Dr. Craig is a liar.

[abaris]

I didn't look through all of your list. I only checked randomly, which you should do too if you are to speak about science journals. Who's behind these supposed science journals, what's their agenda, the works.

Obviously, checking your sources is something alien to the likes of you. It's my daily bread, so I'm used to it. Suffice to say, I would have been highly surprised if Craig actually did land a publication in a real science journal, apart from religious publications.

[Angrboda]

It isn't that God is an impossible explanation, just that it is a very poor one.  Discounting the evidence from miracles, we have no direct effects attributable to this hypothetical being, only the writings and words of men.  Explanations are judged on a number of different criteria to determine their merit.  One of these is scope, or how many phenomena are covered by the explanation.  God gets high marks in this area.  Another aspect is parsimony, or how simple the explanation is.  Arguably, God fares okay on this metric, though it's hard to compare.  On other measures, the God explanation fails miserably.  Relevance, or how related the cause is to the effect is poor.  Explanatory power, or how well we understand the phenomenon after the explanation as opposed to before is another abysmal failure.  Predictiveness, or what predictions you can make based on the explanation and how do those pan out is another big zero for God.

In short, in most of the things we expect a good explanation to provide, God comes up short.  God is little more than a Hail Mary hypothesis.  It explains everything without explaining anything.  The only real advantages it has are scope and familiarity, and familiarity is a lousy reason to support a hypothesis.

Can you provide a link to you list (and discussion thereof) of what makes a good explanation so I can better address each one?

It wasn't drawn from any particular source. I tried to list them clearly in my reply, but philosophy of science is a favorite topic with me and the information is drawn from my experience as much as from online sources.

[GUBU]

What can be demonstrated by objective means to be so. Take for example yhwh, we know him to be imaginaty because of the impossuble attributes ascribred to him in the bible, so he's a good example. The current thinking on him (I use the word thinking very loosely) is that he is a being which is indectectable by any measuring instrument, completely divorced from our reality and able to change our reality on a whim without us being possibly ever able to detect his influence. Now this being who theists insists we'll never detect (until we die and go to heaven) can safely be dismissed because as theists point out we'll never have evidence (not one single scrap) for him.

indetectible?

From natural theology:
  KCA
  Moral argument
  Ontological Argument
  Fine Tuning Argument
  Argument from Contingency

OT Revelation
Miracles
Jesus
NT Revelation

Personal experiences of literally billions of Christians


Perhaps:
Life
Consciousness

A) your theological arguments are neither natural nor evidence. At best, they are special pleading. At worst they are lies.
B) The bible isn't evidence. If it were we'd have to accept that a Scottish giant destroyed a land bridge between Ulster and Galloway, because he was feared of Cuchulainn. This is, of course theGiant's Causeway myth, and it has the exact same evidential basis as the bible. On miracles name me one single one that has been shown to have happened and demonstrated to have no possible natural cause. Only then will I accept miracles as evidence.
C) Consciousness is an emergent property of human (and possibly other large brained species) brain functions. There is no wvidence to show that life neither needs nor has a supernatural explanation. As with miracles, bring evidence to the table and we'll talk. Until then I'll continue on the basis that you haven't the first iota of a clue about what you speak on.

[Jehanne]

All you have to do is provide me with: demonstrable, falsifiable evidence, reasoned argument, and valid and sound logic to support your claim that a god exists.

How does one go about falsifying the proposition that a justified belief must be falsifiable?

You can't, of course, but if a hypothesis cannot, in principle, be disproved, then it cannot be tested.  The evidence for "god" is no greater or less than IPUs or the FSM.

[LadyForCamus]

Okay, Steve, this is only going downhill. You assert that your timeless God can have "a series of mental events [...] enough to form a before and after (therefore some measure of "time.") 1) Given that you believe your God is eternal, his "series of mental events" would be actually infinite, contradicting your many prior assertions that a past "infinite regress" is absurd. 2) This "series of mental events" measuring time also blatantly contradicts your confident earlier statement...


You are clearly making this stuff up as you go!

You missed the qualifier in the sentence preceding the quote: "prior to the universe". Your objection is that there was no time in order to change from this state into creating the universe. Why is it not possible, that God, after existing timelessly created the universe--which would be a mental event causally prior to the universe taking shape? Alternatively, why isn't it possible that God causing the event was simultaneous with the effect (since it was only efficient causation--not material causation)?

...WHAT?!?!


Sorry, that's all I've got until I get some sleep and come back to this thread with fresh eyes...

[Jehanne]

How does one go about falsifying the proposition that a justified belief must be falsifiable?

Really?  The fallacy of the stolen concept argument?  Falsifiability has demonstrated its utility from the standpoint of pragmatism.  It doesn't need abstruse philosophical justification to pay its fare.  That bill has been paid.

Not to mention that there are an infinite number of non-falsifiable propositions but only a finite number of falsifiable ones.

[Jehanne]

You missed the qualifier in the sentence preceding the quote: "prior to the universe". Your objection is that there was no time in order to change from this state into creating the universe. Why is it not possible, that God, after existing timelessly created the universe--which would be a mental event causally prior to the universe taking shape? Alternatively, why isn't it possible that God causing the event was simultaneous with the effect (since it was only efficient causation--not material causation)?

...WHAT?!?!


Sorry, that's all I've got until I get some sleep and come back to this thread with fresh eyes...

What caused god to have a "mental event" that lead to his/her/its creation of the Universe?  If he/she/it existed timelessly prior to the creation of the Universe, what caused him/her/it to "change states"?

[GUBU]

All you have to do is provide me with: demonstrable, falsifiable evidence, reasoned argument, and valid and sound logic to support your claim that a god exists.

How does one go about falsifying the proposition that a justified belief must be falsifiable?

Prove to me that purple doesn't sound like a scuba diving waremelon playing a clavichord on the surface of Mercury.

[GUBU]

Because he's not even remotely touched by science or the acceptance thereoff. Otherwise he wouldn't be a creationist. He's a theologian. Well, that's OK, but I for one wouldn't dare enter a stage to refer on quantum physics or the iniverse, since my credentials don't cover these field. For the simple reason of not wanting to make a joke of myself. But that's what Craig does, on a regular basis. Refering and debating topics, he doesn't know shit about.

I'm just curious, do you think a person gets these articles published in secular philosophy and science journals by "not even remotely touched by science or the acceptance thereoff"?????? The list is too long, so just search for journal, science or philosophy. Have you seen the list of people whom he has debated? Do you think they waste their time with "jokes"? 

http://www.reasonablefaith.org/william-l...blications

As long as gullible people who are unwilling to learn,like you, exist, yes, people do have to debate with jokes (in the case of Craig sad, lying little shits of jokes at that. When a man says he knows better about what a theory contains and means than its three authors, despite showing a profound lack of knowledge of the suject matter at hand, he is a right piece of shit).

[robvalue]

Is the importance of falsifiability really being questioned?

I've mentioned it in passing in videos before... maybe I need to do one concentrating solely on this topic.

I understand many theists being allergic to it. Whenever they make a theistic falsifiable claim above the mundane, it's falsified almost immediately. Not that this stops them. They just retreat back into their unfalsifiable circle.

If WLC has had anything of any worth published in a genuine scientific journal, I'd be extremely surprised and very interested to see it. So if someone can provide that, please do. I'm pretty confident that is a crock. Something peer reviewed by some non-Christians, at the very least.