of East Anglia ... what if I googled say these terms vs Stephen Meyers ... Signature in the Cell ... if it news to evolution.org ... it is to most people then ... The reviewer and posters below in the Spectrum article ... seemed very informed of the subject ... the Reviewer here

http://spectrummagazine.org/review/2...signature-cell
The book itself is almost 600 pages in length, the last 100 contain footnotes, bibliography and index. [Sounds like a reference book to me ?!?] In the 150 years since 1859 the dominant scientific establishment has, it is fair to say, fully embraced the “materialistic naturalism” model generally and specifically as applied to origins. Signature in the Cell proposes to revisit the origins controversy particularly in light of the discovery over 50 years ago of DNA and the enormous advances in our knowledge of cellular biology and information theory since then ... While the book chronicles and explains a host of issues, I was fascinated by the discussion of random chance and the assembly of the minimum amount of proteins necessary for “simple” life to function ... If Meyer stopped here and simply asserted that “since undirected, random chance cannot produce even one protein (given the entire resources of the universe) then life must be attributable to an Intelligent Designer,” he would be guilty of something that he strenuously denies: relying on a “God of the gaps” argument. Meyer does not do this. Instead, he explains “abductive reasoning” which enables one to come up with the “best explanation” ... In short, “God of the gaps” argues from ignorance whereas “Inference to the Best Explanation” argues from knowledge.

Quote:

---

Dawkins refused to debate Meyer because he's a sham. And somehow we're to take this as a poor reflection on Dawkins.

---

Well, whether Dawkin's or Meyer's for that matter is a sham or in my words a ponze schemer ... wouldn't it be great if the some world's most pre-eminent scientists and debaters each clash for there respective magisterium, by whom they were groomed to become? I never seen Dawkins backed down so easily?

http://spectrummagazine.org/review/2...signature-cell
The problem with the origin of life is that there is currently no adequate non-intelligent cause identified, according to Meyer. So while I agree it is inadequate to make the two-step premise/conclusion I set forth, nevertheless that seems to be pretty much exactly what someone like Dawkins does.

Quote:

---

And then a quote mined from Lynn Margulis, who rejected the importance placed on natural selection in Darwinism in favour of her own symbiotic evolutionary theory (and of the Gaia Hypothesis), which was clearly wrong. Margulis is a rather bizarre figure because she was right about one thing, the endosymbiotic origins of the mitochondria, but otherwise she was a life long fringe scientist with bizarre ideas. Despite this, it is disingenuous to quote Margulis suggesting she favoured creationism, because she was adamantly not a creationists. She believed in evolution, just in her own weird personal version of it.

---

Well, I'll give you this one ... I'm glad your listening ... I got this one from a fellow poster at unexplaned-mysteries.com ... I always thought it is rather amusing, don't you think? No Harm Intended ... This argument seems to raise more questions ... than it answers ... so I'm seeing this as a good thing

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/no...ess/#ProMulNot
What does a man love more than life?
Hate more than death or mortal strife?
That which contented men desire,
The poor have, the rich require,
The miser spends, the spendthrift saves,
And all men carry to their graves?
(Leemings, 1953, 201)

The answer, Nothing, can only be seen through a kaleidoscope of equivocations. Some of the attempts to answer ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’ equivocate or lapse into meaninglessness. The comedic effect of such errors is magnified by the fundamentality of the question. Error here comes off as pretentious error. Those who ask the question ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’ commonly get confused. But the question itself appears to survive tests for being merely a verbal confusion.

NOVA The Elegant Universe Pt 2
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics...se-string.html

BRIAN GREENE: However it was discovered, Euler's equation, which miraculously explained the strong force, took on a life of its own. This was the [re-] birth of string theory. Passed from colleague to colleague, Euler's equation ended up on the chalkboard in front of a young American physicist, Leonard Susskind.

LEONARD SUSSKIND: To this day I remember the formula. The formula was... and I looked at it, and I said, "This is so simple even I can figure out what this is."

BRIAN GREENE: Susskind retreated to his attic to investigate. He understood that this ancient formula described the strong force mathematically, but beneath the abstract symbols he had caught a glimpse of something new.

LEONARD SUSSKIND: And I fiddled with it, I monkeyed with it. I sat in my attic, I think for two months on and off. But the first thing I could see in it, it was describing some kind of particles which had internal structure which could vibrate, which could do things, which wasn't just a point particle. And I began to realize that what was being described here was a string, an elastic string, like a rubber band, or like a rubber band cut in half. And this rubber band could not only stretch and contract, but wiggle. And marvel of marvels, it exactly agreed with this formula.

BRIAN GREENE: Veneziano was amazed to discover that Euler's equations, long thought to be nothing more than a mathematical curiosity, seemed to describe the strong force. He quickly published a paper and was famous ever after for this "accidental" discovery.

GABRIELE VENEZIANO (CERN): I see occasionally, written in books, that, uh, that this model was invented by chance or was, uh, found in the math book, and, uh, this makes me feel pretty bad. What is true is that the function was the outcome of a long year of work, and we accidentally discovered string theory.

BRIAN GREENE: However it was discovered, Euler's equation, which miraculously explained the strong force, took on a life of its own. This was the birth of string theory. Passed from colleague to colleague, Euler's equation ended up on the chalkboard in front of a young American physicist, Leonard Susskind.

LEONARD SUSSKIND: To this day I remember the formula. The formula was... and I looked at it, and I said, "This is so simple even I can figure out what this is."

http://www.craigdemo.co.uk/geneticpatterns.htm
One of the things I discovered early on was the occurrence of the ratio 1: 1.2732, the ratio for a squared circle. This led Vernon to the discovery of pi in Genesis 1. This, in turn, led Peter Bluer to the discovery of e {Euler's Formula] in Genesis 1 also.

http://homepage.virgin.net/vernon.je...rst_Princs.htm
In mathematics, the sciences, and engineering, the two most widely known (and used) dimensionless constants are p (pi) and e. Both are transcendental numbers, ie neither can be defined exactly by the ratio of two integers, nor by any algebraic process.

The first (p) is most famously involved in the mensuration of circle and sphere, and has been known from ancient times. Its value is 3.141592654... - commonly approximated by the simple fraction [of 22 Hebrew letters divided by 7 days of creation] 22/7, or 3.142857... (error: + 0.04%). Leibniz discovered that it was possible to express this number precisely as an infinite alternating series involving the reciprocals of the odd integers, thus:

The second (e) is of a more recent vintage (18th century). Known also as 'Euler's number', it occurs naturally in any situation where a quantity increases at a rate proportional to its value, such as a bank account producing interest, or a population increasing as its members reproduce.

The application of a simple numerical procedure to the Hebrew letters and words of the Bible's first verse (Gen.1:1) generates an approximation of p, correct to 5 significant figures (error: 0.0012%).

The application of the identical procedure to the first verse of the Gospel of John (which has much in common with Gen.1:1) generates an approximation of e, also correct to 5 significant figures (error: 0.0011%).

It would be extremely unreasonable to suppose that these events are fortuitous accidents; rather, highly likely that they are features of purposeful design.

PATTERN & PURPOSE - An augmented review of Stan Tenen's web page
http://homepage.virgin.net/vernon.jenkins/Letr_Sym.htm

"Symmetry Woven into the First Verse of the Hebrew Text of Genesis"
Mr. Tenen's essay, "Damning by Faint Praise", can be found at http://www.meru.org/DamnbyFaintPraise.html.

It has already been observed that the Ulam spiral arrangement of the letters of Genesis 1:1 takes place within an 11 x 11 array of unit squares. Using this structure as a backcloth, it is now possible to develop some apposite symmetrical patterns ... which represent 37

REALITY 101: THE BOOK GENESIS - Hidden Secret (The Golden Mean Spiral)
http://reality101blog.blogspot.com/2...iljournal.html

We now know thanks to Stan Tenens work into the origin and nature of the Hebrew alphabet and Daniel Winter’s additional research into the significance of the Golden Mean spiral, that the sacred Hebrew alphabet was designed with a clear intention to convey the very essence of creation and to teach later generations what the Be-resjiet, the principle of creation really is. Independently [both] Stan Tenen and Daniel Winter noticed that the characters of the Hebrew alphabet are projections of a special form on the faces of a tetrahedron seen from different angles! However it was Daniel Winter who pointed out that this special form is actually the Golden Mean or Phi spiral. The Phi spiral describes the surface of the torus, the basic element of matter. Now if we put the Phi spiral inside a tetrahedron and then slowly revolve it around a pivot axis, and shine a light from behind the Phi spiral, all of the Hebrew characters will show up as the shadows on the inside face of the tetrahedron. Hence, the characters of the Hebrew alphabet are the projections of a Golden Mean spiral.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedean_spiral
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulam_spiral

The Ulam spiral, or prime spiral (in other languages also called the Ulam Cloth) is a simple method of visualizing the prime numbers that reveals the apparent tendency of certain quadratic polynomials to generate unusually large numbers of primes. It was discovered by the mathematician Stanislaw Ulam in 1963 ... According to Ed Pegg, Jr., the herpetologist Laurence M. Klauber proposed the use of a prime number spiral in finding prime-rich quadratic polynomials in 1932, more than thirty years prior to Ulam's discovery.

