When the Soap Opera Star beat WLC in debate

[boatsnguitars]

What do you think? Did Scott win the day? Kinda like Rocky, he didn't need to win, just make a good show of it. Personally, I think he won, but i'd like to know your impression.

[TRANSPONDER]

I may watch it, but I tire of debates as nothing seems to get settled, and the denialists side continues in denial. True the Hamm -Nye debate was worth doing as Hamm was scuppered from the start as his case was refuted before he'd even made it, but it was really the last words exposed the whole shabby sham.

'What would convince you to change your mind?' Nye - 'an out of place fossil'.

Ham said no evidence would ever make him change his mind.

This comes somewhere between the designed banana stuffed down bananman's throat and the Dover case that said in a court of Law that ID was not valid science. It frustrates me, though, that these debates just seem to vanish and the theists seem to escape. Like nobody else seems to have noted Wood's body language of David Woods trying to dump his denial that atheists had anything to live for into Matt's lap. Or that preacher whose only case was to sneer at atheists 'Don't Know' how the cosmos was created. The 'I used to be an atheist -like you' ploy, (in a Woods video' but what I call the Strobel syndrome), where they claim they used to be Informed atheists - but post Christian conversion, they don't even recall what being an atheist was, let alone what arguments they used (2). Strobel is just particularly egregious, as he claimed he looked at all the evidence impartially and with an open mind (1), but the only side we get to hear is dyed in the wool resurrection apologetics (3).

Maybe, it is ok in front of an audience, but then the losing side will claim audience -stuffing. Mind, the excellent demolition of 'Catholicism' (Stephen Fry and the Hitch) was a treat to see. And I'll stop before i get onto the distressing tendency of MILLIONS to still drool over a vile and discredited regime. Still it's rather cool to have a Charles III

p.s. I trust that we won't have Kalam debated yet again? It HAD been refuted as an argument for God, never mind Biblegod, even if it has a Case.

(1) have an open mind....really; I don't give into bias, even if I have it. I'll agree with anyone with a case I agree with. I even agree with the Maga crowd, Proud Boys and Oathbreakers about one thing: what should be done with Mike Pence, not for me because he wouldn't enable a political coup, but because he dragged crocoduck creationism into the US senate.

(2)please, please some insider, like a Doomcock informant, tell me about this Bible apologetics playbook they all seem to have.

(3) but then we know all about lying propaganda apologetics, like 'Expelled' an infamous film dishonestly made, dishonestly marketed, and too quickly forgotten, which is a shame as it makes one feel uncannily like watching Fox news interviewing Rudi Giuliani.

[Miles]

A 1+ hour of give and take over the Kalam argument is a bit much, however, I will say that as much as a universe appearing without a cause is difficult to imagine it's no less difficult to comprehend than assigning a conscious agent (god) as the cause for its existence---particularly when this agent has never been proven to exist in the first place. And, of course, lacking a role in either of the two premises, this god plays no actual part in the soundness of the argument, a soundness that, in my view, is unwarranted. God is simply tacked onto the argument to seemingly give him validity, which, of course, the argument doesn't entitled him to at all.

One of the necessary qualifications of a sound argument is the truth of its two premises, and neither premise has ever been shown to be true. Only assumed so.

Premise 1: Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
Premise 2: The universe began to exist.
Conclusion: Therefore, the universe has a cause.

Although perhaps more likely than not, "Whatever begins to exist has a cause" has never been backed up by any confirmable evidence, and, therefore does not qualify as a fact or being true. One can just as well assume that "Whatever begins to exist has no cause."
The same can be said for premise 2. Although it may be difficult to imagine an eternally existing universe, our lack of imagination does not qualify as establishing the truth of anything. Perhaps our universe never began to exist or perhaps it did, nonetheless we don't have sufficient evidence to assert either claim. Therefore, I see the Kalam argument as the pitiful desire by Christians to bring the power of logic into the fighting ring. A ring in which god has yet to win the recognition of rational minds.


.

[POI]

What do you think? Did Scott win the day? Kinda like Rocky, he didn't need to win, just make a good show of it. Personally, I think he won, but i'd like to know your impression.

I haven't watched it yet, but in case people have time, this dude sums up his viewpoint, about the Christian god, in 9+ minutes. I'd say it may be worth a watch, before delving into the big one?.?.?.?

[TRANSPONDER]

I'm watching it and I'm impressed by both in their intelligence. I'm struggling to keep up. Mainly with the terms, I have to work out what they mean by the context

Yes, I found myself questioning both though the actor must have a grounding in Philosophy, and I would have argued as a third view altogether. Dr Craig (rspect ) is winning for me so far until he added God (supernatural) as an aspect of the material, which I suspect is where he must come a cropper.

No...they don't go down that path.They talk concreta and there are other options, such as the idea the universe of matter is itself the thoughts of God. Which is why I would have gone with'not proven'rather than false because the normals of the world couldn't apply before the creation. But I'll see where they go.

