Dr. Craig is a liar.

[wiploc]

...

The KCA is an inductive argument. This is an important point. "Inductive reasoning (as opposed to deductive reasoning or abductive reasoning) is reasoning in which the premises are viewed as supplying strong evidence for the truth of the conclusion. While the conclusion of a deductive argument is certain, the truth of the conclusion of an inductive argument is probable, based upon the evidence given." Wikipedia

Therefore, and this is the point so many of you are missing, it is not enough to answer "you didn't prove it!!!" 

It's fine with me if you prove something is more-likely-than-not instead of proving it absolutely-known-to-be-true.  I'd happily settle for that.  And you'll still have proved something; you'll have proved that something is  more likely than not. 

We just want you to produce an argument that, on the scales of logical persuasion, weighs more than zero.  

The first premise was presented in the link as:

1'. If the universe began to exist, then the universe has a cause of its beginning.

Let me give three reasons in support of premiss (1'):

1. Something cannot come from nothing.

I sometimes trip up here myself.  I'm not saying that you made a mistake.  I'm just taking this opportunity to point out something confusing.  Some conversations go like this:

Christian: "Give an example of something uncaused."  

Me: "Virtual particles."

Christian: "Those don't come from nothing.  There was already something in existence."  

Me: "You asked for something uncaused, not about something that came from nothing."

It's easy to confuse the two. 

To claim that something can come into being from nothing is worse than magic. When a magician pulls a rabbit out of a hat, at least you’ve got the magician, not to mention the hat! But if you deny premise (1'), you’ve got to think that the whole universe just appeared at some point in the past for no reason whatsoever. But nobody sincerely believes that things, say, a horse or an Eskimo village, can just pop into being without a cause.

And now we're back to cause.  

I believe there are scientists who sincerely believe the universe (and therefore horses and Eskimo villages) began without a cause. 

2. If something can come into being from nothing, then it becomes inexplicable why just anything or everything doesn’t come into being from nothing.

Why isn't this argument every bit as strong as yours:

"If a god can create a universe from nothing, then it becomes inexplicable that gods don't keep doing that all the time."  

Think about it: why don’t bicycles and Beethoven and root beer just pop into being from nothing?

Why aren't there cosmic eggs going boom right and left as gods start up new big bangs?  

If the lack of spontaneous Beethovens and root beers disproves godless creation, why doesn't the lack of created Beethovens and root beers disprove godly creation?  It seems to me that these arguments are equally strong, which is to say worthless.  

One could make a similar argument about quasars:  They don't exist around here now; therefore, they didn't exist long ago and far away.  

Why is it only universes that can come into being from nothing? What makes nothingness so discriminatory? There can’t be anything about nothingness that favors universes, for nothingness doesn’t have any properties. Nor can anything constrain nothingness, for there isn’t anything to be constrained!

Why is it only gods that exist in pre-universe nothingness?  What makes nothingness so discriminatory?   How does this argument work better for you than for us?  

3. Common experience and scientific evidence confirm the truth of premise 1'.

If there is scientific consensus on this point, you should make that clear.  Otherwise, you are simply asking us to overrule science on our own authority.  Bertrand Russell forbids.  He said something like, "When the experts are agreed, the layman does well not to hold the contrary opinion.  When the experts are disagreed, the layman does well not to hold any opinion at all.  

And as for common experience, that consistently involves one thing preceded by another.  If you invoke common experience, your result is infinite regress.  

The science of cosmogeny is based on the assumption that there are causal conditions for the origin of the unuiverse. So it’s hard to understand how anyone committed to modern science could deny that (1') is more plausibly true than false.

If you are committed to science, then, unless you are an expert yourself, you have to accept that the consensus view of the experts is probably true.  That is, you don't claim that science proves magic, or that the universe had a cause.  

You are claiming that we should be scientific while refusing to be so yourself.  

Read more: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/popular-a...z48RDdCeQH

Not to change the subject, but I believe that Dr. Craig is a liar.  
[/quote]

[RoadRunner79]

For example, take a train locomotive and a freight car connected by a coupling with 0% flex. When the locomotive starts moving (the efficient cause), the freight care moves as well (the effect). Simultaneous. 

This is absolutely false; special relativity prohibits faster-than-light effects.

So if we take a simple physics equation of F=MA. How long is it after the force is applied to the mass, before it starts accelerating? What are they doing in this time?

[wiploc]

Got it.  Thanks for the clarification. 

Quantum mechanics deals with the very tiny.  Quarks, electrons, virtual particles, cosmic eggs, and such.

Why do they think these things poof I to existence without any cause?

I don't know.  I'm not a quantum physicist.

You can read up on the Copenhagen interpretation.

[robvalue]

There's nothing logically absurd about infinities, or infinite regress. In fact, they're incredibly simple.

It may or may not be the case that any such phenomena exists in reality. Trying to say it can't happen because you can't imagine how it can happen doesn't demonstrate anything. Asking someone else to prove it can happen doesn't demonstrate it can't happen.