All prime numbers, except for the number 2, are odd numbers. Since in the Ulam spiral adjacent diagonals are alternatively odd and even numbers, it is no surprise that all prime numbers lie in alternate diagonals of the Ulam spiral. What is startling is the tendency of prime numbers to lie on some diagonals more than others. Robert Sacks devised a variant of the Ulam spiral in 1994. In the Sacks spiral the non-negative integers are plotted on an Archimedean spiral rather than the square spiral used by Ulam. (In the Ulam spiral, two squares occur in each rotation.) Euler's prime-generating polynomial, x2-x+41, now appears as a single curve as x takes the values 0, 1, 2 ...

Secrets of the Hebrew Letters
http://www.redicecreations.com/speci...ewletters.html

Though the realization was an instantaneous 'Aha!', it took him years to mathematically perfect the shape of the hand model, which incorporates fourteen explicit features representing aspects of western philosophies and is based on a spiral used in art throughout the ancient world, most notably under the Egyptian 'Eye of Horus.' "It is not the Golden Spiral," he says. "The golden spiral is a modern invention that circles itself endlessly in its own image-philosophically, it denotes narcissism. True sacred geometry appears like the golden spiral for quite a while and then it straightens out." "Like the Egyptian spiral," he continues, "ours has a tightly coiled part which expands into all there is-the coiled part represents the human head and brain and the straight part, the spine ... if you overlay the spiral over a human embryo at 56 days, they match perfectly."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_of_Horus
In the Ancient Egyptian measurement system, the Eye Of Horus defined Old Kingdom number one (1) = 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 + 1/32 + 1/64, by throwing away 1/64 for any rational number. Eye of Horus numbers created six-term rounded-off numbers. The Old Kingdom definition has dropped a seventh term, a remainder 1/64, that was needed to report exact series ... The Egyptian Mathematical Leather Roll, the RMP 2/n table and the Akhmim Wooden Tablet wrote binary quotients and scaled remainders. The metaphorical side of this information linked Old Kingdom fractions 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32, and 1/64, to separate parts of the eye.

Ancient Egyptian Religion and Mythology; The Eye of Horus (Eye of Ra)
http://www.ancientegyptonline.co.uk/eye.html

The symbol was divided into six parts, representing the shattering of Horus´ eye into six pieces. Each piece was associated with one of the six senses and a specific fraction ... More complex fractions were created by adding the symbols together. It is interesting to note that if the pieces are added together the total is 63/64 not 1. Some suggest that the remaining 1/64 represents the magic used by Thoth to restore the eye, while others consider that the missing piece represented the fact that perfection was not possible.

http://www.whatabeginning.com/Themes/Part1/BP.htm
http://www.whatabeginning.com/Themes...Teach_Ulam.htm
Themes from Creation's Blueprint - 1: Teach_Ulam

The Ulam spiral is a graphically concise way of representing long sequences of the natural numbers, of highlighting properties that may be held in common, and of detecting patterns of behavior that would otherwise be largely unknown.

http://www.greatdreams.com/grace/146/153quran.html
http://www.greatdreams.com/grace/99/99AAelectrons.html
The Quran's Number 19 -Electrons and Mythologies

Number 19, the number upon which all of the Quran is based, represents two octaves plus the fifth of the third octave of 7 notes.

The use of the torus in my studies is one of modularity ... cyclical in definition of integer solutions solving certain diophantine [allows the variables to be whole numbers negative or positive only] equations. The torus means doubly periodic, which is a two cycle entity. These forms can be represented by the complex values of e (natural log) as: e^(ix)=doubly periodic form.

No, these transcendental constants are embedded and encrypted in the text of the Scriptures ... a priori, before it's discovery ... In the Bio-Info and in the Cosmological Component and crossing each other ... The writers of it ... by science's own admission ... could not have conceived or designed it with their own hand ... or at least without [God's help] ... supernatural invention ... or science is just catching up ... I have tons of more ammo ... but, I need a break ... so until next time ... please don't be mad at me for saying this

Sorry if it seems like I abandoned this debate. It's been an interesting one, but I decided to take most of the week off and do zen out to some good music. I'll try to get back to YesNo and StuntPickle asap. :)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by stuntpickle

God, like the number two, isn't a physical phenomenon...

---

Physical phenomena can only be explained by other physical phenomena. The Big Bang is a physical phenomenon and, therefore, God must, at least in part, be a physical phenomenon.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by stuntpickle

You should watch Dawkins's debate with George Coyne in which Dawkins flatly admits to a scientistic (NOT scientific) worldview. Of course, this was so embarrassing for Dawkins that the interview never aired, but it is still available on the internet.

---

If your conclusions are correct about him being embarrassed about what he said then *so what*. He might have had an off day. If George Coyne said something daft 'off the cuff' I'd let him off, everyone is likely to do that - low blood sugar levels can make everyone irrational. To engage in serious debate you need to refer to serious sources. Can you point to anything in Dawkins published writings to defend your idea that he is an unreconstructed logical positivist?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by stuntpickle

To say your point is silly isn't the same as saying you, yourself, are.

---

Depends on one's philosophy - if one identifies with one's views and you call one silly then one is likely to draw the conclusion that you are calling one silly, and the thread gets derailed. Proof - it just happened.

Why not just say a view doesn't add up, for you?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by stuntpickle

This has been my experience in discussing this issue with atheists. I never get to have the actual discussion, but, instead, have to spend my time informing my interlocutor why, for instance, uncertain premises do not infringe upon an argument's validity, or why science isn't the arbiter of fact, or why metaphysics isn't tantamount to voodoo...

---

Why do you think that we should know that metaphysics isn't voodoo? You have to start with the assumption that you might have to explain everything in a general forum.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by KillCarneyKlans

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/no...ess/#ProMulNot
...

---

Is anyone reading all this? I'm not. I think a forum discussion should involve the give and take of argument, not someone standing up and giving a long lecture. Why not make *one* substantial point KCK, and let the argument roll on... oops three posts in a row, time to eat my own words, I'll stop there....

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YesNo

(Craig) is mirroring the physicists results back to them with his religious twist.

---

I think that's a rather positive and simple way to look at it. Again, I stick with the idea that he cherry-picks quotes and conclusions that he can retroactively fit into his worldview. It's basically hindsight bias, and it's why physicists/cosmologists aren't impressed. You can't move from a point of "we don't know" to "we know!" based on nothing but word games.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YesNo

The problem of doing an infinite number of even mental events is at the heart of the axiom of choice in mathematics. One cannot assume that is logically permitted without the explicit axiom, at least that is how I remember it.

---

And I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say here...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YesNo

Perhaps it was a multiverse outside our space and time that caused our universe to exist... If he is correct about that theorem, even the multiverse had a beginning and we are caught in the same problem.

---

FWIW, I think the multiverse is more damaging to the teleological ("fine-tuning") argument than it is the Kalam. The teleological argument really relies on ours being the only universe out there for its rhetoric to impress. If we're just one of countless universes, then we shouldn't be surprised to find ourselves in one that supports life. But, yes, even multiverse seems to take us back to a beginning, but the nature of that beginning is what we're debating now.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YesNo

Part of their worldview, if I understand it, has been validated.

---

Well, that's like saying that the psychic's powers have been validated when they correctly predict if a pregnant woman will have a boy or a girl; it was 50/50 from the beginning: either the universe began or it didn't, and things beginning is more metaphysically intuitive for us, so they went with that. They also went with a lot of other metaphysically intuitive things that turned out to be completely wrong. The record of Holy Texts predicting the future of scientific discoveries is rather abysmal, if we're going on a case-by-case basis.

I think the idea of God that you have and the one that I have are different. I suspect it doesn't even correspond to Craig's idea of God. I may be wrong, but I suspect that you are right about the God you are describing. It does not exist.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YesNo

These Gods not only explain the origin of the universe but also of our and other species consciousness. In that sense it is the simplest explanation.

---

God explains everything without explaining anything, which is precisely the problem. It covers up ontological complexity (what such a god-like being would entail mathematically or in terms of AI programming) with linguistic simplicity. Yudkowsky once put this very eloquently in saying that "anger" seems very simple to us because we simply feel it, but to try and program in anger is infinitely more difficult than programming in "gravity" which is just a simple mathematical formula, but is completely counter-intuitive to how our minds understand the universe. That's the gist of the thing: there are some things that seem very simple to us because they reflect our natures back to us. We understand without really understanding. Then there are things that seem very complex to us, like math, because they don't reflect our natures back to us. Yet we call these latter things "complicated" and "complex" when, in reality, most mathematical formulas are much simpler than the workings of the human brain. In much the same way, God *seems* like a very simple concept until you really, actually think about how complex such a being would have to be to exist at all.

Anyway, what I said about the conjunction fallacy still applies to God. If we can explain the universe by natural means that already exist, then that's much simpler than having to add an external variable (whose existence is unknown) to the mix. It's no different than phlogiston. Phlogiston sounds like a very simple answer. Very easy to understand. But the very fact that one doesn't know if it exists means it's less likely to be the cause of something that already exists.

To quote that article: "Fake explanations don't feel fake. That's what makes them dangerous."

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YesNo

As the Christians claim, we are made in the image of God.

