Video series on Kalam refutation

[Underseer]

Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_mz_YebHms&list=PL6M9lJ0vrA7E17ejxJNyPxRM7Zki-nS6G

First video in playlist:


Mostly I found this amusing because it covers so much of the bizarre mental gymnastics Craig has to go through in order to resurrect the long-debunked cosmological argument.

What was particularly illuminating to me is that I finally found the reason that I keep bumping into apologists who argue against Relativity and insist that the fact that Relativity is false proves god. They got the argument from Craig and didn't quite understand what argument he was making.

If you just want to comment on the cosmological argument, cool, or if you want, consider this a resource for the growing number of "Relativity is false, therefore God" arguments that seem to be popular right now.

 

[braces_for_impact]

I think the reason for renewed interest among apologists is the recent popularity of the copout now known as presuppositionalism, which is really just a bad rehash of the transcendental argument.

Thanks for the find!

 

[Underseer]

I think the reason for renewed interest among apologists is the recent popularity of the copout now known as presuppositionalism, which is really just a bad rehash of the transcendental argument.

Thanks for the find!

I agree with your assessment.

They can just dust off old, long debunked arguments, reword them a bit, give them a new name, and shazam! Believers think it's a new and convincing argument!

The "math, therefore god" (transcendental argument) is particularly dumb since mathematical truths are simply axiomatic truths. They are true because they are internally consistent with a set of rules we all agree to follow. 2+2=4 is true because we defined what 2 means, we defined what 4 means, and we defined what the plus operator does.

According to theists, it is impossible for humans to come up with a set of rules and then follow them, therefore the only possible explanation for axiomatic truths is magic, therefore god exists.

You couldn't make this stuff up.

 

[bilby]

I think the reason for renewed interest among apologists is the recent popularity of the copout now known as presuppositionalism, which is really just a bad rehash of the transcendental argument.

Thanks for the find!

I agree with your assessment.

They can just dust off old, long debunked arguments, reword them a bit, give them a new name, and shazam! Believers think it's a new and convincing argument!

The "math, therefore god" (transcendental argument) is particularly dumb since mathematical truths are simply axiomatic truths. They are true because they are internally consistent with a set of rules we all agree to follow. 2+2=4 is true because we defined what 2 means, we defined what 4 means, and we defined what the plus operator does.

According to theists, it is impossible for humans to come up with a set of rules and then follow them, therefore the only possible explanation for axiomatic truths is magic, therefore god exists.

You couldn't make this stuff up.

But they certainly can, and do

 

[dockeen]

Relativity is one of those topics that is a fascinating barometer of a witnesses intellectual honesty. If someone who you know wouldn't be able to explain at a top level the difference between general and special relativity is willing to attempt to try and make arguments about theology based on it, they are basically dishonest.

Over the years, a surprising number of discussions in this area have boiled down to the theist saying "well, you know,Einstein was Jewish"

 

[Shake]

When I first heard Craig, his confidence and apparent command of philosophy made him sound reasonable to me. The more I listened, both to him and those refuting him, the more I realized how full of crap he is. I'd heard of him before, but the first video debate I saw with him in it, he actually performed pretty well. I don't recall who it was he debated, but they could have done a lot better in refuting his arguments. The atheist in this case spent his time making a separate argument, not really touching Craig's line of reasoning, so therefore he was able to say, "See? The atheist hasn't been able to take down any of my points," though of course worded differently. I'm now going to go find the video series in the o.p. and watch it on my tablet, because I don't think I've come across this one yet.

I started using YouTube at work to listen to music on my tablet. It didn't matter if I couldn't watch the videos, but somehow I came across some atheist themed videos, starting with some light stuff by Jaclyn Glenn. (Yes, I'm aware of the accusations of plagiarism, but her atheist stuff is actually decent, IMO.) Since then, I've found Thunderf00t*, TMM, Aron Ra, Steve Shives, TruthSurge, potholer54, The Bible Reloaded, the Amazing Atheist, and most recently, Logicked. If you're not aware of any of these folks, I'd recommend any of them. The styles are all different and they cover a variety of topics, but all worthwhile.

