Dr. Craig is a liar.

[Neo-Scholastic]

All you have to do is provide me with: demonstrable, falsifiable evidence, reasoned argument, and valid and sound logic to support your claim that a god exists.

How does one go about falsifying the proposition that a justified belief must be falsifiable?

[Cyberman]

Isn't that your job?

[SteveII]

I have to give credit where it's due.  At the very least, Steve seems genuinely interested in improving his apologetics game.  Yeah, it's mostly by regurgitating WLC, but that's still an improvement from where he was last year.  The progress he's made in his presentation puts him above some of the other theists on here who are either completely reprehensible or interested more in petty one-upmanship than anything else.

I mean, I don't find anything he's written to be convincing, but at least he seems to be trying to put some real thought into it.  I consider that refreshing compared to what we usually get.

Thanks Kevin. 

I have never hid my motives to being here and have even discussed them several times. My wife thinks I'm crazy for posting here--especially when she looks over my shoulder and sees a post that was intentionally disgusting or over the top irreverent. I do it because philosophy and debate are interesting to me and rather just read books, I engage in a live discussion where I get to write out things and watch a debate develop and go research and come back to articulate another point and so on...

Yes, I get a lot of my material from WLC. Why not? By any standard he is a great debater. Because of his training and experience, he is very careful in his writings and responses to questions--often explaining a nuance in an argument that will avoid an objection 3 steps away.

[Edwardo Piet]

Go away SteveII, get lost.

[wiploc]

Of course I mean causally prior. That was the sentence I highlighted in your post. Regarding causation, we would have to distinguish between efficient and material causation. For material causation, the cause would have to precede its effect. For efficient causation, the cause can simultaneous with its effect.

Why only simultaneous?  Why not after?  If you're doing away with the rules, why make up arbitrary replacements.  

If nothing exists necessarily, everything exists contingently. Contingent things have an explanation for their existence.

Then why do gods exist?

Why is there something rather than nothing?

Why is there god rather than nothing?

To say "I don't know" to that question and then tell a theist that the idea of God is ridiculous is, at best, inconsistent.

I don't agree.  

I can certainly say that I don't know something that I actually don't know.  There's nothing ridiculous about that. 

And all the gods I'm familiar with have ridiculousness built in.  Take a necessary god, for example, that's ridiculous.  

[/quote]

[Angrboda]

All you have to do is provide me with: demonstrable, falsifiable evidence, reasoned argument, and valid and sound logic to support your claim that a god exists.

How does one go about falsifying the proposition that a justified belief must be falsifiable?

Really? The fallacy of the stolen concept argument? Falsifiability has demonstrated its utility from the standpoint of pragmatism. It doesn't need abstruse philosophical justification to pay its fare. That bill has been paid.

[Angrboda]

What a crock.  The old, there are arguments, I just don't have them with me dodge.  This is nothing more than a strategic retreat, followed by hollow assertions.

I'm sorry that's all you got from that. I will engage on any topic you want.

It was a truly underwhelming response. You're convinced more by revelation and familiarity than boots on the ground logic and it shows with this handwave to "established theology." Why don't you try engaging my argument that God makes a lousy explanation for anything? The only reason God doesn't seem ludicrous to you is your comfort with the concept, and as noted, that's a poor resort. I'm sure you would find the beliefs of other religions, such as the African natives who believed that there were witches with an extra organ which could travel abroad spreading malevolence, themselves ludicrous. The only bulwark against the absurdity of the concept of an infinitly everything superhero god is the familiarity. As a former Hindu, I know all too well the way familiarity can blind one to strangeness. If you had never before heard of the concept of God and I explained it to you, you'd likely find it strange. Can you name one thing other than God that has such fantastic qualities and properties?

Post on explanations and why God is lacking.
http://atheistforums.org/thread-42435-po...pid1267175

[SteveII]

If you make the statement that nothing necessarily exists, you are also saying that everything is contingent (having an explanation for its existence). If everything is contingent, the universe has an explanation for its existence. 

So the argument seems to be 

1) the universe must have an explanation for existence
2) God cannot be that explanation
Therefore: We don't know, just anything other than God. 

I have yet to hear why the concept of God is logically impossible (and therefore ridiculous).

It isn't that God is an impossible explanation, just that it is a very poor one.  Discounting the evidence from miracles, we have no direct effects attributable to this hypothetical being, only the writings and words of men.  Explanations are judged on a number of different criteria to determine their merit.  One of these is scope, or how many phenomena are covered by the explanation.  God gets high marks in this area.  Another aspect is parsimony, or how simple the explanation is.  Arguably, God fares okay on this metric, though it's hard to compare.  On other measures, the God explanation fails miserably.  Relevance, or how related the cause is to the effect is poor.  Explanatory power, or how well we understand the phenomenon after the explanation as opposed to before is another abysmal failure.  Predictiveness, or what predictions you can make based on the explanation and how do those pan out is another big zero for God.

In short, in most of the things we expect a good explanation to provide, God comes up short.  God is little more than a Hail Mary hypothesis.  It explains everything without explaining anything.  The only real advantages it has are scope and familiarity, and familiarity is a lousy reason to support a hypothesis.

Can you provide a link to you list (and discussion thereof) of what makes a good explanation so I can better address each one?

[abaris]

Yes, I get a lot of my material from WLC. Why not?

Because he's not even remotely touched by science or the acceptance thereoff. Otherwise he wouldn't be a creationist. He's a theologian. Well, that's OK, but I for one wouldn't dare enter a stage to refer on quantum physics or the iniverse, since my credentials don't cover these field. For the simple reason of not wanting to make a joke of myself. But that's what Craig does, on a regular basis. Refering and debating topics, he doesn't know shit about.

[SteveII]

Yes, I get a lot of my material from WLC. Why not?

Because he's not even remotely touched by science or the acceptance thereoff. Otherwise he wouldn't be a creationist. He's a theologian. Well, that's OK, but I for one wouldn't dare enter a stage to refer on quantum physics or the iniverse, since my credentials don't cover these field. For the simple reason of not wanting to make a joke of myself. But that's what Craig does, on a regular basis. Refering and debating topics, he doesn't know shit about.

I'm just curious, do you think a person gets these articles published in secular philosophy and science journals by "not even remotely touched by science or the acceptance thereoff"?????? The list is too long, so just search for journal, science or philosophy. Have you seen the list of people whom he has debated? Do you think they waste their time with "jokes"? 

http://www.reasonablefaith.org/william-l...blications