---

As the atheist claims, God is made in our image, and it is a fact that people mind project onto reality all the time, so what's the argument that God just isn't another one of those times?

Stuntpickle,

I think this is what most of the first half of your last post is stating: Rather than “nothing” being equated by classical philosophers as “empty space,” “nothing” was instead equated with “the absence of any thing,” and “nothing comes from nothing” was an a priori statement made regarding this imagined “complete absence nothing” which I’ll call CAN from now on.

Firstly, I have my doubts about whether CAN was really the only way in which nothing was originally thought of. If “existence” was equated with tangible, sensible material (as I’m pretty sure it was), then “non-existence” was equated to the absence of tangible, sensible material. One might label this “nothing” and think that it was really CAN based on their ignorance, but it still seems to me that if you asked such people “would you define nothing as the absence of all tangible, sensible reality (living creatures, earth, water, stars, sun, etc.)?” they probably would’ve said “yes.” Which means that all that would’ve been left was “empty space” (you could’ve asked them about that instead: “is empty space nothing?” and I think they would’ve said “yes” just as well).

But let’s ponder on CAN for a moment anyway. It seems to me that CAN is just an example of a human brain inventing categories to which nothing in reality belongs (no external referent) and pretending not only that this category is real, but that it would obey certain rules and laws. So, we can imagine CAN, whether CAN does (or can) exist or not, and we can go further and state something like “nothing comes from CAN,” without ever even having observed CAN, which strikes me as positively silly. It’s as if one is programming in the rules of a video game that exists only in their mind.

Back to the Kalam and Craig. When Craig argues for the first premise, “nothing from CAN” (let’s call that NFC) is often invoked. But, dear reader, I ask you: what in the world does a rule invented for an empty set in our brain have anything to do with external, material reality? And why if NFC is so important does Craig constantly refer to examples of things coming from other things inside material reality? How does NFC argue for the first premise? Nobody has ever argued that everything we have observed beginning to exist seems to have a cause (except maybe virtual particles) and that all of those things came from something that was pre-existing. But that has nothing to do with NFC, that has to do with our empirical observations, and “everything has a cause” is only considered a law because it’s been empirically reinforced time after time. That we may have found something that refutes that would seem to be reason to begin doubting its metaphysical truthfulness, rather than invoking NFC that seems to have nothing to do with it in the first place.

Perhaps you’re correct in that Craig has never equivocated on nothing meaning NFC in print, but I’m mostly familiar with his debates, and in those debates when he argues for P1 he always uses examples from material reality, that such-and-such things don’t appear out of nothing. But shouldn’t Craig stress before he says such a thing that he’s not talking about “empty space” nothing to his audience? Because I bet if you asked most people not up on their quantum vacuums if they considered empty space nothing they’d say “yes”. In fact, go ask your average Joe if they think “nothing” actually exists in external reality, and, if they say yes (I’m guessing most will), ask them what they think of as “nothing.” Even if I accept Craig is always using “nothing” to mean “CAN,” that stresses all the more why he should specify that to his lay audiences at his debates rather than just rattling off “NFC” and then giving examples from material reality. That’s, at best, extremely dishonest.

You say that Krauss is equivocating, but I’d argue he’s actually using a very, very common assocation/referent for the word “nothing”. Perhaps it’s only you that assumed when he said “nothing” he meant CAN, rather than QV, and he was never equivocating at all (perhaps Krauss quite simply mistook Craig's CAN for QV to begin with). As clear as it may make things, you can’t stop people from associating “nothing” with “empty space”, and you can’t say Krauss is equivocating when that’s a perfectly legitimate referent for “nothing” in many people’s minds. Plus, let’s not forget, there is a rhetorical power to words, and if “nothing” can be equated with “empty space,” then it’s all the more remarkable to prove that that “nothing” is actually a great deal of “something” that can produce the entire universe. It seems to me that to fuss over the use of nothing in such an instance is to miss the magnitude of the facts of what’s being claimed.

One final point: You say Craig says “outside of time,” but “outside” itself implies space, which wouldn’t have existed then either.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by mal4mac

Is anyone reading all this? I'm not. I think a forum discussion should involve the give and take of argument, not someone standing up and giving a long lecture. Why not make *one* substantial point KCK, and let the argument roll on...

---

I've been thinking this exact thought while looking over Carney's posts. I'm not sure he gets what forums are for. No one is going to read those dissertations.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by KillCarneyKlans

Sounds like to me, evolutionists or darwinists if you prefer ... aren't to big on publishing material that ... "raise significant challenges to key tenets" ... that being "something that had to happen before the process of biological evolution could begin" ... The Ohio State Board of Education, 44 peer-reviewed scientific articles, the National Center for Science Education and multiple other sub-organizations closely tied to education contacted 26 of the scientific authors, representing 34 of the 44 scientific peer-reviewed papers, which were needed to constitute the thesis ... none of which "considered that their research provided evidence against evolution." ... But more than that actually confirms through those scientific methods that previous presumptions of evolutionary theory in the light of the "Biological Abacus" for the lack of a better word are inheritantly wrong and misleading ... this is nothing but a double standard and a scientific ponze scheme ... [but both party's if you wanna call it that are to blame

---

This is a typical rhetorical strategy of the Discovery Institute, claim there is an institutional bias towards their non-science that explains why they can't get any respect in legitimate scientific publications. And then they point to legitimate science and twist it to confirm their ID hypothesis (which is unfalsifiable and thus not a scientific hypothesis according to modern science), even though they clearly misunderstand the science they quote (but the more cynical part of me knows full well that the likes of Dembski and Behe know full well that they are misleading their audiences).

To understand how pathetic these arguments are you have to consider that the number of legitimate scientific articles supporting evolutionary theory number in the thousands every year, and the ID crowd have to mine all of these to find a handful of publications they delusionally believe support their position (or in a few cases they have been implicated in fraudulently getting their own stuff published) despite the actual authors of the papers refuting it.

And all of this depends on the layman audience not understanding the scientific process. A weakness in one hypothesis does not demonstrate a strength in an alternate hypothesis. The ID crowd would have us believe that when someone raises a question about certain models of natural selection under certain conditions that this somehow validates ID or invalidates all of evolutionary theory.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by KillCarneyKlans

The book itself is almost 600 pages in length, the last 100 contain footnotes, bibliography and index. [Sounds like a reference book to me ?!?] In the 150 years since 1859 the dominant scientific establishment has, it is fair to say, fully embraced the “materialistic naturalism” model generally and specifically as applied to origins. Signature in the Cell proposes to revisit the origins controversy particularly in light of the discovery over 50 years ago of DNA and the enormous advances in our knowledge of cellular biology and information theory since then ... While the book chronicles and explains a host of issues, I was fascinated by the discussion of random chance and the assembly of the minimum amount of proteins necessary for “simple” life to function ... If Meyer stopped here and simply asserted that “since undirected, random chance cannot produce even one protein (given the entire resources of the universe) then life must be attributable to an Intelligent Designer,” he would be guilty of something that he strenuously denies: relying on a “God of the gaps” argument. Meyer does not do this. Instead, he explains “abductive reasoning” which enables one to come up with the “best explanation” ... In short, “God of the gaps” argues from ignorance whereas “Inference to the Best Explanation” argues from knowledge.

---

The weakness of this reasoning is quite obvious. First of all, Meyers relies heavily on out of date research on RNA and Amino Acids to support his arguments, which itself should be a red flag that he has to selectively ignore new evidence in biology to make his argument hold up. Secondly, his information theory is old hat and has long been refuted by mathematicians. I don't want to get into a point by point discussion of how Meyers misrepresents current knowledge about origins of life research.

Here is a full rebuttal of Meyers "information" nonsense by Computer Science professor Jeffrey Shallit, of the University of Waterloo:
http://recursed.blogspot.ca/2009/10/...on-theory.html

Meyer has been peddling the same old BS for years, and it is always the same. He is also a well known liar.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by KillCarneyKlans

Well, whether Dawkin's or Meyer's for that matter is a sham or in my words a ponze schemer ... wouldn't it be great if the some world's most pre-eminent scientists and debaters each clash for there respective magisterium, by whom they were groomed to become? I never seen Dawkins backed down so easily?

---

No, Meyer is neither a scientist nor a respected anything. Moreover, he is a well known BSer and mouthpiece for the Discovery Institute who spends most of his time promoting their products and fostering conspiracy theories. Dawkins is completely right to go nowhere near anyone from the DI.

Morpheus,

With all due respect, I'm beginning to think you're the worst of all possible things: unpersuadable. When I stopped being an atheist about five years ago, it was precisely because people like you demonstrated the inadequacy of my own worldview and, moreover, my own obstinance.

You demonstrate that you have difficulties with what exactly it is that constitutes metaphysics or a technically valid argument, yet you speak on these very same subjects as though you were an authority. You start out propounding some variety of empiricism and then quickly hop off into postmodern obfuscation. A discussion with you about the "serious flaws" in the Kalam is complicated by that you can't see the serious flaws in your own assertions, nor do you seem willing. Let me be clear: these flaws I'm referring to have nothing to do with whether God exists, but concern your own capacity to formulate believable statements--not to mention a reasonable arguments.

