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Fun With William Lane Craig

Cheerful Charlie said:
Just a fun little attempt on my part to ask something for which there is no real good answer.
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He writes extensively about the topics you raise. You might not like the answers he provides but he certainly doesn't avoid them or find them troublesome.
 
Lion IRC said:
Cheerful Charlie said:
Just a fun little attempt on my part to ask something for which there is no real good answer.
Click to expand...

He writes extensively about the topics you raise. You might not like the answers he provides but he certainly doesn't avoid them or find them troublesome.
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There are no troublesome topics or questions, when your answers are unconstrained by reality.
 
Craig really impressed me when he said that when God commanded Israeli soldiers to kill Canaanite civiians, the real victims are the soldiers. Imagine all the emotional trauma they must have after killing babies!

So whom does God wrong in commanding the destruction of the Canaanites? Not the Canaanite adults, for they were corrupt and deserving of judgement. Not the children, for they inherit eternal life. So who is wronged? Ironically, I think the most difficult part of this whole debate is the apparent wrong done to the Israeli soldiers themselves. Can you imagine what it would be like to have to break into some house and kill a terrified woman and her children? The brutalizing effect on these Israeli soldiers is disturbing.
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But they had to be killed, so someone had to do it, right? If only there was some way that an omnipotent deity could commit genocide without causing PTSD in his Chosen People.

Oh well, the important lesson here is, God is Good™, and it's not murder if God tells you to do it.
 
There were SS firing squads in WWII who carried out mass executions, shooting down line after line of victims, who then toppled into pits. Some of the men who did this came down with mental afflictions that incapacitated them. Imagine the level of moral debauchment you would reach if you hacked whole villages of people to death with the weapons of the B.C. centuries. It speaks to Craig's powers of imagination when he says this would brutalize the soldiers. But I'm guessing he never says the slaughter itself was immoral and a sign of an atrocious deity and a delusional faith narrative. Safe guess?
 
ideologyhunter said:
It speaks to Craig's powers of imagination when he says this would brutalize the soldiers. But I'm guessing he never says the slaughter itself was immoral and a sign of an atrocious deity and a delusional faith narrative. Safe guess?
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Craig is Joseph Goebbels. He likely doesn't ever pull the trigger but is guilty of rationalizing brutality of the highest order. Religious people like this have taken propaganda to its pinnacle. The bible is propaganda, some of it good but on balance it's evil because of people like Craig and their blind loyalty and obedience to authority and power. Certainly they are delusional but more importantly, dangerous.
 
Craig did make a point I thought valid for a little while. He argued that the universe could not be eternal because the universe, having an infinite past, could never get to the present where we would exist. The problem I saw with his argument after thinking about it was he made the mistake of framing the universe as having some point it had to reach to do something. We are here simply because the universe was shaped in such a way at the time it enabled us to exist. We were not on a linear line of time the universe was following and once it hit our time on the line made us.
 
BH said:
Craig did make a point I thought valid for a little while. He argued that the universe could not be eternal because the universe, having an infinite past, could never get to the present where we would exist. The problem I saw with his argument after thinking about it was he made the mistake of framing the universe as having some point it had to reach to do something. We are here simply because the universe was shaped in such a way at the time it enabled us to exist. We were not on a linear line of time the universe was following and once it hit our time on the line made us.
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If the past is infinite, it (by definition) had no beginning, so has no point "from which to come" in order to reach the present.

He might as well argue that space cannot be infinite in extent, because if it were, we could never have travelled to here.
 
BH said:
Craig did make a point I thought valid for a little while. He argued that the universe could not be eternal because the universe, having an infinite past, could never get to the present where we would exist. The problem I saw with his argument after thinking about it was he made the mistake of framing the universe as having some point it had to reach to do something. We are here simply because the universe was shaped in such a way at the time it enabled us to exist. We were not on a linear line of time the universe was following and once it hit our time on the line made us.
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The flaw with the infinite regression argument is that they never apply this to their deity. Their deity can exist outside of time, exist without creation, but not the universe? I find little intellectual satisfaction regarding any natural sort of origins explanation, however, the Xian solution just passes the buck back one step... and then pretends it doesn't exist anymore.
 
Jimmy Higgins said:
BH said:
Craig did make a point I thought valid for a little while. He argued that the universe could not be eternal because the universe, having an infinite past, could never get to the present where we would exist. The problem I saw with his argument after thinking about it was he made the mistake of framing the universe as having some point it had to reach to do something. We are here simply because the universe was shaped in such a way at the time it enabled us to exist. We were not on a linear line of time the universe was following and once it hit our time on the line made us.
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The flaw with the infinite regression argument is that they never apply this to their deity. Their deity can exist outside of time, exist without creation, but not the universe? I find little intellectual satisfaction regarding any natural sort of origins explanation, however, the Xian solution just passes the buck back one step... and then pretends it doesn't exist anymore.
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When a person uses science in an attempt to disprove science the person is a fraud and an asshole. Craig has the scientific acumen of a potato. Sounding 'sciency" must make him feel good in front of his idiots.
 
Back in the day when I listened to Christian radio because... I am apparently just stupid... the pastor was going on about "science". He was mentioning these critical laws that I had never heard of before. Some of the things he was saying wasn't false, but he was attributing BS names to some of the things he was discussing... which was weird because he didn't need to do that in order to make his "point". But as you note sounding "sciency" probably provides the speaker a sense of authority.

It is an odd thing, science is anti-god... but let me use science to prove god!
 
Yes. Use science to disprove a religious claim, and all we hear is how God cannot be constrained by time and space, that we cannot test God, that we live by faith, etc.

But when someone thinks they have proved a religous claim using science, then it is shouted from the rooftops by the religious. They really want it both ways.
 
That's what the whole entire creationism/YEC/"cdesign proponensism" is all about! It was fun while it lasted, but not many people care about the discotute anymore. These days, they can say all the quiet parts out loud and don't have to pretend they aren't taking a stand for Jeebus.
 
Good point. ID was created to stuff creationism into the classroom. Now days, there is much less that can be done to hold religion out of school. My daughter's fourth grade class had to a do a bio. My daughter did Cecelia Payne... another student did Jesus. I'm thinking, what sources could you use for Jesus? Outside the gospels there like nothing written about the dude.
 
Lion IRC said:
Cheerful Charlie said:
Just a fun little attempt on my part to ask something for which there is no real good answer.
Click to expand...

He writes extensively about the topics you raise. You might not like the answers he provides but he certainly doesn't avoid them or find them troublesome.
Click to expand...
Where in the bible does it support mega billionaires like Joel Osteen? Just curious.
 
Lion IRC said:
Playball40 said:
Lion IRC said:
Cheerful Charlie said:
Just a fun little attempt on my part to ask something for which there is no real good answer.
Click to expand...

He writes extensively about the topics you raise. You might not like the answers he provides but he certainly doesn't avoid them or find them troublesome.
Click to expand...
Where in the bible does it support mega billionaires like Joel Osteen? Just curious.
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Who says it does?
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Joel Osteen, duh.
 
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