*yes, I know Thunderf00t is a raging anti-feminist, but if you stay clear of those videos as well as his YT drama, he's got some decent stuff. I think he did well in his discussion with Ray Comfort, if he did stutter a lot.

 

[BH]

Thunderf00t did a great job on Craig's Kalam argument. He showed that is actually leads to nowhere and why philosophical arguments in and of themselves do not prove anything.

 

[braces_for_impact]

I still find it striking that some apologists are denying relativity now. I don't know why I'm surprised by this. They often deny cosmology, geology and biology; none of which they understand either.

 

[Underseer]

I still find it striking that some apologists are denying relativity now. I don't know why I'm surprised by this. They often deny cosmology, geology and biology; none of which they understand either.

And William Lane Craig is the dumbest of the bunch. He tried to disprove relativity with a syllogism. Even Ray "banana man" Comfort understands enough about why things are true in science to lie about the evidence, but only Craig is dumb enough to think that the evidence doesn't matter.

 

[Atheos]

I wouldn't say WLC is dumb. He's articulate, well spoken and seems quite capable of picking apart arguments made by others. If there is a weakness he exploits it and if there is not he is extremely adept at creating compelling strawman arguments that more often than not confound the listener.

Just because someone happens to believe something that is wrong doesn't make them dumb. A clever person who believes a falsehood is more malignant than anything.

Take Dan Barker as an example. He's definitely a clever person and I would imagine that when he was a preacher he was every bit as adept as WLC at presenting the very arguments he now would oppose. I wouldn't say he was dumb then and clever now. If anything I would say he's simply better informed now.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I wouldn't say WLC is dumb. He's articulate, well spoken and seems quite capable of picking apart arguments made by others. If there is a weakness he exploits it and if there is not he is extremely adept at creating compelling strawman arguments that more often than not confound the listener.

Just because someone happens to believe something that is wrong doesn't make them dumb. A clever person who believes a falsehood is more malignant than anything.

Take Dan Barker as an example. He's definitely a clever person and I would imagine that when he was a preacher he was every bit as adept as WLC at presenting the very arguments he now would oppose. I wouldn't say he was dumb then and clever now. If anything I would say he's simply better informed now.

Exactly. Making a good argument isn't to be mistaken necessarily for being right. Lawyers make a career out of it. The question is, how many people you can convince. Even JT Chick has followers.

 

[Underseer]

I wouldn't say WLC is dumb. He's articulate, well spoken and seems quite capable of picking apart arguments made by others. If there is a weakness he exploits it and if there is not he is extremely adept at creating compelling strawman arguments that more often than not confound the listener.

Just because someone happens to believe something that is wrong doesn't make them dumb. A clever person who believes a falsehood is more malignant than anything.

Take Dan Barker as an example. He's definitely a clever person and I would imagine that when he was a preacher he was every bit as adept as WLC at presenting the very arguments he now would oppose. I wouldn't say he was dumb then and clever now. If anything I would say he's simply better informed now.

Exactly. Making a good argument isn't to be mistaken necessarily for being right. Lawyers make a career out of it. The question is, how many people you can convince. Even JT Chick has followers.

Well, if the goal is to convince people, then I would highly recommend Peter Boghossian's book Manual for Creating Atheists in which he uses psych research to treat deconversion like an intervention.

 

[Underseer]

I wouldn't say WLC is dumb. He's articulate, well spoken and seems quite capable of picking apart arguments made by others. If there is a weakness he exploits it and if there is not he is extremely adept at creating compelling strawman arguments that more often than not confound the listener.

Just because someone happens to believe something that is wrong doesn't make them dumb. A clever person who believes a falsehood is more malignant than anything.

Take Dan Barker as an example. He's definitely a clever person and I would imagine that when he was a preacher he was every bit as adept as WLC at presenting the very arguments he now would oppose. I wouldn't say he was dumb then and clever now. If anything I would say he's simply better informed now.

William Lane Craig tried to disprove relativity with a syllogism (as part of a desperate attempt to salvage his version of the Kalam argument). That is the single dumbest apologetic argument I have heard. It's even dumber than his "disproof" of infinity.