Your whole attempt to salvage this one point about Craig's equivocation is simply a rehash, at length, of previous errors. Consider:

Quote:

---

Perhaps you’re correct in that Craig has never equivocated on nothing meaning NFC in print, but I’m mostly familiar with his debates, and in those debates when he argues for P1 he always uses examples from material reality,

---

You concede the argument, but then you take the concession right back with a straw man fallacy and a plain misstatement of fact that we've already covered. Of course, Craig is guilty of equivocating in neither print nor public debate since he's had a first year logic course. The guy's a PhD philosopher for Chrissake, and you seem convinced against all reasonable evidence that he's made some simpleton's error. Craig's most common example of coming into being is that of himself, in the Cartesian sense, and thus has nothing to do with sensory experience of the material world. And even if he had only used material examples of coming into being, it would not follow that his concept of "nothing" is ruined. But this is all beside the point since none of this would constitute equivocation even if you were 100% right, which you probably aren't.

I've tried to explain to you what equivocation is, and apparently you have not understood. You have resisted all reasonable corrections and insist that Craig is equivocating, and so I throw the gauntlet down.

Until you produce a sourced example of Craig committing a fallacy of equivocation, I will consider you ignorant of the facts. You choose. No more lengthy irrelevancies about semiotics. We needn't discuss Saussure to point out an elementary flaw of logic. The only thing that you can possibly provide to make your point is a quote with an apparent equivocation and a link to the source material. It should be a fairly easy operation without you having to explain some far-off triviality. A fallacy of equivocation involves the speaker/writer confusing two different meanings of the same term in a single argument--not a speaker/writer making a statement and then you descrying the nature of the equivocation through your crystal ball.

A fallacy of equivocation, FYI, generally takes the following form:

1. A1=B
2. A2=C
Therefore, A1=C

What you don't understand, I don't think, is that even if Craig were absolutely incorrect about the nature of "nothing", it would NOT constitute equivocation. It would simply be an error of fact. You are trying to suggest that Craig can never accurately use "nothing" because of some obscure misunderstanding. But this is irrelevant because to commit the fallacy of equivocation, Craig would need to be able to use both the right meaning and the wrong one in the same argument. Your position refutes itself.

BTW, I don't care if you think Craig has made an error of fact. My only goal is to disabuse you of the notion that the Kalam has "serious flaws" of logic. Any error in this instance other than equivocation is simply unimportant since your strategy seems to be to endlessly generate errors.

Stay on topic, and please provide the equivocation in question.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

I think that's a rather positive and simple way to look at it. Again, I stick with the idea that he cherry-picks quotes and conclusions that he can retroactively fit into his worldview. It's basically hindsight bias, and it's why physicists/cosmologists aren't impressed. You can't move from a point of "we don't know" to "we know!" based on nothing but word games.

---

It doesn't matter whether Craig "cherry-picks" his points or not, he has made these points many times in the past. His opponents should be prepared to respond to them since the points come from the fields of their alleged expertise.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

FWIW, I think the multiverse is more damaging to the teleological ("fine-tuning") argument than it is the Kalam. The teleological argument really relies on ours being the only universe out there for its rhetoric to impress. If we're just one of countless universes, then we shouldn't be surprised to find ourselves in one that supports life. But, yes, even multiverse seems to take us back to a beginning, but the nature of that beginning is what we're debating now.

---

There could be many universes. The question is whether something made a conscious choice to create them or not. The multiverse is set up to find some explanation for our universe that involves chance and not choice.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

Well, that's like saying that the psychic's powers have been validated when they correctly predict if a pregnant woman will have a boy or a girl; it was 50/50 from the beginning: either the universe began or it didn't, and things beginning is more metaphysically intuitive for us, so they went with that. They also went with a lot of other metaphysically intuitive things that turned out to be completely wrong. The record of Holy Texts predicting the future of scientific discoveries is rather abysmal, if we're going on a case-by-case basis.

---

I said the Big Bang validates part of the Judeo-Christo-Islamic religion. It does not validate all parts of these religions. However, I think it completely invalidates creationism as well as atheism. These two positions are the big losers with the confirmation of the Big Bang.

The Big Bang may invalidate parts of the Indian shramanic, non-vedic religions such as Jainism or Buddhism. It does not, however, invalidate all parts of these shramanic religions.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

I think the idea of God that you have and the one that I have are different. I suspect it doesn't even correspond to Craig's idea of God. I may be wrong, but I suspect that you are right about the God you are describing. It does not exist.

---

I don't claim that the God I'm interested in the the same as the God Craig believes in, nor do I claim that we agree on a definition of God. The God I'm interested in is essentially consciousness. So if consciousness doesn't exist neither do we.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YesNo

It doesn't matter whether Craig "cherry-picks" his points or not, he has made these points many times in the past. His opponents should be prepared to respond to them since the points come from the fields of their alleged expertise.

---

Listen, I don't disagree that if his opponents are willing to debate him they SHOULD be more prepared than they typically are, but I still insist that simply makes them bad debaters and not WRONG. My point about Craig cherry-picking is that it prevents a very biased, selective, and skewered view of the subjects he's discussing, because there's too much technical nuance to just throw conclusions out there and then twist them to fit into an argument. It's telling that most of those whom he quotes doesn't even agree with his conclusions, often saying so in the same books he quotes from. Of course, he never presents THOSE parts of the arguments.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YesNo

The multiverse is set up to find some explanation for our universe that involves chance and not choice.

---

Correct, and if the multiverse/many-worlds is correct, then it does seem like chance would have to be involved. But we already know chance is involved in something like evolution, so I don't know why we should think the universe wouldn't be subject to it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YesNo

However, I think [The Big Bang] completely invalidates... atheism.

---

How so? Atheism would have had to have made claims about how the universe began for TBB to invalidate it.

The Big Bang may invalidate parts of the Indian shramanic, non-vedic religions such as Jainism or Buddhism. It does not, however, invalidate all parts of these shramanic religions.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YesNo

So if consciousness doesn't exist neither do we.

---

But what the hell is consciousness anyway? Is it another thing that has a direct referent, or it just another metaphysical intuition?
That's what I keep trying to stress in this thread; there are a lot of things that feel naturally right to us, concepts like "nothing" and "free will" and "consciousness," but saying they feel right is a very different thing than saying what they actually are and if they actually exist in the way we think of them as. One reason I subscribe to reductionism is it prevents this kind of ontological obscurity where we refer to complex phenomena as one thing, rather than the many things that they often are. That consciousness refers to a process in our brains/mind is fine, but as to exactly what that entails biologically is another matter entirely.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by stuntpickle

What you don't understand, I don't think, is that even if Craig were absolutely incorrect about the nature of "nothing", it would NOT constitute equivocation. It would simply be an error of fact… My only goal is to disabuse you of the notion that the Kalam has "serious flaws" of logic.

---

I wanted to address this first:

1. I never said the Kalam had “serious flaws” of logic. You added the “of logic” addendum. I merely said “seriously flaws,” and, to me, errors of facts are “flaws” as “serious” as any errors of logic.

2. I already conceded that I could definitely be wrong that Craig is knowingly equivocating, but I drew this inference based on his own arguments, of which I quote below. If I was wrong about how Craig was using nothing, then I suspect many people are wrong about it, and I don’t think you can blame us for being wrong based on how Craig makes the argument.

To elaborate briefly on 2.: Craig is a very careful and powerful rhetorician, and I highly suspect that if he isn’t equivocating then he’s being more than a bit dishonest with how he presents his “ex nihilo” argument. Because he should know that when you use examples from material reality, where there is always “something” so far as we can and have observed, that people will equate “nothing” with being related to whatever material examples that are given. The fact that we as people regularly equate nothing with merely the absence of some things (like you said in your “nothing is what everyone just showed you”), then it is not fair to use the absence of some things as an argument for “nothing from CAN”. It creates natural equivocations in the minds of audiences, if not in the mind of the user, and that either makes the user knowingly manipulative, or ignorantly mistaken. I’m not sure how you get around that.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by stuntpickle

You concede the argument, but then you take the concession right back with a straw man fallacy and a plain misstatement of fact that we've already covered. Of course, Craig is guilty of equivocating in neither print nor public debate since he's had a first year logic course… Until you produce a sourced example of Craig committing a fallacy of equivocation, I will consider you ignorant of the facts.

---

I think you misunderstood the majority of my previous post. My point wasn’t necessarily that Craig was equivocating, but merely that’s what his arguments can create in the minds of audiences who likely have a very different notion of “nothing” than the philosophical one of CAN. If Craig always has CAN in mind when discussing nothing, he should be more diligent about making this clear, and one way to do that would be to STOP using examples from material reality. When he says “Surely an Eskimo village can’t come into existence out of nothing!”* most people will think “yes, that’s right, if nobody was around to build a village then it wouldn’t just appear on its own in Alaska!” What they will think about isn’t an Eskimo village popping into being where there’s CAN, but rather they’ll think of “nothing” as, say, everything in Alaska sans an Eskimo village.

*The video of him using examples from material reality is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXu1H_3y5vI (starting at 21:00).