I would say you literally can't demonstrate these things can't happen. Which is why science does not go around trying to disprove pointless unfalsifiable claims. Science doesn't need to battle religion, or any other kind of woo. Hiding behind the argument from ignorance just shows you have nothing.

I've shown my video about a hundred times now, but some people don't seem to get it. If you have no evidence, you're relying on your premises being 100% accurate and exhaustive. That is an impossible task to demonstrate, I would say. "Close enough" is not good enough. "Probably true, according to me" isn't good enough. You're simply speculating about a theoretical world in which those things are universally true, and for which no other facts interfere with the conclusion. And that's if the arguments even work, which most often they don't.

This is why science brings testing in after a hypothesis has been formed, not as part of speculative, extrapolated premises from which to draw conclusions. No one bases their belief on this bullshit. Well, I hope they don't. This is all rationalisation to make the believer feel more comfortable about beliefs they already have. And it doesn't work on non believers, because they don't need it to work, and so can examine it objectively and see the gaping problems with it.

[Jehanne]

This is absolutely false; special relativity prohibits faster-than-light effects.

So if we take a simple physics equation of F=MA. How long is it after the force is applied to the mass, before it starts accelerating?  What are they doing in this time?

That's classical mechanics; Newton's equations are highly approximate to our every day world, but to get an exact result, one would need to incorporate the Lorentz invariant.  For instance,

Quantum Field Theory = Quantum Mechanics + Special Relativity

With his example, Steve has betrayed himself and Dr. Craig as being Aristotelian philosophers.

[LadyForCamus]

So, after about 50 pages where are we? Steve has not offered a sound argument for his God. He has not demonstrated why it should matter to the real world at all even if the KCA were air tight. We've offered equally poorly formed arguments and examples for infinite regress that he cannot argue are any less truthful or effective (not-effective) than KCA, and he hasn't even come close to rationally describing the various states his God exists in, or the mechanisms by which he allegedly performs his actions. He has failed to properly address several contradictions pointed out to him, and also, not a teeny, tiny shred of demonstrable, verifiable evidence for a single one of his unbelievably abstract assertions has been put forth. *sigh* But we atheists are being obtuse when we say there is no evidence. Okay.

[The Grand Nudger]

Well, the christian faith implores its marks to be ready with an answer...but it doesn't demand that the answer be accurate, sensible, or particularly intelligent. It seems to be enough to make noise until the questions cease.

[robvalue]

How would our reality be different if it wasn't created by an intelligence? How would we tell the difference?

If someone can't answer that, then all they are doing is making an unnecessary assumption, due to their own incredulity.

If they can answer it, I'd love to know where they're getting their information from. Of course, they will try and talk about subdivisions of our reality, and then try to extrapolate the qualities they have to reality itself. The fallacy of composition. Qualities of parts do not necessarily equate to qualities of the whole; especially when we have no reason to believe we even have all the parts to study yet.

[SteveII]

---

---

First, your answer to my thought experiments was simply...we can always find the material cause. The point was, there was no material cause at the point of creating the universe.

It is YOUR bald assertion that there "was no material cause at the point of creating the universe." This is what YOU have to demonstrate. So far, you have failed.

Ugh. To avoid a past infinite regression, there was no material in which to create a universe out of.

1) Did God exist timelessly and changelessly by himself, prior to the creation of the universe? Answer: Yes.

Okay, after all this, your "Yes" to this question finally establishes that you believe 1) There was a period prior to the creation of the universe, and 2) God existed in a timeless, changeless state during this period.

Question: How long was this period prior to the creation of time in which God existed in a timeless, changeless state?

There was no time so measuring it would be nonsensical. Since I am positing a beginning to the universe and a change in God, use of the word prior just refers to the previous state.

However, existing in a state of changelessness does not mean the potential for change is not there. You are confusing changeless with immutability (incapable of change). A timeless being must also be changeless (as we have been discussing). At the point of creation, a change occurred from existing timelessly and unchanging to temporal and changing (entering into an new relationship would be a change).

Question: Even if God had the "potential" for change, what internal mechanism could ever trigger a change in a timeless, changeless being that somehow existed prior to the creation of time?

God's decision to create was a timeless one in that there was no period of indecision preceding it. God could not have created the universe sooner. It simply is that God was timeless and changeless sans the universe and temporal and changing with the universe.

[The Reality Salesman01]

---

He has stated in several of his debates that the "Argument of Evil" is a "dead argument," abandoned by "philosophers everywhere."  I used to believe his shit; no more:

http://www.closertotruth.com/series/does...sprove-god

You're find several distinguished philosophers in the above list (such as Tooley & Smith) who explicitly invoke the argument of evil against the existence of god.

Don't believe Criag; he is a conscious liar.

---

Yup. It's just a bunch of rhetoric used to convince those with their guards down and to validate those who already believe .They regurgitate the things he says without the slightest clue of understanding what any of it means, let alone how to challenge it critically. It just sounds legit to them, and it reinforces their confirmation bias. He's just an overpaid and over-credited pedagogue with a fundamentally useless job. "Christian apologetics"?? In a school?? In a place where higher learning is the objective, such a subject does not belong.