And let's not forget that he argued in favor of genocide as part of justification for Divine Command Theory, which states that things are moral or immoral depending on who does or commands it, which is part of his attempt to argue that moral absolutism proves god.

He just uses bigger words than Ray Comfort, but to be honest his arguments are worse. Sure, he uses flowery rhetoric to communicate these incredibly stupid arguments, but they're still incredibly stupid arguments.

 

[BH]

I watched him debate Stephan Law over whether God was evil or good and Law made Craig look real bad in my opinion.

Law's point was the problem of evil was problematic for the existence of God. He then made the point that God, if he exists, could be evil, and this could be used to explain why good and bad are in the world and even give Craig his objective moral values he so loves. But Law stated that no one really will accept the evil God theory as an explanation why there is evil in world. It's just silly to them. He then asks why people then accept the good god theory and explain evil away to defend it. It isn't any more rational to do one or the other. So its best to conclude both are just bollocks. Craig just stuttered and jabbered but did not address the point.

 

[BH]

I also wanted to add that Thunderf00t's arguments in his video about William Lane Craig and the speed of light could also be applied to the ontological argument.

You can imagine there being a can of spam moving at light speed
A greater can of imagined spam would be one that could move faster than light
An even greate can of spam is one that does exist and moves faster than the speed of light
Therefore faster than light speed moving can of spam exists......

 

[Draconis]

The "math, therefore god" (transcendental argument) is particularly dumb since mathematical truths are simply axiomatic truths. They are true because they are internally consistent with a set of rules we all agree to follow. 2+2=4 is true because we defined what 2 means, we defined what 4 means, and we defined what the plus operator does.

According to theists, it is impossible for humans to come up with a set of rules and then follow them, therefore the only possible explanation for axiomatic truths is magic, therefore god exists.

You couldn't make this stuff up.

But they certainly can, and do

I take the view that math&logic therefore not God. Why? Because these are concepts and rules that do not need creating. One object plus another will be two regardless of the labels we use to represent the constituent parts of that operation. The meaning of what two is does not need to be defined: it merely is regardless of whether humans are around to think of a meaning.

 

[James Brown]

Craig really lost me when he argued that the slaughter of Canaanite infants was a good thing, because they got ushered straight into Heaven. Hooray! But the real victims in that story were the Hebrew soldiers. Think of the PTSD they must have suffered after killing babies!

Never mind that Craig just excused abortion and infanticide in any context, and if the soldiers were doing something that made them morally sick, then it must not have been moral, even if it was commanded by Jehovah.

[YOUTUBE]aUMzYA3XSEc[/YOUTUBE]

 

[Juma]

But they certainly can, and do

I take the view that math&logic therefore not God. Why? Because these are concepts and rules that do not need creating. One object plus another will be two regardless of the labels we use to represent the constituent parts of that operation. The meaning of what two is does not need to be defined: it merely is regardless of whether humans are around to think of a meaning.

Not really. An object is an idealisation, a model. To have an object you must separate what is part of the object and what is not, that requires som sort of intelligence.
Math rise from thinking about objects. Without objects you have no numbers.

 

[Underseer]

Craig really lost me when he argued that the slaughter of Canaanite infants was a good thing, because they got ushered straight into Heaven. Hooray! But the real victims in that story were the Hebrew soldiers. Think of the PTSD they must have suffered after killing babies!

Never mind that Craig just excused abortion and infanticide in any context, and if the soldiers were doing something that made them morally sick, then it must not have been moral, even if it was commanded by Jehovah.

[YOUTUBE]aUMzYA3XSEc[/YOUTUBE]

Yep. Divine Command Theory is a form of moral relativism so extreme as to actually be incoherent.

What makes it so funny is that after making an argument like this and making a mockery of the very notion of objective morality, Craig then turns around and argues that only objective morality is moral and the existence of objective morality proves god, who cannot be proved to be moral without making a mockery of the very idea of objective morality.

 

[James Brown]

That's why it's a two-pronged dilemma. You can avoid the sharpness of one of the prongs by leaping onto the other prong. Or vice-versa.

And if you can do so on different days, then you can command handsome speaking fees and book deals.