Allow me to quote Craig:

Quote:

---

“I have never argued that because every part of the universe has a cause the whole universe has a cause. That would be manifestly fallacious. Rather the reasons I’ve offered for thinking P1 is true are:

1. Something cannot come from nothing

To claim that something can come into being out of nothing is worse than magic. When a magician pulls a rabbit out of the hat, at least you have the magician, not to mention a hat; but to deny P1 you have to think that the whole universe just appeared at some point in the past for no reason whatsoever; but nobody sincerely believes that things, say, a horse, or an Eskimo village can pop into being without a cause.

2. If something can come into being from nothing, it becomes inexplicable why just anything or everything doesn’t come into being from nothing.

Think about it; why don’t bicycles, and Beethoven, and root beer come into being out of nothing. Why is it only universes that only pop into being from nothing. What makes nothingness so discriminatory? There can’t be anything about nothingness that favors universes for nothingness doesn’t have any properties. Nor can anything constrain nothingness since there isn’t anything to be restrained.

3. Common experience and scientific evidence confirm the truth of P1

P1 is constantly verified, and never falsified. It’s hard to understand how any atheist committed to modern science could deny that P1 is more plausibly true than false in light of the evidence. Now know well that the 3rd reason is an appeal to inductive reasoning, not reasoning by composition. It’s drawing an inductive inference about all the members of a class of things based on a sample of a class. Inductive reasoning undergirds all of science and is not to be confused by reasoning by composition, which is a fallacy.”

---

What jumps out of me about this whole spiel is that, one, not once does Craig make it explicit that he is using “nothing” to refer to “CAN,” (EG, would he include abstract laws? How is virtual energy even legitimately a thing? How about space and time itself? How are those “things”?) and, two, whenever he discusses his reasoning for why nothing comes from nothing he uses examples from material reality (horse, Eskimo village, bicycles, Beethoven, and root beer), of which we only know of them they came from a lot of something else. So I still insist that what I initially claimed was right: that Craig seems to use the “everything we know of in material reality comes from something, so nothing can come from CAN,” which simply doesn’t seem to follow. How is it that we use our observance of material reality, where something is always there, to argue that nothing comes from CAN when there may never have been CAN to begin with?

The other problem with this is that everything that’s observed is observed within the constraints of spacetime, within the constraints of everything the universe brought into existence. So while Craig may be right that the arguments for P1 is inductive reasoning, we have a very good reason for being skeptical that this induction holds outside of the universe. Why? Because everything observed obeys the laws that the universe brought into existence, and without that universe there, there’s absolutely no reason to think these laws would hold. Likewise, the “common experience” and “scientific evidence” he refers to only addresses things inside material reality, inside the universe, and nothing outside of it.

To treat the universe in the same way one would treat root beer and Beethoven and Eskimo villages is patently absurd, and the fact that Craig uses these examples seems equivocal to me; if not in his own mind, then in what he engenders in the minds of his audience. He wants them to draw on their “intuitions” that things inside material reality don’t happen without causes, and that this consistency of experience holds for the universe itself, whose existence is predicated on a very different set of laws that seem innately counter-intuitive to us to begin with. His entire second point is built on rhetorical questions, and the answer is simple: those things don’t come into existence “from nothing” because there is no “nothing” for them to come into existence from! Again, it’s no different than asking “why doesn’t Beethoven pop into being from glorckenspiel?” The answer is that glorckenspiel has no external referrent, the same way nothing has in this case. We couldn’t see anything coming or not coming from a state of existence that is not possible to be experienced.

And let me just say this about his: “I have never argued that because every part of the universe has a cause the whole universe has a cause.” Really? Because that seems exactly like what he’s doing to me. Eskimo villages and Beethoven and root beer and (every part of the universe we’ve observed) has a cause, therefore the universe itself has a cause. What’s the difference?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

Listen, I don't disagree that if his opponents are willing to debate him they SHOULD be more prepared than they typically are, but I still insist that simply makes them bad debaters and not WRONG. My point about Craig cherry-picking is that it prevents a very biased, selective, and skewered view of the subjects he's discussing, because there's too much technical nuance to just throw conclusions out there and then twist them to fit into an argument. It's telling that most of those whom he quotes doesn't even agree with his conclusions, often saying so in the same books he quotes from. Of course, he never presents THOSE parts of the arguments.

---

The question is are Craig's opponents simply bad debaters or is Craig right and there is no reasonable response to his challenge? It is not Craig's fault, in any way, that he is presenting a challenge his opponents can't adequately answer. It is their fault they can't answer it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

Correct, and if the multiverse/many-worlds is correct, then it does seem like chance would have to be involved. But we already know chance is involved in something like evolution, so I don't know why we should think the universe wouldn't be subject to it.

---

The existence of a multiverse in itself is not important. Something conscious could have chosen to create many universes with life. Although it is not going to be easy for anyone to test the multiverse theory, a critical part of that theory is that if we happen to find another universe that has life anywhere on it, the chance argument would be destroyed just as surely as if there were no other universe but ours.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

How so? Atheism would have had to have made claims about how the universe began for TBB to invalidate it.

---

The Big Bang takes us to a beginning of the universe, including space and time. Physics cannot go beyond the first quantum of time. By the Kalam argument the universe, which is a finite object, needs a cause. If atheists cannot find a cause that is based on chance, whatever caused the universe to come into existence was based on choice. Once you have choice you have consciousness to make that choice. That means you have a God of some sort which completely invalidates atheism because atheism claims such Gods do not exist. The stakes are high here for atheism.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

But what the hell is consciousness anyway? Is it another thing that has a direct referent, or it just another metaphysical intuition?
That's what I keep trying to stress in this thread; there are a lot of things that feel naturally right to us, concepts like "nothing" and "free will" and "consciousness," but saying they feel right is a very different thing than saying what they actually are and if they actually exist in the way we think of them as. One reason I subscribe to reductionism is it prevents this kind of ontological obscurity where we refer to complex phenomena as one thing, rather than the many things that they often are. That consciousness refers to a process in our brains/mind is fine, but as to exactly what that entails biologically is another matter entirely.

---

The reason I find consciousness key is because of my preference for choice rather than chance regarding the Big Bang. If a choice was made in creating the universe there was some kind of consciousness involved to make that choice. That puts consciousness outside space and time which confirms what people report with near-death and shared-death experiences. They sense a timelessness and a non-local sense of space. Describing God from a perspective of consciousness allows us to scientifically study whatever might have caused the Big Bang and permits us to go beyond where physics can go.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YesNo

The question is are Craig's opponents simply bad debaters or is Craig right and there is no reasonable response to his challenge? It is not Craig's fault, in any way, that he is presenting a challenge his opponents can't adequately answer. It is their fault they can't answer it.

---

They're bad debaters, it's that simple. There are an enormous amount of reasonable responses to Craig's claims even in the literature he quotes from. But, look, that video alone is 30 minutes long and it only addresses the first premise. Not even that, it addresses a few arguments for the first premise. You can't spend 30 minutes debunking arguments for one premise in a debate in which Craig presents 5 different arguments. Why? Because if you do, Craig will call you on your "drops" (debate term) and claim he won the argument.

It's not Craig's fault that he's presenting challenges to his opponents that they can't answer, but it is his fault for insisting on a live debate format that maximizes the strengths of his arguments and presentation and minimizes the ability to fully investigate any counter-argumnts. And, btw, Craig does INSIST on this format. Many previous debaters have commented about how the only way Craig would accept an invitation for a debate or a discussion is if they followed his chosen format. Why do you suppose he does this? Maybe it's because he knows it's next to impossible to refute all of his arguments within the constraints of his chosen debate format. Richard Carrier smartly claimed that it takes twice as long to refute a claim as it does to make it, but I think he really underestimated the amount of time it takes to parse claims on subjects to which there's no agreement like the origin of the universe. The fact that Craig can present in 4 minutes what a mountain of contradicting scientific literature has been written is proof positive that he's simplifying and obscuring the issue to a great degree. There's no way to compress that much controversy and information into 4 minutes and think it's going to be thorough.

But, with that aside, yes, it's his opponents' fault that they don't come prepared with well-manicured arguments that refute his claims and present their own in as concise and economical a manner as possible. Almost nobody that debates him seems versed AT ALL in the techniques of debate. None of them call out Craig for his drops, none of them frame the argument, none of them make attempts to challenge Craig in the same way he challenges them (and by "challenges," I'm talking about those "if my opponent can't refute X, then their position is untenable"). They spend all of their time on their heels trying to dig beneath Craig's over-simplifications of very complex and controversial subjects, and they "lose debates" because they simply can't manage their time and arguments with Craig's laser-like like speed, economy, and precision.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YesNo

The existence of a multiverse in itself is not important. Something conscious could have chosen to create many universes with life.

---

Again, what the multiverse does is quash the notion that our universe is somehow special. If ours was the only one then it would be terribly unlikely that it just happen to be able to support life. But if it's the case that there are many universes, then it wouldn't be so amazing that we found ourselves in one that was able to support life. Again, it defeats fine-tuning, but not the Kalam.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YesNo

The Big Bang takes us to a beginning of the universe, including space and time. Physics cannot go beyond the first quantum of time. By the Kalam argument the universe, which is a finite object, needs a cause. If atheists cannot find a cause that is based on chance...

