(May 31, 2020 at 2:19 am)brokenreflector Wrote:(May 31, 2020 at 2:05 am)arewethereyet Wrote: New guy - BrokenRecord - leads with William Lane Craig.
Surely many will be converted.
What's wrong with William Lane Craig? And why hasn't anyone in this thread been able to cogently defend atheism?
I've never read anything by Craig, so I can't say from personal knowledge. The reason I haven't been motivated to read him, though, is because he uses the Kalam argument, which so far has never appealed to me.
I don't think that a First Cause argument that uses a temporal procession is going to persuade anybody. I don't find it persuasive, from what I know of it.
You probably know, both Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas specifically rejected a temporal First Cause. Aristotle thought the world had no beginning, and Thomas thought that it was a matter of faith, from scripture, that there was a beginning, but that this couldn't be demonstrated.
Their First Cause argument is much more persuasive to me, and I have yet to find any scientific argument that knocks it down.
As you know, this is an essential chain rather than a temporal one.
I wouldn't be mean and say that Lawrence Krauss was dishonest, exactly, when he wrote his book in total ignorance of this argument. But if anybody is going to claim he's defeated an argument he probably ought to know what he's talking about.