Stump the Christian?

[Esquilax]

By the way, one of the world's leading cosmologists, Don Page, took issue with both William Lane Craig and Sean Carroll in an open letter found on Carroll's blog:

Guest Post: Don Page on God and Cosmology
http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog...cosmology/

You might find it interesting.

I did! What I found particularly fascinating is the difference in Page's approach when rebutting Craig, versus when rebutting Carroll. When addressing Craig, the corrections come on a strictly factual basis, pulling him up on errors of thinking regarding the science in some good detail. When addressing Carroll... there's actually not a lot there, content-wise. Page makes some good points about how the probabilities associated with various predictions changes according to the models used, but when it comes to his conclusion regarding god things get utterly nonsensical. He admits early on that he believes by faith, which means next to nothing to me, but when it comes to the actual evidence he provides for that conclusion, shit gets weird.

"Nevertheless," he says, after having dismissed Kalam's first premise as dubious (despite personally believing it to be true, because of another belief that he has, which isn't actually a reason), he believes that a view of the evidence shows that god exists. But his evidence is... not that? He says the elegance of the laws of physics is proof of god, but that's a matter of opinion, since elegance is a subjective criteria, making the argument there "it is my opinion that physics is elegant, therefore god." I've heard counter-arguments of equal weight that the laws of physics are deeply troubling:



Page goes on to assert that the existence of sentient beings is evidence for god, but he never says why that is, just that it is, and, well... no, it's not. That's begging the question, if you just point to things that you know exist and say they're evidence for god; we know those things evolved, we have no reason yet to expect that design is required.

He finishes with one of a series of vague references made throughout the piece to the "historical evidence" of the resurrection, to which my response is "oh? There's evidence that Jesus resurrected? Rather than just evidence that he may have existed? Where's that?"

Page never goes into any further detail.

Ultimately, what makes this all interesting is that it's another case study in how otherwise smart people will bend over backwards and lower their standards of evidence and discourse when it comes to their pet religions. That's not surprising, though it is disappointing.