---

TBB takes us to the beginning of OUR universe, and spacetime in OUR universe. I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "physics can't go beyond the first quantum of time." QP existing in a completely massless state would be one in which time and space is an incoherent concept, and it's possible that one fluctuation could contain within it, eg, a kind of quantum gravity that would pull everything into it, creating spacetime along with all matter. This would necessarily be "by chance" as all quantum fluctuations are.

There are certainly other theories besides this one, fwiw. See that video that presents some of them.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YesNo

The reason I find consciousness key is because of my preference for choice rather than chance regarding the Big Bang.

---

But, really, what is that "preference" based on? So far, when we look down on the smallest level all we see is randomness, probability, and chance, so where's the evidence for which to prefer choice?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YesNo

Describing God from a perspective of consciousness allows us to scientifically study whatever might have caused the Big Bang and permits us to go beyond where physics can go.

---

Firstly, I don't see how you think science could study such a thing, and how it's possible for science to go "beyond where physics can go." If you mean that science can study OUR consciousness, then you're talking neurobiology, and I don't think there's anything in neurobiology that mirrors the origins of the universe. I already gave you a link discussing NDEs and other "out of body" experiences. They may not be literally out of body at all.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

It's not Craig's fault that he's presenting challenges to his opponents that they can't answer, but it is his fault for insisting on a live debate format that maximizes the strengths of his arguments and presentation and minimizes the ability to fully investigate any counter-argumnts.

---

People who lose should start accepting responsibility for their loses. It is as simple as that.

Craig can insist on any format he desires. It is not his "fault" he wins, it is to his credit that he wins these debates.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

But, with that aside, yes, it's his opponents' fault that they don't come prepared with well-manicured arguments that refute his claims and present their own in as concise and economical a manner as possible. Almost nobody that debates him seems versed AT ALL in the techniques of debate.

---

I agree with that. However, Craig does not win all the debates he engages in. I don't think he won the debate with Bart Ehrman on the resurrection of Jesus: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhT4IENSwac

Why didn't he win this debate? It was not because Ehrman was a better debater than he was. Craig was the better debater. It was because in this case the evidence was on Ehrman's side.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

Again, what the multiverse does is quash the notion that our universe is somehow special. If ours was the only one then it would be terribly unlikely that it just happen to be able to support life. But if it's the case that there are many universes, then it wouldn't be so amazing that we found ourselves in one that was able to support life. Again, it defeats fine-tuning, but not the Kalam.

---

I just want to make sure you are not missing something. The problem is not whether there are many universes or not. There may be. That is irrelevant. But if there are many universes, I think the estimate is that 10^500 do not support life. Now if it happens that even one of them besides our own does support life, then the chance argument is destroyed.

One might be able to make a similar case for life arising by chance on the earth. We know that life did start on earth, but what are the odds that it did so by chance? That should give us a clue as to how many planets we should find with life on them or not. If we find more than that with life on them, the chance argument is destroyed.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

TBB takes us to the beginning of OUR universe, and spacetime in OUR universe. I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "physics can't go beyond the first quantum of time." QP existing in a completely massless state would be one in which time and space is an incoherent concept, and it's possible that one fluctuation could contain within it, eg, a kind of quantum gravity that would pull everything into it, creating spacetime along with all matter. This would necessarily be "by chance" as all quantum fluctuations are.

---

How do you know anything is by chance? What chance means in these contexts is that one does not know what the cause is.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

There are certainly other theories besides this one, fwiw. See that video that presents some of them.

But, really, what is that "preference" based on? So far, when we look down on the smallest level all we see is randomness, probability, and chance, so where's the evidence for which to prefer choice?

---

Again, how do you know anything is by chance? And what does it mean to say that something occurred by chance except that one doesn't really know what caused it?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

Firstly, I don't see how you think science could study such a thing, and how it's possible for science to go "beyond where physics can go." If you mean that science can study OUR consciousness, then you're talking neurobiology, and I don't think there's anything in neurobiology that mirrors the origins of the universe. I already gave you a link discussing NDEs and other "out of body" experiences. They may not be literally out of body at all.

---

The fact that you gave me a link doesn't mean that I accept everything in that link. Those out of body experiences may literally be out of body.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YesNo

People who lose should start accepting responsibility for their loses... Craig can insist on any format he desires.

---

But surely you can see how he stacks the deck all in his favor. It's like someone that insists on only ever playing on their home court. I'm not saying that his opponents shouldn't be more prepared, that they shouldn't accept responsibility for losing, but merely that Craig does, undoubtedly, arrange everything so that he has the greatest chance of winning, and I don't find that much better than the general laziness that his opponents display. They may be ignorant and inept with regards to the format, but Craig is knowingly manipulating the format to his advantage knowing it will put his opponents at a disadvantage.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YesNo

The problem is not whether there are many universes or not. There may be. That is irrelevant. But if there are many universes, I think the estimate is that 10^500 do not support life.

---

But what difference does it matter what the number is of those that don't support life if we have no clue how many there are? There could be 1,000,000 times that number of universes or worlds and, again, if that's the case then it was likely inevitable that we would be the result of one of them. Our mind boggles at seemingly impossibly small numbers, but we should consider those numbers in the context of how many trials there were for such a thing to come about. That's just probability 101. You can deal any single hand of poker and calculate the incredibly small probability that the hand would've unfolded THAT particular way, but it means nothing if you don't consider how many trials there were before that one hand actually happened.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YesNo

How do you know anything is by chance? What chance means in these contexts is that one does not know what the cause is.

---

QP is innately probabilistic, and when you’re dealing with probabilities, you’re in the realm of chance. You can make the argument that we simply don’t know what causes a wave to collapse, but that it has a case, but I’d like to see you argue that to any of the physicists who flat out say that it’s random chance. I mean, there are determinist schools of thought that claim that there is a mechanism behind this and we merely observe one outcome that was already decided by some unknown mechanism, but even then; what is the mechanism? Further, how can cause exist outside of time and space when our entire understanding of cause is bounded up in predictions that are carried out in both?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YesNo

The fact that you gave me a link doesn't mean that I accept everything in that link.

---

What in that link don’t you accept? The fact that most of the famous out-of-body claims have been distortions and lies, or that the scientific claims surrounding them have been eschewed? The simple fact is that there’s no solid evidence that consciousness can exist outside of body/brain. The fact that we can experience something akin to an OBE doesn’t mean that’s literally what it is, and it’s remarkable that with all of the reports of such things that there’s never been any hard data to support it. I once saw a special where one hospital inserted a digital scroll above an operating table so if a patient ever did have an OBE they would be able to read what was on the scroll and report it to the doctors after they woke up. Nobody has yet been able to read it. What does that tell you?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

But surely you can see how he stacks the deck all in his favor. It's like someone that insists on only ever playing on their home court. I'm not saying that his opponents shouldn't be more prepared, that they shouldn't accept responsibility for losing, but merely that Craig does, undoubtedly, arrange everything so that he has the greatest chance of winning, and I don't find that much better than the general laziness that his opponents display. They may be ignorant and inept with regards to the format, but Craig is knowingly manipulating the format to his advantage knowing it will put his opponents at a disadvantage.

---

When Craig is courteous during the debate and clearly presents his side to the audience, he is in a sense setting up his opponents to make a mistake. There is nothing wrong with this. I admire his cool. It is what his opponents should do in return. Someone might see that as Craig "manipulating the format to his advantage", but he is really just letting his opponents' characters work against them and to his advantage.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

QP is innately probabilistic, and when you’re dealing with probabilities, you’re in the realm of chance. You can make the argument that we simply don’t know what causes a wave to collapse, but that it has a case, but I’d like to see you argue that to any of the physicists who flat out say that it’s random chance. I mean, there are determinist schools of thought that claim that there is a mechanism behind this and we merely observe one outcome that was already decided by some unknown mechanism, but even then; what is the mechanism?

---

I have no problem with chance being used to model the occurrence of events. My only problem is with claiming chance causes events to happen. My interest here is in things like radioactive decay which has no cause to my knowledge but seems to work consistently enough to be used as a clock in certain circumstances.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

Further, how can cause exist outside of time and space when our entire understanding of cause is bounded up in predictions that are carried out in both?

---

I don't know how that happens, but the only clue that I have is if a choice is made, then consciousness of some sort exists outside of space and time--this is way beyond claiming our consciousness can leave our bodies, but similar to it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

What in that link don’t you accept? The fact that most of the famous out-of-body claims have been distortions and lies, or that the scientific claims surrounding them have been eschewed? The simple fact is that there’s no solid evidence that consciousness can exist outside of body/brain. The fact that we can experience something akin to an OBE doesn’t mean that’s literally what it is, and it’s remarkable that with all of the reports of such things that there’s never been any hard data to support it. I once saw a special where one hospital inserted a digital scroll above an operating table so if a patient ever did have an OBE they would be able to read what was on the scroll and report it to the doctors after they woke up. Nobody has yet been able to read it. What does that tell you?

---

What I would accept as evidence is what comes from Raymond Moody who originally coined the term "near-death experience". Since I am not an expert, if you can convince him that the out of body experience is not literally an out of body experience, I will entertain it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YesNo

Someone might see that as Craig "manipulating the format to his advantage", but he is really just letting his opponents' characters work against them and to his advantage.

