Disproving Odin - An Experiment in arguing with a theist with Theist logic

[GrandizerII]

Personal: Rather than me reword WLC explanation of Ghazali's explanation, here it is:

If someone says there is no separation from God being to God creating our universe, they are claiming that God has not done anything else. I don't think such a limit is justified or even probable.

I don't agree with your supposition here, but it doesn't matter anyway.  Having had some time to think about Craig/Ghazali's argument, it's plain that it's a load of crap.   By 'eternal' here, Craig/Ghazali are implying that God has existed for an endless or infinite amount of time.  Thus the relevance of pointing out that the universe has existed a finite time.  But that's not what it means to be timeless.  This argument is nothing more than a bunch of confusion caused by an incoherent concept of God existing timelessly.  If God exists timelessly, then there is no paradox between the universe being finite and the conditions for the creation of the universe existing because these things do not occur in time.  God is and God creates.  Those two events occur together in timeless existence, so Craig/Ghazali's argument about water freezing simply doesn't apply.  What I find remarkable is that a philosopher who specializes in the theory of time could make such a boneheaded argument.  Either Craig is demonstrating sheer incompetence or he is simply dishonestly making an argument of convenience here.  Regardless, Craig/Ghazali's argument doesn't hold water, and so it can't be used as justification for the belief that the conclusion of the KCA is necessarily a 'personal' god.

Just to supplement what you're saying here, a relevant link:

http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=10746

Craig’s argument only works because he slides back and forth between the two different senses of eternity. If he is forced to stick with one, the argument falls apart.

Yeah, WLC is full of shit as always. And his beloved argument fails from the very beginning anyway.

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Actually, Jenny is more correct that you are here. If a premise is 100% certain, the multiplication (by 1.0) doesn't change the overall probability. If it is less than 100%, it does and should reduce the overall probability from that.
That said,the simple multiplication is only correct when the premises are probabilistically independent of each other. Otherwise, you multiply the *conditional* probabilities of each based on the previous ones to get the overall probability. The conditional probabilities can be very different than the non-conditional probability of each event.

That's simply not true with inductive premises and demonstrably so. 

For example, say you have 2 premises that make it likely that x is the case. 

1. We can't remember a time when Mary did not go to the market on Wednesday (95%)
2. Mary is at the market. (actually, this is not an inductive premise, so there is not probability to assign. However you can assign 100% if you want). 
3. Therefore Today is Wednesday. (95%)

Now say we add premises to that. 

1. We can't remember a time when Mary did not go to the market on Wednesday (95%)
2. Mary is at the market.
3. The street cleaners usually run on Wednesday (80%)
4. The street cleaner just went around the corner 
5. The garbage is picked up on Tuesday evening (80%)
6. The garbage cans in the alley are empty
7. Therefore today is Wednesday. 

According to your reasoning, the probability of today being Wednesday is 95% x 80% x 80% = 61%. What do you think the probability is that it is Wednesday? 

Baynes Theorem is more applicable to this type of reasoning.

He clearly said that you don't just simply multiply probabilities together when the premises aren't independent of each other.

Here's a fun link for you to check out on conditional probabilities:
https://www.mathsisfun.com/data/probabil...ional.html

P(A&B) = P(A) * P(B|A)

Finally, where there are probabilities less than 100%, when you multiply probabilities together, the product is naturally going to be less than 100%.