William Lane Craig continues to desperately defend the indefensible.

[Faith No More]

Solving the problem of universals shows just the opposite. Sensible bodies manifest mathematical ideas to greater or lesser extents.

Unless you can elaborate, I'm going to have to take this as the nonsense it appears to be.

[GrandizerII]

Rhetoric over logic is what the mainstream debates you see in the media are about.

I don't even want to waste my time thinking about this kind of exercise. What a waste of public attention.

It's not a waste of exercise if you go there prepared and ready to use both good logic and rhetoric (that's what Shelly Kagan did and why I believe he crushed WLC in the discussion). The problem with most of the atheists who challenge WLC is that despite having very good logic on their side, their rhetorical skills are relatively poor, making it really easy for someone experienced in debates like WLC (regardless of his views) to play around with their words and make them seem like fools in the eyes of the audience.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Each side of the Pyramid of Giza, three dots on a paper, and a piece of spanakopita all, to various degrees of exactness and completeness, embody the idea of a triangle. By the process of abstraction, people strip away the unessential features of particular things to recognize the universal ideas that a group of objects share. In order to have the idea of a pattern, the pattern must, in some way, already be present.

[FatAndFaithless]

Each side of the Pyramid of Giza, three dots on a paper, and a piece of spanakopita all, to various degrees of exactness and completeness, embody the idea of a triangle. By the process of abstraction, people strip away the unessential features of particular things to recognize the universal ideas that a group of objects share. In order to have the idea of a pattern, the pattern must, in some way, already be present.

[robvalue]

I know why he always puts in his middle initial.

WC = Full of shit

Too perfect. I filter out the L, Bill. You don't fool me.

[Faith No More]

Each side of the Pyramid of Giza, three dots on a paper, and a piece of spanakopita all, to various degrees of exactness and completeness, embody the idea of a triangle. By the process of abstraction, people strip away the unessential features of particular things to recognize the universal ideas that a group of objects share. In order to have the idea of a pattern, the pattern must, in some way, already be present.

So what?

[robvalue]

Er... if someone draws something, they must have already thought about what they are drawing?

[Faith No More]

Er... if someone draws something, they must have already thought about what they are drawing?

No, what he's saying is that if you can build a triangle, the idea of a triangle must have existed in some form before that. It's part of the Platonic nonsense that attempts to establish the existence of the divine with mathematical ideals.

The truth is that no one really knows just exactly math is, be it simply a human construct or some sort of deeper, underlying piece of the fabric of the cosmos, but it sure as hell isn't a good argument for the supernatural.

[Neo-Scholastic]

My position of moderate realism is not Platonic. You are ignorant.

[Faith No More]

Meh. You both rely on the same wishful reasoning that argues for the existence of divine universals, so the difference is negligible from my point of view.