Good. Lane Craig argues that the idea that the normal causes of matter if they did not apply to pre -creation wouldobviate the possibility of existence I suppose the idea is is wrong because that would make a cosmos that did not exist and it does, so there must be a supernatural (non material) cause and Scott is nodding and I suspect he must be going to say that it must also mean that matter must need to be here never have not been there for the process to happen and logically must be eternal, even against human intuition. Let's see.He may jump on popping the supernatural in there without good reason just to skip logical problems,

Gottim. That's just what he did - if it's absurd, it refutes a proposed cause. We seem to have got onto doubling down (logic aside the universe exists and must have a cause and he does say we don't know what,which is the 2nd pillar of Kalam that falls, but I'll see whether Scott goes back to a logical eternal cosmos plus god also being 'materia' and thus must have a cause and if not, so must matter or illogic - special pleading for God which if he rejects than means he is fiddling philosophy.

So I don't know whether Scott is setting a trap but with the cause of the statue (Creator) he seems to be Inviting Goddunnit. Now Dr Craig is either walking into a trap or setting one 'Either the universe never began to exist (read always existed - as it does) or began without a cause'. For me, I look for a way out - matter that could always exist without creation or we have a miracle a complex being without origin. I hope we won't have the too common fixating the causality - Claim That Must Be Accepted.

Well, that seems have ended there with I think Scott saying the Universe must always have existed and Dr Craig saying it must have had an origin, citing Greeks who knew less about the world than we do, so I guess I'm out. It's the old problem of trying to make Philosophy do the job of research science.

[benchwarmer]

[Replying to boatsnguitars in post #1]

I didn't watch the video, but I've seen other debates with Dr Craig. He is certainly a crafty debater and good at drowning his opponent with so many things to refute there is not enough time to do it.

However, the entire Kalam falls with one simple fallacy: Special Pleading.

We don't actually know if the 'stuff' the universe we live in actually had a beginning or not. That is an open question. However, even if it did, inserting an entity that does the creating then has the exact same problem. When did this entity begin existing? Of course the argument is that it has always existed. So, we simply move the problem further away onto something that we can't observe (and may not even exist).

The special pleading is due to the assertion that this god has always existed, but the energy of this universe didn't (when neither thing can be shown true or not).

Where Dr Craig really fluffs up though is appending things like "a personal" god, etc. That just cracks me up every time. Where did that get pulled from? It's classic "load your premises with whatever you want to fall out the bottom" type arguments. If the premises aren't true to begin with, the argument is just a simple "garbage in, garbage out" processor.

[TRANSPONDER]

[Replying to benchwarmer in post #6]


Yes.I thought Dr Craig did ok and Scott did excellently. He has to know some philosophy. It sounded a bit crafty to use essentially (as it sounded to me) the normal nothing without a cause can't account for the universe so either the universe can't exist or it had no cause. It does exist so it must be uncaused (eternal matter). Dr Craig ended up with a sort of agree to disagree and he really wanted to have it as It can't exist without a cause, so the only explanation is a cause that itself didn't need to be caused. Propose an eternal god. Which it didn't take him long to appeal to, and we know where that leads to. Where did God come from? Always there and we've already done the denial that a complex uncreated creator is more logical entities to be explained than something from nothing. So logically an uncreated intelligent agent is more improbable than an uncreated unthinking matter. That gets denied because God isn't the conclusion of the Theist argument but the start, which they don't recognise and will not admit.

I propose myself a basic stuff that is Nothing enough not to be created but able to produce virtual particles. That's the only hypothesis that evades the problem. But like I say, it's academic as it doesn't lead to a particular god or religion, which is what the debate is really about, but it would if a 'god' was proven, eliminate atheism.

[boatsnguitars]

Did you notice where Craig seemed to be taken aback, and resorted to emotional ploys? "Would you feel comfortable standing in front of God..." Glad Scott squashed that immediately - he basically told Craig to grow up. (That's how I saw it ).
Also, Craig tried to use emotional arguments where Scott wasn't.
I've seen this before. When Craig feels the other guy is getting the upper hand, he'll try to distract them with emotional arguments. He's done this more times than I can count, but his most obvious and continuous example is with Shelly Kagan.

[TRANSPONDER]

Did you notice where Craig seemed to be taken aback, and resorted to emotional ploys? "Would you feel comfortable standing in front of God..." Glad Scott squashed that immediately - he basically told Craig to grow up. (That's how I saw it ).
Also, Craig tried to use emotional arguments where Scott wasn't.
I've seen this before. When Craig feels the other guy is getting the upper hand, he'll try to distract them with emotional arguments. He's done this more times than I can count, but his most obvious and continuous example is with Shelly Kagan.

Yes. That was poor. At the time I thought 'What would you say.Dr Lane Craig (or is it Craig?) if it turned out to be Allah? That attempt to frighten people into accepting a prime mover is never going to bother an atheist.

[Wootah]

I made this comment on youtube 7 months ago

40:30 feels like Scott is willing to believe an absurdity just to block any opening for God.

That something can come from nothing.

But I have not rewatched the video just that section.