---

I don't think it's their "characters" that work against them, unless by "character" you mean their lack of preparation. Many of his opponents have offered to simply have a discussion on these topics, but Craig always insists on the debate format. As much as I love debate in general, I also understand where many of his opponents are coming from in recognizing the constraint the form itself puts on getting to the bottom of issues that are this big. I wish Craig would simply be willing to sit down and discuss one subject and allot enough time to do more than just skim the surface of various conclusions that have been reached by certain theorists.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YesNo

My only problem is with claiming chance causes events to happen.

---

Chance isn't an active mechanism so it can't "cause" anything, it just means thing HAPPEN at complete random. I know such a thing is completely counter-intuitive to us, but we should be getting used to the way the universe works being counter-intuitive by now.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YesNo

the only clue that I have is if a choice is made, then consciousness of some sort exists outside of space and time

---

It sounds nice until you start to consider how conscious thought could possibly exist outside of time. Doesn't the very act of thought require time? Even if I suppose that NDEs do represent real OBEs, then even then if a person is thinking they are thinking inside of time, and they can't think for eternity before they wake up.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YesNo

What I would accept as evidence is what comes from Raymond Moody who originally coined the term "near-death experience".

---

AFAIK, Moody was mostly documenting the phenomenon, not offering and testing theories as to how it worked. Again, I said several pages back that I don't dispute that people experience something that feels as if they're out of their body, but what I do dispute is that this is ACTUALLY them being out of their body. I wish the digital scroll concept would be implemented in hospitals everywhere because, eventually, someone would have an OBE and if they were really out of their body they would be able to read the scroll and report back. I know there have been no readings at the one hospital where it was implemented.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

I don't think it's their "characters" that work against them, unless by "character" you mean their lack of preparation. Many of his opponents have offered to simply have a discussion on these topics, but Craig always insists on the debate format. As much as I love debate in general, I also understand where many of his opponents are coming from in recognizing the constraint the form itself puts on getting to the bottom of issues that are this big. I wish Craig would simply be willing to sit down and discuss one subject and allot enough time to do more than just skim the surface of various conclusions that have been reached by certain theorists.

---

When I mentioned "character" I was thinking more of how their personal behavior appears to the audience: good or bad posture, kind of attitude they have, whether they present themselves as egotistical or not--stuff like that.

Actually, I don't enjoy the debate format, but it does provide structure and it guarantees that it wraps up in a reasonable time.

The debate I've most enjoyed which was less formal was between Deepak Chopra and Leonard Mlodinow called War of the Worldviews.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

Chance isn't an active mechanism so it can't "cause" anything, it just means thing HAPPEN at complete random. I know such a thing is completely counter-intuitive to us, but we should be getting used to the way the universe works being counter-intuitive by now.

---

If that is what you believe, then I agree with you. Chance doesn't cause anything.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

It sounds nice until you start to consider how conscious thought could possibly exist outside of time. Doesn't the very act of thought require time? Even if I suppose that NDEs do represent real OBEs, then even then if a person is thinking they are thinking inside of time, and they can't think for eternity before they wake up.

---

I don't know how that works either.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

AFAIK, Moody was mostly documenting the phenomenon, not offering and testing theories as to how it worked. Again, I said several pages back that I don't dispute that people experience something that feels as if they're out of their body, but what I do dispute is that this is ACTUALLY them being out of their body. I wish the digital scroll concept would be implemented in hospitals everywhere because, eventually, someone would have an OBE and if they were really out of their body they would be able to read the scroll and report back. I know there have been no readings at the one hospital where it was implemented.

---

In his most recent book, Paranormal, which was his autobiography Moody mentioned a woman who saw an apparition of her dead son, if I remember correctly, after going through one of the scrying techniques he offered. She asked him if she could touch him, figuring she probably shouldn't, but he didn't seem to mind. He gave her a hug and lifted her off her feet.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YesNo

When I mentioned "character" I was thinking more of how their personal behavior appears to the audience:

---

Well, yeah, that's part of it too. Most of his opponents could use some basic instruction on how to present themselves to an audience.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YesNo

Chance doesn't cause anything.

---

Right, especially things that have no cause and happen just by (not because of) chance. ;)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YesNo

I don't know how that works either.

---

Then keep in mind the link I gave you about fake explanations. Because just because if feels metaphysically intuitive doesn't mean it's even remotely close to the right answer.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YesNo

In his most recent book, Paranormal, which was his autobiography Moody mentioned a woman who saw an apparition of her dead son...

---

That's all well and good, but I'm still not sure what it has to do with answering what the cause of the OBE phenomenon is. Like I said, such stories establish that there's a phenomenon to begin with, not what the explanation for it is.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

Then keep in mind the link I gave you about fake explanations. Because just because if feels metaphysically intuitive doesn't mean it's even remotely close to the right answer.

---

The phrase "metaphysically intuitive" means to me "unexamined cultural assumption". It is something learned and then assumed to be true.

I am reading Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan's Acquiring Genomes: A Theory of the Origins of Species based on a side issue that KillCarneyKlans and OrphanPip brought up in this thread.

I didn't realize that I had the neodarwinist cultural assumption that "random mutation is the major source of evolutionary change, that natural selection acts upon". I am beginning to see that neodarwinism is a side issue at best. Also I tended to view evolution as starting only 560 million years ago ignoring the microscopic life that began a couple billion years earlier. I am now seeing that that microscopic life is key to any evolutionary theory. I think I'm beginning to understand more why Eldredge is so opposed to the "selfish gene" concept.

Another unexamined cultural assumption is beginning to bite the dust for me.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YesNo

Another unexamined cultural assumption is beginning to bite the dust for me.

---

It's an unexamined cultural assumption to assume Neo-Darwinism is an unexamined cultural assumption. It came about because of all the evidence for it, and it took evolutionary biologists a good long time to get it to become accepted as much as it is. I'd hardly call it an "unexamined cultural assumption". I haven't read the book in question, but I do know that Margulis is a respected name in the field. Although, I somehow doubt she's trying to dismantle the whole of natural selection and Neo-Darwinism. That microbiology has a role to play in evolution is undeniable, but I think this is likely like the gradualism/equilibrium concept in that it's a false dichotomy. It doesn't have to be either/or.

Sorry double post happened accidentally somehow.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

It's an unexamined cultural assumption to assume Neo-Darwinism is an unexamined cultural assumption. It came about because of all the evidence for it, and it took evolutionary biologists a good long time to get it to become accepted as much as it is. I'd hardly call it an "unexamined cultural assumption". I haven't read the book in question, but I do know that Margulis is a respected name in the field. Although, I somehow doubt she's trying to dismantle the whole of natural selection and Neo-Darwinism. That microbiology has a role to play in evolution is undeniable, but I think this is likely like the gradualism/equilibrium concept in that it's a false dichotomy. It doesn't have to be either/or.

---

Margulis was a respected name, but her ideas are highly marginal. What kept her a margin of respectability is a moderate commitment to real science and testable hypotheses. Although, she got increasingly crazy as time went on, becoming an HIV/AIDS denialist and 9/11 truther.

Margulis suffered from an unfortunate blindness about natural selection, that I think derives from her commitment to the Gaia hypothesis, she imagined life as a cooperate web like super organism, so she had trouble accepting evolution as a mutation and competition driven process. Her ideas about symbiotic evolution are almost entirely rejected, except for a few instances like the origins of the mitochondria and chloroplast.

The evidence supporting mutation and natural selection as the primary, of many, mechanisms of evolutionary change is very strong.

Thanks for the info, OrphanPip. :)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by OrphanPip

Margulis was a respected name, but her ideas are highly marginal. What kept her a margin of respectability is a moderate commitment to real science and testable hypotheses. Although, she got increasingly crazy as time went on, becoming an HIV/AIDS denialist and 9/11 truther.

Margulis suffered from an unfortunate blindness about natural selection, that I think derives from her commitment to the Gaia hypothesis, she imagined life as a cooperate web like super organism, so she had trouble accepting evolution as a mutation and competition driven process. Her ideas about symbiotic evolution are almost entirely rejected, except for a few instances like the origins of the mitochondria and chloroplast.

The evidence supporting mutation and natural selection as the primary, of many, mechanisms of evolutionary change is very strong.

---

Unfortunately, OrphanPip, I'm finding her book convincing, as well as Niles Eldredge's rejections of the "selfish gene". Do you have any references that might lead me to think otherwise?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YesNo

Unfortunately, OrphanPip, I'm finding her book convincing, as well as Niles Eldredge's rejections of the "selfish gene". Do you have any references that might lead me to think otherwise?

---

There are substantial problems with Margulis' hypothesis, it lacks evidence and some of its substantial predictions do not pan out.

Her idea is not entirely ridiculous, as endosymbiosis played a major role in the evolution of eukaryotes. It is after all the defining feature of Eukarya that they have organelles descended from the endosymbiotic relationship between the progenitor of eukaryotes and bacteria, with strong evidence that the progenitor of eukaryotes was possibly descended from an archaean. There are also numerous instances of horizontal gene transfer between archaea and bacteria that creates another means for genetic change.

However, the major problem occurs when you get into the sexually reproducing eukaryotes: fungi, animals, and plants. These eukaryotes sometimes have gene exchange with viruses (that often incorporates bits of DNA from hosts) and occasionally retroviruses promote mutations or incorporate bits of DNA into their hosts' genome. However, because of the existence of germ cells these instances of genetic change do not have any lasting effects on eukaryotic species. Moreover, mutation occurs routinely in the production of gametes, and we have numerous examples of mutation leading to major changes in organisms. Natural selection has far more explanatory power, and it has produced many more predictions that have been tested in the literature.

Symbiotic evolution, or symbiogenesis, has a long history in the Lysenkoist tradition of biology originating from Soviet Russia. The Lysenkoist were forced to view genetics as a "fascist" science, and thus had to reject Darwinian evolution (those who objected loss their jobs or ended up shot). Margulis' ideas have been tried historically, and have failed, to account for the evidence we see around us. The Lysenkoist predictions lead to disastrous agricultural policies in the USSR and China that contributed to mass starvation. Selective breeding (operating off of predictions based on Darwinian natural selection) has proven extremely successful.

Margulis is not so extreme as Lysenko, in that she accepts mutation and natural selection as existing processes in evolution. However, there is simply no evidence for the broad reaching claims of her symbiotic evolutionary theory. Neodarwinism is the dominant view in biology precisely because it has stood up to tests. There is merit in thinking about lateral gene exchange in some microorganisms, but mutation and natural selection remain the best explanations of how evolution occurs.

Eldredge would agree, since he also views mutation and natural selection as the major driver of evolution. His position is based on the emphasis on the unit of selection, whether it is the individual (as Eldredge and Darwin emphasized), the gene (Dawkins et al.), or the species (group selection now rejected by any legitimate biologists).

Thanks, OrphanPip. I'll keep this in mind as I go through her book.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YesNo

The Big Bang takes us to a beginning of the universe, including space and time. Physics cannot go beyond the first quantum of time. By the Kalam argument the universe, which is a finite object...

---

How do you know it's a finite object? the standard models of cosmology allow for space being infinite. If space was created at the big bang why could it not have been created as infinite?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

I wanted to address this first:

1. I never said the Kalam had “serious flaws” of logic. You added the “of logic” addendum. I merely said “seriously flaws,” and, to me, errors of facts are “flaws” as “serious” as any errors of logic.

---

First, you said Craig was equivocating and committing compositional fallacies (though you dressed it up with set theory jargon), and those are "flaws of logic"--regardless of what you pretend to have meant. Moreover, any "serious flaw" would necessarily be one of logic. If you think the fact that you can question one of the premises of an argument demonstrates a serious flaw, then you must think every argument ever made has "serious flaws". The truth is that, insofar as logic is concerned, you don't seem all that informed, and most of your complaints seem to have been plucked from second-rate atheist web sites. The compositional objection even had the dishonor of appearing in Craig's popular article "The World's Worst Objections to the Kalam" which basically dealt with various "objections" that appeared online that no atheist philosopher would ever make.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

2. I already conceded that I could definitely be wrong that Craig is knowingly equivocating, but I drew this inference based on his own arguments, of which I quote below. If I was wrong about how Craig was using nothing, then I suspect many people are wrong about it, and I don’t think you can blame us for being wrong based on how Craig makes the argument.

---

"Could definitely?" Talk about shifty language. That you--who do not understand metaphysics in the slightest--think Craig--who is a PhD philosopher--is unwittingly engaged in elementary blunders of logic is absurd. You know, this entire concession would be far more palatable if you hadn't dressed it up in a way to try and save face. You were wrong. I know it, you know it, and anyone who familiar with fallacies of equivocation knows it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

I think you misunderstood the majority of my previous post. My point wasn’t necessarily that Craig was equivocating, but merely that’s what his arguments can create in the minds of audiences who likely have a very different notion of “nothing” than the philosophical one of CAN.

---

This is simply a lie. You listed equivocation as the first in your little list of "serious flaws". Frankly, I think you're just trying to save face after I called your bluff and you couldn't produce an actual equivocation.



There's absolutely no equivocation in the argument you present from Craig.

I would, however, like to present you with a fairly good, practical example of a fallacy of equivocation--one with which I'm sure you'll be familiar.

Morpheus: 1. A fallacy of equivocation, which means to use different meanings of the same word in a single argument fallaciously, is a "serious flaw."
Morpheus: 2. When Craig says "From nothing, nothing comes" he commits a fallacy of equivocation, which means <insert some non-standard, bizarre, inexplicable definition that requires Morpheus to write a 1,000-word essay just to try and explain it>.
Morpheus: Therefore, Craig is guilty of committing a "serious flaw".

That's right. You're actually equivocating on "equivocate".

So are we done with #1 and ready for #2?

Edit: initially, I had some rather harsh criticisms for the quote you selected, but then I realized that they would be interpreted as having been directed at Craig rather than as I intended. Suffice it to say that your selection, in no way, demonstrates what you're claiming.

It seems that you now claim that all you ever meant to say is that people misunderstand what Craig means by "nothing". Besides this not being anything close to a "serious flaw" in general or equivocation in particular, I think it is absolutely false. Whenever a child says he wants "nothing" for dinner, he demonstrates precisely what Craig means. The child isn't saying that he wants to eat a cubic foot of air or a quantum vacuum; he's saying he wants not a thing to eat.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by stuntpickle

The compositional objection even had the dishonor of appearing in Craig's popular article "The World's Worst Objections to the Kalam" which basically dealt with various "objections" that appeared online that no atheist philosopher would ever make because they are so absurd.

---

I search for and watched Craig's talk, 10 Worst Objections to the Kalam Cosmological Argument: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfsYhWNMYr4

Thanks for mentioning this. Craig's talk seems to me to be one of the best lectures on logic I have ever heard.

The 10th argument was one where he quoted Dawkins as accepting the Kalam argument but with Dawkins claiming that the Kalam argument doesn't imply that this cause has all the attributes of the Christian God. Craig then said that he never claimed it did, only that the Kalam argument implied an efficient cause of the universe. The idea this left me with is that when Dawkins accepted the Kalam argument with the restrictions he made, he contradicted his own atheism.

Stunt,

In your last several responses to me you have completely failed to address any of my arguments and have instead preferred to shift the debate over one concerning logic. You seem to miss that that if *I* have misunderstood what Craig meant by "nothing," then I am not the only one. You can sit here and blame me (and others) for not getting what Craig meant when he "clearly" wasn't equivocating, or you can admit that his own examples lead us to the wrong conclusion about what "nothing" he was referring to. If you really want to talk about fallacies, you've mentioned Craig's credentials I don't know how many times now. That he knows what he's talking about isn't even in dispute, it's what he's communicating to others that's in dispute. That he knows there are multiple associations with the word nothing, and yet he uses examples that do not illustrate his concept of nothingness, should be strikes against him. But you are so intent on pounding on my inability to grasp logic (and, apparently, everyone else's) that you refuse to see that.

Yes, I linked to and quoted from Craig's own video about the "10 worst objections to the Kalam," and I believe he hangs himself with what I quoted and for the reasons I gave. Why don't you address those reasons and stop beating around the bush with what you think I said or what you think I think? A child wanting "nothing" for dinner is clearly not the same "nothing" Craig is talking about, because the child can only eat tangible material. So his nothing is "I don't want any tangible material to eat" not "I want a complete absence of anything to eat." That you have repeated this same type of argument twice, but fail to grasp that someone handing me "nothing" and a child wanting "nothing" to eat is still not Craig's "nothing" is ironic to the extreme.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

In your last several responses to me you have completely failed to address any of my arguments ...

.Why don't you address those reasons and stop beating around the bush with what you think I said or what you think I think?

---

Let's get something straight: I'm not at all interested in debating the existence of God with you. I've already told you this. The reasons are many. For one, I don't think you're particularly prepared for such a discussion, nor do I think you are willing to concede any point I don't force you to. I suspect you are fundamentally dishonest insofar as this discussion goes, not only with me, but with yourself. Moreover, I'm not convinced that you possess the requisite understanding to judge when this or that point has been properly adjudicated. Essentially, I'm saying I believe you are so entirely hostile to this subject in general that no real discussion can occur. My only interest in this discussion is to demonstrate that the Kalam does not have "serious flaws" as you claim.

I'm not beating around the bush; you're moving the goalposts. YOU listed three points YOU thought best demonstrated the "serious flaws" of the Kalam. You could have said anything you wanted. You took your best swing, and you missed entirely. YOU are the one who said Craig was equivocating. This isn't some straw man you're being forced to defend, but rather it is the foremost "flaw" at the top of your list. It turns out (surprise, surprise) that the only "flaw" was in your thinking. Now that this has been made so abundantly clear that not even you can deny it, you prefer to change the subject.

Now you prefer to discuss how Craig is "misleading" people. Well, guess what? You had your shot at complaining. The complaint department is now closed. This conversation has convinced me that you are absolutely unpersuadable and committed to generating pointless complications to frustrate the discussion. I suspected as much after reading your first couple of posts, in which you veered from one worldview to the next, and I thought to myself, "Well, Stunt, how do you squash an average obfuscator?" The answer, of course, is "Get him to commit."

And commit you did. Oh, you're trying to run from what you said, but I won't let you escape. There's only one way to talk to someone who jumps around incessantly just to avoid the actual discussion, and that's with him on a leash.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlnSfr2DBGw

You ready for #2?